globally mobile family life with an uBPDh

[Depression = 72% of members]

What a relief to find a space where I can share honestly with people who understand something of what our family lives with. I believe my husband, whom I love dearly and who is an incredibly intelligent, funny, passionate, creative person, has undiagnosed BPD. Over many years I have been learning how to protect myself, empathize with him, and love him - and myself and our kids - through it all. It is an ongoing process and part of my joy in finding this forum is that it is a process that I am really unable to share with anyone. Well-meaning friends and loved ones, if I share too much, simply encourage me to leave. My husband is estranged from his family, and although our kids and I have maintained a relationship with them (with my husband's knowledge and consent) this is not something I can discuss with them, as their relationship with him is part of the complicated backstory of our current struggles. We also live a highly mobile lifestyle and most of the friends who are physically near me are not close friends and actually have no idea what our life is really like.

The story of how I came to believe my husband has BPD is far too long to post in its entirety here, but I'll try to sketch it out. Over the course of two years of dating and the first several years of marriage I believed my husband to be a guy who just sometimes snapped and had a few clearly very tender emotional spots. His family seemed to be close and loving. Several years into our marriage and parenthood adventure, though, (kids came early - earlier, in retrospect, than we were ready for) it seemed like my husband was becoming a completely different person. He was under a tremendous amount of stress from a number of directions and his response was to turn viciously on me. I was suddenly not only not the woman of his dreams after all, but I had set out to trap him and use him to my ends with no concern for what he wanted or needed. My family had always disliked him, he said, and he gave me long lists of "proof" of their dislike (none of which computed, as far as I was concerned). He had always seemed to have a simmering resentment of our children, though he also clearly loves them, and was vocal about the fact that having started our family within a year of our marriage was a huge mistake. But now it was not just a mistake we had made together - it was part of my plan to entrap him. The details as I remembered them (for instance, that he had been the one to suggest stopping birth control) were disregarded as "excuses" intended to distract from the reality of my intent to trap and use him.

Needless to say, this was a dizzying time for me. I had never heard of BPD (and was yet to hear of it for quite a long and painful time). I had no context for my husband's behavior. In retrospect, I see a thread of common BPD behaviors present throughout our relationship, but at the time it seemed to come out of nowhere. In the course of dealing with the fallout from these changes my husband and I sought counseling, both together and separately. He ended his individual counseling after several months, saying the therapist had been helpful at first but had "just become mean" and "wasn't helpful anymore." Our couples therapy initially went well and I learned some incredibly sad and painful things about my husband's upbringing and relationship with his parents, who had seemed so loving (father emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, mother rarely asserted herself to protect my husband and had her own forms of emotional abuse as well). But increasingly my husband felt that the therapy was too focused on him and that the therapist was making him "the problem," just as his parents had. He refused to go any longer. As far as I'm concerned, I also learned a lot about myself and my flaws and the dysfunctional ways of communicating and dealing with conflict that had made our problems worse. I felt that it was fairly evenly balanced. But my husband did not share that view, and chose to stop. I continued personal therapy with my parish priest, who also happened to have a PhD in family counseling. It helped me immensely. I still had never heard of BPD.

One day I was Googling random things I couldn't understand about my husband's behavior and came across information about BPD. I started reading everything I could about it. I discovered the book "Walking on Eggshells." I felt like I had been given a secret decoder ring.

I said I was not going to go into our entire story and I'm leaving out vast swathes of it, but this has already been long enough, I think. In the four years or so since that time we have continued as best we can. My husband, after quitting couples therapy, expressed that he will never, under any circumstances, enter any kind of therapy again. I have not brought it up again. I continued sessions with my priest/therapist until we made a drastic change and my husband took a job that will mean moving internationally every few years. We are 3/4 of the way through the first international post.

I'm not sure if it's having a job that he finds more challenging, more suited to his skills and interests, and more fulfilling or whether it's that I have learned an enormous amount about myself and the ways in which I was fanning flames when my husband was feeling under pressure and had a hard time regulating his emotions or - most likely - a combination of all of that and more, but generally our life is far more peaceful now. (I've stopped doing things like mentioning that it was his suggestion we stop birth control when he gets on the "you tricked me into having kids" theme, for example. It wasn't helpful for anyone.) A lot of the worst, most painful stuff has really let up. I haven't heard the "you set out to trap me" argument for a very long time.

