Needing assistance to better my marriage

[Trying123]

Hi! I have been reading this forum for some time so am not new to the techniques. I’ve read Walking on Eggshells and am currently reading and working on The High Conflict Couple. I’m looking for a place to talk about what’s going on, learn more, and get support and feedback.

Lately things have been rough. I’m stuck between loving my husband and wanting to work on things but also knowing I don’t deserve the treatment I’m receiving. I know I have things to improve within myself, so I’m choosing to stay and  focus on my own problems.

I become very frustrated and angry when he begins to show signs of becoming dysregulated. He has a huge fear of abandonment which comes out as a form of paranoia that I’m cheating or planning on leaving him. I haven’t helped the situation because in my anger I have threatened the very things he is afraid of.

Right now I’m trying to overcome some of the anger and resentment I have towards him regarding the things he’s said and done. Does anyone have any tips to help me do this?

I’m also working on viewing things in a nonjudgmental way and calming myself down before beginning communication with him. This is suggested from chapters 2 and 3 in the conflict book. I’m focusing on a chapter per week.

I’ll end this before it gets too long!  Thanks for reading!

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Cat Familiar]

Regarding your frustration and anger when he is becoming dysregulated, perhaps you can ask yourself at those times, “Do I want to be angry or do I want to be effective?”

Sure, you have every right to be angry about your husband throwing away the keys to being a rational human being in the moment and acting like an azz. He may have little control of how he behaves, but the question here is how do you want to respond to that out of control behavior?

I’ve learned to focus on *what I want* when my husband is on the verge of a hissy fit. I know I don’t want to participate in it, because I know if I do, I’m only throwing gas on the fire. When he’s dysregulating, he has no awareness nor concern for my feelings, and no amount of explanation nor confrontation on my part will help him be more understanding or compassionate. And if I do enter into *crazy-town* with him, it will only leave me with emotional heartburn and further my disrespect for him. So I figure out how to exit the situation ASAP and wait until the embers have burned down to ash, which is easier said than done when you live with someone. My strategy is that there’s always some task I have to attend to, and if I can’t actually remove myself physically, I just don’t participate in his meltdown and it lasts much less time.

Regarding overcoming anger and resentment for past treatment, I’m still working on that. But I’ve found that preventative measures I’ve outlined above stops new anger and resentment from arising.

My issue with lingering anger and resentment with a partner with BPD is that, unlike with someone who is emotionally healthy, there seems to be little opportunity to revisit the situation and talk about one’s feelings without stirring up yet another argument. Should I bring up the past, it’s likely he will get defensive and feel like I’m attacking him, rather than taking the time to really understand how his behavior impacted me and be accountable and make amends. I find forgiveness comes quickly when someone truly understands my side and takes responsibility for their behavior. Unfortunately that seldom happens with a BPD partner. Letting go of past scores when one knows there is little awareness about how their behavior affected us remains an unsettled issue, unless you can chalk it up to having a partner who, at times, is a child in a man’s body.

[Trying123]

You hit the nail on the head that nothing ever really gets settled so there’s no closure. He is completely unable to hear how I’m affected. He will try at times but mostly it leads to him being lost in his own guilt and shame so the cycle continues.

Tonight my 9 year old had a friend over and they were watching a movie. He made a comment he thought would be funny but she became embarrassed and ran up to her room crying. He became very defensive and almost seemed unaware of why what he said caused problems.

This turned into him going upstairs to take a nap but then an hour later he was woken up by my 14 year old daughter and I practicing her speech and he became angry at that. At that point I lost my cool and we argued.

In my opinion, any reasonable adult would understand the situation and voice a complaint without turning it into an argument. This is what frustrates me the most and I know it is going to boil down to whether or not this is something I can live with, and that really REALLY sucks!

[Cat Familiar]

Yes, it really sucks, but that’s who he is. Period.

It’s certainly possible for people with BPD to mature, but only they can choose to do that. We can model healthy adult responses, and it’s possible they can pick up on that.

One thing I’ve never seen mentioned as a strategy per se is to consistently behave in ways that you are proud of, regardless of how your partner is behaving, as a way to elicit some sense of guilt for their *bad behavior*. Yeah, we talk about being the *emotional leader* here. Counterintuitively perhaps figuring how to elicit guilt/remorse with someone who we know has a sense of self loathing already, may create a realization that they were behaving badly. And if we are on our best behavior—then we have the moral high ground without verbally stating that. Shame can be a motivator to do better, but that has to be internally generated. We cannot be a part of that or it only becomes a downward spiral.

[SaltyDawg]

Right now I’m trying to overcome some of the anger and resentment I have towards him regarding the things he’s said and done. Does anyone have any tips to help me do this?

Trying123,

My tip is to learn the DBT skill of 'Radical Acceptance'.

