Lack of actions taken as "being mean"

[laurel1980]

Okay... .so my wife... .I love her to death.  Been married to her for a year and a half now, together with her for about 3 years.  One of the biggest issues that continuously comes up between us... .is my lack of calling her "sweet names" and things.  She calls me on it all the time, and it is so frustrating!  I constantly feel like she is expecting me to be something or someone I'm not.  I am not the lovey mushy love words all day long kind of person.  However, I am most certainly not "Mean" to her.  But she has this way of implying that by my lack of those actions, I am somehow being "Mean" to her.  She tells me all the time, "You are being so mean to me."  And I am just sitting there having spent hours and hours doing stuff for her, and taking care of her, and running errands for her and things all because I love and care about her.  But if I don't tell her all of these sweet things about herself throughout the day, after a while she just starts acting all irritated at me, and will get excessively pissed at me for stupid little things like forgetting to switch the laundry around.  In her mind, it is as if I can't stand her guts, and have been insulting her all day long and actually being mean to her.  She perceives a lack of actions somehow as if it is a direct action against her.  I can't imagine living life like that!  Always feeling like your significant other is out to get you.  And here I am with such a big sensitive heart, and I just get absolutely crushed by this behaviour.  It kills me inside!  Knowing that I love and care about her so much and am willing to do just about anything for her, but to have her treat me as if I am the biggest scumbucket a hole on the planet just because I did not gush my heart out to her on a regular basis.

    I am starting to feel hopeless.  We have this fight every couple days and having it go on for 3 years now, has really been beating me down.  She makes me feel like I am a failure, and she LOVES to compare me to other spouses.  "My sisters husband is super sweet to her and calls her sweet names all the time, I wish so bad I had married someone like him."  And I'm standing there just dying inside having the woman I love so much imply that I am a failure of a spouse and that she basically regrets marrying me.

  How does a person protect themselves from this kind of thing, or cope with it so it doesn't cause me... .well... .I'm already experiencing extreme depression over it.  My favorite time of the day is bedtime, because I finally get to just lay down next to her and hold her, and be close without her telling me how much of a failure I am.  I don't know how to handle it.  I am dying inside here.  I love her so much when she is not being that way.  But all it takes is her sensing that I might not be willing to jump excitedly at going and doing something for her, and she takes that as me not loving her enough to just freely "want" to serve her.  I love doing stuff for her, but if it is right in the middle of my work day, and I have a done of work that HAS to get done, yes, forgive me for getting a little irritated that I am being taken away from work again.  But I am extremely careful to NEVER EVER EVER show any irritation at all, or she takes it that way.  That I don't care about her.  But... .no matter how careful I am, sometimes she still senses that I'm not exactly excited about missing out on 3 hours of work to go do something for her, and then I get treated like the absolute scum of the earth because of it.  Because I am "Being Mean" to her, when I most certainly am NOT!  I might not be being all overly sweet and loving, but most certainly NOT mean.

  So I just don't know how to handle this.  Like I said, this exact subject comes up quite literally every few days, and being told so regularly that I am such a huge failure, and feeling like I can't ever do or say anything right, after years of this kind of thing, I have really begun to believe it's true.  To believe that I really am the complete failure she loves to tell me I am when she's mad at me.  Other times, she's all over me telling me how much she loves and appreciates me, and then the instant she gets upset at me, it turns to her telling me all of the ways I suck so bad.  And my poor heart can't take it.  She has beat me absolutely into the ground with this!  My love for her is so conflicting!  If it weren't for me loving her so much and loving the good times together, I would have run from this kind of incredibly hurtful damaging abuse long long ago!  But my love for her and the hope that somehow maybe I could figure out how to change myself enough for her to be happy causes me to stay and continue to put up with it.   She tells me that I have put her through "Hell" the past three years.  And that absolutely kills me too, because if you sit and think about what she is implying when she says that.  That she regrets marrying me, that our whole life together has been a nightmare, that I am always such a jerk to her.  And I find myself sitting there thinking, "If this is true, if I have really treated you THAT bad, then WHY ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?"   

  I find myself wondering how much of it is her BPD, as opposed to just me really truly being the total jerk she says I am.  But I know I am not a jerk.  I know that I have a very big, caring, super sensitive heart that gets crushed on a regular basis by her.  I have never cried so much in my life as I have these past few years.  All because I love her so much, and it hurts so bad to have the person you love so much tell you how big of a failure you are so regularly.  I am literally dying inside.  It has probably taken 10 years or more off my life because it affects me so bad.  Yet here I am, still here.  Am I stupid?  Or am I a better person for caring so much about her that I am willing to try to work past it?  I honestly don't know at this point.  All I want is to be happy, and live life and have fun together, and have her be happy.  But she tends to be very negative quite often and complaining about how much stuff she has to do, and just doesn't seem to enjoy life like most other people do. And it is so sad to see.  I wish I could figure out the trick to keeping her happy and helping her to look at things in a more positive light.  :-(

   

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

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[ArleighBurke]

Yep - I think we've all been there.

