Shouldn't She Be Asking Me to Take Her Back?

[ScornedNForlorn]

Hello Everyone-

My BPD wife and I met back in 2005, while working together.  We dated for approximately 6 months before moving in together.  While our early times together were somewhat trying, due to the usual ups & downs of a young relationship and some financial difficulties, we laughed far more than we cried, and even then there was no doubt that I wanted to be with her forever. 

Fast forward about 2 years, and I reached a point of being overwhelmed by her volatility and negativity.  It was probably the hardest thing I had experienced in my life to that point, but I broke up with her and moved out.  She was understandably devastated, fell into a deep depression, and while I did my best to limit contact, I was still helping her with rent/bills/etc. After 3 months separated, during which she lost her job and got a new one, she also began counseling, and made dramatic improvements in her positivity and overall attitude.  We began seeing each other semi-regularly, and after about 2 months of that I asked her to move back in with me.  4 months and some couples counseling later I proposed to her and she said yes.

Wedding planning was quite the ordeal, but we married in June of 2009, and had some of the best times of our relationship on our honeymoon to Hawaii.  About a year later, we began to have more intense disagreements, and both of us were struggling to feel heard and validated by the other.  So we sought out further counseling, to a limited degree of success.  Things would be good for a while, but could seemingly explode into a crisis a the drop of a hat.  It was around this time that I first noticed the shift in my own behavior to limit what I shared with her, especially if she had a bad day at work or school.

We following another turbulent financial period in which I was unemployed for a period of time, I ended up taking a well paying job back in my hometown, about 55 miles from where we were living at the time.  Instead of commuting back and forth every day, I went down on Monday and stayed with my parents during the week, coming home on Friday after work.  After getting past the initial separation issues, our relationship seemed to flourish, as we both learned to take full advantage of our short time together, finding little time for the petty and not so petty arguments that had regularly popped up in the previous 4-5 years of our relationship.  This persisted for about 8 months, at which time we were able to buy our first house in a small town halfway between my job and her job and school. About a week before we got the keys, we also found out she was pregnant, which delighted both of us.

The pregnancy was hard on her, and was compounded by the fact that I was remodeling our house due to a mold issue.  We did purchase a house with a rental unit in back, so we had a place to live, but the burden of the pregnancy and her own health were overwhelming, and I was struggling to work full time, and coming home to work on the house until 11 or 12 every night, stopping only to make her dinner.  In retrospect, I can see how she would have felt very alone, but I didn't know what else to do, since I was trying to ready the house prior to the birth of our son.

In May of 2011, she graduated with a degree in Psychology, and shortly thereafter, our son was born in June.  I was able to mostly finish the house about a month later, and things seemed to settle down as we were enamored with

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RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[ScornedNForlorn]

Our son, and had a bit more time to spend with each other.  Not too long after I was paid off from my job, and she was forced to return to her full time job, while at the same time beginning her pursuit of a graduate degree to become a MFT.  This was a difficult time, but we were able to find a tenant, and our bills were paid, and though it wasn't the planned situation, at least one of us was able to stay home with our son.  But we both began to become more and more depressed, and our relationship deteriorated significantly over that time frame.  We both withdrew from each other, I began heavily abusing marijuana, and soon learned I was also suffering from low testosterone.  She had her thyroid removed in March of 2012, and was distraught because I wasn't there when she awoke from surgery, as I was watching our son, and because her doctor didn't think to leave a message to let me know when she would be awake. 

Things progressively got worse between us, so we again sought couples counseling, which culminated in me angrily storming our of the 6th or 7th session, being fed up with not one but two therapists sitting in a room discussing how I felt and what I thought while I was sitting there.  She decided we should stop that and both pursue individual counseling, before going back to couples therapy.

In late October, we went to Chicago for 3 days in advance of a trip to Mexico City where she was taking a two week course for school.  I made the mistake of looking a her phone one night in Chicago and found text messages from another man, of a flirtatious nature, as well as an exchange between her and a friend confirming a previous conversation in which she said she was going to divorce me.  This of course exploded into a huge fight, the night before we were to head to a foreign country.

