Staying for My Son, but Emotionally Burned Out and Disconnected

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

It's been a while since I have checked in. A brief summary: I have been with my dBPDw for close to 14 years and for most of that time she got progressively more and more abusive toward me. It started with verbal and emotional abuse and progressed to domestic violence, sexual abuse, and spiritual abuse (trying to keep me from practicing my religion.) We have a S3 together and her S25 (my SS). I finally found the courage to stand up for myself after deciding that I would not allow my (then) S2 to grow up watching Dad get abused by Mom and having him use that template for what a "normal" relationship looks like. I read the book "Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get On with Life" by Marglis Fjelstad and it taught me how to place real boundaries in my life for my safety and the safety of my son. Since I have done my boundary work the physical attacks, suicide threats, and divorce threats have completely stopped for over a year. However, she is still snarky, passive-aggressive, and drinks daily to deal with her emotional discomfort. I have also been in intensive personal therapy for over a year to deal with my CPTSD resulting from our relationship and have been practicing more and more self-care.

The issue is that I have done everything that I can do from my side of the street to control and improve my 50% of the relationship, but she has done very little to nothing on her side to make things better. We have plateaued and I don't see us getting any better until/unless she starts to work on herself. I am still committed to our marriage, but it is mainly to ensure a safe environment (physically and emotionally) for our son. She is very impatient with and dismissive of him when she is dysregulated and I would not want her in sole charge of him when she has been drinking. I am emotionally checked out of the relationship. I have a lot of resentment, justifiably so, for all of the mistreatment that I have received over the years, and even though the worst of the abuse has stopped I am still not getting any kindness or emotional support from my wife. It feels like I am putting in 99.9% of the effort in the relationship and she is putting in 0.01%. I don't know how long this is sustainable, or what else I can do to make things better.

I am not conflicted about staying. I want to make things better, but don't know how to. I am not motivated to try to be affectionate with her (think of trying to hug a cactus) and intimacy has been awful. For example, she will accuse me of thinking of someone else during the act, will criticize my ability to get or maintain an erection (I am under the care of an endocrinologist for a tumor on my pituitary gland that throws off all my hormones, and he tells me all my levels are optimal - the problem is performance anxiety from being criticized), the amount and quality of ejaculate, etc. This has traumatized me to the extreme about having intimate relations with her. Worst of all, I have to keep our conversations very surface-level and positive/neutral. If I try to share hopes and dreams, fears and worries, or any deep thoughts and feelings they are mocked, ignored, or stored away to use against me as a weapon. I DO try to validate her when possible, but she is on the warpath so much that I rarely have opportunities to do so.

I have increased the amount of time that I spend away from home. I have started to repair friendships that were neglected due to my trying to cover up the abuse. I see my elderly parents who live about 20 minutes away as often as I can, and I go to church regularly. I bring my son with me to all of these things and also try to carve out lots of daddy-son activities just for the two of us. I am also in my first semester of getting my Doctorate of Education in an online program (I do that at home so I can watch my son while I am in class) that meets twice a week for three hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays in addition to teaching full-time. My plate is pretty full, which helps to give me time away from my wife and also helps me do self-care. On the weekends that she is not working, I try to plan family activities like movies, trips to the zoo, etc. but by evening she is done dealing with people, has started drinking, and disengages from my son and me as soon as I enforce a boundary about not swearing, insulting me, etc. in front of our son. She retreats to the bedroom with her drink in hand and spends hours on her phone and watching TV while I watch cartoons and play with our son.

In general, I am just fed up with the constant negativity. I can't force myself to try to coax her to be positive anymore. I am at the point where if she is in one of her moods, I just want to shield my son and myself from her. I am letting her deal with the negative emotions on her own and hoping that she learns to self-soothe. So far, it seems like she is mostly doing that by drinking and isolating herself when she realizes that I will no longer absorb her negative emotions via projection. I am ok with listening to her complain and will validate when she does so, but as soon as it turns into personal attacks (which it nearly always does) or she begins to swear and get dysregulated, I am out. I am feeling stuck and empty. Can anyone who has hit this plateau offer advice?

