Staying for My Son, but Emotionally Burned Out and Disconnected

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have checked in. A brief summary: I have been with my dBPDw for close to 14 years and for most of that time she got progressively more and more abusive toward me. It started with verbal and emotional abuse and progressed to domestic violence, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse (trying to keep me from practicing my religion.) We have a S3 together and her S25 (my SS). I finally found the courage to stand up for myself after deciding that I would not allow my (then) S2 to grow up watching Dad get abused by Mom and having him use that template for what a "normal" relationship looks like. I read the book "Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life" by Marglis Fjelstad and it taught me how to place real boundaries in my life for my safety and the safety of my son. Since I have done my boundary work the physical attacks, suicide threats, and divorce threats have completely stopped for over a year. However, she is still snarky, passive-aggressive, and drinks daily to deal with her emotional discomfort. I have also been in intensive personal therapy for over a year to deal with my CPTSD resulting from our relationship and have been practicing more and more self-care.

The issue is that I have done everything that I can do from my side of the street to control and improve my 50% of the relationship, but she has done very little to nothing on her side to make things better. We have plateaued and I don't see us getting any better until/unless she starts to work on herself. I am still committed to our marriage, but it is mainly to ensure a safe environment (physically and emotionally) for our son. She is very impatient with and dismissive of him when she is dysregulated and I would not want her in sole charge of him when she has been drinking. I am emotionally checked out of the relationship. I have a lot of resentment, justifiably so, for all of the mistreatment that I have received over the years, and even though the worst of the abuse has stopped I am still not getting any kindness or emotional support from my wife. It feels like I am putting in 99.9% of the effort in the relationship and she is putting in 0.01%. I don't know how long this is sustainable, or what else I can do to make things better.

I am not conflicted about staying. I want to make things better, but don't know how to. I am not motivated to try to be affectionate with her (think of trying to hug a cactus) and intimacy has been awful. For example, she will accuse me of thinking of someone else during the act, will criticize my ability to get or maintain an erection (I am under the care of an endocrinologist for a tumor on my pituitary gland that throws off all my hormones, and he tells me all my levels are optimal - the problem is performance anxiety from being criticized), the amount and quality of ejaculate, etc. This has traumatized me to the extreme about having intimate relations with her. Worst of all, I have to keep our conversations very surface-level and positive/neutral. If I try to share hopes and dreams, fears and worries, or any deep thoughts and feelings they are mocked, ignored, or stored away to use against me as a weapon. I DO try to validate her when possible, but she is on the warpath so much that I rarely have opportunities to do so.

I have increased the amount of time that I spend away from home. I have started to repair friendships that were neglected due to my trying to cover up the abuse. I see my elderly parents who live about 20 minutes away as often as I can, and I go to church regularly. I bring my son with me to all of these things and also try to carve out lots of daddy-son activities just for the two of us. I am also in my first semester of getting my Doctorate of Education in an online program (I do that at home so I can watch my son while I am in class) that meets twice a week for three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays in addition to teaching full-time. My plate is pretty full, which helps to give me time away from my wife and also helps me do self-care. On the weekends that she is not working, I try to plan family activities like movies, trips to the zoo, etc. but by evening she is done dealing with people, has started drinking, and disengages from my son and me as soon as I enforce a boundary about not swearing, insulting me, etc. in front of our son. She retreats to the bedroom with her drink in hand and spends hours on her phone and watching TV while I watch cartoons and play with our son.

In general, I am just fed up with the constant negativity. I can't force myself to try to coax her to be positive anymore. I am at the point where if she is in one of her moods, I just want to shield my son and myself from her. I am letting her deal with the negative emotions on her own and hoping that she learns to self-soothe. So far, it seems like she is mostly doing that by drinking and isolating herself when she realizes that I will no longer absorb her negative emotions via projection. I am ok with listening to her complain and will validate when she does so, but as soon as it turns into personal attacks (which it nearly always does) or she begins to swear and get dysregulated, I am out. I am feeling stuck and empty. Can anyone who has hit this plateau offer advice?

HurtAndTired

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RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[kells76]

Hi HurtAndTired, thanks for being willing to update us with what's going on in your life. You do sound burned out, and your concept of "hitting a plateau" makes sense for where things seem to have settled.

It sounds painful to feel like you've done everything you can, and this is the current result for your marriage. You want your son to experience parents who love each other, who treat each other respectfully, and who spend time together, and that isn't really happening much. It's a loss of what you'd hoped for.

