I’m stunned; he threw 8 years down the drain

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

I just read lesson 1 on this board—I’m trying to understand what on earth happened. I apologize in advance for how long this is, and truly appreciate anyone who is willing to read it

My story (which I’ve broken down into the three relationships we’ve had):

R/S 1: I met my now ex ud-BPD about 8 years ago and a year after my dNPD estranged husband was finally out of my life for good. I hadn’t been looking for a new relationship, but we met through work and became friends, bonding over our recent separations and the struggles of raising kids with difficult/absent co-parents. Within a few months we began dating. Things were great for the first month or two of the r/s and then the red flags started popping up and whenever there was an issue, it was all my fault. During our second winter together my seasonal depression was especially bad and told him I was really struggling to stay afloat. But he fought with me daily saying I wasn’t doing enough for him or making him feel loved enough or special enough. I finally broke and told him I couldn’t take care of both of us and needed to end things to take care of my mental health. He raged and blamed me for “destroying” him and then immediately (within about a week) started dating someone else. We were NC through the rest of the winter.

R/S 2: Come spring, we started texting again. Though he was still with this other woman, the feelings started coming back for both of us. He was in therapy, and I had done some inner work, and we decided to give it another go, so he broke things off with the other woman. A few months later, my children (teens at the time) and I moved in with him and his young children who he had nearly full-custody of. Again, things were great at first! But after a couple months he started bringing up hurts from the past and filtering for the negative so he could have evidence that I was a “selfish person who didn’t love him at all.”

Also, he became increasingly harsh in his discipline with his kids (I realize now this had always been the case, but that he generally tempered it when I was around). My kids were very uncomfortable in the house because of it, and of course I wasn’t okay with it, so after some time trying to help him understand the impact of his actions on his kids and sharing healthier parenting strategies, when things did not improve I told him that if that kind of verbal aggression and use of physical intimidation continued, I would have to move out. Well, it stopped for a bit (I thought) and then one day he had a major verbal and physical outburst with his son and I had to intervene. I then told him I was going to move out and we’d have to work on things from a distance, but only if he was willing to get help. Well, he raged for the next several weeks while I was in the process of moving out. He blamed me for hurting him and his kids with my “selfish” decision to move. He raged that I *dared* to insinuate that he was abusive when he had done “nothing wrong”.

After I moved out, we continued to text (I was foolishly seeking closure and any bit of ownership from him for his part in what happened, but instead I just got more blame). And again, within a week or two of the b/u he started seeing someone. We went NC for a few months, and then somehow started texting again. He finally began to concede (a bit) that he shouldn’t have acted the way he did and realized it was “both our faults”. I guess this was validating enough for me, because he ended things with the other woman and we eventually decided to give it another shot (ugh).

R/S 3: Before getting back together, I told him I owned my part in the issues, and I thought that we both needed to agree to be vulnerable, trust one another, stop the blame-game, and agree to parent with calm but firm boundaries instead of angry outbursts. He agreed. Mind you, I really love this man— when he’s feeling “good” he’s wonderful, so kind and loving and fun to be around. And I was willing to support him through his struggles if he could commit to working with me to build a healthy relationship and family.. So, after a year of things going pretty well we agreed we were in this for the long-haul and would one day down the road get married (for financial reasons, after his kids finished college). When my lease ended, he offered me to move in with him (my kids were off to college at this point).

I’ll save some words here by saying the usual cycles/patterns persisted, but he was in therapy and was trying, so I was okay with things and remained committed.

But this fall, his son (now a teen) was having some mental health struggles of his own, and my partner did not handle this well AT ALL. Instead of having compassion and empathy, he got really angry with his son for “ruining things” and blamed his son “making HIM miserable”. I found this deeply troubling. I tried to show love and support to his son, while also helping my partner manage his feelings and work on healthy parenting strategies, but he just started to spiral. He’d get mad at everyone about the littlest things and rage about how no one cares about his feelings. He would get angry with me for not “being” happy—he felt I was responsible for lightening the mood for him and making him feel better, despite the fact I was extremely stressed, losing sleep, and missing a lot of work to deal with his son’s crises.

He started making excuses not to be home and not to interact with his  son or myself. His daughter became his FP and the golden child. He started bringing up all our old issues again. I figured this was just one of the usual episodes where I was the “bad guy”, and I listened and tried to validate his feelings and show him love and support. I also acknowledged the incredible stress that he and everyone in the house was under. I also expressed that I needed him to try to be home more because I had been bearing a lot of the family burdens alone and thought we needed to support each other through this tough time. He stared at me blankly. A week or so later he told me he “doesn’t believe in us anymore” and “no longer has feelings for me”, and that I needed to move out, things were over.