One of my huge concerns right now is our children. Generally speaking, I have borne the brunt of my husband's wrath, and it has only rarely been visible to our children. I've read that this is typical when the spouse with BPD is the husband - the children may be objects of resentment for taking the wife's time and attention, but usually are not the objects of anger and attack. Recently, however, on a family vacation, our 9-year-old daughter was particularly challenging to deal with and my husband unleashed his frustrations on her (verbally). I had to step in as he was being verbally abusive, calling her a brat and accusing her of intentionally setting out to ruin our vacation. (He did later apologize to her and tell her he was very wrong to have spoken that way, and assured her that she did not ruin our vacation, but certainly there was damage done by that point.) Since then my daughter has often asked me why her father can be so volatile and why he sometimes gets so mad at me "for nothing" (her words). She asked why I put up with it when he does it to me but stopped him when he did it to her. She's incredibly observant and perceptive, but it's hard to explain to her that not fighting back and detaching myself/removing myself when he behaves like that toward me is not "putting up with it" but protecting myself in a way that doesn't escalate him. It's the dilemma of what to say to our children and how to say it without undermining my husband as a father that really brought me here, particularly given the added instability of our mobile life (which I enjoy, but which also gives me a larger set of emotional challenges to handle as I work to help our kids navigate all the change - and navigate it myself; it suits my husband perfectly because he's great at making casual friends quickly and prefers not to let himself be known too well.) We also have a 13-year-old son who seems to easily love and accept his dad as he is, but is clearly sad when he sees conflict in the family. He is a peaceful and incredibly loving and empathetic person. I have not specifically discussed BPD with either child, or really ever said anything other than "your dad sometimes struggles to deal with stress and process emotions and this does not have anything to do with you and is not your fault in any way." I really fear undermining him or somehow betraying him by what I say to the kids, but I also fear not giving the kids enough support and context for his challenging behavior - even though they see far less of it than I do.

Thank you to everyone here for this forum and this environment and support. I've been reading and it's already a help.

Thank you.

[KatieLou]

What a relief to find a space where I can share honestly with people who understand something of what our family lives with. I believe my husband, whom I love dearly and who is an incredibly intelligent, funny, passionate, creative person, has undiagnosed BPD. Over many years I have been learning how to protect myself, empathize with him, and love him - and myself and our kids - through it all. It is an ongoing process and part of my joy in finding this forum is that it is a process that I am really unable to share with anyone. Well-meaning friends and loved ones, if I share too much, simply encourage me to leave. My husband is estranged from his family, and although our kids and I have maintained a relationship with them (with my husband's knowledge and consent) this is not something I can discuss with them, as their relationship with him is part of the complicated backstory of our current struggles. We also live a highly mobile lifestyle and most of the friends who are physically near me are not close friends and actually have no idea what our life is really like.

The story of how I came to believe my husband has BPD is far too long to post in its entirety here, but I'll try to sketch it out. Over the course of two years of dating and the first several years of marriage I believed my husband to be a guy who just sometimes snapped and had a few clearly very tender emotional spots. His family seemed to be close and loving. Several years into our marriage and parenthood adventure, though, (kids came early - earlier, in retrospect, than we were ready for) it seemed like my husband was becoming a completely different person. He was under a tremendous amount of stress from a number of directions and his response was to turn viciously on me. I was suddenly not only not the woman of his dreams after all, but I had set out to trap him and use him to my ends with no concern for what he wanted or needed. My family had always disliked him, he said, and he gave me long lists of "proof" of their dislike (none of which computed, as far as I was concerned). He had always seemed to have a simmering resentment of our children, though he also clearly loves them, and was vocal about the fact that having started our family within a year of our marriage was a huge mistake. But now it was not just a mistake we had made together - it was part of my plan to entrap him. The details as I remembered them (for instance, that he had been the one to suggest stopping birth control) were disregarded as "excuses" intended to distract from the reality of my intent to trap and use him.

