Hi campbembpd,
Notwendy raises an important point here:
for someone with BPD, feelings are facts. Whether or not this other parent dissed your wife - your wife feels that way- so it must be true for her.
This is important to keep in mind as you try to find a new approach.
The issue for your W isn't "what actually happened" -- even though the way she talks about it makes it sounds like the issue is "the facts of the incident".
The issue for your W is how she is feeling inside. And, like every human being, she would like the way that she feels to be heard and understood.
This gives you a middle way. The options aren't just "stand my ground and tell her she got it wrong" or "roll over for her so we get a moment of peace." That's "all or nothing" thinking which is a cognitive distortion that we need to recognize in ourselves.
One helpful image I learned through reading here is that we sometimes picture the two options as two ends of a line. One end goes off this way, the other goes off 180 degrees that way. This or that -- no other options.
Actually, there is a third option, that isn't more "hard nose" or more "pushover." Imagine a line going perpendicular to that line -- off 90 degrees to the side. It isn't more one direction or the other. It's a third direction.
That option is
emotional validation.
If your W has BPD traits and behaviors, then she is coping with a mental illness that impacts her ability to think, process, understand, and correlate cause and effect. She has disordered thinking. So, she will struggle to identify that her feelings come from inside of herself (not from other people or external causes), and when she tries to come up with "reasons" for her feelings (we all want our feelings to make sense), the "reasons" will be disordered. And, she may not have the insight to know that when she communicates her constructed "reasons/facts" for her feelings, that those explanations won't make sense to other people. She may then escalate her efforts to "be understood" without knowing that those escalations aren't helping.
When she can have an experience where the feelings (not the "reasons" or "facts") behind her words are acknowledged, she may feel more understood and less driven to escalate for engagement/agreement.
...
So, let's find where you can practice emotional validation here:
I think I posted this last week but quick recap:
- 17d is going on a camping trip with 4-5 families. All from church, including her BF's family - there will be a girls tent and lots of parental supervision but we don't know most of the families
- wife texted the mother of 17d's BF to meet up after church last week. They had to stay late because we had a bible study class
- the mom texted my wife at the time we were meeting, asked where she could find us
- my wife didn't respond and about 15 minutes later, not hearing anything the mom texted my wife she had to work that night and needed to get going to take a nap. We were 10-15 minutes later then we were supposed to get out of the study but she didn't know that
- My wife thinks she was dismissed and discarded by this woman
Since then wife has been mad at me for not being mad and saying how horrible this woman treated my wife. I wasn't willing to say that. I said she could have waited a few more minutes but she didn't know where we were. So now we've gone around and around, thought it was actually resolved a week ago but my wife was triggered by something yesterday and it came back to the top. Now she's mad that the other mom hasn't reached back out to set something up (keep in mind this was my wife's request at the beginning). At the time when it happened I simply said let's try for next week. Now my wife won't text her.
Am I crazy? Was this woman being rude and discarding my wife. It didn't seem like a big deal to me.
My wife literally said I should be feeling what she's feeling if I care about her. That therapy is ruining us. She wanted me to say I would give up therapy for our marriage (but said she wouldn't actually make me stop, just wants to know I would). She said I'm putting my needs first by not supporting her (agreeing and mirroring her emotions and reactions). She says I'm a robot, don't make her feel loved, etc. Threatened that EVERYONE will know why we split up that I'm not supporting her, I'm continuing in therapy and not putting her first. I tried to explain that I'm learning about me and how to put on my oxygen mask so I can be the best for her and the family. She wants it to go back to how it was 10 years ago. That's when I didn't say anything about anything. I made almost double the income so she could be wined and dined... She overly talks about how much more I used to love her - I still do, so much... sometimes it would be so much easier to not.
Now again threatening divorce, wanting to put a 6 month time limit on our marriage. Oh and she says everyone she talks to says I'm being unreasonable and this woman was horrible. They all don't understand why I'm not supporting her. So again, am I crazy? But... I know how she weaves her stories and I doubt it was told objectively if she did tell others.
OK. It isn't crazy to rationally look at the situation, like Notwendy suggested, and see that while it'd be annoying, we aren't mindreaders and who knows what the other woman was thinking.
The key part of your interaction with your W won't be about "what happened" or "what the other woman meant". It's about you finding the feelings behind your W's words and genuinely validating those feelings.
And we get a clue here:
Since then wife has been mad at me for not being mad and saying how horrible this woman treated my wife. I wasn't willing to say that. I said she could have waited a few more minutes but she didn't know where we were. So now we've gone around and around, thought it was actually resolved a week ago but my wife was triggered by something yesterday and it came back to the top. Now she's mad that the other mom hasn't reached back out to set something up (keep in mind this was my wife's request at the beginning). At the time when it happened I simply said let's try for next week. Now my wife won't text her.
I agree that you don't have to agree with your W's reasoning for what happened. That is fine.
What you can do instead is
validate:
"It would feel horrible to feel like you were treated that way". Or, "Wow, that would be so painful." Or, "Nobody wants to be stood up." Or, "It would hurt to feel unimportant".
None of those are agreeing with "the facts". They are all acknowledging and validating that even with irrational "reasons", your W has real feelings, and when those feelings don't get heard and cared about, she escalates.
...
Real validation like that isn't necessarily an intuitive skill; it can take practice to have it feel more instinctive. It can make a huge difference in "turning down the temperature" and ending endless conflict. We know that feels -- we want so much to be heard and understood that we, too, can escalate (in different ways) when we aren't. Finding safe ways to
connect can decrease conflict in a relationship.
Of course, if you find that even after you try to connect through validation, your W has already "launched the plane" as it were, you don't have to stick around for the escalation/yelling/shouting. It is OK for you to say "I'm heading to the kitchen/going on a walk/running to the store, be back in a few". That would be a boundary -- that you don't participate in making yourself available to be yelled at.
Validation is to connect, boundaries are to protect. They work together.
...
This is a lot so I'll wrap it up here. I think the key part is realizing that emotional validation (not "validating everything she says", or "rolling over", or apologizing, or trying to be positive, etc, which are not real validation) has the potential to be a huge factor in improving your relationship.
What are your thoughts? What seems do-able? See any potential conflicts coming up, that we could walk thru with you?