I was completely blindsided—nothing he had said to me was any different than any of the other times I was the “bad guy” and blamed me for all the problems and thus expected me to fix all the problems. But these episodes were always followed by him kind of coming out of it and realizing he did, in fact, love me and “believed we had something truly special”. I don’t know what was different this time.

I’ve gone through many stages of grief already: denial—I told him I wouldn’t let him break up our family just because things were hard right now and that I was going to support him until we could get to the other side of this; anger—after he confirmed that he was, in fact breaking up our family, I definitely let him have it!; bargaining—I told him that I thought what we both needed to feel more stable and secure would probably be to get married sooner rather than later (I foolishly thought marriage would be the final hoop I had to jump through to show him I loved him enough/wasn’t going to abandon him), but he said it was too late.

I guess I’m in the depression stage now, as it’s been a two month period where we’ve co-habitated while I’ve been finding my own place (my move-in date is this Sunday) and he’s remained cold as ice to me, while I’m left to grapple with what happened

I truly don’t understand how he is able to just turn off his feelings like that. In the 8 on-and-off years we spent together, I never stopped loving him and never dated (or wanted to date) anyone else. I’m struggling to accept that despite all the love and support I’ve shown him and his kids (for whom I’ve been like a mother), when things got tough and I asked him to show up for me, he couldn’t/wouldn’t and instead decided to just discard me, our family, and our future, over…what?

I’m also struggling to accept that our ideas of love were never the same: while I loved him as a person, he didn’t love me—he loved what I gave him (e.g., love, support, sex, affirmation, etc.). I’m also wondering why I’ve been so willing to accept the one-sided love I’ve gotten from my PD partners…

And I’m worried about his kids, how things will be for them, and the logistics of  maintaining a relationship with them.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Again, sorry for writing a novel!!

[Rosebaby]

I just read lesson 1 on this board—I’m trying to understand what on earth happened. I apologize in advance for how long this is, and truly appreciate anyone who is willing to read it

My story (which I’ve broken down into the three relationships we’ve had):

R/S 1: I met my now ex ud-BPD about 8 years ago and a year after my dNPD estranged husband was finally out of my life for good. I hadn’t been looking for a new relationship, but we met through work and became friends, bonding over our recent separations and the struggles of raising kids with difficult/absent co-parents. Within a few months we began dating. Things were great for the first month or two of the r/s and then the red flags started popping up and whenever there was an issue, it was all my fault. During our second winter together my seasonal depression was especially bad and told him I was really struggling to stay afloat. But he fought with me daily saying I wasn’t doing enough for him or making him feel loved enough or special enough. I finally broke and told him I couldn’t take care of both of us and needed to end things to take care of my mental health. He raged and blamed me for “destroying” him and then immediately (within about a week) started dating someone else. We were NC through the rest of the winter.

R/S 2: Come spring, we started texting again. Though he was still with this other woman, the feelings started coming back for both of us. He was in therapy, and I had done some inner work, and we decided to give it another go, so he broke things off with the other woman. A few months later, my children (teens at the time) and I moved in with him and his young children who he had nearly full-custody of. Again, things were great at first! But after a couple months he started bringing up hurts from the past and filtering for the negative so he could have evidence that I was a “selfish person who didn’t love him at all.”

Also, he became increasingly harsh in his discipline with his kids (I realize now this had always been the case, but that he generally tempered it when I was around). My kids were very uncomfortable in the house because of it, and of course I wasn’t okay with it, so after some time trying to help him understand the impact of his actions on his kids and sharing healthier parenting strategies, when things did not improve I told him that if that kind of verbal aggression and use of physical intimidation continued, I would have to move out. Well, it stopped for a bit (I thought) and then one day he had a major verbal and physical outburst with his son and I had to intervene. I then told him I was going to move out and we’d have to work on things from a distance, but only if he was willing to get help. Well, he raged for the next several weeks while I was in the process of moving out. He blamed me for hurting him and his kids with my “selfish” decision to move. He raged that I *dared* to insinuate that he was abusive when he had done “nothing wrong”.

After I moved out, we continued to text (I was foolishly seeking closure and any bit of ownership from him for his part in what happened, but instead I just got more blame). And again, within a week or two of the b/u he started seeing someone. We went NC for a few months, and then somehow started texting again. He finally began to concede (a bit) that he shouldn’t have acted the way he did and realized it was “both our faults”. I guess this was validating enough for me, because he ended things with the other woman and we eventually decided to give it another shot (ugh).

