Dear BPD Family,
Starting this evening (USA midnight PST) I will no longer be actively interacting with this board and in reality I will be leaving until my pwBPD relapses into her next cycle or two - as long as I see improvement I will stay away. This can be anywhere from a few days to upwards of a month, and rare occasions longer (when we were physically separated by my job) - which I do not foresee as I am now retired. I will likely be back sometime in April, perhaps a little later depending on the progress, perhaps next week after our next couple's therapy session.
In the unlikely event that I will not be back, I am going to summarize my journey with the borderline to date [with a strange, fiction-like turn of events] - you can't make this stuff up as it is quite the journey down the rabbit hole well beyond the land of Oz.
I joined back the BPD Family this past September, after I had done an unintended borderline intervention of sorts by telling her my opinion which I had learned from my individual therapist at the time. By being here it has been a tremendous learning experience for me and a personal growth journey where I have used this forum to brainstorm and problem solve the illogical nature of the borderline. I have also used this forum to put my thoughts into writing to understand myself better and to help others who find themselves in a similar situation as myself.
I first learned of the borderline this past June for the first time ever. My individual T gave me a book describing a borderline relationship which the wife in the book was twice as crazy as my dear wife. I was thinking to myself, at least she isn't as bad as the woman described in the book. That was the good news; however, it then it also dawned on me that with her being half as crazy as the woman described in the book is also very bad news, as she was a lot more crazy than a normal person. That is when I had my ah-ha moment and realized my wife may indeed be crazy.
Much like the husband in the book, it took me 10 full days and nights to realize the implications of what I had just read. I mentalized our entire relationship from every angle possible and came to the realization that "Dr. Quack" from the book was right - if it looks like duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck, flies like a duck, behaves like a duck,
it's a 
duck! Especially as my wife clearly met 8/9 DSM V symptoms, and most of the major and intermediate traits with a majority of the red flags
that I have seen throughout this website.
By the time I finished reading that first book, I will mention the similarities, both the girl and my wife had several suicide attempts, my wife 6, the girl 4, other than my wife's 6th attempt, I handled it the same way as the guy in the book. Both women were initially hypersexual, and then hyposexual. Both women were raised in a very 'traditional' manner with public/home schooling being the primary difference. Both smacked the crap out of the wall. Both got physical. However, that is where the similarities ended. The girl in the book also rode on the hood of this guys car to prevent him from leaving, and harassing him at work, that never happened to me, except for love bombing at work when I was split white.
I did an initial deep dive on myself with all of the transference and projection of my uBPDw's gaslighting on me to make sure I wasn't the one who was messed up. According to my T, who had a PhD in psychology I was not. He also recognized he was in 'over his head' in my situation, and got his supervisor to take over in September.
I also started to read more books, which validated my observations, the “Stop Caretaking the Borderline Or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life” by Margalis Fjelstad was a 99+% match of her behaviors and my reactive behaviors, and my feelings - all but one sentence and the level of my reactive abuse (less than what the book indicated) was spot on. This was the 2nd book I have read.
I then read “Stop Walking on Eggshells” by Paul T. Mason and Randi Kreger [3rd Edition]. I then learned my wife was more borderline than narcissist. I took all the assessments in the front of the book, including the top 10 to get help [she matched 9 out of 10]. I later learned that the physical violence against men trait alone indicated a 50% chance for a woman to be diagnosable as a borderline. [This website's poll suggest it is in the mid 60's%] Now combine that with the other 8 in that section, scoring 19 on the 30 question assessment with all of the borderline (3/4 of the 'yes' answers) in the positive and the balance of the narcissist (1/4 of those in the 'yes' section). It was looking a lot like she had borderline. Even though my wife has some communal narcissistic traits, it didn't rise to the level of narcissism.
Armed with this knowledge, I attempted to talk to our couple's T at the time. She refused, and said my wife was normal. So, I took it upon myself, to pick the worst trait/symptom of the week, and made that the weekly issue for our couple's therapy. This triggered my wife into more symptoms and traits which were shared with the T 'in session.' Eventually the T ghosted us, and verbally indicated that my wife was 'maybe' a borderline and accused me of just 'piling it on' as I had finally grown enough balls to actually confront my wife's false narrative that she had been sewing for the past three years with this T and I kept quiet until my wife's most recent suicide attempt while doing a 'homework' assignment by this T.
Going back to this past May, when my wife did her most recent suicide attempt, which was caused by me stating that I wanted to do 'self-care' for the first time ever in our relationship in order to improve our relationship, as I was sacrificing all of my waking energy into doing my wife's will without being good enough for her [16 hours per day/7 days per week] she likely perceived this as 'abandonment' and tried to kill herself. I also started individual therapy a couple weeks after that under an ultamatum by the couple's T to start individual therapy. I went to therapy in order to understand better my wife's most recent suicide attempt to deal with my thought processes and failing to realize that after nearly three years of couple's therapy, there was no real progress, and in fact was getting much much worse and something needed to change. Prior to going to therapy, I thought the attempts where just 'high drama' to coerce me [control me] into doing something I didn't want to do [do more than 16 hours of servitude for my wife with only breadcrumbs of attention in return]. On a couple of the attempts she point blank told me "you aren't supposed to behave that way" including the most recent one.
I have since learned that suicide attempts were much more serious than I thought, and the correct action is to ring up 911 immediately.
Our current couple's T told me point blank that to leave all 'online therapy' is the 'golden key' to reconnect with my wife. I know my wife doesn't like it, and has made that ultimatum over and over again. However, I continued online therapy including this site with the grace and understanding of my individual therapist.
