First post

[history]

This is my first post and honestly I am not totally sure about this so I think I will just start with a bit of our history that has lead me to this point.  My wife and I have been together for 19 years or so.  We had a very rough start, and I realized now after working with my therapist and reading several books on people with BPD, that our relationship has been drastically effected my this challenge.  My wife and I have 5 children; D18, S15, S10, S8, and D6.  i have always known that wife and I's relationship had issues, and I was even warned by many friends and family along the way that I should be very careful in this relationship because it seemed to be very controlling.  I honestly never wanted to believe it, and I have read countless self help books, and relationship books and always had a hope that things would get better if I could just learn to communicate my love and show her I was committed to her.  Well after enduring a lot emotional abuse and sometimes physical abuse (I have always been scared of disagreeing with her because I knew a battle was going to ensue). I started suggesting a few years ago that we should really get some marriage counseling because things were bad and did seemed to be getting worse in time.  When I would bring this up it was always met with violent opposition.  So I would drop it for awhile and then when we would have another large confrontation, I would suggest it again.  This last year has been the worse for sure.  I always knew before that I could just apologize for everything that was amiss in our relationship and all would be back to normal again in a few hours or a few days if I just degraded myself an took the blame for everything.  I can not tell you how many times I went against my own judgement and convictions just to keep the peace in our relationship and try and keep our family together.  I was totally scared of our family breaking apart, not only that but the emotional abuse that was going on was terrible, now that I look back on it.  My wife has told me for years, that she was only married to my because of our children, that I had no idea how to treat a woman, that I was a terrible communicator and without her I would have no friends and be a recuse even from our children, she said I called her worthless and stupid but i know I did not, she would accuse me of seeking out other women and did not even want me to work with any customers who were women without her being there.  There is a lot more degrading and demeaning ways she used me and I was quite ashamed to face the truth.  I honestly hid from the reality of our relationship with the false hope that things would get better if I just got better.  This failed miserably.  Back in July 2016 we were back in our room and having a heated conversation about something, and the conversation turned from it's path and became a berating session of her recalling all the times I have made mistakes, blaming me for all of our relationship challenges, and multiple global statements attacking my character. After about 3 or 4 hours of this and me trying to defend myself and ask for examples of her accusations, without reply, I finally said (while sitting in a chair across the room) that there are some things really wrong in our relationship and I was going to seek out help whether she wanted me to or not.  She then raced across the room and slapped me in the face, very hard.  Honestly I was shocked and got up to leave the room.  She went and stood in front of the door an started saying I was going to ruin our family life and I was threating our family.  She also told me that no counselor was going to help me because nobody really knows me and she is supposed to be my number one counselor and since she was so connected to God I should just accept the things she says about me and change.  She refused to move and quite honestly i was scared of her. Truthfully,  i had come to a point where I did not trust my own version of reality, because it seemed to be so much different than hers.  Anyhow I called our pastor and asked him for a referral to a counselor.  He sent me to a friend of his who was a college professor of phycology, and was also a part time counselor at a church.  I asked me wife to go with me, but she refused and said I was wasting my time, and that someone who doesn't really know me could never help me.  I had already made the appointment and choose to go to see what was wrong with me and our relationship.  When I went in to see him and shared with him my perspective of the situation and the physical abuse that was going on, he suggested I look at the destructive relationship patterns from John Gottman.  After he shared that with me I realized how critically in trouble our relationship really was.  Of course I say things in that, that both my wife and I were doing and how this pattern of behavior was leading us to destruction in our relationship and how it was effecting the kids was also really bad.  That counselor suggested that I seek out someone who could help us out on a longer term basis than what he was capable of in his part time position there at the church.  He also suggested to me, that I get a temporary separation from my wife and go see the people at the Women's and Children's Alliance.  Honestly I was not prepared to do this and I was very scared of where that could take us.  Instead I decided I was going to start seeing a counselor on a regular basis and dive into personal responsibility and relationship knowledge.  I spend over 200 hours in the next 3 months, reading books, attending counseling, and watching marriage seminars.  The more I watched and the more I learned, the more I noticed the toxic ways of our relationship.  :)uring this time I kept encouraging my wife to seek out help for herself and every time it was met with more and more violent (verbal or sometime physical) aggression.  She told me I was waisting our money and started to use the kids a lot to guilt trip me and would bring up totally in appropriate conversations about or relationship in front of our kids.  She would also started a campaign of using global character attacking statements about me in front of our kids over and over again. I read a book called 'Boundaries' and literally cried (I am not usually a crier, my coping method was to shove down emotion and let it just build up); after reading this I realized I lived a boundary less life and so did our kids.  As you can imagine this new realization led me to start trying to implement boundaries, and this was not welcome at all!  Between August and September I was seeing this one counselor but I felt like he didn't really care and I was just a number to him, so a friend encouraged me to seek out a counselor I connected with and who I felt could really help me.  :)uring this time I also started to let a few people in on what had really been going on in our life and how things really were from my perspective.  My wife is high functioning and she is very careful about her image in front of others.  She wanted everyone to think we had a perfect family, but the realty was far from that.  Not saying everything was bad, but the underlying methods of relationship in our family was very toxic.  So I went to see another counselor who was a referal from a ministry organization I respect. After our first session he asked me what I knew about abusive relationships,  he said I had been studying a lot on relationship books that deal with normal people working through normal issues, but the way I described our relationship was far from that and that some of the techniques those books teach could hinder and worsen an abusive relationship.  So he suggested a couple of books and one had a test in it.  This is when I truly realized the state of our union, and began on the journey to seeking the truth about destructive relationships.  It was frightening to look at reality and see what was really going on, there were many things I wanted to push aside and ignore, but I could not because of the drive I had in how our relationship was effecting our kid.   After a few sessions with him he asked me to answer some questions about my wife from the DSM book, (he is a licensed psychologist).  After this he suggested I read the Book "Stop walking on Eggshells" and gave me a brief description of personality disorders, he told me after he had asked me questions on the diagnostic questions for people with BPD. That book was eye opening!  I can hardly put into words how many times I saw our life in that book and how so much of our struggle was understandable when you are looking at it in the right paradigm.  I then went on to read a few other books on the subject of people who suffer from BPD and how it effects those they are in relationship with.  So my wife has never been diagnosed, but according to the books I have read and the help of my counselor, I believe my wife has the traits of a person with high functioning (invisible) BPD.  