R/S 3: Before getting back together, I told him I owned my part in the issues, and I thought that we both needed to agree to be vulnerable, trust one another, stop the blame-game, and agree to parent with calm but firm boundaries instead of angry outbursts. He agreed. Mind you, I really love this man— when he’s feeling “good” he’s wonderful, so kind and loving and fun to be around. And I was willing to support him through his struggles if he could commit to working with me to build a healthy relationship and family.. So, after a year of things going pretty well we agreed we were in this for the long-haul and would one day down the road get married (for financial reasons, after his kids finished college). When my lease ended, he offered me to move in with him (my kids were off to college at this point).

I’ll save some words here by saying the usual cycles/patterns persisted, but he was in therapy and was trying, so I was okay with things and remained committed.

But this fall, his son (now a teen) was having some mental health struggles of his own, and my partner did not handle this well AT ALL. Instead of having compassion and empathy, he got really angry with his son for “ruining things” and blamed his son “making HIM miserable”. I found this deeply troubling. I tried to show love and support to his son, while also helping my partner manage his feelings and work on healthy parenting strategies, but he just started to spiral. He’d get mad at everyone about the littlest things and rage about how no one cares about his feelings. He would get angry with me for not “being” happy—he felt I was responsible for lightening the mood for him and making him feel better, despite the fact I was extremely stressed, losing sleep, and missing a lot of work to deal with his son’s crises.

He started making excuses not to be home and not to interact with his  son or myself. His daughter became his FP and the golden child. He started bringing up all our old issues again. I figured this was just one of the usual episodes where I was the “bad guy”, and I listened and tried to validate his feelings and show him love and support. I also acknowledged the incredible stress that he and everyone in the house was under. I also expressed that I needed him to try to be home more because I had been bearing a lot of the family burdens alone and thought we needed to support each other through this tough time. He stared at me blankly. A week or so later he told me he “doesn’t believe in us anymore” and “no longer has feelings for me”, and that I needed to move out, things were over.

I was completely blindsided—nothing he had said to me was any different than any of the other times I was the “bad guy” and blamed me for all the problems and thus expected me to fix all the problems. But these episodes were always followed by him kind of coming out of it and realizing he did, in fact, love me and “believed we had something truly special”. I don’t know what was different this time.

I’ve gone through many stages of grief already: denial—I told him I wouldn’t let him break up our family just because things were hard right now and that I was going to support him until we could get to the other side of this; anger—after he confirmed that he was, in fact breaking up our family, I definitely let him have it!; bargaining—I told him that I thought what we both needed to feel more stable and secure would probably be to get married sooner rather than later (I foolishly thought marriage would be the final hoop I had to jump through to show him I loved him enough/wasn’t going to abandon him), but he said it was too late.

I guess I’m in the depression stage now, as it’s been a two month period where we’ve co-habitated while I’ve been finding my own place (my move-in date is this Sunday) and he’s remained cold as ice to me, while I’m left to grapple with what happened

I truly don’t understand how he is able to just turn off his feelings like that. In the 8 on-and-off years we spent together, I never stopped loving him and never dated (or wanted to date) anyone else. I’m struggling to accept that despite all the love and support I’ve shown him and his kids (for whom I’ve been like a mother), when things got tough and I asked him to show up for me, he couldn’t/wouldn’t and instead decided to just discard me, our family, and our future, over…what?

I’m also struggling to accept that our ideas of love were never the same: while I loved him as a person, he didn’t love me—he loved what I gave him (e.g., love, support, sex, affirmation, etc.). I’m also wondering why I’ve been so willing to accept the one-sided love I’ve gotten from my PD partners…

And I’m worried about his kids, how things will be for them, and the logistics of  maintaining a relationship with them.

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated. Again, sorry for writing a novel!!

[ChiWeenieGuy]

Hi Rosebaby. I read your story and was heartbroken. It mirrors my own in many ways. My pwBPD wife has decided she wants to throw away 11 and a half years of marriage for reasons that still baffle me. I have been faithful to her those 11 and a half years. I have been a loving husband and a good provider. And yet, just the fact that myself and other people in her life started to set boundaries with her and call her out on bad behavior, was enough to push her over the edge. She has alienated me, her friends, my family, her own family, people at church, coworkers, etc. but still doesn't see the problem is her. Or if she does see it refuses to make changes. She has sunk to the point where she doesn't seem to have empathy for others at all and that's terrifying. She has become mean-spirited and cruel. She's a shell of the person I married and it's heartbreaking. The only advice I can give you is take care of and love yourself the best you can. Try to remember that it's not about you or anything that is wrong with you. I know that's easier said than done in those moments when we are lonely and feel rejected and betrayed. Get all the support you can from friends and family. See a therapist if you need to. I'm starting to learn with pwBPD that we cannot allow ourselves to be destroyed along with them when they are intent on destroying themselves. We can learn to love and trust again but it will take time. Dealing with these people is traumatic. I'll check this thread again if you want to talk anymore. God bless you.