Getting support or betraying marital confidences?

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

I am in a dilema. I am lucky enough to have several very close friends. There have been several times of crisis in the last 6 months where I felt like I was going to lose my mind or become suicidal over the relationship with my uBPDw. Total despair. Total drowning in anguish. I reached out to some of these friends for support. A few of my friends are co-workers whom I have known for most of my long career. They noticed me not functioning very well to say the least and initiated the topic. After a recent break-up (or attempted break-up) I became despondent and sent two of my long distance friends emails, pouring out my heart and I even mentioned BPD. My wife hacked into my email account and found these. I have not and would have NEVER told her about my theory of her BPD. She was understandably angry and hurt. NOW she is calling me a "cheater" since I have spoken to people about our marriage, "defamed" her and she is convinced that I talk to EVERYBODY I know about EVERY DETAIL of my life with her. She de-friended all my friends from her FACEBOOK. To punish me, she changed her FACEBOOK name back to her FORMER married name and took off all our pictures or any pictures with me in it and changed her relationship status to "ask".

I do have a therapist but I can only afford to see her once every two weeks or so. My T says that I have every right to seek support under the circumstances as well as having a right to privacy.

Since I get stuck in FOG way more than I like and get to the point of being so anxiety ridden that I can hardly think straight, please weigh in on this for me. Have I done my marriage wrong?

[michel71]

I am in a dilema. I am lucky enough to have several very close friends. There have been several times of crisis in the last 6 months where I felt like I was going to lose my mind or become suicidal over the relationship with my uBPDw. Total despair. Total drowning in anguish. I reached out to some of these friends for support. A few of my friends are co-workers whom I have known for most of my long career. They noticed me not functioning very well to say the least and initiated the topic. After a recent break-up (or attempted break-up) I became despondent and sent two of my long distance friends emails, pouring out my heart and I even mentioned BPD. My wife hacked into my email account and found these. I have not and would have NEVER told her about my theory of her BPD. She was understandably angry and hurt. NOW she is calling me a "cheater" since I have spoken to people about our marriage, "defamed" her and she is convinced that I talk to EVERYBODY I know about EVERY DETAIL of my life with her. She de-friended all my friends from her FACEBOOK. To punish me, she changed her FACEBOOK name back to her FORMER married name and took off all our pictures or any pictures with me in it and changed her relationship status to "ask".

I do have a therapist but I can only afford to see her once every two weeks or so. My T says that I have every right to seek support under the circumstances as well as having a right to privacy.

Since I get stuck in FOG way more than I like and get to the point of being so anxiety ridden that I can hardly think straight, please weigh in on this for me. Have I done my marriage wrong?

[Mr. Solo]

They do not like to be exposed so any communication with others, no matter how innocent, will be seen as betrayal. My dBPDw was allowed to talk to whomever she wanted to get "support" but I wasn't allowed, according to her, to speak with anyone other than my counselor.

When she first began "flipping out" four years ago, I made the mistake of contacting some of our mutual friends for help. They began talking to my wife about things and holding her somewhat accountable to what she was doing and she didn't like that at all. She just dropped those friends and surrounded herself with friends that she knew I would not like so she could run her mouth to them all she wanted without the fear of my finding out. Her friends are now a woman who is either BPD or NPD herself (who controls my wife), a drug dealer (who supplies my wife with drugs), and someone with limited intelligence (who does whatever my wife tells her to do). Any "normal" friends have been discarded because they do not approve of my wife's choices. Basically, anyone who knows "too much" and sees my wife as who she is has been removed from her life.

[maxen]

hi michel. first, you have really good friends. please be aware of that. that some of them approached you is splendid. and i agree with your therapist: you should be able to discuss almost anything with your closest friends, though you may not want to tell all.

after my w bolted, in a fury of pain i reached out to our two closest mutual friends, one the maid of honor at our wedding. both answered me, one within a half hour. but when my w heard that i did that, she was dictatorial: "what are you doing talking to my friends?" the fact that she planned her escape with other friends wasn't to be discussed.

i've wondered about this trait of, not confidentiality, but secrecy, which she displayed during the marriage too. i come back to the idea that exposure is a terror for many with BPD, because once the lid is opened, the searching can go anywhere, and things that are discovered might be judged, and sensitivity to judgement and rejection is one of the cardinal markers of BPD. in great pain at the core, they want to protect the core by keeping it hidden.

[terranova79]

I am in a dilema. I am lucky enough to have several very close friends. There have been several times of crisis in the last 6 months where I felt like I was going to lose my mind or become suicidal over the relationship with my uBPDw. Total despair. Total drowning in anguish. I reached out to some of these friends for support. A few of my friends are co-workers whom I have known for most of my long career. They noticed me not functioning very well to say the least and initiated the topic. After a recent break-up (or attempted break-up) I became despondent and sent two of my long distance friends emails, pouring out my heart and I even mentioned BPD. My wife hacked into my email account and found these. I have not and would have NEVER told her about my theory of her BPD. She was understandably angry and hurt. NOW she is calling me a "cheater" since I have spoken to people about our marriage, "defamed" her and she is convinced that I talk to EVERYBODY I know about EVERY DETAIL of my life with her. She de-friended all my friends from her FACEBOOK. To punish me, she changed her FACEBOOK name back to her FORMER married name and took off all our pictures or any pictures with me in it and changed her relationship status to "ask".

I do have a therapist but I can only afford to see her once every two weeks or so. My T says that I have every right to seek support under the circumstances as well as having a right to privacy.

Since I get stuck in FOG way more than I like and get to the point of being so anxiety ridden that I can hardly think straight, please weigh in on this for me. Have I done my marriage wrong?

Hi Michel,

I've seen several of your posts and your uBPDw seems very similar to mine, so I thought I would weigh in.

