Mind blowing realization

[pikar]

Ok you might not find it mind blowing my BPD wife and I do.

It happened yesterday 2am after 2 hours of discussions. My wife went back on her chaotic life trying to understand why she was driven by such a chaotic path.

She used to go from one twisted despicable destructive experience to the other, all the time.

My wife always feels she DESERVE PLEASE READ happening to her but she doesn't DESERVE happiness and I never understood how this feeling is even possible.

And then we realized:

She unconsciously wanted to be accepted by her mom.

Let me clarify this: my wife's dad left her when she was 6. She grew up with her mom.

On one hand, when you share a positive experience with her mom she stares at you with no expression at all, she only nods from time to time. But when you tell her bad thing that happened to you she'll have a lot to comment but will invariably let you know "don't worry, I've been through worse".

On the other hand, her mom will gladly talk about other people's experience, letting you the feeling she somehow admire the persons she talks about.

She never apologies, compliments or thanks and Rarely did for her own daughter.

She disregarded even my wife's emotions when she was a kid, saying stuff like "Stop the comedy and your childish stuff, adult's stuff are a lot harder "

So we think my wife has been driven by the need to be admired a little bit by her mom, or at least considered equal. So she just wanted to have the worst life possible to be able to have as much PLEASE READ as her mom and thus, be worth it in regards to her mother.

I think this realization made us go one step forward to understand her BPD behaviour a bit better and it might as well help her, help us to get through life more easily.

In 2 years of relationship I have learned so much about people, about my wife and about myself. BPD is no fun, but I don't regret my decision of staying with my wife a single second.

Ok now we know, but what to do with this information?

Have you had such realizations with your SO?

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[CodependentHusband]

First of all, I think it is great that you are able to have a discussion like this with your pwBPD! Discussions of this nature are farther and few between for me and my dBPDw, especially nowadays. Is this actually helpful to your wife, or just an interesting observation? What do you do with this? Ultimately, it seems to me, that is really up to her (which is another way of saying "her stuff," "your stuff". I'm not sure what you can do in practical terms, really. Keep communicating with your pwBPD when it is healthy communication. Keep up the good work!

[jessicapuppy]

Hi there

Is this something your wife would feel able to explore further with a therapist that works with BPD sufferers?

JP

[pikar]

CodependentHusband:

I don't know yet if this is gonna be helpful to my wife, time will tell. I think it will, or it might be a good tool to help me calm her down in certain circumstances.

My point was that knowledge is a good thing only if you know how to use it.

Is there a step after realization or is this good enough for my wife to calm down during crisis time?

We'll see I guess.

For the communication part it is mostly because of you guys. Once I started to understand BPD and good ways to interact with BPD, my wife progressively felt reassured that I was here to listen to her, that I won't judge, only help. Validation helped me a lot to build this trust. It took a while though to get to this point, but now whenever she is overwhelmed by her emotions I try to be there, with her, and just try to get her to explain to me what's going wrong. And it's been few month she didn't have big crisis, now it is less frequent and does not last long (30/60 minutes) as she calms down, talking to me and me trying to broader her views.

And from time to time, when she is in a good mood we talk about our past, trying to remember how you felt in certain situations. It is not necessarily about her, it can also be about me (which made me understand some of my behaviour).

jessicapuppy:

She's been in group therapy for 8 month and before that she went weekly to a psychologist for few years.

The psychologist didn't help much according to her, she left the psy office in tears just every single weeks.

The group therapy on the other hand  correlates to improvement on her side. But it also correlate to me learning a lot about BPD on this forum so I don't know which one helped more.

In general she'll have a real hard time to tell things to people except me, she fears rejection and judgment and puts bad thoughts into people's mind.

But she stopped group therapy while her pregnancy started to be painful and hasn't come back there because she simply does not have time... .Full-time school/new born baby at home, it is already quite a lot to deal with.

[BPDHubby]

My MIL is almost exactly the same. Her hobbies also include sticking her nose where it doesn't belong and sitting in public scrutinizing complete strangers. My uBPDw has often said all she ever wanted was a relationship with her mum. I am convinced my MIL always resented my wife and tried to live through my wife's experiences.

