Relationship triggered BPD in wife, now it seems like there's no way back

[the_western]

This will be a bit of a ramble, but I don't have these thoughts really well organized.  When I first met my wife twelve years ago, we were both single professionals, we both had our own homes and lives and were both very independent.  It's something that attracted us to each other, I wasn't looking for a domestic caretaker and she didn't need me to take care of her either.  For the first five years of our relationship it was dream-relationship stuff.  We had our own jobs, interests, money, we communicated really well, I didn't know what BPD was then but she certainly didn't show any evidence of it. 

Then she suffered a big setback at her career that mirrored something that had happened to me when I was in the military long before we met.  I remembered how nobody was there for me when the similar thing happened to me, and how alone I felt, and I resolved to make sure that she felt cared for and supported.  I really stepped into a caretaker role at that time, which I assumed would be temporary.  This really was the triggering event I think that altered our relationship.  After her career got back on its feet, I had the opportunity to change jobs which would involve going to school out of state for a time. 

She was verbally very supportive, which is what I expected, since we both had always been independent and supportive of the other person.  But when I left to go to school a thousand miles away, that's when the BPD symptoms really started (which I didn't understand then, I just knew that it was so dramatically different than she'd ever acted before).  She started swinging between a previously unseen domestic caretaker personality and anger and contempt.  She had always been active and the life of the party but she stopped leaving the house, stopped dressing well and caring for herself like she used to.

We'd always had really open communication so I immediately pointed it out, asked what was going on, was she depressed, how could I help, etc.  Not only did the behavior just accelerate, we would have the same conversation over and over, literally almost verbatim, and she would act like we had never talked about it before.  She would swing between apparently trying to "buy" my affection by being this new domestic mommy character and being angry with me for "abandoning" her by going back to school, which she had encouraged me to do.

This behavior took another huge leap when she lied to me about her birth control status and got pregnant while I was at home.  I still had another year of school left.  I had been visiting home about twice a month for a weekend.  I had specifically checked in about her birth control status before we had sex and she told me she was safe.  She was not, she knew she was not, and she got pregnant.  I had always been very ambivalent about the prospect of children, I wasn't openly against it but never felt like I had a need in my life for kids.  I had been open about this since the very beginning of the relationship and she had previously expressed not wanting kids due to how they would curtail her freedom.  She had never mentioned changing her mind or wanting children.

Our son just turned four.  I have the dissonance of loving my son enormously but at the same time resenting that my life was so dramatically altered without my consent in a way I can never change.  My wife has been diagnosed with BPD, I have done a lot of reading and understand what's going on a little more, but am so enormously frustrated that there is nothing I can do to change what is happening.  We have tried marriage counseling several times, she has been in and out of therapy with individual counselors, but she won't change her actions or follow through with anything.

She will commit to some behavior change, then less than a week later (sometimes less than a day later) be back where she started.  This is a post-grad educated highly intelligent woman.  She has read the books, she knows what she has, she can identify and describe her own symptoms with great detail, but she simply will not or cannot alter her behavior.  She just started with a new therapist who does DBT.  She has seen a DBT specialist before but didn't follow through.

I am in therapy for myself.  I am no stranger to therapy, I grew up in an abusive home and went through a lot of intensive therapy in my late twenties.  I always swore I would never be in a situation like what I grew up in, and even though there is no physical abuse in our relationship I see the same cyclic patterns I grew up with.

I know what an amazing person she can be but it seems like that person is just gone.  Occasionally it's like they visit for an afternoon and then gone again.  It's heartbreaking.  I miss my friend.

I think that's all I wanted to say.  I really, really miss my friend.  I don't know what to do.

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[Jabiru]

Hi and welcome

You're posting in the Bettering board so I'll go with that assumption.

It sounds like you've been through a lot, and it's great that both you and her and working with therapists. What has your therapist suggested?

What boundaries do you have to protect yourself? An example that I have with my uBPD wife is that if she starts raising her voice, then I calmly ask her to not yell. If she continues, then I say I need an hour to cool down, then simply exit the room.

Also, check out the Tips menu at the top of the page.