The Change; before marriage, after marriage

[Depression = 72% of members]

I was curious if anyone who is married to a pwBPD, has had a similar experience to me where their partner has become much more symptomatic AFTER getting married? 

While my dBPDw and I were dating, there were certainly signs of some disregulation, but since she was hospitalized 9 months after our wedding for being suicidal, the symptoms seem to be much worse, and continuing to get worse.  We've been married six years, and she was diagnosed as BPD about a year-and-a-half or so ago.  99% of the time her mood is either sad or angry.

Are sufferers able to hide their symptoms for a certain time until they just can be buried no longer?  I'm trying so hard to make this work, but there is just so much time lost to her illness that is difficult to see the point of it all sometimes. 

I'm just venting a little I guess.

[ApChagi1]

I was curious if anyone who is married to a pwBPD, has had a similar experience to me where their partner has become much more symptomatic AFTER getting married? 

While my dBPDw and I were dating, there were certainly signs of some disregulation, but since she was hospitalized 9 months after our wedding for being suicidal, the symptoms seem to be much worse, and continuing to get worse.  We've been married six years, and she was diagnosed as BPD about a year-and-a-half or so ago.  99% of the time her mood is either sad or angry.

Are sufferers able to hide their symptoms for a certain time until they just can be buried no longer?  I'm trying so hard to make this work, but there is just so much time lost to her illness that is difficult to see the point of it all sometimes. 

I'm just venting a little I guess.

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[waverider]

This is normal. Its not so much as hiding, as there is nothing deliberate about it. It is part of the evolution of the Borderline relationship.

A lot of what appealed to you was her mirroring you, and taking on part of you to fill the hole that lack self leaves within her. But as this is not the real her, it does not stick so eventually falls away and the lack of self comes to the surface again which leads to conflict and dysregulation as you are no longer bonded the way you were. Of course this parting of the bond has to be projected as your fault.

Stay consistent believe in yourself and dont waste your time trying to restick your personality back on to her. Even when pwBPD are "cured" they do not go back to being as you first met as that was part of the disorder too. Constantly striving to regain that initial idealization phase is one of the biggest traps we fall into, it is like chasing the end of a rainbow. We believe we can see it hiding just behind the current drama. So we tackle this drama only to glimpse it just past the next, and so on, but never getting there

[aspiegirl23]

Yep, I am experiencing this right now, too. We got married 8 months ago and things have DEFINITELY been worse since then... . Especially with his drinking.

I have no advice though, sorry, I am feeling pretty stuck myself

[eeyore]

This thread might be helpful:  BPD Fear of Intimacy

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=79300.0

[Chosen]

In my case, I think the BPD signs were there even before we got married, but I only learnt about BPD (he's still undiagnosed) after we got married.  But yes, certainly the symptoms were much more intense in a way, but I believe it's probably only because we're living together (we didn't live together before getting married). 

[wishfulthinking]

I had no clue. Everything was the fairytale. 2 weeks after we got married. The first rage. I was baffled. I'd never been called selfish in my life and considering I'd just loaned him over 4 grand I thought I'd not been selfish at all... . Some days are good, some days I feel stuck. Learning a lot here, though.

[ucmeicu2]

I was curious if anyone who is married to a pwBPD, has had a similar experience to me where their partner has become much more symptomatic AFTER getting married? 

i'd imagine that's a common scenario if there is an abstention of premarital sex.

for me everything was great with my BPD friend until she confessed she'd fallen in love with me.  then she started to get extremely anxious. very soon after that she initiated physical intimacy w/me and she started unravelling that night, before my very eyes.  i didn't know at the time that she was BPD or that sexual confusion is a BPD symptom or that she was very uncomfortable with the idea of being a lesbian. abt 2 yrs later, after a lot of push/pull, she proposed to me.  that was apparently the last straw for her psyche and shortly after that came lots of denial including the claim that she wasn't attracted to women, we had not been in r/s, and we could be friends!

the very sad thing abt BPD is that what they desire most - intimacy, love, attachment - is what they can handle the least when they finally get it.  or sometimes even when they get just a whiff of it.

stay and read and learn  and best of luck to you,

icu2

[Sadsue]

Yes things have got much worse since we married, he asked me and cried with happiness when I said yes but in the 6 months since we were married I am living a nightmare, I too am called selfish and I have never been called selfish, or needy or a deranged dog, that's his favourite description of me!  I too lent him 10k, am very generous.  He says he regrets marrying me, that hurts because I am a very good wife but he has built me up in his mind to be his enemy, a monster even.  I know it's totally untrue but it hurts beyond belief. 

If he wanted to leave I wouldn't stop him, because as much as I love him and will stand by him I crave to be loved and cherished and not deliberately hurt.  After a tremendous row last night I am backing off.  The tears and begging him to stay are over, he can do as he pleases.  I know I am capable of moving on and being in a 'normal' relationship, for him he will live like this forever, with or without me.  At the moment I don't even want to spend any time with him. 

