Hi there.
My partner and I have been together for 6 years, approaching the 2nd anniversary of our marriage. Our early relationship was turbulent, with emotional abuse, uncontrolled mental health issues, and lots of explosive fighting that ended in breakups. We had what I later came to see as a typical cycle of abuse-blow-up-remorse. We had two major breakups, including one where we were living together and I moved out. Finally my partner got a BPD diagnosis that stuck--she had already been diagnosed with various other mental health issues including ADHD, depression and anxiety. She also struggles with two major physical chronic illnesses. Thanks to some really great medical practitioners and mental health care workers, she went on medication and made a lot of changes with the help of a great psychiatrist. We also worked with a couples counselor that helped us enormously. We were doing really well, and it seemed like she was in recovery--it was night and day from her previous state.
Right before the pandemic hit, I had been offered a job in a neighboring state--the state I grew up in, but that my partner wasn't very familiar with. I finished a graduate degree during the pandemic, and we moved for my job in 2020. At this point, things were going pretty well between us, and she was a lot more stable.
At first, despite challenges related to COVID, unemployment, and family stressors, we were doing really well. But this last year, her mental health has been in a downward spiral. I have been urging her to find a new therapist since we moved, and she has been very resistant. She has justified this by stating that her previous therapist betrayed her by missing a BPD diagnosis. Even when she has made an effort to access mental health care (at my urging), the medical system we are insured through is seriously lacking when it comes to mental health. On top of that, therapists of all sorts, let alone those qualified to treat BPD are overbooked, in high demand, and simply not taking new patients since COVID began. My wife does have a psychiatrist, but he is pretty absentee. She has never met him in person, and he's not very accessible. She tried to get a therapist earlier this year, and then gave up. She is still taking her medication, but her depression has gotten worse--she spends most of her time watching TV and smoking, or taking naps. She is for all practical purposes out of work again.
In the past few weeks, I have started to notice BPD behaviors such as black and white thinking, framing me as the enemy if I disagree with her, self absorption and inability to see another person's point of view, and feelings of persecution when I ask about her search for a therapist. After a bad fight that happened in the car on the way back from a weekend trip, she brought up an incident that happened between us years ago. She told me that she feels that fight is reflective of underlying issues between us, and that no progress can be made unless I admit that I was wrong about how I handled that. She refuses to engage further unless I admit that I was wrong. That incident was before she sought out treatment, and it's really alarming to me that she has brought it back up, and has locked on to it as "proof" that I am out to get her, or that I am somehow the problem in our relationship. I'm not claiming to be perfect, but I am working on my own mental health, I have my own therapist, as well as a support community that I process feelings with regularly, and am generally working on taking responsibility for my own
PLEASE READ, without getting sucked into hers. But things are getting really bad.
I'm really worried that she's spiraling out of control. Everything I do is perceived as an attack or an abandonment. I've started to pull back for my own well being, and focus most of my time on my own life, but this is just feeling like more and more of a rift between us. I do see that she is trying to get access to a therapist, but it's moving very slowly, and it takes time to get to know a new person. In the meantime, things are getting more and more tense between us. I'm really not sure what to do. I work from home in the summer, and have some trips scheduled, but when I am home, it's awkward, tense, and the constant sound of the same reruns she watches over and over on TV really bother me. I have some things scheduled with friends and community groups over the next week, so I can't go visit family, who live a few hours away, without cancelling things, and I would really rather not do that. I'm really worried about our marriage, about her, and about my own wellbeing.
I don't really know what I want...validation, I guess. I feel some shame for having stuck with her despite her pretty terrible behavior in the past, and I am trying really hard to maintain my center, avoid drama, but also not just give in to her way of thinking. I'm not happy to be back here, but also not ready to give up on her again/yet. Help!
