Unsure what is normal anymore

[c0nfusedandsad]

This is my first post and I'm hoping to gain a little bit of clarity from the group. Thank you in advance! I feel very lost and confused.

The last 3 yrs, I've been on a roller coaster of emotional/mental health with my husband of 6 yrs. His therapist and psychiatrist are still figuring out his diagnosis (right now they are treating it as major depression) but his symptoms seem characteristic of bipolar II or BPD in my opinion. He goes through cycles of being OK, then increasingly irritable/angry, an outburst of rage that lasts anywhere from ~3 hrs to 3 days, followed by depression so severe he can't get out of bed for 1-3 days. The cycles have been 3-4 months long typically, but at his worst, last fall, it was weekly. On occasion, he will lash out on me (verbally) -- calling me names, blaming me for everything, sometimes saying he wants a separation, yelling, etc -- wakes up the next morning feeling deeply depressed/ashamed and begs for forgiveness.

Most recently (~3 weeks ago), he came home after spending 2 weeks at McLean hospital for depression and after a few days being home, lashed out on me -- telling me that "he did a lot of thinking over the last week in the hospital and realized that his problems always come back to me, he thinks that if we just had more sex he wouldn't have any issues and he wants a separation."

It was the same old cycle -- where he was so sure of himself and cruel, and then the next day begged for forgiveness and spent the next 3 days in bed. Something about this time was different and I'm having a really hard time moving forward with the relationship. I don't think I can just forgive and forget. He's telling me that he had just come from the hospital and because of this I should be more understanding. He says he actually thinks a separation will "only push us further apart" and he "likes what we have." Meanwhile, I have been the only one working for the last 2 yrs, taking care of our 2 and 5 yr old girls often times by myself, feel like we're already as far apart as we can possibly be and know something needs to change. His reasoning alone makes me feel like we are living in two different realities.

Ultimately, my confusion and sadness comes from the fact that he was not always like this -- we've known each other since we were 18 yrs old (we're 35 now) and he's only started acting this way the last 3 yrs. I've been holding on hope that his mental health will improve and our home life will improve, which is why I think I've given him so many free passes and kept things hidden from our friends and family in the past.

My questions for the group are:
1) Have you found that people can improve long term with the right meds, therapy, and self awareness? Or, will this "up and down" always be the new normal to some extent.
2) For those of you who did see improvement in their BPD spouse's behavior, were you able to regain trust and connection again? How?
3) At what point (when there is no physical abuse) is it safer/healthier for the kids to have their parents separate then to always be around 1 parent who is mentally unstable?

Thanks in advance to anyone who took the time to read this lengthy post and may have advice.

[PeteWitsend]

Hi, and welcome!  I'll answer your questions below, with my thoughts.  I base this on my own experience, and reading the posts and advice on this site, FWIW.

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My questions for the group are:
1) Have you found that people can improve long term with the right meds, therapy, and self awareness? Or, will this "up and down" always be the new normal to some extent.
2) For those of you who did see improvement in their BPD spouse's behavior, were you able to regain trust and connection again? How?
3) At what point (when there is no physical abuse) is it safer/healthier for the kids to have their parents separate then to always be around 1 parent who is mentally unstable?

Thanks in advance to anyone who took the time to read this lengthy post and may have advice.

1) I think the meds really only moderate the extremes; they can make the depressive periods less "low" and keep the person more functional - assuming they work.  In theory they may curb some of the angry outbursts, but they also might not do much.  Therapy is really the key to actually improving, and the person themselves has to want to go and want to do the work.  There's nothing you can do here in terms of getting them to therapy.  If they go because of an ultimatum from you, or peer pressure, I think you'll find that they do the bare minimum to get through the therapy sessions and then refuse to keep going. 

2) Not to be negative, but I've been on this site for several years, and I don't think I've ever read an account of someone who was borderline (BPD), or BPD with comorbid conditions like Narcissistic personality disorder or Bi-polar disorder actually improve.  The statistics are not good here.  Hope for the best, but plan for the most likely outcome.

3) This is a hard call.  I had heard from several people that fighting in front of the kids is really bad for them.  My parents didn't fight very much, but I remember that when they did, it made everything awkward and you could feel everyone in the house suffer from the tension and anger. 

I had given BPDxw an ultimatum here that we needed to stop fighting & insulting me in front of our daughter. I wasn't going to tolerate her behaving like that in front of our daughter.  Well... that didn't do much.  She simply couldn't control herself, and would come up with all sorts of ridiculous excuses for why it was okay for her to do that. 

I looked at #3 two ways:
 
First, if I divorced, I couldn't control how my ex-wife would behave in front of our daughter.  But I also couldn't control my ex-wife - by that I mean limit the fighting to shield our D from it - if I stayed married.  But if I divorced, at least I could control the environment when she was with me.  So my calculation was that if I stayed married, I was exposing my Daughter to the conflict of our marriage 100% of the time.  But if I divorced, I'd get (at a minimum) custody of close to 40% of the time.  So at least she'd get to live in a "normal" house during the time she was with me, and we could relax and enjoy eachother's company without the threat of BPDxw screaming at her or I. 

Second, I considered that if I stayed married, I was modeling an unhealthy relationship for my Daughter, i.e. that it was "normal" to be treated like BPDxw treated me.  I was tolerating it.  And I read that often the children blamed the non-BPD parent for enabling it. 

Again, I couldn't stop BPDxw from getting in a new relationship and behaving like that all over again, but at least I could show my daughter that I wasn't going to tolerate it, and she shouldn't either, and there were consequences (divorce) for when a spouse couldn't respect the other. 

It's not an easy call, especially since my daughter was young at the time, and not able to stand up for herself.  It was hard to leave her, but like I said, the fighting was just intolerable for me.  I have a friend who's a psychiatrist and I confided a lot of this in him, and he basically said "just get out of the relationship; it's always hard on kids, but in some ways, it's easier when they're young."  That sort of clarity was helpful. 

So I weighed a lot of the evidence myself before I made the decision, and also spoke with an attorney about my concerns and the likely outcome. 

I did not discuss this with BPDxw in any way shape or form, because the trust between had been completely destroyed by this time.  I could not have any sort of honest discussion with her.  She was too paranoid, insecure, and reactive.