Needless to say, this was a dizzying time for me. I had never heard of BPD (and was yet to hear of it for quite a long and painful time). I had no context for my husband's behavior. In retrospect, I see a thread of common BPD behaviors present throughout our relationship, but at the time it seemed to come out of nowhere. In the course of dealing with the fallout from these changes my husband and I sought counseling, both together and separately. He ended his individual counseling after several months, saying the therapist had been helpful at first but had "just become mean" and "wasn't helpful anymore." Our couples therapy initially went well and I learned some incredibly sad and painful things about my husband's upbringing and relationship with his parents, who had seemed so loving (father emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, mother rarely asserted herself to protect my husband and had her own forms of emotional abuse as well). But increasingly my husband felt that the therapy was too focused on him and that the therapist was making him "the problem," just as his parents had. He refused to go any longer. As far as I'm concerned, I also learned a lot about myself and my flaws and the dysfunctional ways of communicating and dealing with conflict that had made our problems worse. I felt that it was fairly evenly balanced. But my husband did not share that view, and chose to stop. I continued personal therapy with my parish priest, who also happened to have a PhD in family counseling. It helped me immensely. I still had never heard of BPD.

One day I was Googling random things I couldn't understand about my husband's behavior and came across information about BPD. I started reading everything I could about it. I discovered the book "Walking on Eggshells." I felt like I had been given a secret decoder ring.

I said I was not going to go into our entire story and I'm leaving out vast swathes of it, but this has already been long enough, I think. In the four years or so since that time we have continued as best we can. My husband, after quitting couples therapy, expressed that he will never, under any circumstances, enter any kind of therapy again. I have not brought it up again. I continued sessions with my priest/therapist until we made a drastic change and my husband took a job that will mean moving internationally every few years. We are 3/4 of the way through the first international post.

I'm not sure if it's having a job that he finds more challenging, more suited to his skills and interests, and more fulfilling or whether it's that I have learned an enormous amount about myself and the ways in which I was fanning flames when my husband was feeling under pressure and had a hard time regulating his emotions or - most likely - a combination of all of that and more, but generally our life is far more peaceful now. (I've stopped doing things like mentioning that it was his suggestion we stop birth control when he gets on the "you tricked me into having kids" theme, for example. It wasn't helpful for anyone.) A lot of the worst, most painful stuff has really let up. I haven't heard the "you set out to trap me" argument for a very long time.

One of my huge concerns right now is our children. Generally speaking, I have borne the brunt of my husband's wrath, and it has only rarely been visible to our children. I've read that this is typical when the spouse with BPD is the husband - the children may be objects of resentment for taking the wife's time and attention, but usually are not the objects of anger and attack. Recently, however, on a family vacation, our 9-year-old daughter was particularly challenging to deal with and my husband unleashed his frustrations on her (verbally). I had to step in as he was being verbally abusive, calling her a brat and accusing her of intentionally setting out to ruin our vacation. (He did later apologize to her and tell her he was very wrong to have spoken that way, and assured her that she did not ruin our vacation, but certainly there was damage done by that point.) Since then my daughter has often asked me why her father can be so volatile and why he sometimes gets so mad at me "for nothing" (her words). She asked why I put up with it when he does it to me but stopped him when he did it to her. She's incredibly observant and perceptive, but it's hard to explain to her that not fighting back and detaching myself/removing myself when he behaves like that toward me is not "putting up with it" but protecting myself in a way that doesn't escalate him. It's the dilemma of what to say to our children and how to say it without undermining my husband as a father that really brought me here, particularly given the added instability of our mobile life (which I enjoy, but which also gives me a larger set of emotional challenges to handle as I work to help our kids navigate all the change - and navigate it myself; it suits my husband perfectly because he's great at making casual friends quickly and prefers not to let himself be known too well.) We also have a 13-year-old son who seems to easily love and accept his dad as he is, but is clearly sad when he sees conflict in the family. He is a peaceful and incredibly loving and empathetic person. I have not specifically discussed BPD with either child, or really ever said anything other than "your dad sometimes struggles to deal with stress and process emotions and this does not have anything to do with you and is not your fault in any way." I really fear undermining him or somehow betraying him by what I say to the kids, but I also fear not giving the kids enough support and context for his challenging behavior - even though they see far less of it than I do.