HurtAndTired

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[kells76]

Hi HurtAndTired, thanks for being willing to update us with what's going on in your life. You do sound burned out, and your concept of "hitting a plateau" makes sense for where things seem to have settled.

It sounds painful to feel like you've done everything you can, and this is the current result for your marriage. You want your son to experience parents who love each other, who treat each other respectfully, and who spend time together, and that isn't really happening much. It's a loss of what you'd hoped for.

It's good that you're able to share your contribution to the dynamic:

I am emotionally checked out of the relationship. I have a lot of resentment, justifiably so, for all of the mistreatment that I have received over the years, and even though the worst of the abuse has stopped I am still not getting any kindness or emotional support from my wife. It feels like I am putting in 99.9% of the effort in the relationship and she is putting in 0.01%. I don't know how long this is sustainable, or what else I can do to make things better.

She contributes to the dynamic in all the ways you've described (which are significant, serious, and impactful), and you're able to disclose that you're fed up with the negativity, emotionally checked out, and have a lot of resentment.

While I don't have personal experience with a situation like yours, the thought that comes to mind is that it's important you have a place like this, where you can actually be vulnerable, not only about your hurts, but about negative things about yourself, too, if that makes sense -- what I'm getting at is I'm guessing that in addition to feeling unable to share your positive hopes/dreams with your wife, I image that sharing your perception of your flaws with her would not go well.

It's important we have places and people to go to where we can be vulnerable in both directions, about the whole of ourselves -- both our really sensitive yearnings and dreams, and the areas where we fall short and are hurtful... and to know that we won't be judged, dismissed, or mocked.

I want to keep encouraging you to share all of that here -- the "bad" and the "good". Even if we haven't gone through your exact situation, I can say I know what it's like to feel resentful of a spouse. I don't have it all together in my marriage and we do have significant hurdles, and I contribute a lot to those. In that sense, I do understand, because I'm also a limited and hurtful person.

...

The paradigm or concept for marriage that you've had or that you've wanted doesn't seem to apply currently to your relationship (support, respect, intimacy, sharing). It would be frustrating and build resentment to keep hoping or expecting for the "marriage" paradigm to apply right now.

It may sound odd, but is there another paradigm or description of your relationship right now that is... reachable? What I'm getting at is -- you're deciding to stay in the relationship, and at the moment it isn't a marriage in the way you would hope for. Maintaining that hope and expectation will leave you perpetually disappointed and may feed the resentment.

If you shift paradigms to: we're business partners in the business of raising S3, or, we're in a group project of maintaining a home for our child, or, we are roommates with some shared tasks and goals, etc, would you say you two are being more successful in terms of one of those paradigms?

Does that question/approach make sense?

If I hold on to the paradigm of "I'm a wealthy person with no money concerns" and I organize my life and expectations around that, I will be perpetually disappointed, upset, and resentful. "Why do I always run out of money, I'm rich -- this shouldn't be happening to me". If I use lenses more in line with the current reality ("whatever it is I wanted, my current situation is that I am a person of modest means and I do have money concerns"), I may have an opportunity to stop feeding resentment. I may one day become a wealthy person with no money concerns, but that isn't right now.

Not sure if any of this will land... and you may have already gone down that road of thought. Just some thoughts to share.

...

What is your therapist's perspective on where you're at right now?

[HurtAndTired]

As always, thank you for the great feedback Kells,

I have discussed this with my therapist, at length, and she thinks that there is not much I can do without a willing partner to further improve the relationship. She has talked about radical acceptance, and I have been working at that, but it is a hard pill to swallow. I am not expecting that my wife and I can ever have a normal, reciprocal relationship built on mutual trust, support, and sharing, and I am ok with living like roommates or co-parents...for now. If she doesn't decide to get help, at some point, I will not be able to continue on that way.

For now, our son is too young and vulnerable for me to consider anything else but staying. I have also just finished reading the book "Splitting" by Randi Kreger and Bill Eddy about divorce and BPD, and oh boy was that a scary book! The thought of her accusing me of God only knows what in an attempt to get full custody of our son terrifies me. I cannot and will not risk my precious boy being raised solely by an unstable alcoholic. He is currently 3 and a half and I am going to wait until he is at least 6 or 7 before I would contemplate leaving. I want him to be of an age where he can speak for himself should my wife make any kind of outrageous claims against me.