We spent 2 weeks in an apartment together, but apart.  We were doing tourist activities during the day with her school group, and I was watching our son at night while she had class.  We argued quite a bit, it was the most miserable and uncomfortable experience of my life.  She told me all the reasons that she didn't want to be with me, that I didn't make her feel loved and supported, I was the reason we had financial issues throughout our relationship, I never listened to her, etc. And of course she was adamant that this other man that she worked with was nothing more than a friend and coworker.

Upon returning, she told me she wanted me to move out of our house, so she could be alone and sort things out.  I would stay with a friend most nights, drinking heavily, smoking cigarettes and pot, and basically drowning in the grief of losing my love and my marriage.  I would return each morning to watch our son while she went to work.  The times before and after she left were often filled with her shouting at me, while I calmly told her that I loved her and wanted to be with her.

After about two weeks, I had installed a key logger on our computer, and also recovered a backup file of her phone and downloaded her text messages.  From reading the messages and emails, she was convinced that this man was her soulmate, and they were destined to be together, despite him still being married as well.  The messages soon transpired to a sexual flirty nature, and led to me making the poor decision to track down his wife and fill her in on what was going on between our spouses.  This of course led to further vitriol being thrown my way about what an ass I was, and how I clearly never loved her or I would just let her be happy with this new guy.

Much of the fighting culminated in her telling me over the phone on Thanksgiving that she wished I was dead, in response to my text telling her I wished she was with me and our son.  At this time, I did have the fortune to begin interviewing for a new position with a great company.  So we had to begin evaluating daycare centers.  Following a Christmas apart, we went to visit a daycare in a nearby town.  The conversation afterward soon deteriorated, leading to her loudly calling me a ~ing cocksucker in front of our son, and then threatening to keep me from seeing him, and that she was going to file a restraining order since I was violent.

So as I began my new job the following week, I also felt I had no choice but to protect myself and the best interest of our son, and despite not wanting it at all, I filed f

[ScornedNForlorn]

Filed for divorce, in order to get a custody hearing.  She seemingly took the news in stride.  Though after the fact I learned that she was completely consumed by the volatility of her affair relationship, as she had pushed and pulled this other man to his breaking point on several occasions.

They eventually ended up consummating their relationship, you know the one that was just a friendship.  Unfortunately for her, this was a terrible experience that evoked feelings of the sexual abuse she suffered as a child.  She further compounded the issues of their relationship the next day by freaking out on him.  And he again cut her off.  This fluctuated for several weeks, with him promising to see her, then flaking, then seeing each other the one day a week they worked together.  As to be expected, this exacerbated her BPD tendencies and she began to alternately freak out on him and suffer through days long bouts of miserable depression.

At the beginning of February, she was supposed to have taken our son to a friends house so she could go to school. But she called me at work, saying she was having a panic attack and couldn't handle school, or the baby, or anything.  I went over to our house after work, at which point she collapsed into my arms, following the past 3 months where I couldn't even be near her.

I was able to talk her down, and ended up falling asleep holding her that night.  This persisted for the next several evenings after I got off work.  She couldn't believe he had just cut her out of his life, she was depressed, and spoke often of wanting it all to end, to go to sleep, but not of suicide directly, most likely due to it being a touchy subject because of the suicide of her father when she was 17.

Things for her began to improve over the next week or so, and I spent a lot of time counseling and consoling her.  For the first time she said she felt I was there for her when she needed me.  With the help of her therapist and a teacher at her school, she diagnosed herself as BPD, and it opened up a whole Pandora's box for both of us.

About 2 weeks ago, she again reached out to this guy, and was rebuffed once again.  She then proceeded to send his wife a message on FB telling her the guy had knocked her up & she had miscarried (not true) and that he intended to trick his wife into getting back together so he could use her money to pay his student loans and then leave her again (true as far as I know).

This led this fine upstanding Christian MFT student to file a harassment complaint with their supervisor, resulting in my wife being suspended and ultimately terminated from her internship yesterday.