Thank you to everyone here for this forum and this environment and support. I've been reading and it's already a help.

Thank you.

[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.

[Mutt]

Hi KatieLou,



I'd like to welcome you to  bpdfamily. I'm glad that you decided to join us. I like your post and the comment with the secret decoder ring stick out for me. I had no idea that there were a group of people sharing their experiences and supporting each other. For years , I couldn't make sense of my ex wife's behaviors, until one day a thought crossed my mind there is something fundamentaly wrong. I would ask people that I trusted questions about things that were going in our r/s and it didn't make sense to them, they thought I must of dine something wrong. Your post also reminded me of my marriage counselling sessions and how my ex had walked out a session because I went into that one prepared and I brought up several things that were important to me.

BPD is a persecution complex, the person believes that their circumstances are caused by someone else, they feel like they're victims. I'm not surprised that he didn't like the T, a pwBPD will often cast themselves in the role of victim, sometimes rescuer and rarely persecutor, I wasn't there at the session but he cast the T as persecutor, my guess is the T was asking him some difficult questions?

The kids are always looking at us and sometimes things fall through the cracks. I don't think you're undermining your H, it's good to validate our kids feelings, especially when there's a parent that suffers from mental illness. Did you ask your parish priest?

[ArleighBurke]

I have 3 kids 13/10/7. The older 2 have started asking questions about mum's behaviour as well.

I too want to provide the best advise for my kids, without undermining her as a parent. I have chosen the path of:
- Mum gets very anxious over little things because bad things happened to her when she was a child.
- Sometimes she does things or asks for things that don't make sense. You are always within your right to question them, and certainly within your right to say no. However, you need to consider the best time to do that. When she is angry/stressed, and what she asks is little, sometimes it is better just to do it. You can talk about it after. If it's something big, then you can stand your ground. That may make her yell more, so you need to expect that.
- 13yr old asked why mum was so inconsistent... .(dessert OK some nights not others, no friends allowed over etc). Mum operates a lot on emotion. In everything there is a combination of factors, but because of who she is, it is hard for her to have all the factors in her head at once. So she will choose to focus on just one things, which leads to an outcome. Tomorrow, she may choose to focus on something slightly different

So really, I focus on the behaviour. I don't label it as BPD - just as "her". I hope that I am helping my kids to not take things personally - I'm really trying to instil that into them - which should help with their other relationships as well... .

[Notwendy]

Hi Katie Lou,

Your story reminds me of mine in some ways, especially being blamed for marrying my H and having the kids. When we met, we were both students heading towards careers and I had my own career goals. Our dating was mostly great with some snaps of anger that my H explained as pressure related- exams, work. I didn't have a clue. I also worked until the kids came along and we both agreed that I would work part time and be the main caretaker. During his anger times, I gave him an out. I really didn't want to be married to someone who didn't want to be married to me. I could support myself.

But although he didn't take the "out" offers, he continued to blame me for "trapping" him and derailing his career. He had a good job but said he took it because he had to support us. I guess he imagined he would have more choices if he hadn't done that.

There were more reasons he "blamed " me but as Mutt said- it is about feeling persecuted. I think any young parent could feel overwhelmed at times by the responsibility of children. However, a parent without BPD learns to manage that feeling, maybe ask others for help- grandparents, a babysitter- to watch the kids if we need a break. But someone with BPD could blame someone else for that feeling.

As to your concern about the kids. I noticed my H loves to do the fun stuff, but the difficult stuff- getting them to do chores, help with homework, drive to activities, school events and meeting, he didn't like to do and these situations got tense if I tried to push it. So, I took over these things for the sake of the kids. Family outings were fine so long as I took care of the details. He loves his kids, me, his family and is good to them. That overall made the marriage worth working on.

I tried MC but he walked out stating we were ganging up on him. Eventually he reluctantly agreed again. ( I was at the last straw, the marriage was in danger and he knew that). Fortunately, the MC was very wise- she made me the problem. At first, I was angry and confused. How could I be the only problem. I had the label ( co-dependency) and she worked on a plan for me. My H could just get a pass on this. But I realized over time, that she could work on both of us through me as the "problem". I also did personal T like you did ( with a different one so that there was no perceived "gang up" and 12 step co-dependency groups.