In November I had finally reached a point where I knew something had to change and I was constantly leaving the house at night and spending the nights in parking lots because of the threats, and abuse that seemed to be escalating  in my home from my wife and the toxic environment our children were in.  On my way out one night my wife was being extremely verbally abusive and threatened me by saying I had better be careful of the way I treated her because God was going to stop my heart if I did not stop.  As I was leaving out the door she slapped me very hard in the face in front of our oldest daughter, and pushed the door shut on me.  Before this, I had been preparing for this and a friend of mine said I was welcome to stay in a spare bedroom he had.  So I decided to create space, maybe or maybe not a good idea, but the abuse needed to stop.  Unfortunately I think this had the adverse effect I had hoped for and actually caused things to escalate even more.  :)uring the next couple of months she became more and more hostile toward me and began campaigning against me with family and friends telling them all sorts of distortions and some flat out lies (but she believed them or appeared to anyhow).  So on January 17th I had scheduled to take a few of our kids up skiing and went to pick them up.  My wife was not happy with me that morning, and to make a long story short, she slapped me in the face again in front of our 18, 10, and 8 year old's.  She hit me hard enough to knock the glasses off my face.  I simply opened the door and called the police.  When they arrived she totally switched to her victim roll, and convinced them that she was really wanting our relationship to work she was going to stop slapping and pushing me when she felt threatened.  She is very charasmatic and they believed her said they were not going to charge her that day, even though she admitted she had hit me several other times in the last 6 months.  She then started a new campaign of telling our kids that the officers said i could not take them anywhere because of my control and anger issues.  This was a total lie, but it was a way she could stay in control of the situation and place the blame on me.  
After several more minor incidents, I was on another support forum and saw a "are you safe" link.  I and took the test they had and it came out with a 8 out of 10 rating for coninued and possible escalating violence in our relationship.  I finally called the domestic abuse hotline and the Woman's and Children's Alliance.  After explaining our situation to the gal there she asked me if I knew anything about protection orders and suggested I look into that.  I ended up filing for one and we had hearing 2 weeks later.  After my wife was served the protection order she then went and filed one against me.  In the hearing is was decided that I would get a protection order protecting me from her, but hers was dismissed for it was just full of lies and distortions, and I have never been physcially threatening to her in anyway I know of, and I have reflected back on this very seriously.  I was given full custody of our 15 year old son because of an incident with her hitting him and saying she would do it again if she needed to.  This has been extremely tough to deal with and work through.  I finally decided to file for a divorce.  I tried to do everything possible to avoid this, even offered to negotiate a legal separation, but in order to protect my kids and myself I believe this is the best course of action.  So that is where I am right now.  The crazy making of living my whole adult life with someone who I believe suffers from BPD is hard to untangle and I need all the help I can get.  So I am not sure what to ask for or honestly what I am looking for in writing this post, but my hope is that I will find people who are going through or have been through similar situations, and from the testimony's of people in the "Eggshells" book and in the "Essential Guide" book, these sharing sights have really helped.  

So If you got there thank you for taking you time to read my long post and if you have any insights, thought, questions, or anything else I would love to hear from you.

Sincerely history.
 

[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.

[ForeverDad]

First, welcome!  Though we wish none of us ever had issues in our relationships that required us to seek counseling and peer support but that's the reality and we have to face our realities.  The peer support here is solid... .we've been there, done that... .we've walked in your shoes, we get it... .we're Paying It Forward, sharing our hard-won experience of what usually works and what usually doesn't.