So there's 2 aspects to this:

And I am just sitting there having spent hours and hours doing stuff for her, and taking care of her, and running errands for her and things all because I love and care about her.

Problem #1: This is a generic male thing. The more you give her, the more you do for her, the more you keep raising her expectations - the more she'll want, and the less each of the things you do will count. This feels wrong - but makes sense. If you give her flowers each day, she'll "get used to that". If you stop, it'll be that you don't care. But because it's every day it stops feeling special to her - so it doesn't count anymore and therefore you have to do MORE next time.

You can't win.

STOP DOING STUFF FOR HER. Again, this feels wrong, but put yourself first. Live YOUR life first. Invite her into your life - to join you - but do NOT use "her approval" as your measure of whether you're doing things well or not. I REALLY recommend the reddit group Married Red Pill for lots of advice. (This stuff works!)

I wish I could figure out the trick to keeping her happy and helping her to look at things in a more positive light.

Problem #2: She has BPD. You can't "keep her happy". Her whole brain is not wired the same as you. Which is why you need to live YOUR life first. Again - this feels wrong but it works. Her brain is a constant whirlwind of emotions and thoughts. She needs YOU to be a rock. Sure of yourself. Not fazed by her outbursts. She will complain that you do things without her, that you don't do enough, that you don't care. But these are all projections. BE HER STRONG MAN. Strong emotionally. Live your life by your own rules, have your own ambition and desires. Stop living in HER world and start living in your own. She doesn't want to live in her world - so why are you joining her there? Make your own fantastic world and invite her into it. She will come... .she will get afraid of it and retreat/push you away - but she will come back. It is what she wants, but it scares her. Give her you strength and your world as her escape.

[Tattered Heart]

hi laurel1980,

I'm sorry you feel like you've been running in circles trying to please your W but nothing is working. It sounds to me like your W and you are speaking 2 different languages--love languages that is.

To you love looks like: Acts of Service
To your wife love looks like: Words of Affirmation

In the book The 5 Love Languages Gary Chapman explains that each of us has a unique way of experiencing love. Problems arise when couples have different love languages. So sweeping the kitchen floor may seem like love to you, but to her it's nothing more than just doing housework. The way she best experiences love is through hearing words that say nice things to her. Not hearing affirming words is like starving her out of love. She is literally telling you what she needs from you, albeit she is doing so in a way that is demeaning to you.

Granted, there should be limits on how often. It would be weird and uncomfortable if every time you spoke to her that you had to lay on the flattery. But, could you start with a nice compliment just 2 times per day?

[engineer]

hi laurel1980,

I'm sorry you feel like you've been running in circles trying to please your W but nothing is working. It sounds to me like your W and you are speaking 2 different languages--love languages that is.

That's eye-opening... .  I mean, really it explains a lot.

Me: affirmation and touch
My Wife: acts of service

I was mystified about how strangely my wife acts about words of affirmation and touch.  She just kinda doesn't get it. 

And with acts of service, she always seems to be struggling to make sure whatever I am doing for her is something I really want rather than something I feel like I am supposed to do... .and now it is clear why.  I mean, it's clear to *me* that I do things 'cause I love her, but I don't think I make it clear to her... .mostly because I just didn't think of it as a showing love thing.  Cool, I can fix that.

Thanks

[reluctanthusband]

The 5 love languages really helped me before I found out about my wife's BPD. If you use the tools you will(Within healthy boundaries) have less of that type of conflict.  You may find that your wife's LL changes at the drop of a hat, just be mindful of what your partners primary languages are.  Also understand that as I see it BPD's have cracked/faulty love tanks.  No matter how well you do in filling your spouses love tank they have an automatic dump valve.  I can be the best most loving Christian husband/father/provider and the next minute say something apparently wrong(in her eyes) and I am disconnected from God, not fathering correctly and somehow unable to provide.  It sucks but it helps reduce them not feeling loved all the time.

Me: Acts of service and second to that physical touch. 
I would wake up early on Saturday morning on my day off and clean the entire house, make a late breakfast and have coffee done.  My wife has stayed home for almost our entire marriage.  When my wife crawled out of bed at 9-10 it would barely register that I had done all of the house work she should have done all week in a few hours.  I would almost be happier with a clean house and dinner at a decent time the great sex all the time... .But that would be great as well

Her: Words of affirmation mostly
Not only words of affirmation but the complete and utter absence of anything critical.  She can literally accuse me of being unfaithful at the drop of a hat with just the faintest hint of ANYTHING and no evidence, but if I get upset at the hypocrisy(She's the cheater) I get "Look at how you are talking to me" as if I shouldn’t be mad.  She for years said she ":)idn't feel loved" and I was losing my mind trying.

