Hi Ekf87 and
We have two children to take care of and she is sometimes just not coming home. Can anyone help me?
You are in a rough spot. Unfortunately no one can make your wife choose to do something that she does not choose for herself. The best we can offer is to help you make sense out of her behavior so that you can make the best choices for yourself and your children.
My wife and I have been married two years. She was evaluated a few months ago and told that she may be either borderline bipolar or have BPD. Well, through living with her I can tell you that she is BPD. She not I took it very seriously.
One thing to consider is that for people with BPD (pwBPD), they will take the knowledge of their diagnosis (BPD) very hard -- to the point that many pwBPD will just deny their diagnosis. In this sense, it is better to think of pwBPD as unrecovered addicts or alcoholics who choose denial over recovery. If they are not seeking help for their own sake, then it is possible they are going through to motions only to have us continue to enable them.
Just about a week ago she announced that she wanted a separation (but still live together) and that she is seeing someone else. She told me that with this other girl she doesn't have to worry about anything and she doesn't feel pressured.
You see, her choosing to find someone new is her telegraphing that she feels you know too much about what she wants to remain in denial over, and that you would hold her too accountable to her behavior from here on out. She'd prefer to be with someone who is less knowledgeable (and more vulnerable to her distortion campaigns) and she'd like you to enable her until she finds this arrangement.
I tried to ask her to see a therapist and she blew up and told me that I was the one who needed to see a therapist not her.
Another aspect of her dysfunctional behavior is to project. In her mind, you're the one who has problems not her. Deny and project.
She has started to drink more, she picked up smoking, now for the first time in our relationship she is seeing someone else who is 8 years younger.
If you are no longer subscribing to her distortions, then she will use other means (alcohol/nicotine) to help subdue her disordered emotions. And of course she is finding someone who is younger, less experienced and more vulnerable who will subscribe to her distorted perspective and enable her to continue denying. It is likely she is feeding the new candidate distortions (aka lies) about her relationship with you to make the younger person more amenable to her needs.
I don't want to separate and I have made it clear that I want to work things out. She wavers back and forth saying that she wants this and that she wants to be here and that she loves me straight back to she doesn't have it in her to be here. I know I can't force her to do anything but I need help in talking to her. I need her to realize that the affair is not okay and that she needs to seek treatment.
Unrecovered, she's going to take the easier path. She doesn't want you to leave before she is ready to dump you first. But she I'd doubt she'd choose to remain with you so long as you require that she actually face the things about herself she doesn't want to face.
If she can be with someone else who doesn't require her to seek treatment, she will choose that person.
I hope some of this helps.
Best wishes,
Schwing
