Claycrusher
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 63
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« Reply #3 on: January 07, 2016, 10:44:51 PM » |
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The lack of empathy from my BPDw has been the hardest thing for me to deal with over the course of my 17 year marriage to her.
She has epilepsy. When she was diagnosed, her first fear was that her driving privilege would be revoked. At the time, she had a 50 mile round-trip commute for her job.
After she got laid off, we moved 1,500 miles away on the understanding that both of us would look for jobs that came with medical insurance benefits. I was a freelance writer that the time and actually making decent money doing that, but not enough as a sole-proprietor businessperson to afford insurance cover for a serious and pre-existing neurological disorder, if I could even find a carrier willing to provide coverage. The deal was that if I found the job first, she would keep looking and I would work that job plus keep my freelance thing going. When she found the job with benefits, I would quit mine and concentrate on my writing career. Eight years later, I still work a job for insurance cover, she never found one and pretty much gave up trying, and I no longer have a freelance career, at all.
She had a shot at getting a job with good pay and benefits. When she told me she wasn't taking it, the first reason listed was "Well, you know I'm epileptic and shouldn't drive long distances or at night" in reference to a job with a 40 mile commute when she had formerly done a 50 mile commute with no problem. I pointed out that my job wasn't ideal for my own health issue of hypoglycemia and listed all of the reasons why. I also pointed out that my 80 mile commute that had me driving at night on one of the most dangerous two-lane highways in the state wasn't too good for my health, either, because I had already killed over a half-dozen deer, and wound up in ditches numerous times to avoid hitting them. It was like talking to a wall. "Well, it's not just the drive, but the stress. You know I'm not supposed to have too much of that with my epilepsy." Uh-uh... . And I'm not supposed to be doing "shift work" on a job where I can't have a regular break schedule or end of watch time because these things both interfere with keeping my blood glucose regulated. "We both can't work long hours, and during the tax season, I'd be working 14 hour days or more. Whose going to get our kids to and from school"?
It was like, "Yeah, ok, so you've got problems or whatever, but what about ME? Why aren't you putting my problems ahead of yours"?
A couple of years ago, I came home after working 16 hours with no break and no food and having two hours of commuting time on top of that to meet by BPDw on her way out the front door as I was entering it. Dinner, I was told, would be "whatever you can scrounge," which would have been nothing, because the grocery shopping hadn't been done during the time I was working on this long-hours project. She, who shouldn't drive long distances or at night, was off to meet her half-sister for dinner at a town about 90 miles north of the one we live in. Her half-sister was just passing through that town on her way back home to Kansas City after being in our home state for a funeral. I started to speak, but my BPDw told me, "Save it. I know what you're going to say, but I'm going... . Come on kids, let's go... ." Uh... . No... . I don't think you really know what I am going to say. "Sure I do, You're going to tell me I can't go." Nope. I know better. If you want to risk killing yourself, knock yourself out. But you're not taking our children with you and exposing them to that risk. "But my sister wants to see them. My brother is with her, too. He wants to see them." Uh-huh... . If they want to see the kids so damned bad, they can drive another 180 miles out of their way to do it. Or they can see them some other time. But they are NOT going with you. "See, I was right. You don't want me to go." No. You're wrong. I don't care anymore if your impusive behavior has a real risk of getting you killed. YOU are not the center of the issue here. I care more about the other people you are about to put at risk, like our children, for example, and for that single mother coming home from work late at night that you're about to kill because you can't resist acting on impulses. "Well, I didn't want to ask you to take me, because I figured you be to tired after working so long, and when you called an hour ago to say you were coming home and hadn't eaten yet, I figured you'd want to do something about that." Uh-huh... . You had an hour to do something about it. But you didn't. (looks bewildered) "But I'm not the one with the blood sugar problem. You are. I don't understand why your so upset." I'm not upset. I am a little disappointed. Your sister isn't the one keeping a roof over your head, clothes on your back, or doing a job she doesn't particularly like all that much so that your epilepsy is treated and you have the medications you need to keep it under control. Yet you will do something you KNOW you shouldn't do for her and couldn't be bothered to something kindhearted and helpful for me. But we can talk about that on the way up there. Let me change my clothes real quick and I take you there. "I don't want you to do this for me." Good. Because I am not doing it for you. I am doing it for that single mom coming home late from her job that your impuslive and epileptic self is about to expose to risk of death or injury because you can't keep your impulses under control.