I think it is great to keep working on yourself. We can't really change someone else. However, we can learn relationship skills that can decrease the conflict in the relationship. Change can happen when we work on ourselves.

[KatieLou]

Mutt, ArleighBurke, and NotWendy -
Thank you all so much for your kind welcome and for your insights. The "persecution" thing is so real and that's one of the things it's still hard for me to cope with. I actually have less of a problem when I'm the bad guy than when other people are - it's been hard for me to let go of arguing that with him, especially when he attacks my family or our kids (I ALWAYS defend them if he says something inappropriate in front of them, of course, but sometimes in private conversation he'll accuse one of them, usually our daughter - who is a more willful kid - of purposefully antagonizing him). I absolutely know that it does zero good to attempt to convince him that my parents don't hate him or that our daughter is not just trying to make his life miserable, but it's hard to listen to that. I generally give a neutral acknowledgement of how badly it must make him feel and then try to move the conversation on. He also frequently talks about what a "raw deal" he has received at the hands of his employer, although it's no different from what many other employees get. He's in a high-stress, super demanding job and he has definitely drawn the short straw, so to speak, with certain assignments and other circumstances, but it's not personal. Except to him it is. Again, years ago my instinct was that it would be better for him if he could realize that he's not being singled out, but now I know that me trying to help him see that feels like me also persecuting him and telling him he's wrong (and bad and stupid and . . . etc.)

I especially appreciate the advice with the kids. Mutt, it's a great idea talking to the parish priest, and I might actually reach out to him, but it's been a few years since we left that community and we now live in another country, so I don't have that resource as readily available as I did before. I appreciate the specific language you shared, ArleighBurke. That is very useful. My kids really only just started questioning his behavior, and so this is a new thing for me. So much of our conflict (thankfully) has happened in private, when the kids are not around, that what little they did see - for a long time - was probably understandable in the "everyone sometimes gets stressed" vein. But my daughter is sometimes a real challenge and, as you mentioned, the fun and easy parenting stuff is what my husband is great at. Dealing with her willfulness and difficult behavior really stretches him to his limits, and while I handle at least 90% of that (because he's at work and I work from home and care for the kids) there are inevitably clashes between them sometimes, and increasingly it's been impossible to just say "well your dad is stressed out right now." That just doesn't cover it convincingly. The irony of this situation is that I'm fairly certain this is how a lot of his childhood played out - he was willful and challenging with his parents and his dad, in particular, responded by ruling with an iron fist. I tried, during the vacation incident, to gently point out that I knew he would not want to respond to her the way his dad responded to him and he was FURIOUS. He was too emotional in that moment and I should have waited until we were in calmer waters. I think he would have been receptive at the right moment.

Notwendy - one thing I hadn't really read about until very recently is the difference between being married to a woman with BPD vs. being married to a man with BPD. Your comments reinforce everything I read and once again, I feel like things make so much more sense as I learn about other people's experiences. I know, in my heart of hearts, that I never tried to trap my husband or hold him back. I acknowledge that I was sometimes not as careful or thorough in communicating with him and making sure we were on the same page with our plans, but in retrospect I also feel like, since I had no idea what BPD even was at that time, it maybe is unrealistic for me to expect I could have known that was necessary (for instance, knowing what I know now, I always dig very deep into my husband's feelings about something before we make a big change, and make sure we have thoroughly talked through any possible consequences that we can be aware of. We should have done that before starting a family, but instead I assumed he was ready when he said we should start trying. If we'd had a far longer conversation about what parenthood would mean for us individually and as a couple it may have brought out that he wasn't ready). I've learned that I can't assume adult-level emotional skills from my husband. I have to speak with him about things that could have potentially significant, life-changing impact much in the way I would speak to our kids, going through step by step.

Anyway, thank you once again for your help and support. It means the world to have this resource.

[Notwendy]

I can't dig deep into my husband's feelings. We can't talk on that level. The conversation about his feelings ends up with him saying "I feel you... .don't do this or you don't do that" and then on to talking about me. Often I find myself JADEing to respond to his "feelings".