[laurel1980]

Thanks so much for the replies!   Yes, I actually am familiar with the 5 love languages, and before we even started dating, we had already taken the test to determine what our individual love languages were.  Both of us got "Quality time" and "Physical Touch" as our top two.  So here I was all this time being confused as to how we could spend an entire week together having all kinds of fun, and at the end of the week, she would act as if I had abandoned her all week.  Now, she took the test again, and it shows that her top love language is indeed "words of affirmation".  Which makes far more sense!  And answers why spending so much time with her just kind of went by the wayside.  I need to take the test again myself now that it's been a few years since I last did, but I'm willing to bet my result would be the same.  Because for me, quality time and physical touch are still very important to me.  Acts of service, I mostly do out of habit just because I tend to be the helpful type of person, and like to do nice things for everyone, and in my mind, it makes sense that she should appreciate those things.  But apparently to her, those are just things I should be doing anyway.

  She loves to ask me to do something, and then if I accidentally happen to forget to do that thing, such as make the bed, or switch the laundry, here comes the "You never do anything I ask you to do" comments.  Which as you can imagine, is absolutely NOT true.

   I tell her all the time how much I love her, but she is wanting so much more from me. And it is so devastating for me, because all I want is to be able to be happy and live my life and have her be happy.  But my life is miserable so much of the time, because I feel like she is expecting me to be something I am not.  That is a terrible feeling to have, that you are not good enough the way you are, and that you can never do anything right.  It sucks!  I love her like crazy, but I'm losing my mind over stuff like this.

  She has also almost completely alienated me from my family.  Both of my parents are still alive, and I have one sister that I used to be super close with.  I used to be really close with my whole family, and would go visit them regularly.  But since getting together with her, she has systematically managed to eliminate my family from my life, by convincing me they are horrible people and that my sister is evil.  Every time I try to talk to her about my family and tell her how much I love and miss them, and would like to be able to go visit them now and then, she outright forbade me.  She says it's either her or them.  And I try to talk some reason into her telling her "Hey! They are my family! I know you don't get along with them, but they are still my family, and I still love them, and want to have them in my life."  But her answer is that they are terrible judgemental people who will never accept me and my lifestyle, and why would I want anything to do with them.  Almost every time I get a simple "Hi" text message from my mom or sister, it triggers her hardcore and we often end up in a huge fight over it.  I really don't know what to do about it!  My poor family feels like they have completely lost me, and they basically have.  I never call them, I never text them, because every time I do, she gets all offended as if I am somehow betraying her by doing so.  For a long time I tried to hold my ground, and tried to stay strong and insisted that I was going to continue communicating with them as long as I saw fit.  But over the past few years, of her getting so ridiculously angry at me over them, after a while I learned that having my family in my life just is not worth the absolute hell I end up going through when she insists that I should have nothing to do with them.  My sister is traveling nearby next month, and she sent me a text wanting to know if we could meet up.  I haven't seen her since September, and before that it was the September before.  An entire year I went without seeing them.  Not by my choice, but because my wife gets so upset about me going there.  But anyway, my sister wants to meet up with me next month when she flies out here.  So I very carefully asked my wife, "So are you not going to let me go visit her?"  And she straight out told me no, that if I love her, and don't want to lose her, I will not go see my sister.  And I cannot for the life of me figure out how she thinks she can get away with that.  How she thinks she can alienate me from my family, and then straight out bannish me from going and visiting my own sister whom I love and used to be super close with.   In fact... .as I am typing this I am realizing just how much of my own identity I have lost in this relationship.  So much that I am actually sitting her letting my wife get away with banning me from going and meeting up with my own sister?  What in the hell?   I know that if I go, it will cause a HUGE fight between us.  But at the same time, I feel like it is my duty to tell her to shove off, and not let her get away with that kind of crap.  It is my sister.  Other than her perceived injustices that she things my sister did to her, she has no reason whatsoever to keep me from going and visiting her.  I mean like I said, I went from not going more than a month without seeing my sister at the most, to now it's been 6 months so far, and was an entire year before that.

  How would those of you more experienced BPD partners handle such a situation?  I know you can't possibly know all of the details of the dynamics between my wife and my family.  But she is very threatened by them for some reason.  And I don't know what to do.  Because my parents are getting older and aren't going to be around much longer, and here I am completely abandoning them, and when I cry to her about missing my family and the thought of them dying with things being this way kills me and makes me super sad.  Her answer is "Well they are horrible people who do not care about you.  They are very selfish, and do not have your best interest in mind, so you don't need them in your life."  I beg her to please just try to understand that they are my family, and I love them, and want to talk to them and visit them now and then.  And she just gets absolutely livid and acts as if I am being a complete jerk to her and invalidating her experience with my family.  She insists that my mom and sister have sent her tons of terrible, mean, abusive text messages... .that conveniently got deleted and do not exist anymore.   Hmmmm.  And she uses that as a reason that I should not have anything to do with those horrid people.  And since she claims the horrid text messages don't exist anymore, I can't argue that my family is not as bad as she says they are.  It's my word against hers now.     I am so devastated and sad.  I love her so much, and we do have a good life together, and get along great a lot of the time.  But there are so many of these incredibly weird, and hurtful BPD influenced behaviors that just kill me so bad and make me wish everyday that my wife was normal!