BPD wife wants me to ditch my own therapist

[Depression = 72% of members]

A little background:

I've been in and out of the BPD Family boards for about 2 years and you've all been very, very helpful. I couldn't have made it this long without you. Thanks!
I'm been with my wife, who is undiagnosed BPD (but it's super-obvious), for about 18 years, married for 10. We have 3 kids. I'm not going anywhere... yet.
Before we got married, we had the familiar pattern of awesome, exhilarating relationship followed by decline into cyclical strife and pain. I insisted we get help for our relationship and she seek help for whatever haunted her, and I did as much for myself. Within a couple years the ship seemed righted and we were very happy and got married. Since the kids, it's been a steady decline into BPD misery over the last 9 years.
A few years ago, our couple's counselor, who we still saw regularly, had a falling out with my wife and my wife refused to see her ever again. I kept up the sessions with the therapist thinking my wife would come around, but she never did, and the counselor became my de-facto personal therapist.

Now my wife sees the couple's counselor, my therapist, very negatively. She sees the therapist as her enemy and my continued relationship with the therapist as a betrayal. Of course, the betrayal is total, wife being a BPD splitter. This comes up whenever we have any discussion about our dysfunctional, mostly loveless marital relationship. We will occasionally discuss how to repair our relationship, but that devolves into me being the source of all her misery and is probably a discussion for another post. The point is my wife will bring up my continued therapy relationship as a major problem for her and I should leave the therapist because she says it hurts her and if I cared about her I would do it and I should want to do it for her willingly.

Meanwhile, I have resisted leaving the therapist for a few reasons.

--I have a very long history with this therapist.
--The therapist knows my wife very well and understands the BPD situation.
--I'm resisting my wife's urge to separate me from things important to me by simple demand and making herself into a victim.
--I need a therapist! Oh boy, do I need a therapist.


On the other hand, I've been thinking of making changes.

--It might be positive to have a fresh perspective.
--Geographically, my current therapist is kind of inconvenient (I've moved away from our original area).
--Eliminates yet another source of victimhood for the wife.
--Gives me a little leverage over wife (I'm probably fooling myself there, but see more below).

One more thing not mentioned above, I've sometimes made leaving my therapist contingent upon seeing a new couple's counselor with my wife. I leave the therapist when she commits to couple's counseling. Heck, we can even discuss my therapist with the new couple's counselor! This idea of mine arose when her initial objection to renewing couple's counseling was budgetary. I said I would make space in the budget by forgoing my own therapist. I also saw it as a quid-pro-quo to go to counseling, which she has resisted for a long time.


So here are the questions, the issues for which I seek advice today:
Do I give up my therapist? What am I missing? Am I thinking about this clearly?


Some extra editorializing if you want to keep reading:
We started seeing a new, local couples counselor about 2 years ago after I told her I didn't want to remain married to her anymore and then we found out we were having another kid. You can see my original post for more on that. (The kid is now 15 months old and a total joy of a kid.) We saw this counselor irregularly, I didn't really buy into her methods, but I did try to play along with mixed success. Eventually we stopped seeing her due to what I thought was my now pregnant wife's inability to stay awake much past 7pm -- pregnancy is hard! She eventually pinned our failure with this counselor on me, saying something along the lines of, "You didn't do the things she told us to do. I let you fail and when you did I saw how committed you were to it. So now I know you won't do it and I won't put in the effort for you." To be sure, I wasn't as disciplined about some of the things the counselor wanted us to do on a daily basis, and I own that. On the other hand, that's no reason to stop, that's reason to discuss how to improve. New habits aren't built overnight!
And now when the topic of counseling comes up, she won't budge, won't do it. I want to do it because I've decided I'm not leaving (yet), and I've seen it have very positive results before. I know couple's counseling is difficult, but we've had positive results before -- only reason I'm even trying.

[BeardBeast]

A little background:

I've been in and out of the BPD Family boards for about 2 years and you've all been very, very helpful. I couldn't have made it this long without you. Thanks!
I'm been with my wife, who is undiagnosed BPD (but it's super-obvious), for about 18 years, married for 10. We have 3 kids. I'm not going anywhere... yet.
Before we got married, we had the familiar pattern of awesome, exhilarating relationship followed by decline into cyclical strife and pain. I insisted we get help for our relationship and she seek help for whatever haunted her, and I did as much for myself. Within a couple years the ship seemed righted and we were very happy and got married. Since the kids, it's been a steady decline into BPD misery over the last 9 years.
A few years ago, our couple's counselor, who we still saw regularly, had a falling out with my wife and my wife refused to see her ever again. I kept up the sessions with the therapist thinking my wife would come around, but she never did, and the counselor became my de-facto personal therapist.

Now my wife sees the couple's counselor, my therapist, very negatively. She sees the therapist as her enemy and my continued relationship with the therapist as a betrayal. Of course, the betrayal is total, wife being a BPD splitter. This comes up whenever we have any discussion about our dysfunctional, mostly loveless marital relationship. We will occasionally discuss how to repair our relationship, but that devolves into me being the source of all her misery and is probably a discussion for another post. The point is my wife will bring up my continued therapy relationship as a major problem for her and I should leave the therapist because she says it hurts her and if I cared about her I would do it and I should want to do it for her willingly.

Meanwhile, I have resisted leaving the therapist for a few reasons.