I know he loves his family and me, but talking about feelings just doesn't work.

Our children were planned, so there was no "trapping" him. So was the decision for me to cut back on work, even to the point of being a stay at home mother. He got his money's worth in terms of my work in the house and with the kids. Because he said he felt "trapped" I basically stopped asking for his involvement with them. He could come and go as he pleased. Any other arrangement he considered to be "unfair".  He also complained about being the only one working. I have gone back to work, for my own sanity and self esteem.

So while he did ask me to marry him, and the kids were planned, I guess if he got frustrated, that was his feeling in the moment. I think most parents sometimes get a bit overwhelmed and feel tied down, but we manage that, and overall love our families. It was hard to hear my H feel trapped, and also then express resentment over having to be the only one working even though he agreed to that too.

I don't make major decisions without including him. Often his response to my suggesting something is negative, but after he thinks about it, he may agree. I think that even if I was to dig deep into his feelings about a major change, it might change according to his moods. He is overall a great person who is devoted to our family, and he does a lot for us, but it seems if I ask him to do something, I am persecuting him.

Our relationship is easier when I don't try to dig deep into his feelings. He seems to have strong boundaries. We work better as a team when we do things together, like see a show, but not try to share tasks in the home. I have to respect his need for emotional distance. I have learned to be less reactive to when he is negative about something. It seems he is just venting. Maybe he felt trapped in the moment, but he really does love us.

[KatieLou]

I definitely hear you, Notwendy. The reality of this kind of relationship is that there are serious limitations that have to be accepted for the sake of everyone's sanity. When I talk about "digging deep" that should have an asterisk and then in fine print the explanation "while carefully avoiding certain triggering subjects, phrasing things with immense care, and only attempting the conversation when my husband is in a very solidly positive emotional space." Our kids were also planned! But still when he's feeling stressed he believes I trapped him. As I mentioned, he was the one who suggested we start trying to conceive, but years later he said he thought it would take a year or more for me to get pregnant and I should have made sure he knew I could get pregnant right away, and should have known he didn't want that. He expects a LOT of mind-reading. When I talk about digging deep part of what I mean is trying to examine the assumptions we're bringing to any given topic and making sure they match - because when we were first married it never occurred to me that a 31-year-old man wouldn't understand that a woman *could* get pregnant any time if she's not using birth control. Now I take nothing for granted. Since he's often illogical and does not regard the facts when he's out of control emotionally I suppose he can and will still become upset with me for things that are not actually my fault, but I do think going carefully over big decisions before we make them gives him less ammunition later.

[Notwendy]

I hear you too. Often I think my H has participated in a big decision, only to hear how "blindsided" he was later on. That is another one of his favorite accusations- that I blindsided him.

I have come to accept that I can't change victim perspective. Sometimes I think he even sets himself up for this- like agreeing to take on an extra project at work ( that isn't obligatory). Then the next few weeks I hear him complaining about how he has no time for himself- but he did it. Then sometimes he blamed me for it.

I do the best I can, but trying to prevent something like this seems futile. I didn't "trap" him. I had my own career goals. I offered him an "out" several times- before engagement, during and after marriage. He has not taken them. I know that some of us have fears of abandonment ourselves, but for me- I didn't want someone to be with me who didn't want to be with me. If he felt trapped, I would rather he not be.

We made a mutual decision that I would be the main caretaker for the kids. As a result, my career and earning potential were diminished. Without child care commitments, he was free to advance in his- didn't have to be home at night with them- could travel, stay late. Then, what I heard was about how expensive things were, and even this one" I didn't expect to be the sole wage earner". This is after many years of me being the main caregiver and home maker.

But no sooner has he said this, than he also turns around and tells me he is grateful for what I do and that it was best for him and the kids.

When I took his words to heart, they were very hurtful. I was very confused. Now, I think in general- he has our best interest at heart, agrees with me most of the time. But sometimes, what he says I think is in the heat of the moment, and once he says it, he forgets about it, doesn't mean it. It's the consistency of his actions- he does go to work to help all of us, he is good to the kids- that tells me what he feels.

