Liveagain2017
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Posts: 3
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« Reply #3 on: January 11, 2018, 09:44:52 AM » |
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I am new to this and didn't expect much. Thank you for responding to my messages. You really gave me hope.
I have been with my husband for 14 years and married for 11 years. We have a 9 year old daughter. When I first met my husband, he was gentle, loving, kind, very successful and capable. Shortly after we met, he decided to start his own business, then we got married and had our daughter. But right after our daughter was born, he started getting angry, irritable and it got worse and worse. I tried everything to calm him down when he got mad - reasoning with him, agreeing with him or even yelling back at him. Nothing worked. His business didn't make much money. I was under a lot stress providing for the family, taking care of our daughter and constantly tippy toeing around him. So about 4 year ago, after one of his anger outburst, I told him that I couldn't take it anymore and he needs to change. He did - he got less angry, still not easy, but better than before. But he got depressed too. And later on, he told me that it wasn't that he got less angry, he just didn't show it, which made him very anxious and depressed. He said he feels anger all the time. Around the same time, his mother got sick and passed away and he completely stopped working. So he hasn't worked in 4 years. According to him, he was physically and emotionally abused by his mother and he was adopted. So the past 4 years, it has been a yoyo between him being angry, raging and depressed, anxious.
He has been seeing a therapist for the past year, who told him he has trauma related issues from his childhood. But I don't think she sees how bad it is for the family. Because my husband comes home and tells me that his therapist says his anger is fine. I need to deal with my fear and I should be sorry for being scared when he is angry. He also accused me of making him feel that there is something wrong with him.
In the past many years, I supported him through his struggles with his anger issues (he used to get very angry with his mother when she was alive), his depression and anxiety. I never pushed him to get a job and encouraged him to take time to figure out what he wants. But beginning of 2017, he started seeing a 24 year old master student in Psychology behind my back. He is 47. He claimed that they didn't have a romantic and physical relationship. He just wanted to talk to someone about his depression, anger and suicidal thoughts without being judged. It lasted for almost half year until one day I accidently saw a text from her on his phone and confronted him. He did cut it off right away. But it hurt me a great deal. I always trusted him, never questioned anything he did and took care of everything so that he could feel better. While I was busy at work or taking care of our daughter, he was secretly meeting this girl behind my back. It nearly killed me. But I decided to see it from his point of view again - he is struggling and he just needed someone to talk to. So I put it behind me and decided to move on. That was in August.
Not even a few months passed, I was still trying to recover from that, he started getting very angry with me and accusing me of having hurt him so badly including making him hate his mother so that he couldn't treat his mother nicely towards the end. None of those was true. I was crushed again by his accusations. Our relationship was so chaotic at that point. And I started seeing a new therapist around that time. A few sessions into it, my therapist told me that she believes that my husband has borderline personality disorder. I never heard of this before. So I bought a book "Stop Walking on Eggshells" without expecting it will help at all. But I couldn't put my highlighter down. I think I pretty much underlined the whole book. It was the first moment I realized I wasn't alone and I am not the one who is crazy, too sensitive, and couldn't handle anger.
During the Christmas holiday, after I had a very busy December at work, on boxing day, he decided to clean the kitchen. And he was angry and ___ing about how dirty it was. First of all, anyone who has been to my house, would never say my house is messy or dirty. secondly, I work full time, do all the activities with our daughter and spend hours talking to him to help him with his mental issues. It was so unfair for him to get so angry over this. And he wasn't angry for 10 minutes, he was angry for the whole day. I was very hurt by it and asked him to stop acting this way at the end of the day. He lost it and two days later, he apologized to me saying that it's all his fault. He doesn't know why he gets so angry and he is just so unhappy inside. All of these, I have heard thousand of times, but next time when he gets angry, he would remember none of it. And he said he would like to go away for a week to think and clear his head. I told him that I am okay with whatever he thinks would help him feel better. So he left, but he stopped all contact, no phone calls and no texts. It's the middle of the winter and I had no idea where he went. Plus, it was over the New Year's. I was devastated and our daughter was so worried and hurt by it too. After 4 days of silence, he started texting me, again, accusing me of having wronged him so much and he was totally justified to be angry. After a whole day of "shouting" through texts, he again said he was confused and really didn't know anything anymore. The next day, he texted our daughter telling her he loves her and loves our family, and she is a great daughter. Then that night, he came home. When he got home, he apologized to me. Up until today, I don't know where he went in those 5 days.
Now he says he wants to look for a job and starts all over again. I don't know if I believe him, but I will give it another try. The emotional turmoil he put me through has pushed me to my limits on top of keeping a very demanding job and taking care of our daughter. I am so scared that I might go crazy myself, then who is going to take care of our daughter? I am the stable parent for her. And, I don't know how to take care of myself in terms of not being impacted by him so badly when he goes out of control. I read the book and know that I shouldn't take it personally, but it's so hard.
I will be so grateful for anyone who will reply. I am exhausted, devastated and can't go on like this anymore. Thank you for listening.
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