beginning to see with some clarity

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Hi all,

I am at the early stages of divorcing my BPD wife.  After 3 years of marriage (5 years of relationship), I really began to put the pieces together beginning in May of this year, partly on my own but also through the work of a couples counselor. 

I am embarrassed to admit that it took me years to figure out what I have been dealing with, and that I overlooked some fairly obvious signs during our dating/engagement.  But, I was at fault because I was coming from a long relationship in which I was emotionally starved, and well, I was ready to see what my heart wanted me to see and was SO ripe to fall for her... .

Our marriage (really from week 2!) has been a rocky roller coaster ride of "I hate you, I love you".  I began early to look for signs of WHICH wife would walk down the stairs in the morning, the loving or the hating.  There is an affect to her face and eyes that I began to realize would tip me off the to the kind of day we were going to have, and I began to really walk softly and not provoke until I could determine what kind of mental state she was in.  And this is not to say that it wouldn't change from one minute to the next.  A simple phrase or comment that seemed benign could set things off, and the typical cycle (for us, it would last 12 to 36 hours) of withheld love, of hateful comments and a barrage of texts or calls (literally dozens and dozens in the space of a short time) all deriding me and my ability as a spouse/parent/professional/man would ensue.  We would normally have 3-4 good days before something triggered an event that would sledgehammer our marriage. 

I learned that the cycle just had to run its course, that nothing would alter the process or shorten it.  In the past year, the verbal abuse also began to include physical abuse, and this prompted me to first leave the house in May to avoid escalation.  I have been in and out of the home since then, living really out of a suitcase (and I travel 1 to 2 days a week, or every other, so I have been on hotels too) since then.

So, the complications: I have 2 older boys who are 17 and 13, and they're amazing and well adjusted young men.  She has begun to see them as competition since 2014 (birth of our first son together) and has increasingly alienated them.  I feel as though I failed a bit here, in protecting them from the worsening relationship, and our ability to spend time together really suffered for about 3 months.   I feel as though we've turned a corner since August and are on the mend... .

I have 2 younger boys with my BPD spouse, and I have tremendous guilt regarding them.  The oldest is 2, and he is a force of nature and a HAPPY child.  The second is 3 months, and he cannot be sweeter or more placid.  I know: I feel terrible that this is happening, with young sons, one a newborn, but I didn't take any of this lightly.  My ability to bounce back and normalize emotionally became very difficult, though she always has seemed to have the ability to forget the nastiness and wreckage created during these episodes as soon as they were over.  Many have counseled that the cycle could just be "hormones due to pregnancy" etc, but I have lived with this for years and know better.  In fact, our first pregnancy was the smoothest period we've ever had, and she was really quite even-keeled by comparison.  Not so this second time... .

I left for the final time shortly after the birth of our second son in September (I know, I am struggling with this).  But, I truly had to.  First, she had said during the summer that I would never know either of our sons, and they'd never even remember me since I am a horrible person (this in a counseling session with our therapist, who first saw this for what it is and recommended I read "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" to understand the relationship), and that I wouldn't even be there for the birth of our 2nd child.  So, I appeased and patched things as best as possible for 3 weeks or so before birth... .

Six days after, I made the mistake of spending 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, helping my brother-in-law on a project.  I had cleared the timing with her on this to make sure it would be the least impactful, but anybody who has been here knows that that means nothing.  Her Dad and step mom were even over at the house to help for most of the time.  I was away from my phone for 45 minutes (it was an outside project in bad cell area) and found the typical text barrage and voice mail messages of increasing escalation.  Well, I returned to chaos.  My wife's sister had removed my older son from the house because she was worried, and after I picked him up, I returned to HATE, and a night of mental torture.  I offered to take the night duty completely with our baby (we normally split the night in half) but she refused angrily, and basically was so abusive verbally, and increasingly physically, that I retreated to the bedroom once I bathed and put our oldest to bed.  She wanted continual confrontation, and repeatedly knocked on the walls and door to the bedroom every 30 minutes or so throughout the night (Yes, I had to work the following day, too) and when I offered to help as long as she was civil, she chased me back to the bedroom. 

