Hi SheepNumber99 and a warm
There's definitely been a lot of conflict and instability over your two year marriage. That's a lot to pack in to a short amount of time -- I think anyone would feel depleted coping with that. You're in a good place to find new ways to move forward, because it sounds like even though there have been positives (him engaging in therapy and decreasing rages are very good signs), overall stuff isn't working for you. You've got nothing left in the tank; something has to change.
One of the deeply unintuitive things about staying in a BPD relationship is that for it to have a chance, we need to turn the spotlight off of the pwBPD so much, and turn it on ourselves.
That theme comes up over and over in our
success stories thread: the real tipping point for successful relationships was when the non-BPD chose to look at themselves, decrease their own contribution to the dysfunction, and get mentally healthy and grounded through therapy for themselves.
Other factors going into success stories include non-BPD partners "facing the facts" about how they've engaged in "co-dependent type" behaviors like trying to manage the partner with BPD (their behaviors, insights, choices, feelings, etc), trying to intervene between the pwBPD and others, trying to prove to professionals that "they're right and the partner is wrong", and so on.
BPD relationships are difficult; no argument there. It can be freeing, though, when we realize how much power we have, that's 100% under our control, to change our contribution.
The partner with BPD may always have limitations and imparirments (usually in the areas of emotional regulation and relational intimacy) -- kind of like how if you married a person who used a wheelchair, your partner would always have mobility limitations. A relational success story when your partner uses a wheelchair probably won't sound like "and then he had cutting-edge surgery and can fully walk again!" Success in that kind of relationship will probably look like "and then I
radically accepted that he had a limitation, and I chose not to be resentful about it, and to accept that I'd chosen to be with him, and that we would create a different kind of success together".
What do you think? Is creating a different kind of success story, one that accepts both of your limitations, something that might be do-able?
Lots to think about!
Glad you found us;
kells76