Your therapist is absolutely correct that you have the right to seek support from friends/family and that you have a right to privacy.  In my mind, one of the most insidious features of BPDs is their ability to gaslight and convince nons that the nons are the crazy ones and are at fault for everything.  That type of mental abuse is absolutely corrosive--trust me, I've endured years of it and am just now realizing it--so it is vital to have the perspective of mentally healthy and supportive friends, family, and therapists.

Also, you should not feel guilty about reaching out to your friends for support.  Ask yourself this:  were you honest in what you told your friends and do you stand by what you said?  And did you reach out to them because you were hurt and wanted to figure out how to fix your relationship with your uBPDw, who you care about?  I imagine your answer to both questions is yes.  If so, it seems to me that you had good intentions and did not do anything wrong.  To me, it sounds like you feel guilty because your wife is guilt-tripping you for saying things that are unflattering to her, even if they are true.  Just because you feel guilty doesn't mean you actually should.

Another thing about what you said is striking.  Your wife is furious with you for what you wrote in private emails to your friends, but what about the fact that she invaded your privacy and hacked into your email?  There's nothing wrong with you seeking the support of your friends, but hacking into another's email is just plain wrong.  It's unfair that you are the one treated like the villain in that situation.

As an aside, I experienced a very similar thing with my uBPDw about a year ago.  My uBPDw has an intense and completely irrational hatred of my sister in law (my brother's wife).  I'm not super close to my SIL, but we are on good terms.  One day, I left my phone laying around and my uBPDw started reading all my text messages.  She saw that my SIL and I had exchanged a few innocuous emails a couple months previously about a football game.  Well, despite the fact that my uBPDw read my texts without my permission and despite the fact that the texts she read were totally mundane, she was furious with me for having texted with my SIL.  She accused me of going behind her back, not supporting her against my supposedly evil SIL, but she showed virtually no remorse for invading my privacy.

I hope this helps.  Many of the things you've recounted sound very similar to mine (eg she has also cut off all ties with my friends and family), so just know that you are not crazy and that you are right for feeling like you've been dealt a very difficult hand.  Good luck and keep in touch with those who care about you most.

[Theo41]

 I agree: we have a need and a right to get the support of friends as well as therapists. My wife is totally against therapy for me as well as her. "This is the private business of our marriage." My take on that is that she's afraid an independent professional resouce wil confirm that she's sick and needs help.  Theo

[Aussie0zborn]

There is nothing wrong with getting support and you certainly didn't betray marital confidences in the process. You did nothing wrong.

What's wrong here is how we are made to feel that we did something wrong. Please be aware of this.

As we know, a popular modus operandi is to isolate you so as to keep you in the FOG. Another one is to surround themselves with a quorum of enablers built up through the smear campaign levelled against you. But ofcourse, nons are not allowed to have a support network no matter how horrible the rages and abuse get.

You are lucky that you still have friends that are close enough to notice the effects that a BPD partner has on you. When I became totally isolated and didn't have that, I felt the frustration of knowing I was being abused but not knowing how to walk away. I felt stuck with nobody to throw me a lifeline.

You did nothing wrong.  Stand your ground and defend yourself. Better still, ask yourself where this relationship is going, why you  think you  need it and add up the pros and cons. Be kind to yourself when you add up the  pros and cons and give yourself extra points as you may very well devalue yourself in the process.

[Skip]

Maybe another way to look at this... .

Yes, it's reasonable for you to seek support AND its reasonable that she does not want you providing a biased and unknown expose of your private life to people she has to live with.  There is a line between getting help, violating her privacy, and smearing.

If you don't want your support to hurt the relationship, I'd focus my support carefully - pick people who are very balanced and ready to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.  

Your therapist is safe, we're safe, and there is probably a friend or family member or two that can help.  When you widen the circle beyond this - it is damaging.

[terranova79]

Maybe another way to look at this... .

Yes, it's reasonable for you to seek support AND its reasonable that she does not want you providing a biased and unknown expose of your private life to people she has to live with.  There is a line between getting help, violating her privacy, and smearing.

If you don't want your support to hurt the relationship, I'd focus my support carefully - pick people who are very balanced and ready to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.  

Your therapist is safe, we're safe, and there is probably a friend or family member or two that can help.  When you widen the circle beyond this - it is damaging.

I will second the advice to be careful about who you confide in.  I learned my lesson the hard way.  My uBPDw and I live in a city far away from where I grew up, so I don't have any family and few close friends here.  I started confiding in my best friend here earlier this year about my deteriorating relationship.  Before I confided in him each time, I asked him to promise that everything I said would be confidential and that he would not tell his wife, who is a friend of my wife (though not really a very close one and much less close than my friend and I).  He always promised me he would keep things confidential.  Well, when I eventually told him that I was at the end of my rope and that my parents really thought I should get a divorce, he went and told his wife, who then relayed this to my wife, along with a whole bunch of other stuff I had confided to my friend.  A normal wife would take this kind of news hard, but for a BPD it's even worse.  My uBPDw now completely blames my family for the state of our marriage (overlooking anything she's done) and has completely demonized them and has ruled out ever having anything to do with them.  She is trying to isolate me from them more than ever before.  All I've ever wanted is for my family and wife to get along, but now that dream of mine is destroyed.

The long and the short of it is that my friend's betrayal of my confidence has made my already-difficult marriage almost certainly impossible to repair.  It is truly on its last legs now and I can't do anything to fix it.  My friend did not even bother to apologize for what he did, so my friendship with him is also pretty much shot.

It totally sucks and I realize that the situation is partly my fault.  My other friends and family have been much better support, but my decision to rely on this one friend was a horrible mistake.  I feel like I've lost everything and that my life is in shambles now.