I guess I am hoping that she hits some kind of rock bottom, now that I am no longer enabling her by letting her offload negative feelings onto me. I know that she is in extreme discomfort since I quit caretaking, hence the daily drinking, but apparently she is not yet ready to admit she needs help. There is nothing I can do to move that along, except to "remove the pillow" from the "rock bottom" so that she can really feel it when she hits (i.e. no longer enabling).

All of this is to say that I am resolved that I am going to stay, for now, unless things get markedly worse. However, the calculus on that may very well change in three or four years. I certainly do not want to spend my retirement years living with someone who has untreated BPD. I am hoping that she gets help, but hoping is all I can do for now.

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

I have discussed this with my therapist, at length, and she thinks that there is not much I can do without a willing partner to further improve the relationship. She has talked about radical acceptance, and I have been working at that, but it is a hard pill to swallow. I am not expecting that my wife and I can ever have a normal, reciprocal relationship built on mutual trust, support, and sharing, and I am ok with living like roommates or co-parents...for now. If she doesn't decide to get help, at some point, I will not be able to continue on that way.

How did you feel when you heard that from your T?

Is there a specific situation, dynamic, or issue you are focusing on radically accepting right now (i.e., something more specific than "everything about her")?

The NEABPD Family Connections class I'm in recently went over radical acceptance.

One thing they teach is that by definition, radical acceptance must go hand in hand with grief. If we are radically accepting something -- if we are saying "this is not what I wanted, but this is how it is" -- then inherently we have lost something we desired.

If we don't grieve it, then we get stuck in an aborted grief process, just like many pwBPD.

I wonder if you have really grieved the loss of the marriage and family you wanted. What would your T say, do you think?

For now, our son is too young and vulnerable for me to consider anything else but staying. I have also just finished reading the book "Splitting" by Randi Kreger and Bill Eddy about divorce and BPD, and oh boy was that a scary book! The thought of her accusing me of God only knows what in an attempt to get full custody of our son terrifies me. I cannot and will not risk my precious boy being raised solely by an unstable alcoholic. He is currently 3 and a half and I am going to wait until he is at least 6 or 7 before I would contemplate leaving. I want him to be of an age where he can speak for himself should my wife make any kind of outrageous claims against me.

Have you looked into the Family Connections class yet? It's skillbuilding for anyone with a pwBPD in their life, in any capacity. To be general, there are people in my class who are coping with a pwBPD parenting a child they care about (many relationships -- other parent, child, ex, etc). You do not have to have any particular goal or feeling about the relationship, though you can.

Given that you are choosing to stay in the same house as your W for the time being, FC can help you develop and practice tools (in line with what we share here) to turn down the temperature of conflict and make your life more livable under the circumstances. The fact that it is talking to real, non-anonymous group members has meant a lot to me. I'd encourage you to check it out and maybe apply -- it's free but will be a long wait time (6-7 months). Classes meet once a week for two hours.

I guess I am hoping that she hits some kind of rock bottom, now that I am no longer enabling her by letting her offload negative feelings onto me. I know that she is in extreme discomfort since I quit caretaking, hence the daily drinking, but apparently she is not yet ready to admit she needs help. There is nothing I can do to move that along, except to "remove the pillow" from the "rock bottom" so that she can really feel it when she hits (i.e. no longer enabling).

I'm curious what it would be like to step down the focus on "I hope that she ______" or "I think she needs to ___" and turn your focus onto "I hope that I ______" or "I think I need to ___". No right or wrong answer, just interested.

All of this is to say that I am resolved that I am going to stay, for now, unless things get markedly worse. However, the calculus on that may very well change in three or four years. I certainly do not want to spend my retirement years living with someone who has untreated BPD. I am hoping that she gets help, but hoping is all I can do for now.