[Cat Familiar]

KatieLou,
I want to commend you for your compassion and understanding of the situation with your husband. I'm currently married to a BPD husband and I divorced another one, whose BPD was even more extreme. It's taken me years to understand and have the relationship skills that you seem to manifest, so I think you're doing really well.

No matter how much self-esteem we have, it's still difficult to be the target of attacks. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be to bring up children in that environment, though I now realize that my mother was also BPD and that created a template for me to feel "at home" with people who have that disorder. I guess that is what I would emphasize to you about your children: you want to demonstrate strong boundaries so that you're not a doormat, yet you want to not undermine your husband in their eyes. It's like walking a tightrope, but I think you have good instincts and are very self-aware, so I'm confident you will do well.

Cat

[Cat Familiar]

With regard to work, I observed the victimhood attitude in my mother, my ex-husband and my current husband. Typically the BPD symptoms are mostly reserved for close family members, but I believe that it "leaks" out in the workplace, even though the individual tries to keep it hidden.

Something will seem "off" to co-workers and bosses. Therefore I think it's likely that they do end up getting "the short end of the stick" to some extent.

My husband is one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. His people skills are excellent--to a point. Somehow he never advanced to the highest level in his career. And I think that's because people could see his challenges with anger management, his feelings of persecution, his self-defeating behavior--all which I'm sure he attempted to hide to the best of his abilities.

[KatieLou]

You're absolutely right, Notwendy, that even taking care to make sure our partners are heard is no guarantee they will *feel* that they've been heard - and their emotional reality IS reality in those moments of immense pain. But I think I've come to a place of peace with the fact that I can only do my best, make sure I am, in fact, listening well (I wasn't always; I definitely concede that), and understand, as you mention about your husband, that he does actually have our best interests at heart and is doing the best he can. It just sometimes sucks, as we all know. I have also made it clear that while I don't intend to go anywhere, I also don't want him to stay out of a sense of martyrdom and would rather he leave if, in his heart of hearts, he truly believes that I only wish to use him and trap him. The thing is, I think that intellectually he absolutely knows I love him and and these fears he has are baseless. And when he surfaces a bit from his emotional undertow he realizes he doesn't have it so bad after all.

Interesting what you note, Cat Familiar (and thank you for the kind words, as well!), about perhaps our husbands undermining themselves at work, despite their intelligence and general competence. In some cases I think you're probably right with my husband. In his current job, he definitely has received some unlucky draws that have nothing to do with his behavior or personality, but I think about the job he had before and realize that he actually consciously kept himself from advancing. Like Notwendy mentioned, my husband also would volunteer for extra duties at work and then act as if he was being persecuted with all that extra stuff . . . and while I'm not sure it bled through to his on-the-job behavior (he's generally super well-regarded at work and always has been) he has limited himself by not wanting the "nuisance" of advancement. He's a federal employee and could easily have been in the "senior executive service" by now had he taken opportunities presented to him, but he always found reasons not to (it would be a hassle, he didn't like who he'd be working with, etc.) and still felt trapped and angry at not having advanced further. There's definitely a constant element of damned if you do and damned if you don't in living with a BPD person! A tightrope walk is a very apt description.

[Notwendy]

I went back to work now that the kids are pretty self sufficient. The main reason was for my sanity. The outside stimulation and the feeling of a job well done really helps my self esteem- although raising a family is my first priority and a source of self esteem.


My salary is not much, but it is helping a little. Yes, I know it is all our money. I have been very careful and frugal with finances-more than he has. He even tells me that. But on the other hand, I have heard a bunch of reasons why he is burdened by carrying the financial load. So I have been excited about my small contributions, but he doesn't seem to want to discuss that.

One of his "logical" ideas is that he lumps the kids and my expenses into one pot in his mind, and then compares what he takes for himself to that. So, he will say "look, I only took $200 of spending money this month, and look at all you took. Well in that "what I took" includes the monthly expenses for food for all of us, and fees that involve the kids, along with any personal expenses. But he chooses to speak about it as if it was all for me.

There is more good in our marriage and family than to be apart. It is worth working to make better. But I can only do my part in things. I can't change how someone thinks.