So, morning came on that last day, and I dressed for work.  When leaving, she grabbed my computer bag, tried to smash my phone and laptop, scratched my arms and hands to a bloody mess in the process, threw a pot of water on me as I retreated into the garage and to my car, and basically tried to prevent me from leaving the house, making a HUGE scene in our neighborhood in the process.  Wow.

So, that's a very condensed and tepid overview of life in my marriage recently.  I filed for divorce in early November and basically have had to coerce her through lawyers to let me see our children, and have dealt with the hacking of every account I have, including LinkedIn, Facebook and email accounts, where she has publicly posted things in my name to embarrass me and even attempt to get me fired... .  She has reached out to family and friends alike, to employees at our gym, etc to trash my name and accuse me of infidelity and worse.  She even has accused me of sleeping with our counselor after she walked out on our last session together.  She has denied me access to the house, has gone on major spending sprees with our joint account, and has literally tried to email, text and call me and my family (including the older boys) at all hours of the day.  I will still get emails from FB or google saying that an attempt has been made to access my accounts at 2 or 3 in the morning.  Friends I haven't seen or talked to in 2 to 3 years have reached out to ask why my wife is contacting them at 6 am on Thanksgiving for dirt on me! I feel constantly under siege, with her probing for any and every weakness!

Anyway, I felt the need to put this all down in words and apologize for the length of the post.  Thank you for reading it and any advice or comments are appreciated.

[rollercoaster13]

Hi all,

I am at the early stages of divorcing my BPD wife.  After 3 years of marriage (5 years of relationship), I really began to put the pieces together beginning in May of this year, partly on my own but also through the work of a couples counselor. 

I am embarrassed to admit that it took me years to figure out what I have been dealing with, and that I overlooked some fairly obvious signs during our dating/engagement.  But, I was at fault because I was coming from a long relationship in which I was emotionally starved, and well, I was ready to see what my heart wanted me to see and was SO ripe to fall for her... .

Our marriage (really from week 2!) has been a rocky roller coaster ride of "I hate you, I love you".  I began early to look for signs of WHICH wife would walk down the stairs in the morning, the loving or the hating.  There is an affect to her face and eyes that I began to realize would tip me off the to the kind of day we were going to have, and I began to really walk softly and not provoke until I could determine what kind of mental state she was in.  And this is not to say that it wouldn't change from one minute to the next.  A simple phrase or comment that seemed benign could set things off, and the typical cycle (for us, it would last 12 to 36 hours) of withheld love, of hateful comments and a barrage of texts or calls (literally dozens and dozens in the space of a short time) all deriding me and my ability as a spouse/parent/professional/man would ensue.  We would normally have 3-4 good days before something triggered an event that would sledgehammer our marriage. 

I learned that the cycle just had to run its course, that nothing would alter the process or shorten it.  In the past year, the verbal abuse also began to include physical abuse, and this prompted me to first leave the house in May to avoid escalation.  I have been in and out of the home since then, living really out of a suitcase (and I travel 1 to 2 days a week, or every other, so I have been on hotels too) since then.

So, the complications: I have 2 older boys who are 17 and 13, and they're amazing and well adjusted young men.  She has begun to see them as competition since 2014 (birth of our first son together) and has increasingly alienated them.  I feel as though I failed a bit here, in protecting them from the worsening relationship, and our ability to spend time together really suffered for about 3 months.   I feel as though we've turned a corner since August and are on the mend... .

I have 2 younger boys with my BPD spouse, and I have tremendous guilt regarding them.  The oldest is 2, and he is a force of nature and a HAPPY child.  The second is 3 months, and he cannot be sweeter or more placid.  I know: I feel terrible that this is happening, with young sons, one a newborn, but I didn't take any of this lightly.  My ability to bounce back and normalize emotionally became very difficult, though she always has seemed to have the ability to forget the nastiness and wreckage created during these episodes as soon as they were over.  Many have counseled that the cycle could just be "hormones due to pregnancy" etc, but I have lived with this for years and know better.  In fact, our first pregnancy was the smoothest period we've ever had, and she was really quite even-keeled by comparison.  Not so this second time... .