I will continue to live my life and be strong.  Xx

[Cipher13]

It was 3 weeks or so prior to our wedding. First part of December. My dad had asked me to go up to the cabin for the weekend to get in the last weekend of deer hunting and to help close the cabin up for the year.   This was something we hd been doing for several years. She did not want me to leave.  If you leave don't ever come back. Why do you wan tot leave me. All those sort of things came out. I was only going for a couple days. She tore up our engangement phots and thrpough stuff and was crying and yelling. I don't know why she had to do that. After the first day after she was trying to call my cell phone a number of times. Little to no service in that area. I went to apay phone and called her. She convinced me to come back witht e whole wedding thing we need to plan. I did know what 1 day was going to hurt but I left early. She was still angry when I got home and said why do you have to leave me to do this stuff.

It has gotten worse after we got married but the focus is more on me. She has put a source of her bad feelings to be me and what I did or caused.  The most common phrase I hear "You did this to me, you make me feel this way!"

[nevaeh]

My H and I dated for 4.5 years before we got married.  We did have issues while we were dating with some pretty heated fights.  One particular day he went into a rage because he missed an exit on the freeway.  That was the first time I saw the scary rage.  He dropped me off at home and then called me later that night to tell me he wanted to break up.  There apparently was someone else in his life.  Cheating was a recurring theme during our dating years.

However I fought hard to "win" him back   and we were married several months later. 

He had his first rage about 4 weeks into our marriage.  It was really scary and I remember thinking at the time that I had made a terrible mistake marrying him.  I honestly remember thinking I should leave him but was embarrassed at the thought if ending a marriage after a month and thought that this was just one of those "worse" times we would work through.  Little did I know at the time that my gut instinct was right and I should have walked away. 

Anyway, yes, my H got WAY worse after we got married. 

[wishfulthinking]

Sadsue,

We had the same night. Mine is divorcing me. "He deserves better" and I "emotionally abuse" him. I did throw a big folder at him. I do regret that. I snapped. I couldn't take anymore. My best friend lives across the street and he came home late and she waved, which he didn't see, so now I've been talking behind his back? I'd be embarrassed if people knew what I put up with. Guess it doesn't matter anymore.

[ApChagi1]

In a new development for me, my wife apparently woke up upset during the night last night that she'll never be President of the United States, and is angry at me because she couldn't wake me up to comfort her. 

I swear sometimes if you don't laugh at this stuff, it will make you cry.

[wishfulthinking]

Mine wakes up being attacked by Satan and his demons.  I guess you could compare that with Congress... .

[ApChagi1]

hahaha yeah, I'd say that's pretty much the same thing, Lost.

[Cipher13]

Mine wakes up being attacked by Satan and his demons.  I guess you could compare that with Congress... .

Thats a good one.  I got a text that said she had bad dreams about me... . when she asked if I was wantingto see my parents (which I have had no contact with for years now thanks to this illness) I knew it was the sometimes re-accouring dream where I leave her to go back to live with my parent sor they come and kid nap me from her... . Happens at least 1 time per year.

[whatshappening]

I had the perfect pre-marriage, then after marriage, I went to help a family member do something I had pre-arranged and she screamed and cried that I should not go. I went, but I am still being reminded of the fact that I am not "connected" to her. I will never "Protect" her. All things I could do much better if I had not been subjected to many subsequent years of blame, anger and resentment that  makes life for me and kids a daily stress filled hell. She believes you have to give unconditional support to the person you marry, and she finds some who agree with her, but none have been thru what I have been through so I will not go this way. Is this something any of you have seen also and do you believe in Unconditional Support of a person with BPD behaviors who makes your life a living hell? how do you reconcile it?

[RedEye]

There was definitely a change in my case. We were a normal couple while dating, although my wife (then girlfriend) was much more attached and emotional than I was (I feel like I'm more detached and much less emotional than a normal person, though, so it made sense). After a couple of months, she said that God told her that she would marry me in the future, which I suppose could be seen as a BPD sign. Other than that, it felt like a normal relationship. Once we got engaged, we started arguing much more, though I suspected that that was just because the relationship became more "real." A week after we got married, that's when things started to get bad -- my beliefs and opinions started to be invalid to her, and she would fight me until she won. She wanted me home all the time, even if she was just going to be doing homework (that still can be good together time, but we stopped seeing friends altogether, it seemed like). I think it was five or six months in that I started suspecting something was psychologically wrong. When my wife pulled up the Wikipedia page for BPD one day to describe to me what her thoughts were like (I asked if she was diagnosing herself, and she said no, she doesn't have it, but it was a good idea of what she felt like), it seemed to match, and every week it seems more and more true. (We're eight months married now.)