On the way home, she remained awake in the car less than ten minutes. At home at 1:30 AM, she made an attempt to scurry off to bed. I told her we needed to talk. "Yeah, yeah... . I hurt your feelings, I guess. That can wait until tomorrow." Uh, no, it can't. Not if you want to stay married, anyhow. So, we talked. She really didn't understand how in the world I could have had my feelings hurt. It wasn't her fault I had to work 16 hours, or had two hours of commuting time on top of it, or had no break or food during that time, and she couldn't understand why I was blaming her for that. I asked her to reflect a bit on why I had that job in the first place. "Because of my epilepsy." Uh-huh... . I pointed out that a lot of women in her position would have told their sister that they either couldn't make it or had enough compassion for what their husband had gone through to either have some food made for him or at least had some food in the house for him to eat.
Now, prior to this incident, she had agreed that I could use a portion of a bonus and monies from sell-back of excess leave time to go see my end-stage renal failure mother and my father and take our kids with me to do so during their fall break from school. She helped me pack their bags the day I was leaving. She couldn't go because she used all of her leave time from her part-time job. She kissed us all good bye and I stopped off at the ATM for cash to travel on before heading out of town. I found that I not only didn't have enough money in my checking account for my 1,500 mile road trip, but there wasn't enough to even get me out of the county I live in. The next day, she could not account for where the money went, went dysregulated, and I didn't push the issue further until the morning we came home from having dinner with her sister, several months later.
All of the divorced women at work knew where that money went. They were right, too. My BPDw had been siphoning off family finances in to an account in her name only that I had no access to. Quite a lot of it, in fact. I let her lie about it for months. She tried lying about it when I told her what the balance was on the day I discovered the account. She quit trying to lie about it when I told her what the balance was as of 7:00 AM the previous morning.
The lack of empathy extends to being told in the afterglow of 3.5 hours of nonstop conjugal relations that she had to conjure up images of a woman to "get aroused and get off." Having to do that, of course, meant that she was bisexual. That, in turn, obviously meant that she needed some "girl on girl side-action". She asked how I would feel if she sought that out. I responded to that question by asking her what prompted it, and I got exactly the answer I knew I was going to get when she said, "Well, I met this woman on (online dating site) back in October, and we communicated via the site for a while, and moved on to texting, and we've made plans to meet this Sunday for lunch." I told her that I had no objection to her meeting another woman for lunch but feelings of bisexuality were no excuse for marital infidelity. She had her lunch date and was like a giddy teenager when she came home and told me all about her new love interest. She was married, too, and my BPDw got to meet the husband, because her lover was dropped off and picked up by him. On the 22nd of December, she left our children to fend for themselves, lied to them and me about her whereabouts, and wilfully led me to believe she was despondent, while she was really having a lasagna dinner with her new lover and her new lover's husband. She waited up for me to tell me that when I came immediately home from work at 2:30 AM. She said nothing sexual happened, because she left sooner than she planned when caught in her lie. The next day, she told me that she thought something sexual probably would have happened between her new female lover and herself. I told her she was naive and had just been set up by another pwBPD to play "unicorn" for her new lover and new lover's husband, and that given her lack of impulse control, she would have played the part to the hilt.
She was too busy to do any Christmas shopping for her children. Not too busy to arrange a play date for herself in which she claimed to have no idea that she was likely going to be playing "unicorn."
So for me, the lack of empathy my BPDw has had for me during the whole of our 18 year association is going to be the toughest thing to get over when we divorce -not the lies, not the manipulative behaviors, or attempts at them. I know that not all people are like this, but I know I might well become a member of the "he-man woman hater's club" if I continue to expose myself to this lack of empathy indefinitely.
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