I left for the final time shortly after the birth of our second son in September (I know, I am struggling with this).  But, I truly had to.  First, she had said during the summer that I would never know either of our sons, and they'd never even remember me since I am a horrible person (this in a counseling session with our therapist, who first saw this for what it is and recommended I read "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" to understand the relationship), and that I wouldn't even be there for the birth of our 2nd child.  So, I appeased and patched things as best as possible for 3 weeks or so before birth... .

Six days after, I made the mistake of spending 2 hours on a Sunday afternoon, helping my brother-in-law on a project.  I had cleared the timing with her on this to make sure it would be the least impactful, but anybody who has been here knows that that means nothing.  Her Dad and step mom were even over at the house to help for most of the time.  I was away from my phone for 45 minutes (it was an outside project in bad cell area) and found the typical text barrage and voice mail messages of increasing escalation.  Well, I returned to chaos.  My wife's sister had removed my older son from the house because she was worried, and after I picked him up, I returned to HATE, and a night of mental torture.  I offered to take the night duty completely with our baby (we normally split the night in half) but she refused angrily, and basically was so abusive verbally, and increasingly physically, that I retreated to the bedroom once I bathed and put our oldest to bed.  She wanted continual confrontation, and repeatedly knocked on the walls and door to the bedroom every 30 minutes or so throughout the night (Yes, I had to work the following day, too) and when I offered to help as long as she was civil, she chased me back to the bedroom. 

So, morning came on that last day, and I dressed for work.  When leaving, she grabbed my computer bag, tried to smash my phone and laptop, scratched my arms and hands to a bloody mess in the process, threw a pot of water on me as I retreated into the garage and to my car, and basically tried to prevent me from leaving the house, making a HUGE scene in our neighborhood in the process.  Wow.

So, that's a very condensed and tepid overview of life in my marriage recently.  I filed for divorce in early November and basically have had to coerce her through lawyers to let me see our children, and have dealt with the hacking of every account I have, including LinkedIn, Facebook and email accounts, where she has publicly posted things in my name to embarrass me and even attempt to get me fired... .  She has reached out to family and friends alike, to employees at our gym, etc to trash my name and accuse me of infidelity and worse.  She even has accused me of sleeping with our counselor after she walked out on our last session together.  She has denied me access to the house, has gone on major spending sprees with our joint account, and has literally tried to email, text and call me and my family (including the older boys) at all hours of the day.  I will still get emails from FB or google saying that an attempt has been made to access my accounts at 2 or 3 in the morning.  Friends I haven't seen or talked to in 2 to 3 years have reached out to ask why my wife is contacting them at 6 am on Thanksgiving for dirt on me! I feel constantly under siege, with her probing for any and every weakness!

Anyway, I felt the need to put this all down in words and apologize for the length of the post.  Thank you for reading it and any advice or comments are appreciated.

[ForeverDad]

Do you have independent documentation of these events, for example, the day you left?  If you describe it in court and she denies it all — or worse, claims you were the abusive one — what proof do you have that it isn't "he said, she said" that the court will be inclined to to ignore or side with the woman/mother (a gender which can easily posture as targets or victims)?

We encourage documentation, documentation, documentation.  As much as possible from the professionals, though hopefully not with you trying to defend yourself from allegations.  Also, witnesses.  (But beware that while her relatives may support you now, when push comes to shove they may support her later on due to the blood connection as sister or daughter.)  Also, any photos of the results of her attacks.  Also, recordings where she is the aggressor or attacker, whether verbal or physical.  Understand that courts and professionals give priority to the impact on the children.

As I'm sure you know now, the older children are not hers and so they do not have to spend any time with her.