Suicide Threats/Insinuations by BPD SO

[Ihope2]

I am struggling with this issue immensely.  I am filing for divorce from my BPDh of 11 months.  He moved out 2 weeks ago and has, so to say, disappeared.  He contacted me from an unknown number on Saturday basically to throw a lot of vitriole my way, and to try and hook me with his latest tragic story and to get money from me.

Then on Sunday, he sent me a woeful and tragically pathetic "goodbye" email with a sorry photo of him.  It is not the first time he has woven this tragic story to me of having "nothing more to live for", being "done with life".  This time his added reason is obviously that once again he has been totally rejected and kicked to the kerb and cannot find anyone to love him and stay with him.

I have read the suicide guidelines/workshop information on this site, and  I note the general tone of "it is a duty to preserve life", phone 911 immediately, inform the professionals and let them take care of it.  But my scenario is now that I have a suspicion of his current whereabouts (another town 3 hours away by car from where I live); we do not have a really efficient emergency medical hotline in this country (South Africa); even if I did get an operator on the line, I would not know where to sent them to find him.  And I have no contact at all with his family (father and older brother) and he always lead me to believe that they took part in his childhood abuse, both sexually abusing him and torturing him... . I do not know of any other friends and acquaintances of his who might help him.

Basically there is only me, and I really want to disengage from this man and have no contact with him any more.  I do not want to get sucked back into his victim pathology and his emotional blackmail and manipulation of me.  Besides that, I do not have a reliable contact number for him anymore, he chops and changes his mobile number regularly (it is possible to do so in this country).

This is a great dilemma to me:  I know it is said that a suicide threat always must be taken seriously and we are bound ethically and have a duty to inform those who can help the individual.  And yet, I do not want to be involved and feel responsible for this man any more.  I cannot afford to do this to myself any more.  I need to cut off from him and protect my own sanity.

Also, I feel that I do not have anything I can offer to him in the form of encouragement and hope and faith and the will to carry on living.  Quite honestly, I cannot see how his life as he leads it now can feel like a life worth living!  I am sorry to say that, but I would not want to be in his mind and his body and I would not want his life.   He has no joy and everything is just blackness and hopelessness and self-pity.  So I would rather just cut off from him, and leave him be.

It is hard enough trying to pick up the pieces of my life, and stopping myself from ruminating constantly about how he will cope, whether he will kill himself, how he will kill himself, or does he really have the will to continue living. Will he find employment. Will he be able to build some sort of a life for himself?

So in the process of trying to disentangle myself, get out of the intense enmeshment, wait for the divorce to be finalised, stop ruminating about him, stop feeling responsible for his misery and pain; the worst thing I can do is obssess about his suicide messages to me!

I would be very grateful to read other people's take on this... . I am sure many of you have been / are going through similar traumatic situations.

[Learning_curve74]

Hi Ihope2, I'm sorry to hear what you're going through. Not only did your husband run away but now it sounds like he is trying to make you feel guilty about his depression and suicidal thoughts. Not a very good feeling.

I understand feeling responsible as my gf was extremely depressed and suicidal when I was going to break off our relationship the first time. While thoughts of suicide should be taken seriously, it also amounts to emotional blackmail at the same time. Basically she was saying to me that I was responsible for her life and death. That was unhealthy as well as untrue.

Is your goal to get divorced and detach? Even if it were not, he is an adult and even though you may feel responsible, in the end he is responsible for his own actions. He is not helpless. Can you let him own his own actions? You can be compassionate and kind by taking the steps you are able to, but when he makes it impossible to reach him, there is a limit to what you can do, right?

[Ihope2]

Thank you, yes my goal is to divorce and completely detach.  It will be difficult, as I will be providing him with what they call "rehabilitative maintenance" here for the next 24 months.  I have set up a stop order to go off each month on the 1st of the month into his account.  I am going to change my mobile number once the divorce is 100% finalised.  Actually, writing this, I don't know what I am saying I need to wait until the divorce is done.  That may only be sometime at the end of May or in June this year.

So I should just change that number ASAP.  It traumatises me to hear from him, and if last time he called is anything to go by, he just wants to extort money from me. And I still feel weak and vulnerable and I end up helping him, even though I am on a really tight budget myself.

I see that I am almost waiting with morbid fascination to get that phonecall from a stranger that they have found him... .

I need to snap out of this and cut myself off 100%.