You can find it under topic 1.06 from the following post: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=329744.0

My version of 'radical acceptance' is to pre-forgive, in essence, I know the reality of my situation is that my wife will eventually transgress against me in the form of gas lighting or other forms of emotional abuse when she is splitting me black and on rare occasions physical violence too. Since I know this to be a fact [based on historical patterns], I know this is going to happen again, as long as I know that she is not deliberately doing this, and I see that she is being triggered by external forces; therefore, I have already forgiven her for what she does not know that she is about to do. That's what makes it radical.

Part of radical acceptance is "Once individuals can accept [forgiveness] reality while simultaneously not approving of it is when change can be made" and I have added forgiving her in the accepted part of reality, even though I do not approve of her actions and will state as much when it is happening to me.

In essence I have mentally compartmentalized my wife's bad behavior as being attributable to her mental state of mind, and she is 'not guilty by reason of insanity' literally, and that is how I treat it when she splits me black.

I hope this makes sense, as it took me half a year to wrap my head around this concept, as I was in denial that this was even possible.

In the link above, there are many other topics that are useful for managing the borderline.

I also recommend two books to better understand the borderline, and how to manage them, these too will take time to process and practice.

“Stop Walking on Eggshells” by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger [3rd Edition]

“Stop Caretaking the Borderline Or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life” by Margalis Fjelstad

I will wrap this up, with my number one piece of advice, and that is to do 'self-care' - make sure it includes individual therapy [for yourself], exercise outdoors [as simple as a walk], among other activities that you enjoy doing to recharge your spirit.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and take care.

SD

[Trying123]

Thanks for your replies. The evening continued with drama because he couldn’t get his debit card to work. He did ask me if I did something to it which I calmly replied that I didn’t. He called the bank and left a pretty nasty message on their overnight voicemail. I feel bad for whoever has to deal with that. I do understand his frustration of being locked out of his card for some unknown reason even though he has funds. He could have easily found ways around this but he didn’t think of them and I didn’t offer help.

@Cat Familiar - I try to be the bigger person and keep my side of the street clean. I think it helps since he very often feels terrible the next day without my even saying anything. I think it causes him to be unable to justify his behavior to himself. However, he already lives in a world of his own making filled with guilt and shame, so it tends to pull him back into his self loathing and the spiral continues a few days later. This has definitely progressed from every couple months, to once a month, to twice a month, and now to multiple times in a week. It’s gotten extremely hard to live with.

@SaltyDawg - I actually was reading that topic on radical acceptance just last night! A good point that was brought up was, when does it become too accepting? I struggle with that question frequently. Also, you mentioned telling your wife that you disapprove of her actions. How do you phrase that so as not to escalate the behavior? I’m not sure my husband would take that as anything but condescending and my thinking I’m better than him. I do need to find ways to protect myself from the verbal abuse though.

[SaltyDawg]

He could have easily found ways around this but he didn’t think of them and I didn’t offer help.

I find with people with PD [personality disorders] that painfully obvious alternative solutions are out of their mental grasp, they have a very myopic ways of processing and handling what is around them.  Experiment with SET communication if you want to help him.

@Cat Familiar - I try to be the bigger person and keep my side of the street clean. I think it helps since he very often feels terrible the next day without my even saying anything. I think it causes him to be unable to justify his behavior to himself. However, he already lives in a world of his own making filled with guilt and shame, so it tends to pull him back into his self loathing and the spiral continues a few days later. This has definitely progressed from every couple months, to once a month, to twice a month, and now to multiple times in a week. It’s gotten extremely hard to live with.

@SaltyDawg - I actually was reading that topic on radical acceptance just last night! A good point that was brought up was, when does it become too accepting? I struggle with that question frequently. Also, you mentioned telling your wife that you disapprove of her actions. How do you phrase that so as not to escalate the behavior? I’m not sure my husband would take that as anything but condescending and my thinking I’m better than him. I do need to find ways to protect myself from the verbal abuse though.

"Too accepting", when your personal boundary has been crossed, and that is different for each person on the receiving end of these behaviors.  I have established, with the help of a couple's counselor [the boundaries are accepted easier by my wife in this manner] to eliminate physical violence first and foremost, and then we are currently working on reducing verbal/emotional abuse.  In essence 'loving boundaries' must be established and maintained.  When the boundaries were initially set, she tested these boundaries and my resolve to enforce them, these must enforced much like a 2 year old child would test 'rules'.  It's pretty sad one has to resort to such enforcement actions, but that is the reality of the situation. 

Since your H's behaviors are becoming more and more frequent, it sounds like this is the first area that you need to address, while I did have boundaries, I didn't enforce them, and my wife's behaviors became more and more frequent much like your husbands, these behaviors are reversible; however, it does require great effort and the enforcement of boundaries.  It is important to establish these boundaries when he is not triggered and he is 'baseline'.