Going to recommend Family Connections again as a way to load up on the skills you will need to navigate conflict with your uBPDw, currently not in treatment, with whom you have a son. If you are living together at an impasse it's going to take next level stuff to manage conflict, given that both of you seem to be at your limit (in different ways) for improving the relationship. Not saying "it's your fault" or "it's her fault", more commenting on -- things are at a standstill, each of you has reasons that make sense to you for why you're tapped out, and that's the current reality.

Grieving that you do not have a wife who currently sees herself as having a problem or needing help, and loosening your hold on hoping she gets help -- maybe laying that to rest, giving yourself some closure -- I don't know, it's an idea, and ultimately you know yourself best in this situation.

Would be interesting if your current T has heard of FC.

[HurtAndTired]

Thanks again Kells,

I had not heard about Family Connections. I will look into it and run it past my therapist. It's worth the 6 or 7-month wait if it is that effective.

As to the mourning aspect of radical acceptance, I am definitely mourning. I keep bouncing around through the stages of grief. I am past the bargaining and denial stages, but I am stuck oscillating between the sorrow and anger stages. I don't know if I will ever reach the acceptance stage or not. More specifically, I am sad that my marriage cannot ever be what I wanted it to be, and I am angry at her for how she has treated me, and angry at myself for having put up with it (and even enabled it) for so long.

What is making it so hard to exit the grieving process fully is that, unlike someone who is dead, she keeps doing things that make me angry. It's hard to mourn someone when they are constantly doing new things that tick you off. Being drunk and dismissive of our son when he desperately begs for her attention makes my heart break for him, but lights a burning fire of anger deep inside me towards her for hurting him like that. I don't know how to move past that and grieve when fresh wounds keep being opened. My options of what to do about it are very limited though, which takes me back into the depression stage. I give him every ounce of love that I can, but I can't shield him 100% from all emotional damage.

I also appreciate your shift in focus from the "I hope she______" to an "I hope that I_____" because it puts the ball of control back in my court. However, I think that I may have not been clear. I am not holding out hope that my wife's behavior will change for the better.

My wife's behavior has been, is, and will continue to be out of control. Things she has done to me in the past could and should have landed her in jail. Plus, with her out-of-control daily drinking, nothing positive will come out of the path she is headed down. I am not hoping that she hits rock bottom. I know that she will hit rock bottom, I just don't know when or how. That is not in my power. The thing that is in my power is that I will no longer try to prevent her from hitting rock bottom, as I have in the past. I will not cover up abuse or make excuses for her anymore.

I do hope that when she hits rock bottom she will make a wise decision and try to get help, but I have zero control over that. It is the same as me hoping that the weather will be nice when I go somewhere on vacation. I have zero control over it, but I still hope for it. However, I will adjust plans accordingly if the weather is crappy and will figure out something else fun to do if the beach is out of the question. I guess I am saying that I am not holding my breath over her having a "moment of clarity." I just know that for her to have one, hitting rock bottom will have to happen in some form. One has to believe that there is a problem to seek help for a problem, and that belief/self-awareness is not going to happen unless something unpleasant happens. It might not even happen then, but I hope that it does. I will go on living my life regardless, but just like that beach day, I can hope for sunshine.

I will look into Family Connections right away and will bring it up with my therapist next week in session. You are right. I am stuck in the grieving process, as I mentioned above, and I don't know how to get the closure that I need to emotionally move on. Perhaps this is what I need to bring up with my therapist and start working on. It's going to be a doozy, but absolutely necessary because feeling stuck like this is intolerable. If this is a fraction of what it feels like to have BPD and be stuck in an unpleasant loop, I can imagine how awful their lives must be.

Thank you,

HurtAndTired

[kells76]

I had not heard about Family Connections. I will look into it and run it past my therapist. It's worth the 6 or 7-month wait if it is that effective.

Glad you're checking it out. It'll be interesting if your T knows about it -- I don't think mine did (but my T doesn't specialize in PDs per se).

I want to emphasize that it's not a magic wand (nothing is); it's one more way to work on yourself and your skills and approaches. Often, even if we're hearing the same content, hearing it from a different person, or presented slightly differently, gets an insight through to us that we just didn't get previously. In my case, I'd read about radical acceptance here before, but the FC class helped me understand how integral the grieving process is with RA.