[SweetCharlotte]

It was a couple weeks after we became engaged that my uBPDh started to dysregulate. We are long-distance, and he stone-walled me for four days by not picking up his phone. I was so worried, I called his friend (what passes for a friend with him, since he's mainly a loner) to make sure he was OK. I had never heard of stone-walling on this level. Now it is like normal behavior of his, sorry to say (I'm really on the Undecided Board).

Then a few weeks before the wedding, he had been babysitting my youngest, whom I had as a single mom through an anonymous donor. He claimed she had tried to place his hand between her legs and that she had stated that my ex-husband had done this to her when he babysat for her. He did not want me to ask the child about this, said she would just cover it up, and I had to get her interviewed by authorities right away. I made an appointment with a children's psych center to have her interviewed for possible molestation. They reported that there was no sign she had been abused by my ex-husband, and that it was my fiancé (the now uBPDh) who sounded like trouble.

Well, fiancé retorted that I had ruined things by putting the question to her beforehand (she firmly denied that anything like what he described had happened), and also that I had delayed too long in taking her for the investigation, had taken her to an incompetent center, etc.

Days before the wedding, he threatened that he would deliver a public ultimatum on the altar against my ex-husband: that if the ex should abuse my children again, the H would report him to authorities (he makes a big deal about being a mandated reporter due to his job). He then hung up and would not answer his phone for 24 hours. In horror, I called off the wedding and uninvited my guests. Then, he told me I had misunderstood him and he never said that (and also that I should have known he didn't mean it, a contradiction in terms). My head and heart were so topsy-turvy at this point that I married him in a smaller ceremony with just my immediate family.

Things got worse right after the wedding, if you can believe it. However, in answer to the OP's question, there were significant outbursts between the engagement and the wedding. Instead of frightening me away, they served to "trauma-bond" me to my fiancé.

[wishfulthinking]

Trauma-bond... . interesting term. I feel as though mine is trying that with my exh right now, though I'm getting either silence or hate at the moment. He seems more jealous of my ex as time goes on. I barely talk to him except about D9, though there's no animosity between us. I'd like to keep it that way, but uBPDh is starting things then putting requirements on what I should do to handle it. There's be noting to handle if you'd leave the ex alone... . ?

[SweetCharlotte]

Trauma-bond... . interesting term. I feel as though mine is trying that with my exh right now, though I'm getting either silence or hate at the moment. He seems more jealous of my ex as time goes on.

Yes; I found trauma-bonding in the literature somewhere. It's when you stick with someone through instances of emotional abuse and it makes you more dependent on them (like Stockholm Syndrome for hostages and abductees).

Focusing on the ex is what they do when they need to blame you for something and you are not doing anything reproachable. If you have kids, then the ex is going to make appearances, and the pwBPD can develop more animosity over it as they head toward the push-you-away part of their cycle.

[wishfulthinking]

When does it shift from the push part of the cycle to the pull?  I'm trying to watch and monitor his behavior and I'll be honest... . he never seems to pull... . he always wants the attention and yes, he does small things for me, but they are so overshadowed by the rages and constant eggshells... . I don't want to MAKE him pull, as I don't want to play games... . but I'm curious what causes the switch.

[SweetCharlotte]

The pull-you-back-in is when they reach their "base level" after pushing you away. They have calmed down and are not feeling engulfed by the intimacy of the relationship. In fact, they are starting to feel lonely and empty. . . If they have someone still waiting around for them, it's time to recycle. If not, they look for someone new.

In my long-distance relationship these phases are easy to mark, but if you live with someone all the time, maybe they never reach the pull-back-in phase because they never push you away totally.

At any rate, to get back to the OP theme, I found Waverider's remarks about the first few months very definitive. The first few months are different; the cycle hasn't begun yet because they are mirroring the partner and filling the vacuum that way. At some point that isn't enough and they begin the cycle. Perhaps women w/BPD hold off until marriage (or cohabitation at least) to really start cycling like mad, but men know they have got you at the engagement and that's when they start. It's very hard to get a woman in love to break off an engagement (except through infidelity or physical abuse), so it's safe to start cycling and emotionally abusing the fiancée.

[Theo41]

I saw nothing before we married. Then, after 2-3 months witnessed her teeing off on store clerks. I said: " I hope you never do that to me, I couldn't take it (to fragile). By the end of the first year I became a lightening rod for most of her anger. Since I had a great career and travelled a lot we remained married. The children grew up with it and both are successful but badly scared. They can not tolerate her, despite loving her, and maintain their distance.

The regrettable part is that I bought "it's your fault. If you didn't... . I wouldn't." and assumed that since the anger was directed to me the kids were ok. They are NOT. they are frightened and insecure when the blow up occurs and sometimes believe it is their fault. We can accept this behavior if we are strong enough or unable to break away and take care of ourselves but the biggest mistake I made was not protecting the children better, perhaps by leaving with them. They all once told me: " if you leave, we want to go with you." I responded by saying their mother was the best friend any of us ever had or will have. Some truth to that but should have brought everything to a head. But back then we didn't know what we were dealing with.