Now, when my wife is triggered, I have to stick with phrases using "I" pronouns, part of the SET communication method [Support / Empathy / Truth].  As you definitely do not want to escalate the situation with Gottman's 'four horsemen' of destroying your relationship of being critical of your person, doing something that will generate contempt in your person, saying something that your person will feel compelled to defend, or simply ignoring him like in the next paragraph.
https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

Or, if things are irrational and totally out of control, you will need to not JADE [Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain].  If your pwBPD is totally irrational and/or raging, you can do the 'do not JADE' by saying something like "I feel that I am angry, and I do not want to say anything I will regret later; therefore, I am leaving the room to calm down, if I don't feel safe expressing my feelings."  [Notice how many times I used "I", and not one time did I use the words "you" or "we"].  You turn his attention to yourself, tell him how you feel with 'truth' so he wont become 'defensive', you don't want to escalate the conversation to point of being regretful [empathy] and leaving the room is actually being [supportive] even if it is a form of 'stonewalling'; however, you cannot reason with the irrational, and things must 'calm down'.  If he continues his irrational flooding/raging, then enforce the 'leaving to the other room' boundary.  Then repeat the above statement, ending it at 'calm down', and then walk out of the room into another room.  If he follows you to the other room, repeat the above again, but leave your home [instead of 'room'] and go for a 'walk' or 'drive' to a place that you feel safe.

Once things calm down, give a minimum of 10 minutes of things being calm [this is actually a variable, and will require experimentation to figure out the optimum amount of time to wait combined with your person's body language] then re-approach using "I" pronouns and SET communication only.  This version of stonewalling is called 'gray rocking' where you temporarily stonewall to calm things down, but must engage in order to minimize the feelings of 'contempt' and/or abandonment.   It's a delicate balance and a learned skill through trial and error as each dysregulated person's behaviors will vary somewhat; however, once figured out, they are usually pretty consistent.

If he has abandonment type behaviors when you do this, add the following phrase "I am doing this to clear my head, I will return in [ _____ timeframe]".  That way he knows that you aren't abandoning him; however, you will have communicated your intentions so his mind should not spiral further, and if it does, it won't go quite as far.

Disclaimer:  This is what has worked for me, it is still being 'tweaked' after each incident, which are becoming fewer and fewer and draws from many different type of therapy styles.  No one style will work in every situation.  Dealing with the irrational is more of an art form than a science; however, applying scientific principles does make it more effective.

When to talk about what happened, from what you wrote, and in my specific case 10 minutes is not enough, I usually have to wait until the 'next day' - this is the optimum time to talk about it in my situation and perhaps yours too.  Encourage him to express his feelings, ideally with I pronouns [share SET communication with him if is willing to use it] and you can lead by example.  This is best done the first few times using a couple's therapists, but can also be learned independently, use a bestie to practice on who is familiar with your situation.

Hopefully this is helpful. 

lmk if you have more questions.

Take care, and do self-care.

[Trying123]

Thank you for taking the time to write that all out! It is extremely helpful and informative. I’ve reread it a few times now and I’m going to head over to brush up on SET as well!

[Trying123]

It’s been a quiet past few days at home, thankfully! However, I’ve got a bit of learning burnout and am feeling a bit down. I’m trying to be gentle with myself and practice some self care.

I believe part of the reason I’m feeling this way is because my husband had told me he had a therapy appointment scheduled for yesterday. Well, yesterday came and went without any mention of said appointment. I didn’t ask because it’s not my place to push him to get help.

I know I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up. I guess due to some of the consequences he’s recently been dealing with I thought this would be it. He’s wanted to get help since last year but didn’t have insurance until January 1. Now we are coming up on March 1 and all he’s done is pick up some paperwork on possible therapy locations.

I’m trying to just be thankful I’m getting help and growing but it’s hard. I guess today it’s hitting harder than most days.

[SaltyDawg]

Trying,

   It can be very easy to get 'learning burnout'.  If you aren't careful, it can consume you, I know it did for me -- self-care is essential for this kind of relationship, do lots of it whatever that looks like for you.

   Regarding your H's therapy appointment that he missed yesterday and you are very upset that he did not follow through.  Even though you feel that it is not your place to push him, I am going to push-back and suggest that you may want to reconsider that stance.  You need to look out for yourself, and if that means having a good relationship with your husband, you need to gently reinforce your desire, enforcing a boundary, for him to obtain useful therapy in improving YOUR relationship with him. 

   Of course use the communication tools to do this, so it will sound a lot different than 'nagging' him to do it.  No-one likes a 'nag'.  However, you could phrase it to something like "I seem to recall that you mentioned that there is some therapy today.  I really would like to provide support.  Can you refresh my memory when your appointment is so I can be there for you?"

   Be supportive, be empathetic, and be truthful [in a very loving way].

   Definitely work on yourself with therapy, and other self-care.  Definitely focus on yourself; however, be compassionate and invite your husband along your journey - the worst answer is no, but you won't know unless you ask [when he is baseline].

   Living with a pwBPD is not easy, there will be setbacks, it will not be smooth.  As long as there is overall 'progress' there is hope.

   Hope and pray for the best; however, prepare for the worst.