Thanks for posting this. Food for thought.

.

[briefcase]

It's always helpful to have discussions that lead to some insight.  I think the value in this is mostly if it gets her in to the right kind of treatment and keeps her there.  If she continues to accept this insight as true, you can at least provide a reason for her to stay in therapy, which can otherwise be very difficult. 

[jessicapuppy]

I thought you might find this link useful, due to your wife's pregnancy.   Food for thought:

https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a108.htm

JP

[waverider]

My partner was never "accepted" by her mum due to her "difficulties" and not being a high achiever like her siblings. As a result of never really bonding with her mum, she cant let go and move on. She keeps attempting to bond by constantly contacting her mum with both ailments (for sympathy) and wild fairly tales/exaggerations (to impress). Result is she cops a put down lecture for not getting her act together.

This causes stress, then she does it again. The cycle keep repeating. Despite 49 years of not fitting in and screwing up, her family dont really believe in "mental" illness its just a matter of getting your act together like everyone else has too.

Knowing this is a contributing factor in the whole dysfunctionality is still a long way from letting it go. In fact it can be an easy way out to paint your family black and hence avoiding any responsibility yourself, in order to be committed enough to address it.

Her father who is the only member of her family she identified with was a severe alcoholic

She suffered serious workplace bullying too.

She was involved in an unethical and unhealthy sexual relationship with the psychiatrist who treated her when she was an inpatient after a breakdown, this had a very big impact.

So there are many circumstantial things she can point to as causes of the disorder. These things only help her blame other people rather than look inward.

[pikar]

Jessicapuppy:

Thanks for the link, my wife already delivered, we have a beautiful 3 month old little girl 

I find this article to be very pessimistic! It says what to expect but not how to prevent these things from happening.

But at least, I hope that it will trigger the alarm when I see a strange behaviour from my daughter. Maybe caught early we can make it right or talk to a therapist about it.

My wife's worst nightmare is about messing up our daughter. I have to reassure her that everything's gonna be ok and we are going to do our best, but this article somewhat diminishes my confidence a bit now!

I'll keep my eyes open.

Waverider:

My wife has a very low self esteem so she will never blame anybody for things happening to her. Especially not her mom.

Our last realization was: her appetite for destruction was led by the will to be accepted by her mom.

Our previous realization: her lack of confidence and her perfection to do things but her inability to enjoy what she does is probably related to the fact that her mom never acknowledged the good things my wife did or was proud of, but she blamed the bad things.

My wife but she feels the need to protect her mom still and keep the responsibility on her.

So what we did instead is, not judge, not blame, but accept things happened in a way and nobody knew it would have such an impact so nobody did anything.

But I have to remind my wife about that when she struggles with her emotions, because she'll put back everything on her shoulders. Most of the times it works and helps her calm down.

And our situation is kind of the opposite from yours: my wife once abandoned the idea of contacting her mom (despite living in the same city), because every time they communicate is painful and doesn't end well. She's not happy with that but it is the best she can do... .

Except that recently, her mom tried to put things back together contacting my wife and asking to rebind. So it is my MIL that tries to maintain a relationship. She has good intentions but she didn't change at all because she just can't (my MIL recently ended a 15 years relationship, finds no job and now live at her daughter's). So my wife hits the same communication wall that hurt her in the first place. But it's her mom and she doesn't want to be mean so she keeps seeing her, even if she comes back home and cries most of the times after they meet.

Oh well, I see your story and mine, and either way is not so good... .

[jessicapuppy]

Hi there

I hope all is well with your new daughter.  Congratulations 

I just wanted to update you with a couple of articles I have found on this subject, that I thought you may find helpful:

www.BPD.about.com/od/causesofBPD/f/parent_fq.htm

www.borderlinepersonalitytoday.com/main/BPDtherapist/24.HTM

Some perspectives from people raised by a parent with BPD:

www.borderlinepersonalitydisorderfamily.yuku.com/topic/907#.UOrBEG-TpjY

Hope that helps!

JP

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