We're here in remote and relatively anonymous peer support.  That way you can feel comfortable seeking answers, explanations and proactive solutions.  Due to the "high conflict" nature of our relationships, we encourage our members to be careful when browsing and posting.  After all, we don't want to trigger more conflict, right?  So browse here cautiously, log out when leaving the computer, also very wise to clear the browser's history as well.  It you're very concerned, as many are here, then we strongly recommend you never log on from a computer where your spouse has physical or electronic access to your computer.
- A variety of questions answered... .https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=58954.0
- Could I be found out?... .(on the above page, this link seems broken, I'll report it)

It is good that you're getting educated about BPD and the associated patterns of behaviors.  With information, insights and solid support you will be able to make more informed and more confident decisions.  They'll still be hard decisions but at least you won't swinging in the dark in all the wrong directions, so to speak.

Understand your situation well.  You're been together some 20 years or so.  In that time she behaved increasingly worse and nothing you did could turn her around.  It got to the point that she convinced you over time that YOU were the major problem.  Now that you've gotten counseling you see that the major problem is not with you.  Recently, you've encourage her to get therapy or joint you in counseling.  She has still refused.  What do you conclude?  From our collective experience and the many relationships discussed here it has become very apparent that we could not fix our spouses.  Think of the old allegory, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.  Can you accept that reality?  So what can YOU do?

You can only change yourself, your perspective and your boundaries.  Improved boundaries will help you but be forewarned that there will likely be a backlash.  If the relationship is imploding, as many do when both spouses aren't improving in meaningful therapy, then you will likely face 'extinction bursts', that is, increased demands and ultimatums to return to the prior ineffectual behaviors.

Maybe at some point she will choose to improve her perceptions, let go of the intense Denial of her part in this, stop Blaming and Blame Shifting and work with you rather than against positives.  Maybe.  But with many years of dysfunction and evidently it only getting worse, you can't count on it.  That is The Reality.

Read, ask, share and the peer support here will be an invaluable resource for you whichever way things go.

Edit:
Another excellent handbook - essential when divorcing - is Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder by William Eddy & Randi Kreger

What happened to you happened to me too.  My then-spouse was arrested for Threat of DV, eventually ruled Not Guilty by the municipal court judge, but she immediately raced over to domestic court and counterfiled her own claims.  She had to make me look as bad as or worse than her.

Do you have possession of the home?  That's what I had when I got my first (temporary) protection order.

[stayingsteady]

Hi history!

I have an extremely similar story as yours.  I'm also a Christian, I have also dealt with the abuse of a distortion campaign, and I also have three children of my own.  You are definitely not alone.

I have been separated from my wife now for about seven months.  Before the separation I had begun setting boundaries after reading "Boundaries" by Dr. Townsend.  I had extremely escalated reactions occur from my wife as well.  I know now these escalated behaviors are extinction bursts which are extremely common with individuals who have symptoms of BPD.  The final outburst involved a false domestic violence charge, women's shelters, and a three month restraining order due to the false/distorted accusations (this restraining order ended four months ago, my wife and I have Skyped many times since).

My wife also creates her own realities.  She seems to often try to get the world to fit within this developed reality rather than adjusting herself to fit within the world.

In my previous field of work, I received the opportunity to work closely with a Board Certified Behavior Analyst in a variety of elementary and middle schools.  During this time I learned a lot about extinction bursts and how to handle them.  This knowledge has helped tremendously in understanding what my wife is going through.  I wanted to share some quick tidbits with you as well.

When an extinction burst occurs it is because the individual is drastically trying to receive something.  For both your wife and my wife I believe it's the same thing, a feeling of being in control.  When we put down boundaries, our wives couldn't feel in control.  This resulted in their escalated behaviors. 

The good news is that an extinction burst is called an "extinction" burst for a reason.  It is because these are the final actions performed before a behavior is deemed as useless because they no longer work.  After this, the behavior can become extinct.

Since the separation, and after realizing my wife was having an extinction burst, I decided to try using the same strategies I used with the behavior analyst at the elementary and middle schools: 

I knew her need was to feel in control of my actions.  I also knew that she would continue to try to gain a feeling of control using a variety of means (usually in the form of fear, obligation or guilt).  My job has been to identify when this is being done, and avoid any action that could allow this feeling within my wife from developing.

Basically, I check to see the purpose behind what I do for my wife.  If I feel I will do something out of fear, obligation or guilt, I will not do it.  If I feel I am doing something out of an act of love for a fellow brother or sister, I will.  This is my ongoing boundary.

While my wife and I are still separated, I am happy to say I am seeing changes within her I have never seen before.  Just like your wife, my wife would have never seen a counselor.  She has not only begun seeing one, but has been doing so for months now.  Even more amazingly, on Sunday she mentioned she had received psychological testing after discussing it with her counselor.  She never would have been open to this previously.

I still don't know what the future holds between my wife and I, and I avoid any expectations in regards to our future.  However, I do know that my wife is moving in a direction she has avoided her entire life.  I fully believe the changes she is making now will impact her life, and the life of our children, for the better.

I do hope this information is useful to you.

Hoping for the best for you, your wife, and your children,

- Staying Steady