I love her but why do I feel like I hate her?

[dburke]

Hello,

I am new on this site and I was searching anywhere for help. I am scared, feel trapped, manipulated feel as though I am loosing relationships with friends and family because of all the high conflict relationship in my marriage. My wife has not bee diagnosed with BPD but everything that I have read and watched has pointed me to suspect that she is suffering from it. I fear she will never get the help she needs as she sees that I am the problem of everything that is going on inside her and in our marriage. I love her but I am scared because I don’t know how to best support her or approach her about anything. She is highly defensive and quick to blame. I have lost so much of my own self esteem and I have come to pacify her by just giving in. I feel out of touch with myself! I don’t know who I am any more. I want to learn how to be companionate as I do love her and for this reason I want to shed the thick layer of resentment that keeps blinding me. I pray that she gets better while praying that I too get better at supporting instead of reacting to her pain. Unfortunately being part of this site has to be a secret for me because if she were to find out what I was up to, she would be devastated. I wish to share more but she is coming home any minute. I want to learn how to love her and be able to tell her I love her and things will be ok even when I feel I am her emotional punching bag. There has to be a healthy line between that support and being a door mat. If there is, I want to find that balance. I find myself unsure of anything I do and I feel I live a lie telling friends and family everything in my marriage is going good. The fact is I feel like I am living a nightmare; one where I walked into it while awake. I have never reached out to anyone before and feel I am going crazy and often wonder if I am the only one caught in such an uncomfortable feeling of always walking on egg shells. I have become anxious, something I never used to suffer from. I never know what to say. She tells me to say things a certain way and then the following day I do only to be yelled and sworn at because I need to say it a different way.

I am interested in exploring more this site and hopefully interacting with people in this site. Thanks for reading this.       

David

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Mike-X]

Thank you for posting your story. I am sorry for what you are going though in your marriage, but I am glad that you found this site.

When you get a chance, please try to read through the lessons on the right.

Your reaction to pacify and nurture is a common loving response, BPD or not. However, the tools in the lessons (particularly, learning to provide validation, stay centered, and establish boundaries) can help you to better manage your reactions to your wife and hopefully help toward rebuilding your esteem. They made a world of difference for me.

Have you considered seeing a therapist? What is your life like outside of the relationship - friends, family? I certainly understand feeling overwhelmed in a high conflict relationship, but are you doing things to bolster your mental and physical health? Learning about your wife's condition and joining these boards are all positive steps in this regard.

[waverider]

This is a good question.

You will find that it comes down to growing resentment and loosing respect.

The cause of this is usually a building sense of unfairness, and a perceived lack of genuine effort on the part of the pwBPD.

To overcome this you will need a degree of Acceptance that the ideal will not be attained. You will learn to rebuild you so that you don't feel like your life is being wasted by association with the Disorder.

It will take some time but now is a good time to start. we have plenty of resources here to help you.

You are not alone

Waverider

[Thread]

Dburke,

Almost every other day I switch from this man is amazing I'm so glad I married him to I cannot stand him and I honestly hate hate hate him. I sound like I'm the one with BPD!

It's not fun. But as you will see the more you utilize this site, it's out there and it's a thing and all of us who are new to the realization of our loved one being BPD, we all feel like we're going crazy and/or are living in hell.

After the full realization of my situation i have been very proactive for a healthier relationship but also self. You really might think of therapy. Even therapist dealing with a BPD has therapy to have support. I often found my family and a few friends who just didn't get it, and then you really start believing it's you, you're crazy. However it was with my therapists and friends with BPD in their life who were the most beneficial to me... .And oh! This site! Even my mother said she noticed recently a calm and control in my reactions to my pwBPD. I told her it's my forum, I have support, understanding and validation.

Another thing I have come to realize is how I always tried to alter my life or my days to fit his needs. Stop doing that. Boundaries. And a healthy amount of independence will keep you grounded. You need friends- I would sometimes not see my friends to avoid the conflicts. I sometimes will do that, but it's best to not enable the behavior. But sometimes I just don't have it in me for the next explosion. But having friends and a life will help you not get caught up in the BPD black hole. I am learning this in therapy. I tend to be codependent so aserting my boundaries and sticking to them are difficult.

Thanks for sharing and reaching out!

We all can empathize with what you're going through  

[waverider]

If you are struggling to balance the love hate thing, it is most likely because your expectations and hopes are often being blown away.

When this is at the resentment stage, it primes you for the next blow up, often prematurely as you have never really gotten over the last disappointment.

The goal is to break the resentment down into periodic frustrations. This is normal, it comes and it goes, the residual aspect is not there. One of the things that makes this harder to achieve is we have become afraid of rocking the boat so we try to bottle up frustration, so it never runs it's course. This accumulates into resentment.

As you get better at handling conflict you become less afraid of letting frustration out. Even if this means blowing your lid occasionally. I know I do this. If you don't let it out you can't get over it.

It does take acceptance that it happens, you can't control them, and you can only partially control you. ie Accept you are not a martyr and thats ok.

It is possible for some people to have perfectly happy and yet occasionally volatile and dysfunctional relationships.

Is this for you? Who knows, but bottling things up trying to keep an unachievable peace will create that resentment which breeds hate.

Take time to differentiate between hate and anger also. Hate is destructive an can be vindictive, anger is expressing feelings of the moment

You can't guarantee any particular outcome, but you can work towards greater clarity by getting a handle on your own reactions

Waverider

[Thread]

Nailed it! Wave rider 

[waverider]

Keep in mind, disorder or not, not everyone is compatable. It is possible that you believed you are/were soul mates based on false premises, ie the "white" facade side of the disorder.

This is something you will get a better handle on once you reach a better state of clarity on the whole picture.

There are no guarantees, only good practices for working out what is best for you. Too often we make reactive decisions out of an inability to see any alternative path.

This site has the paving stones and instructions to build that path. Its not easy and there is no telling were it ends, but it will be somewhere other than where you are at now.