Hi rattled64,
It can be so helpful to gain that clarity and framework for what we're experiencing -- that whatever it is, however difficult it is, it is something specific, it has a name, and there is a constellation of behaviors/traits under that name that are happening in our lives.
There's a lot going on for you, so let's take a look at the different parts of your situation.
Something would trigger my wife to feel unappreciated, taken for granted, or sometimes just that I was being "distant". I believe now that this is her feeling abandoned, and the magnitude of her rage is unbelievable. I need to start seeing it coming more so I do not get sucked in, but I can describe like nothing other than an "attack". How could someone that loves her treat her this way? If I really cared about her, she says, I would care about her needs. I find myself baffled as to what those needs are, and before long it turns into an argument and escalates and then she starts screaming. Unfortunately, I am not good at detachment and I respond to the attack and defend myself, which she then proceeds to try to rip to shreds. When I finally say "enough!" she often grabs her purse and heads out in her car. Then she typically comes back and sleeps for a while.
Something I've read recently is that while a condition like bipolar can have definite, tangible triggers (like violent movies, or substances), one way of looking at BPD is that life itself is a trigger. So it's less helpful to wonder "what triggered her -- maybe I can avoid her triggers" and more helpful to radically accept that she is responding to her intense and wildly varying internal emotional states. Her rages aren't necessarily because of "what just happened out there" -- perhaps more helpful to think of her rages as occurring due to "what just happened inside of her". That's not to say "oh, well, nothing we can do to change anything" (we can make things worse!), more to suggest that even she may not know what she needs, and even she may not understand that her feelings are coming from inside of her.
She may always feel like you aren't meeting her needs the right way, or enough, or whatever, but nothing that anyone could ever say or do will meet her needs -- and she may not know that. Imagine truly feeling like if someone else just said the right thing, or did the right thing, you'd feel better... but you never feel better. You might conclude "they are never doing it right", and it'd be so frustrating! That might be her experience, coupled with little to no insight that her emotional needs aren't meetable by anyone else. (Again -- I'm not saying "so you're off the hook from caring about her emotions), it's more just to suppose that arguing about her needs (and what you did or didn't do/say to meet her needs) will likely always be a one way ticket to a blowup.
Easier not to buy the one way ticket in the first place, than to get on that plane and then try to turn the plane around. A good place to start looking at what's under your control, to change your contribution to the dynamic, is that part in bold above: can her starting to scream be your cue to take a break -- versus your cue to "try to explain"?
It is really hard to know it is coming any particular time, but if there is a pattern, it is generally one of a few things. She may be spent by worrying about the needs of others too long and not her own and feel depleted. It might be something that triggers low self esteem. So often I feel like she gets into a state where she is just looking through a lens that everyone is slighting her. I now think this is projection, and a reflection of her hating herself. I have always viewed her own self esteem issues as a third rail in our relationship. I cannot tell her about things that are good with me professionally for example, because it tiggers her to feel terrible about herself. She so often picks fights. I have started calling her out on this. She picks a fight and then is attacks me when I will have none of it. It can be right after we have had sex (once in a blue moon these days), or in the middle of watching a football game when our team is in the playoffs.
What does that look like? How has the "calling her out on it" worked for you so far?
It has come to a head due to s series of really bad blow out incidents over the last few years that have been devestating to me. Most recently her father died and after doing everything I could to make sure she felt strongly supported (she said many times "you are my rock"), now it has become just another reason I am a dirtbag to her because I am not taking her crap patiently. For whatever reason it became very clear to me what she is doing. She is sabotaing my ability to support her and then being angry and claiming I am not supporting her. This is devestating to me because it is the single most important thing I want to be there for her right now. But this is the same patter that has happend for our entire relationship. It usually ends with agreement we need to "work on us" or "fix us" and me committing to couples therapy. The last time around, going through some of these episodes with a therapist together, things started to crystalize.
To me, this ties in with the thought above -- even she doesn't realize that nobody can possibly meet her needs from the outside. She has a distorted perspective of what effective emotional management and support are.
The key question that I'd be asking in all of that is -- can you look at what you said and did objectively (i.e., "I wrote her a card, I hugged her every day, I listened to her talk for 30 minutes, I made her coffee that week, I held her hand at the service" or whatever you did) and can you say with integrity "no matter anyone else's perspective on it, I did the best I could as a normal human being to be supportive"?