This therapy group has been able to perform one miracle before and that was to stop the 0-100% rages in a second. However, they have not been able to stop the splitting; and the subsequent period of splitting has been extended from 2-4 hours to overnight [most of the time] to up to two days.
This site was 50% of my online presence in dealing with the borderline.
The other 40% is I hang out on a few FB sites that are much less regulated/moderated group therapy setting similar to this site; however, I was in a group where a licensed therapist specifically sought me out based on what I was posting [I put firm boundaries in place as I thought I knew what I was dealing with] who I am assuming is a diagnosed borderline, as she said point blank said she 'is bpd' when I asked her as soon as I realized that she had a nearly identical personality as my wife and this dBPD-T was having very similar issues with her husband as my wife was having with me. [que 'twilight zone' music, the following reads like fiction, but it is non-fiction...]. The dBPD-T had nearly identical intelligence, behaviors, worries, demands, complaints, work ethic, and moral compass - at least an 80% fit at the point in her marriage when comparing and contrasting it to my marriage. The differences were when she hit her husband, he hit her back, she and her husband's emotional cycles were at least 3-7x faster than ours. Her husband, was very similar to me in behavior except the hitting back part and another issue related to my moral compass so he and I were about a 70% match in personalities. She has her MS and is a PhD student. She has also been in therapy for two decades to deal with her own issues. Based on the behavioral matches, this pretty much confirmed what I had already known, my uBPDw is BPD.
The holy grail of psychological tools is the fictional 'vulcan mind meld' from the Star Trek universe of 'telepathy' or 'mind reading'. This therapist was a 'self-aware' borderline. She invited me to become friends so we could pick each other's 'mind' on our respective spouses, it had to be on a 'friendship' level, as I could not be her confidant otherwise in a therapeutic type virtual setting. In essence we both had access, in each other, to a real-life 'fictional' psychological tool of 'mind reading by proxy'. She read my wife's mind with 90% accuracy, and I read her husband's mind with similar accuracy as her behaviors and his reactions were very similar to my marriage dynamics.
The dBPD-T was able to restore her own marriage using this knowledge. I was able to make tremendous improvement over a period of a month and half time [about a years worth of progress in a month based on what I have read], and just when I thought we were going to make a major breakthrough on reconnecting, my wife self-sabotaged the process [another borderline trait], and called out the 'friendship' to the couple's T [as I didn't give her all of the details on what our discussions were] in which the couple's T blurted out I was having an 'emotional affair' which absolutely devastated my wife, and I smelled fear on my wife stronger than I ever had before and caused my wife to spiral backwards in a matter of a few seconds wiping out all progress to date.
My wife has always had jealousy/insecurity issues, as she had accused me of 'go f**k the other moms' back in 2009, which was finally validated by the couple's T with two words of impulsive accusation and was acted upon immediately by my wife.
The couple's T instructed me to terminate the dBPD-T's relationship immediately, which I did that day, as I definitely did not have any romantic feelings for this person and I still wanted to 'save' my marriage to my uBPDw. Regarding the dBPD-T, if anything I was repulsed in that manner as I definitely didn't want to do a 3rd dance with the BPD - she 'used' me to reconnect to her H, and I was using the unorthodox therapeutic relationship ['friendship' in name only] same way to reconnect to my W.
Fast forward to the next session, this week, I received an additional ultimatum to discard 90% of my remaining support network, specifically BPD Family, after I discontinued the dBPD-T the previous session. I feel that I have been coerced/blackmailed into leaving you guys under the valedictorian level manipulation tactics of my person with undiagnosed borderline. This forum is by far the best place to be when dealing with d/upwBPD as there is no scheduled appointment, and can be accessed anywhere, anyplace, anytime with an internet connection unlike other forms of therapy which are more inconvenient.
I strongly suspect I will be back, it is a matter of 'when' and not so much 'if'. If anyone needs to talk, reply to this thread as I turned on notification to this thread only.
In the mean time, I already verbally indicated to the couple's T, I will be shifting to a real-life group setting which will be much more ripe to have an 'affair' considering the abuse my wife is unintentionally doing to the relationship. I will likely go to a CODA meeting if I can find one 'in-person' since I am being banned virtually by my uBPDw and the couple's-T.
So, I am making one last attempt at making this work out, otherwise, if she isn't willing to change after I have met all of her unrealistic demands, I will start to apply pressure for her to leave me as I need to protect our children from her and me too - the only reason why I am going through Herculean efforts to protect the children, and allow their mother to recover to a point where she is once again seen with respect by our children.
If and when I do come back, it may not be on the 'bettering board'.
I do recognize the damage done to me, I went from a secure attachment style to something else. I have become codependent because of the trauma bond from this relationship with my uBPDw that is far more impactful than coming face to face with real life terrorists. It sucks, however, I have the determination to come out of this situation with the minimum amount of damage to my children, myself, and my wife too.
I will follow my own advice and do self-care [even though at one point in time it provoked a suicide attempt in my uBPDw] and I urge everyone of you to do the same for themselves. I wish everyone a speedy and full recovery from their respective journeys with the borderline.
Thank you everyone here for being my rock when I needed it. Thank you for being there for me. I hope and pray that you appreciated what I brought to the table with my advice and insight from my own life experiences. I do have one request, If you guys pray, please pray for this situation as this journey has introduced me to T's from all walks of life and conditions, and if you don't pray, please wish me luck.
Forever Gratefully Yours,
Salty Dawg