This of course is not the first relationship she has firebombed, romantic or otherwise.  Our life together has been the most stable period of her entire life, living in generally the same area for 9 years, with the same man for 8, etc. She grew up with divorced parents, was sexually abused around the age of 5 by mom's boyfriend, has an emotionally distant and possibly BPD mother, father committed suicide when she was 17, was in abusive relationship in early 20's, followed by several years of promiscuity and failed relationships, jobs, and friendships.

I come from a large, close family. My parents have been married for 37 years.  My whole family loves my wife, and have always accepted her as one of us.

I am currently living with my parents, we share custody of our son.  We have been to 3 therapy app

[ScornedNForlorn]

Therapy appointments in the last month, with the agreed upon intent of improving our communication whether we get divorced or not. We are both also seeing our own individual therapists.

I am struggling with my desire to work on our marriage, and my need to set clear boundaries with her.  I love her, I want to spend the rest of my life with her, I want to have more kids with her. But she tells me that while she thinks and sometimes wants the idea of us to work and to be a family again, she has no feelings and no attraction to me, so she can't commit to anything.  She doesn't believe we will ever connect with me like she did with that lying sack of ~, and that we won't be able to ever learn how to feel what the other is feeling.  I have offered to both complete the divorce or file a withdrawal, whatever she wants.  But she cannot commit to either.

And now she says she wants to be alone for a while, so she doesn't need me to be around to support her emotionally, but I also know that she is now emailing other men on a dating website.

As my original title states, shouldn't she be asking me to come back? What is wrong with me that I let her control this much of my life?  I know I want her, I know that if we both worked on things, we could have a stronger relationship than ever before.  I have come to

[ScornedNForlorn]

I have come to peace with her affair.  I just want to continue to work our relationship, while she wants to go out and start another one, but still doesn't for sure want to get divorced.

I don't know what to do.

Sorry for the choppy post/replies to self, I am typing this on my phone.

Any advice from someone who has been through this would be greatly appreciated.

[yeeter]

Hello Scorned, and welcome!   

Wow, you have been through a lot!

A couple thoughts, although Im sure you will get some great insights from the others here.

It sounds like you are in an ok state of mind, considering all that you have been through!  You have come to peace with the past and are focused on the present, and how you want to move forward.  This is significant, because it means you are in a state of mind that you can make good decisions going forward.

I would suggest that you take it slow.  And develop and nuture your friendships and family relationships.  Make sure you are eating right and exercising, and have some time for your hobbies.  In other words - be sure you are taking care of yourself, no matter where the relationship goes.

Therapy appointments in the last month, with the agreed upon intent of improving our communication whether we get divorced or not. We are both also seeing our own individual therapists.

I am struggling with my desire to work on our marriage, and my need to set clear boundaries with her. 

I think these are one in the same.  That is, in order to develop a healthy relationship, you MUST set clear boundaries.  Without them, its not a healthy future for you and why would you want to set yourself up for a unhealthy relationship (its not sustainable and would destroy you).  So in order to have a chance, you HAVE to maintain your own boundaries. 

But she tells me that while she thinks and sometimes wants the idea of us to work and to be a family again, she has no feelings and no attraction to me, so she can't commit to anything. 

I have offered to both complete the divorce or file a withdrawal, whatever she wants.  But she cannot commit to either.

Its pretty likely that she really doesnt know what she wants.  Or that it changes daily (or hourly)

What is wrong with me that I let her control this much of my life?

A really important and great question - to be worked on with your T.  Most of us here have faced this question and often times its wrapped up in our own childhood development.

One common problem is that we get stuck in what we 'want' - but what we 'want' isnt a real possibility.  We struggle to come to grip with the reality that the relationship cant give us this.  Sometimes this is because there are times when everything is just fantastic - but thats not sustainable and it will blow up and see saw back up and down - but it takes a while for us to learn this.

Definitely read the lessons and understand what it takes to stay in the relationship.  Definitely consider your boundaries, and your actions and behaviors.  You cant control her.  She will do whatever she wants - but the same is true for you, so consider 'if she does X, I will choose to do 'Y'.  Not as a tit for tat, just as clarifying and establishing in your own mind what your values really are and the lines you want to draw on how you let others treat you.

 

[ScornedNForlorn]

Thanks yeeter, I can definitely understand the points you made.  Thank you for the feedback.