Limbo: Stressed out mess, volatile wife pushing me to spend, help appreciated

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

Hi there

I’m here becaus my personal life is a stressful mess and I just don’t know what to do.

Things should be good. I’m married to a beautiful Italian woman, we have two adorable small kids, we’re healthy and I enjoy a decent income from working freelance meaning I can be flexible to spend more time with the family.

However, my life is endlessly stressful. My wife is very volatile, sometimes delightful but often in a rage with those closest to her, and is always falling out with people.

There’s always a new flavour of the month who is the best person ever but they always fall from grace (they end up ‘disappointing’ her, due to her unrealistic opinion of how she deserves to be treated). She’s not getting on any more with half her own family and none of mine like her any more, which makes day to day life and wider family holidays impossible.

My wife is doing her best to make it hard to see my family, always. Saying nasty things and always casting aspersions on them, and it’s hard for me to spend time with my friends, it always seems to be hers.  She also always ensures that her mother is living with us more often than not or we’re staying in their family flat in Italy in the summer. It’s just not fair or balanced at all. A definite isolating policy.

I am pretty sure she is BPD or a narcissist, and have started reading up on the subject. She is also addicted to designer shopping (to improve her mood as she is dissatisfied with the life I provide for her, so it’s apparently ‘all my fault’) and worryingly now also expensive jewelry, which has helped push us from what should be a comfortable lifestyle now into debt. (She does not work - I know I am partly to blame for facilitating the expenditure but sometimes it’s out of desperation to ‘change the mood’ though of course it never lasts).

Truth is that at this point I’d run a mile but we’re married with 2 toddlers and I feel an obligation to soldier on, even though I feel I am losing my happier, carefree personality of old. (Others tell me this too.)

I’m in a real mess. Isolated, stressed, frequently under a rage attack, distracted from my job, always pushed to spend cash I don’t have. Any thoughts or ideas anybody might have are most appreciated... .thank you.

[Tc18]

Hi there

I’m here becaus my personal life is a stressful mess and I just don’t know what to do.

Things should be good. I’m married to a beautiful Italian woman, we have two adorable small kids, we’re healthy and I enjoy a decent income from working freelance meaning I can be flexible to spend more time with the family.

However, my life is endlessly stressful. My wife is very volatile, sometimes delightful but often in a rage with those closest to her, and is always falling out with people.

There’s always a new flavour of the month who is the best person ever but they always fall from grace (they end up ‘disappointing’ her, due to her unrealistic opinion of how she deserves to be treated). She’s not getting on any more with half her own family and none of mine like her any more, which makes day to day life and wider family holidays impossible.

My wife is doing her best to make it hard to see my family, always. Saying nasty things and always casting aspersions on them, and it’s hard for me to spend time with my friends, it always seems to be hers.  She also always ensures that her mother is living with us more often than not or we’re staying in their family flat in Italy in the summer. It’s just not fair or balanced at all. A definite isolating policy.

I am pretty sure she is BPD or a narcissist, and have started reading up on the subject. She is also addicted to designer shopping (to improve her mood as she is dissatisfied with the life I provide for her, so it’s apparently ‘all my fault’) and worryingly now also expensive jewelry, which has helped push us from what should be a comfortable lifestyle now into debt. (She does not work - I know I am partly to blame for facilitating the expenditure but sometimes it’s out of desperation to ‘change the mood’ though of course it never lasts).

Truth is that at this point I’d run a mile but we’re married with 2 toddlers and I feel an obligation to soldier on, even though I feel I am losing my happier, carefree personality of old. (Others tell me this too.)

I’m in a real mess. Isolated, stressed, frequently under a rage attack, distracted from my job, always pushed to spend cash I don’t have. Any thoughts or ideas anybody might have are most appreciated... .thank you.

[juju2]

Hang in there, you are in the right place.

We have tools.  I started here last year, i wanted to learn how to stop making things worse.

The community here is caring, helpful, experienced.  You will be o.k.  if you are willing to learn.  I didnt realize how much i can do, i am not a victim.

Keep reading here.   When did your wife start w the behaviour, did you see any red flags, early?

Take excellent self care,  j

[Papa]

TC, welcome. I'm fairly new here too, I  left my wife of 25 years last September and didn't know about BPD until a this Spring. Your experiences sound very similar to mine. I wish I had found out about BPD when my marriage and children were as young as yours. You have choices to make about whether to try and make it all work, learning the strategies to cope with a BPD partner, or whether to set out for a different life. At least now you have the chance for these to be will-informed choices.

[Tc18]

Hang in there, you are in the right place.

We have tools.  I started here last year, i wanted to learn how to stop making things worse.

The community here is caring, helpful, experienced.  You will be o.k.  if you are willing to learn.  I didnt realize how much i can do, i am not a victim.

Keep reading here.   When did your wife start w the behaviour, did you see any red flags, early?

Take excellent self care,  j

Thanks for the note. We've been together 'on and off' for about a dozen years, usually 'off' and as friends though because I got put off by her behaviour/demands and lost interest for periods of time. We were living together when I finally decided once Xmas about 4 years ago that I'd really had enough. She left me early to rejoin her family back in Italy and I really thought that was that. I\d have been happy not have any more involvement. Then the telephone call came about 2 weeks later saying she's pregnant. I really couldn't believe the timing of this news, though I know she'd been keen to have kids and I had been less convinced, due to the volatile, unstable state of our relationship. So that's how I came to be in the situation I am now. Loyalty and 'doing the right thing' for my children, but I'm  not sure it's sustainable.

[Tc18]

TC, welcome. I'm fairly new here too, I  left my wife of 25 years last September and didn't know about BPD until a this Spring. Your experiences sound very similar to mine. I wish I had found out about BPD when my marriage and children were as young as yours. You have choices to make about whether to try and make it all work, learning the strategies to cope with a BPD partner, or whether to set out for a different life. At least now you have the chance for these to be will-informed choices.

Hi Papa. I'd be interested to know more about your situation and how it evolved. Do you wish you'd got out earlier or would that not have been the right answer? For myself, I need to find out more what BPD/Narcissism entails and if there are any adequate coping strategies (for the sake of the kids' stability), otherwise I'd be best off out of it if things continue as they are. Right now and I am in the deep freeze and not being spoken to, which is an improvement on yesterday's screaming fit at me in the bathroom. Sigh.