It's good that you're able to share your contribution to the dynamic:

I am emotionally checked out of the relationship. I have a lot of resentment, justifiably so, for all of the mistreatment that I have received over the years, and even though the worst of the abuse has stopped I am still not getting any kindness or emotional support from my wife. It feels like I am putting in 99.9% of the effort in the relationship and she is putting in 0.01%. I don't know how long this is sustainable, or what else I can do to make things better.

She contributes to the dynamic in all the ways you've described (which are significant, serious, and impactful), and you're able to disclose that you're fed up with the negativity, emotionally checked out, and have a lot of resentment.

While I don't have personal experience with a situation like yours, the thought that comes to mind is that it's important you have a place like this, where you can actually be vulnerable, not only about your hurts, but about negative things about yourself, too, if that makes sense -- what I'm getting at is I'm guessing that in addition to feeling unable to share your positive hopes/dreams with your wife, I image that sharing your perception of your flaws with her would not go well.

It's important we have places and people to go to where we can be vulnerable in both directions, about the whole of ourselves -- both our really sensitive yearnings and dreams, and the areas where we fall short and are hurtful... and to know that we won't be judged, dismissed, or mocked.

I want to keep encouraging you to share all of that here -- the "bad" and the "good". Even if we haven't gone through your exact situation, I can say I know what it's like to feel resentful of a spouse. I don't have it all together in my marriage and we do have significant hurdles, and I contribute a lot to those. In that sense, I do understand, because I'm also a limited and hurtful person.

...

The paradigm or concept for marriage that you've had or that you've wanted doesn't seem to apply currently to your relationship (support, respect, intimacy, sharing). It would be frustrating and build resentment to keep hoping or expecting for the "marriage" paradigm to apply right now.

It may sound odd, but is there another paradigm or description of your relationship right now that is... reachable? What I'm getting at is -- you're deciding to stay in the relationship, and at the moment it isn't a marriage in the way you would hope for. Maintaining that hope and expectation will leave you perpetually disappointed and may feed the resentment.

If you shift paradigms to: we're business partners in the business of raising S3, or, we're in a group project of maintaining a home for our child, or, we are roommates with some shared tasks and goals, etc, would you say you two are being more successful in terms of one of those paradigms?

Does that question/approach make sense?

If I hold on to the paradigm of "I'm a wealthy person with no money concerns" and I organize my life and expectations around that, I will be perpetually disappointed, upset, and resentful. "Why do I always run out of money, I'm rich -- this shouldn't be happening to me". If I use lenses more in line with the current reality ("whatever it is I wanted, my current situation is that I am a person of modest means and I do have money concerns"), I may have an opportunity to stop feeding resentment. I may one day become a wealthy person with no money concerns, but that isn't right now.

Not sure if any of this will land... and you may have already gone down that road of thought. Just some thoughts to share.

...

What is your therapist's perspective on where you're at right now?

[HurtAndTired]

As always, thank you for the great feedback Kells,

I have discussed this with my therapist, at length, and she thinks that there is not much I can do without a willing partner to further improve the relationship. She has talked about radical acceptance, and I have been working at that, but it is a hard pill to swallow. I am not expecting that my wife and I can ever have a normal, reciprocal relationship built on mutual trust, support, and sharing, and I am ok with living like roommates or co-parents...for now. If she doesn't decide to get help, at some point, I will not be able to continue on that way.

For now, our son is too young and vulnerable for me to consider anything else but staying. I have also just finished reading the book "Splitting" by Randi Kreger and Bill Eddy about divorce and BPD, and oh boy was that a scary book! The thought of her accusing me of God only knows what in an attempt to get full custody of our son terrifies me. I cannot and will not risk my precious boy being raised solely by an unstable alcoholic. He is currently 3 and a half and I am going to wait until he is at least 6 or 7 before I would contemplate leaving. I want him to be of an age where he can speak for himself should my wife make any kind of outrageous claims against me.

I guess I am hoping that she hits some kind of rock bottom, now that I am no longer enabling her by letting her offload negative feelings onto me. I know that she is in extreme discomfort since I quit caretaking, hence the daily drinking, but apparently she is not yet ready to admit she needs help. There is nothing I can do to move that along, except to "remove the pillow" from the "rock bottom" so that she can really feel it when she hits (i.e. no longer enabling).

All of this is to say that I am resolved that I am going to stay, for now, unless things get markedly worse. However, the calculus on that may very well change in three or four years. I certainly do not want to spend my retirement years living with someone who has untreated BPD. I am hoping that she gets help, but hoping is all I can do for now.

HurtAndTired