Unconscious gaslighting and confused boundaries

[dave888]

Hi,

I've just read "Stop Walking on Eggshells", and it seems really obvious to me I have the typical problems of a spouse to someone with BPD. My wife's involved in an intimate relationship with someone else, and identifies as "separated", yet in fact still lives a non-separated family life with me, spending hours a day together, co-parenting together, and generally treating me as her "rock".

I think I have unknowingly enabled her behaviour, and I need to decide what boundaries to set. However I don't want to stop her living together with me and our kids (I'm the primary carer). I think separation would be damaging for the kids and their relationship with her.

I think another thing I need to change is I need to stop buying into her reality. When I think carefully, I can see she's living a contradiction (identifying as "separated" yet not actually separating). But when she talks about how she feels, she sincerely believes she's just moving on from an unhappy marriage, and I should just accept that and evolve into best friends, and she unconsciously gaslights me *so* convincingly that I start thinking I'm the problem.

OUR HISTORY

My wife and I have been together for 17 years, and we have three kids aged 10-15. Her emotional rollercoaster has always been challenging: groundless suspicion, absurd jealousy, deep smouldering blame, great difficulty forgiving. Worst of all for me was accusations of deliberate cruelty — to which I'd often react with exasperated anger. But she herself *never* had angry outbursts (Anger was prohibited in her childhood, and she's been diagnosed as having quiet BPD).

In 2018, after years of depression and periodic suicidal ideation, she went on antidepressants. They helped for the mood extremes, but our sex life, which had been good for 10 years, took a hit.

In 2019 she got weight loss surgery and lost 50 lbs. Suddenly she was getting a lot of male attention. Then in mid-2020 she said she wanted a trial separation for six months. She said she'd experienced a sudden loss of attraction towards me, like something snapped. She said me shouting at her was completely unbearable. She said she felt I didn't like her and didn't respect her, and that I'd undermined her to the kids. She also said a few months earlier she'd started "giving" sex to placate me if she feared anger (something I didn't really detect at the time), and now sex with me was linked in her mind with the violations of childhood sexual abuse she suffered.

I took her criticisms to heart and doubled down trying to show her I could be a better husband. I pledged to end my shouting reactions, and I 100% succeeded. I focused strongly on her needs, on praising the good things she was doing to her, on voicing the positives about her when the kids were listening. She aged I'd made huge "progress". Instead of moving out as she'd originally imagined, she stayed living together and became emotionally closer than ever (though without physical intimacy). But nontheless she started going on dating apps and having a series of one-night stands. This was devastating to me. Then when I was helping her with a photography project, I went to pull something back out of her deleted folder, and I saw the most horrific, graphic sex video of her having unprotected sex with another man. I felt utterly traumatised. I've had intrusive visions of that video every day for the past 5 years. However I didn't tell her what I'd seen. I was trying so hard to create a serene relationship where she felt liked, respected, and safe from conflict.

At the end of the six months I talked to her: hadn't I shown things could be different during the "trial separation"? Would she consider recommitting? But she had just started a relationship with a man from the dating app. She insisted she wanted to see how this relationship panned out. I was devastated, but still stuck with her and kept her dating secret from the kids and my friends and family. Eventually that relationship soured: the guy cheated emotionally and then ended up physically assaulting her. After that she told me she wanted to leave that relationship but didn't feel strong enough. It took her a couple of months but she did leave him. By mid-2021, she was saying she did want to try again with me. She also said she identified as having a Love Addiction and went to a Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meeting.

Unfortunately she'd picked up an STI from one of the guys. That meant no sex for a year while she got treated and I got vaccinated. To be honest I think that was something of a relief for both of us, because I felt traumatised about the video, and she felt traumatised about the "reluctant" sex (as she was now remembering it). But even after that, our sex life never really picked back up. I was keener for us to try than she was: I imagined my trauma melting away as she recommitted her body to me. But I was very patient about this, barely even mentioning it for two years. Then she confessed she'd acted out sexually in late 2022, kissing guys at bars twice. She was very sorry, and said she needed to kick alcohol so this wouldn't happen again — which she successfully achieved, she's been sober for 2+ years now. But the acting out moved to other forms: seeking out social media attention with revealing photos, then an emotional affair online in 2024. In Feb 2025 she had a physical affair with a highly narcissistic guy who treated her horribly. Again she confessed these things to me full of sorrow, resolving to change. She got a SLAA sponsor and began attending regular meetings.

But then in July 2025, once again she told me she wanted to end our romantic relationship and her commitment to monogamy. She said she'd not been attracted to me for 5 years and had only recommitted for the sake of the kids. She'd met a guy in March, and unlike the other guys she'd hooked up with, this one started as an "innocent" friendship but then progressed. She no longer accepted she'd had a love addiction, instead saying it was just the effects of being trapped in an unhappy marriage. She's telling some people we're separated, even calling me her "ex-husband". Yet she's taken no steps to actually *separate*, and does not want to cease living together, coparenting together, having a close friendship, and having a strong emotional, practical and financial dependence on me.

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