Hi Case600lp,
It is so interesting to hear the stories we all have. I notice when I hear about women with BPD I always have this urge to want to sit down with them and try to "talk sense" in them about their partners. I am not sure logic helps though in these situations, and I will never be able to get to all the wives/partners here! I am not a BPD woman, and I am a feminist, but I do know as women we can often have some pretty high/unreasonable expectations of our partners - be very demanding while not giving back the simple things that make them happy. (In this case I mean how we respond to heterosexual men.) I learned over the years not to bombard my husband with lots of requests when he walks in the door after a long day of work. I consciously try to be friendly, see how he is doing, and offer what I can to ease his transition to relaxing and being home for the evening. I consciously work to help reduce his stress, not add to it.
If you still have some energy left in you for this I would say to toss all you think you know, and start again. Start all over again with the lessons here. A Beginner's Mind approach if you will. Write out what your problems are. Is she raging? Is she violent? Is she no longer affectionate? What are we working with here specifically?
Keep in mind the goal of your work is not to eliminate this. It is not going away. I believe that it takes "Radical Acceptance" for those of us who are living in this.
That does not eliminate the possibility I will leave this relationship at some point, but I do not live with that as a current option, with one foot in and one foot out even though this extreme behavior can make you feel broken into those two pieces - force you to live with those realities. It is just too much to have that I found. Being "in" helps me to stay positive and remain focused on the present. I noticed lately I was dealing with some resentment and anxiety, so I had to work on that before it got out of hand, especially the resentment.
Dealing with this stuff you are really doing most of the work on yourself so let yourself feel good about that - that is in your control and something in the positive column of life.
Let's stop here and look her "recitation of shortcomings". Are any of them true? Or does she just say mean stuff to hurt you? Or does she just not know how to word things? If she has valid points can you listen past the garbage package they are delivered in?
My husband threw a lot of mean words and insults at me this past weekend. I can't remember exactly what he said because frankly it was a bunch of nonsense and cruelty. He raged and spit it all out and I had to set aside the pain for a moment and reply like this. "I hear you are feeling bad. I think you feel insecure that I don't love you and don't want to be with you. That is not true." I may not be wording things "correctly" either, and for the particular issues I had to wade through a lot of garbage, but I was able to focus on the feeling underneath the anger and deal with that. The rest really is garbage and I thank my brain for dumping most of it out of my memory banks. Whew!
I don't think you should defend or justify that you are or want to be a good husband. That is something you can agree on perhaps, "Listen, we both want to be good partners with each other. What can we do to make things better?" If you say you want to be a good husband she can't really argue with that and you don't have to defend that. Fact. But perhaps that is a discussion for a white phase and not a crisis. Use the calm phases to lay a positive foundation for the relationship so you aren't always in crisis mode.
Take care!
