Thank you , I actually read through this book in a few sittings. It was a strange experience, you know honestly I though it would be an ‘Aha’ moment of elation and understanding, it felt amazing to finally be understood but it was followed by a heavy feeling yet freeing feeling that I am not ultimately responsible for the feelings of my BPD wife. Other things are the twisting statements , her very quickly turning a discussion around so that I must apologize. Spending huge amounts of money in the name of household goods, withdrawing physically, and sadly encouraging ( since I’m the one that did it) distance from my family, friends and ultimately my own sense of self. I feel shame when I’m with her and that I’ll never be good enough. She constantly uses passive aggression and claims that I misinterpreted her tone. This was particularly hard as I felt greatly despised and disrespected. Everything becomes a competition. I’m from another cultural background, she would sometimes even say she’s more (my culture) than I am - encouraging isolation from even this part of me. Reading SWOES 3rd Ed was heart warming because it actually names the above as emotional abuse
When my 'Aha' moment hit, about 10 days in from when my therapist first introduced me to BPD, he gave me a book, and it described my wife's crazy behaviours with way too much accuracy. When I had some time and I was finally able to process what I was faced with in my wife, I had a full blown panic attack, my first ever, in June of '22 where I was hyperventilating, and freaking out when the gravity of the situation finally hit me where she would likely never revert back to the love bombing at the beginning of our relationship. My primary emotion wasn't 'elation' but rather 'fear' -- I was relieved that it wasn't me, but I was absolutely petrified my wife would never again be the woman I thought I married, and unless she changed back, full or partially, my marriage would likely end - coming from a religious background it was especially daunting for me.
Other than spending huge amounts of money (offset by her uOCPD miserly spending trait), my wife has the same traits that you describe in yours. She is definitely passive-aggressive.
However, I will speak to the isolating behavior - this is perhaps the biggest mistake I did as I lost my emotional support system. She would accuse me of having affairs, although untrue, I initially let my platonic friendships with women go by the wayside in response, a few years later she would act all crazy in front of my guy friends, and those too went by the wayside in order to appease my wife's need for attention and validation, which I gave to the point of physical exhaustion. I have since learned how to do self-care and get my energy back. It is a process, and I am taking back little by little to get my sense of self back, and to assert my wants and needs, the balance of power only has recently shifted from her to me, and that was a few months ago, this year.
It requires an enormous amount of energy, the emotional equivalent of running across continents non-stop (except for sleep), a never ending effort to manage your pwBPD through rigid boundaries, learning how to persuade good behaviors, which requires intentionally using some of the same behaviours that they are using unintentionally.
Since you are already familiar with SWOE. The next book I recommend reading is "
Stop Caretaking the Borderline Or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life" by Margalis Fjelstad which will give you some of the tools I mentioned.
Also, on this website, there is an extensive set of libraries, here is a link to one of them on more things you should learn to manage your wife's bad behaviours -
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=329744.0Being mindful you cannot fix them, but you can change what you do. I will give you a word of caution, when your wife senses the change in your behaviours, they will likely get worse before they get better, and that can be extremely upsetting for you - these tools do work, but there will be an extinction burst of really bad behaviours before she will conform to them. Take it slowly, make small changes, slowly (I do about one per week), pick your battles wisely, starting with the most problematic ones first. I started with her suicide attempts, followed by physical abuse towards me.
My wife knows there is something wrong with her (on her good days), so I am also using persuasion techniques to steer her in a direction where she can get help from her own therapist - my wife is the exception rather than the norm in her level of self-awareness. I helped in the self-awareness, by shining a spotlight on her behaviours in front of the therapist. I also set boundaries, to steer her in a better direction. There has been good progress; she is about halfway there in putting it into remission, which is possible with treatment. You need to figure out which of the tools in the aforementioned resources works best for you and then use those to manage your relationship with your wife. My favorite tool is the 'seed planting tool' in the Stop Caretaking book, as it requires the least amount of effort, and uses the power of suggestion where she adopts a good idea that you suggest as her own.
This will get you started. It will be more stressful at first, but eventually it will become a lot less stressful - at least it did for me.
Read, ask questions, vent, and most importantly, do self-care, and if you don't have an individual therapist, consider getting one for yourself, one that specializes in BPD relationships or high-conflict ones if you cannot find one local to you for BPD.
Take care with self-care.