--I have a very long history with this therapist.
--The therapist knows my wife very well and understands the BPD situation.
--I'm resisting my wife's urge to separate me from things important to me by simple demand and making herself into a victim.
--I need a therapist! Oh boy, do I need a therapist.


On the other hand, I've been thinking of making changes.

--It might be positive to have a fresh perspective.
--Geographically, my current therapist is kind of inconvenient (I've moved away from our original area).
--Eliminates yet another source of victimhood for the wife.
--Gives me a little leverage over wife (I'm probably fooling myself there, but see more below).

One more thing not mentioned above, I've sometimes made leaving my therapist contingent upon seeing a new couple's counselor with my wife. I leave the therapist when she commits to couple's counseling. Heck, we can even discuss my therapist with the new couple's counselor! This idea of mine arose when her initial objection to renewing couple's counseling was budgetary. I said I would make space in the budget by forgoing my own therapist. I also saw it as a quid-pro-quo to go to counseling, which she has resisted for a long time.


So here are the questions, the issues for which I seek advice today:
Do I give up my therapist? What am I missing? Am I thinking about this clearly?


Some extra editorializing if you want to keep reading:
We started seeing a new, local couples counselor about 2 years ago after I told her I didn't want to remain married to her anymore and then we found out we were having another kid. You can see my original post for more on that. (The kid is now 15 months old and a total joy of a kid.) We saw this counselor irregularly, I didn't really buy into her methods, but I did try to play along with mixed success. Eventually we stopped seeing her due to what I thought was my now pregnant wife's inability to stay awake much past 7pm -- pregnancy is hard! She eventually pinned our failure with this counselor on me, saying something along the lines of, "You didn't do the things she told us to do. I let you fail and when you did I saw how committed you were to it. So now I know you won't do it and I won't put in the effort for you." To be sure, I wasn't as disciplined about some of the things the counselor wanted us to do on a daily basis, and I own that. On the other hand, that's no reason to stop, that's reason to discuss how to improve. New habits aren't built overnight!
And now when the topic of counseling comes up, she won't budge, won't do it. I want to do it because I've decided I'm not leaving (yet), and I've seen it have very positive results before. I know couple's counseling is difficult, but we've had positive results before -- only reason I'm even trying.

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[Ozzie101]

Hi there, BeardBeast!

Ah, yes. The counseling/therapy drama. Many of us have experienced it.  We've even got an article about it: https://bpdfamily.com/content/how-to-get-borderline-into-therapy. My H was VERY opposed to my seeing a therapist -- so I went, secretly, anyway. He's come around to it now, but still admits he feels threatened by it. Ultimately, I think he's afraid that she'll encourage me to leave or will plant seeds in my head. That old fear of abandonment.

This sounds to me like a boundary issue. I'm guessing you've read about that? https://bpdfamily.com/content/setting-boundaries

My opinion: Your therapy is about you, primarily. Yes, it can help your relationship. But whether you see someone and whom you choose to see is all you. Giving your wife a say in it or power over your decision about that is not a good precedent to set, in my opinion.

If you choose to leave, do it because you want a new perspective. Do it because you want someone more conveniently located. But don't do it because your wife wants it or as a bargaining chip.

Finding a therapist can be like finding someone to love. Sometimes you click. Sometimes you don't. And it can take time and effort to find the right one.

As you've discovered, there can be real problems with couples counseling with BPD relationships. You say you've had some success before, and that's great. She may eventually come around and agree to go again. She may not. That choice will be hers.

Just out of curiosity, how do you respond when she accuses you of failing in counseling before? What were the things you feel you fell short on?

[GaGrl]

It sounds like a counseling need that is "both/and" rather than "either/or." You need individual therapy and you need couples counsrling. The individual is your purview - - who, when, where, why. The couple's counseling is a partnership with your wife.

Boundaries.

[BeardBeast]

Thank you everyone who responded and Happy New Year to you!

This pretty much confirms what I was already thinking and you gave me some good reading on ways to deal with the situation. Thanks again!

[strugglingBF]

Your original post sounds like I wrote it.  I can identify and you are not alone.  My GF and I were seeing a couples therapist for over a year.  My GF stopped going after a couple major incidents that occurred in what was a shared house and blended family that would have made her address some things she is very uncomfortable with (I can provide more details if needed).  I kept seeing this therapist as she knew the dynamic of my relationship and she knew me pretty well as a person.  My therapy sessions immediately turned to dealing with a BPD spouse and my GF discovered that when she found the Stop Walking on Eggshells book my therapist gave me to read.  Oh, that was not a good day.  She dug into my therapists life, found out where she lived, that she was divorced, that she lost a son to a drug overdose.  Used all of that to discredit her as a good therapist.  She accused our therapist of wanting to get in my pants.  Threatened to leave me if I kept seeing her, which I did for another couple months.  She had to have sex with me before EVERY appointment.  She would text me pictures of the therapist she found online and tell me I was choosing the therapist over her.  She made me feel like I was cheating on her every time I went to therapy.  My sessions would sometimes run over an hour, and she would blow my phone up on the hour every time I went over.  On a few occasions she sent me my therapist picture via text at least 100 times, drawing hearts around her head and putting demeaning comments on them.  I gave in and stopped going.

I really liked that therapist, and it would take me months of sessions with another therapist to get the point I was at with her.  Plus, that therapist understood what I am working with in my GF firsthand.  A new one will not get it or understand it on that level.  My GF said numerous things in our joint sessions that would blow my therapist away, although she wouldn't show it during the session.