Combining your individual therapy, with BPDfamily.com, with Family Connections, with spiritual support, may give you a better chance at making your current situation "less bad", in ways that are under your control.

[LittleRedBarn]

An alternative to Family Connections is John Mader's Family Skills Training class, which I took earlier this year and found immensely helpful. It's essentially the same material (DBT is a small world) so, if the timing is right and you don't want to wait for Family Connections, it's worth checking out. He offers a significant discount if you are low income, too.

https://search.app?link=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dbtfamilyskills.com%2Fdialectical-behavior-therapy-for-families.html&utm_campaign=aga&utm_source=agsadl2%2Csh%2Fx%2Fgs%2Fm2%2F4

[HurtAndTired]

Thank you all for the suggestions.

I met with my therapist yesterday for the first time since the holidays and went over things with her. She agrees that DBT training might be useful to me, but that since the meetings conflict with my grad school schedule, I can get the same training from her. She is certified in DBT. She thinks that going to an Al-Anon meeting would be a better, more flexible way for me to get into a support group of people who are also dealing with chaotic spouses.

My marriage has also had some shocks since the last time I posted. I just found out that two close friends from college passed away during the last year. I found out belatedly because I am no longer on Facebook. These were former roommates and were more like family than friends. I was devastated and tried to share my grief with my wife. Big mistake. She got mad at me for being sad about people who I hadn't spoken to for years (not realizing that the self-isolating behavior I had been doing was a result of her abuse) and then tried to make herself the victim. She started to cry about the miscarriage that had happened six years ago and was angry at me for not mourning our lost child instead of my friends. The lack of empathy from her gutted me.

A few days later I had to spend a few hours working on a paper for my grad school classes. I came upstairs after about three solid hours of working in the basement and she was visibly drunk and playing with our S3. She had downed a half bottle of Golden Margarita...the big bottle, and was on her second or third mixed drink after finishing the bottle. I asked her if we could eat the dinner that I had picked up on my way home from work before putting our son to bed. She then started angrily berating me about how I was selfish for being in grad school and putting my career ahead of our family. She started to get the scary black eyes that tell me she is extremely dysregulated and was swearing at me in front of our son. I just took him upstairs and put him to bed, and then retreated to my safe space in the guest room with the door locked.

When I related these things to my therapist and asked her about mourning the relationship as I wish it could be, she told me that I need to start keeping a daily journal of her behavior. She supports me staying in the marriage for now, but thinks that I need to be smart and keep track of her patterns of dysregulation and dangerous behavior. She said that it will be very important if things ever do come to the point where I need to exit the marriage for my safety and the safety of our son. She also said that given the severity of my wife's symptoms that it would not be advisable to discuss living as co-parents or any other such thing as it would most likely activate her core fears of abandonment and cause her to become extremely and potentially dangerously dysregulated. I was advised to try to keep to the status quo as long as I am able to continue to keep my son and myself safe from my wife's behavior.

It makes me sad to think that I am at this point where I am documenting outbursts and drunken rages with times and dates in a notebook, but I also have to remember that having this kind of documentation could ultimately help to keep my son from having to live solely in the care of a person who doesn't do a very good job of taking care of herself, let alone anyone else.


HurtAndTired

[Lenfan2]

The only thing other people do not seem to have addressed much here is the drinking. It seems like you have 2 separate but overlapping and related problems, the drinking and the BPD. We know she'll likely never admit to, or treat for, a personality disorder, but has she ever acknowledged a drinking problem?  Getting her in to AA or some other program might help her address her other issue through the back door. Is that a possibility?  Whatever else is going on , drinking likely makes it much worse, and if she can stop that, it might improve her behavior somewhat. I think your therapist is right that Alanon may be a good support for you as a family member to deal with that end of things.