Her perceptions and feelings about "if you were supportive enough" aren't what determine the reality of whether you did your best or not.
Can you be OK with assessing your own behavior and seeing if it was supportive or not? Maybe it wasn't -- that's probably independent of her complaints about it, though if she had a valid complaint, that's worth addressing. Her statements don't define reality (even though her statements are uncomfortable).
I started drinking heavily to cope with her behavior, I don't even know how many years ago. When I got a bit concerned about that I was researching therapies and came across DBT, and stumbled on BPD as a condition, which I had not heard of before. She has been on medication for depression almost since I have been married to her, starting a few years after. She did not reveal to me that she had been on prosiac when she was in her 20s. Her mom had agoraphobia when she was little and she had to take care of her mom instead of the other way around. She and her sibs believe her mom has histrionic personality disorder, and we have both though for years it was NPD. My father had NPD and was bi-polar, something my mom hid from us when we were growing up.
It's possible to have BPD and other things going on, too (bipolar, depression, anxiety, ADHD, etc). It also is not uncommon for mental health challenges to seem to run in families (whether that's genetic, environmental, or both, can vary).
It's good that you can look at your own family history to see how MH challenges in your parents may have impacted you. Our parents, whether they are trying to or not, teach us "hey, what we're doing -- you should consider that a normal relationship" (even if they aren't healthy). Our sense of "this is what intimate relationships are like" comes from what we saw and heard. I wonder if there was something that "felt familiar" about your W's "vibe" to you, that was attractive, or felt "normal" or "comfortable"? As we understand more of what draws us to disordered family and relational dynamics, that understanding gives us a gift -- the opportunity to change to healthier patterns. I'm in the middle of it, too -- you're not alone.
How are you doing with drinking?
So I confronted her about how mean and irrational she gets, escalating small issues - after not accepting my apology because she does not "feel" like it is sincere. It was a bit chilling honestly. She because weirdly calm. She hammering me for examples of her out of contral anger and behavior, and I gave it to her straight. She focused immediately on my feeling of her emotions being out of control was just my subjective opinion. Then she went to an evening meeting, and came back and hugged me and said "I am sorry I get snarky sometimes" and appeared to want to bury it all and move on. I find myself not knowing what is real with her outward front. Is that just a fake front hiding all the fury and anger underneath?
Another thing I've learned from this site is that pwBPD struggle to have, or lack, a solid sense of self. For "generally normal" persons, we have one distinct and continuous personality. We're basically the same person in terms of interests, values, beliefs, priorities, across our lives and relationships. On the far end of the spectrum, persons with DID (dissociative identity disorder), which is not BPD, do have distinct and solid personalities -- but more than one. Each personality is solid and continuous and predictable... but there are many. Those with BPD, however, don't have multiple solid personalities, and struggle to have one solid, continuous personality. They are their feelings of the moment, in a way -- there is no solid "this is me" to go back to. I wouldn't necessarily think your W has "fake fronts" -- because there's nothing behind. She is all of that, maybe. It's all her because she doesn't have a solid "her". So wondering "which one is real and which one is fake" might be another dead end. It's all her -- that's how she shows up in life right now, is unstably. The bigger question is how to have an effective relationship under those circumstances. People do -- people stay, and work on not making things worse, and there can be improvements.
So my question to you all is whether there is any path whatsoever that makes sense to alert her psychologist and her psychaitrists NP about my suspicions. They are treating the symptoms, not the cause. Or is this just a fools errand, and I should just focus on detachment and not getting sucked in and have more healthy coping mechanisms when she falls off the deep end. The episodes are getting deeper and longer. This one has been going on since before Christmas. All thoughts welcome.
So she is in therapy and does see a psych? How long has she been doing that?
When you say "they're treating the symptoms and not the cause", how do you know that? (I mean that seriously, not sarcastically -- is this something you fear? something your W has said? something the psych and therapist told you directly? other...?)
Have you been involved in her medication and psych appointments before?
Is your W open to any feedback from you about her mood and/or her meds?
...
Lots of questions and lots to talk through -- I know this is long. Maybe we can home in on one or two areas to focus on; I know you have a lot on your plate and are wanting to "turn this ship around". Definitely a marathon, not a sprint.