My pwbpd engages in emotional abuse, has a similar "victim" attitude, very little empathy , and little to no emotional support for me. I have toughed out a dysfunctional relationship for many years for similar reasons as you. My child is an adult now dealing with their own issues,  and didn't have the greatest of childhoods, but I think it would have been much worse had I not been around fulltime, and they've expressed some gratitude for that.  So, if you're looking for some encouragement to keep toughing it out, I hope my experience helps. It's not easy, but neither are the alternatives.  I can only imagine how much worse it would have been be with alcohol in the mix. Best wishes for you.

[GaGrl]

Just a few suggestions on the documentation...

You might want to transfer your notes to a protected file, Google calendar, etc. Should your wife find the notebook, no telling how she would react (and the notes could very well be gone).

Note not only how much she is drinking but also the monetary cost of the alcohol. Is it coming from an account/credit card you have access to for proof? This changes things from your notes to a provable fact.

My husband made the decision to stay with his then-wife ( uBPD/NPD) because of the children. She was a competent mother when the children were small, but her "acting out" was constant and blatant affairs to which the children were exposed. She left the home when the youngest was 16, and much damage had been done. My stepdaughter says she has "married a version of her mother, twice" trying to work out her issues with relationships. So you are right that your son needs not to have extended exposure to an abusive relationship.

[HurtAndTired]

Thanks Lenfan2 and GaGirl,

Although my wife may or may not meet the definition of an alcoholic, she definitely has a drinking problem. She uses the alcohol to self-medicate. I have read that pwBPD have an overwhelming comorbidity of substance abuse problems due to self-medication (I believe it is somewhere around 70%). The issue is that the drinking is MY fault. She has said so on numerous occasions. "I drink because you drive me to it" or "I can see why your ex was an alcoholic, you made her drink." This kind of blame-shifting, while nothing new, tells me that, like with most other things BPD-related, she is not willing to take any responsibility for her circumstances or take any action to fix them. The chances of her voluntarily going to AA or trying to quit drinking on her own, without hitting rock bottom first, are next to zero. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, however, I am no longer covering for her. It is just a matter of time until she does something self-destructive enough to have to face serious consequences. These are consequences that I will no longer shield her from. At that point, it will be up to her as to whether or not she sees that she needs help or continues to be in such deep denial as to be able to blame-shift her rock bottom to be everyone else's problem which she was merely (once again) an innocent victim.

As to the suggestion to do my documentation online, it is a very good one. I had already been planning on doing so. Not solely because of the ability to preserve records should she find them, but because keeping a physical notebook is not very practical. If I started writing in a physical journal daily, my wife would surely notice and would be suspicious (she's suspicious of everything). However, because I am a teacher and a student in grad school, I am frequently on my computer writing things that she cannot be bothered to read (she has a high school education and I am working on my doctorate which makes her very uncomfortable and insecure).  I also have a boundary about not accessing my electronics due to an endless amount of unwarranted snooping, possible legal violations of her accessing my minor students' school records (FERPA violations), and making ridiculous accusations of infidelity based on completely innocent and work-related emails between me and female colleagues. All of my electronic devices are password-protected and/or biometrically protected.

The suggestion about tracking the purchases of alcohol through receipts is a non-starter though. My wife and I have separate banking accounts and do not share any credit cards (my idea). My first wife was very financially irresponsible and after our divorce, I vowed never to share a bank account or credit card with anyone again. I had no idea at the time that my current wife had BPD, but oh boy am I glad that I insisted on keeping our accounts separate. My wife self-soothes through "retail therapy." While she has been mostly good about paying her share of the bills (we have things divvied up fairly based on our incomes) there have been times when she has had to ask me to pay a bill because she was out of money. I shudder to think how she might have drained a mutual account to pay for her million pairs of shoes, copious and unnecessary collection of designer clothes and purses, or the bric-a-brak and tchotchkes she fills our house up with. Keeping track of how often she is drinking and the things she does when she is intoxicated will just have to suffice. Hopefully, having several years of data will be enough to show any judge that no one in their right mind would put forth the effort to manufacture such a journal over the course of years simply to paint their spouse in a bad light in court. However, I do plan to consult with an attorney about the details. My therapist has suggested one that has worked with partners of pwBPD with success in the past.

Thank you again for all of the suggestions and support. It means so much to me.

HurtAndTired