new to this site

[metalone]

My wife of 13 years is a family friend i have known for 30 years, a very sweet, beautiful, kind, humorous, intelligent,loving woman. She come from parents that had her and her brother while they were in their mid teens and that marriage ended by the time my wife was 4 years old and it was a nasty seperation and custody battle. my wifes father got custody and the right to limit visitation and he exercised that right as often as he liked, my wife did not get to know much about her mother until she was a teen. couple that with her dad getting married again to a lady with  children and turmoil running rampant in thier house it was not the best environment to be raised up in. She left home as a teen and was married to her first husband at the age of 18 and had a daughter. that marriage lasted a short time and fell apart when she had an affair and became pregnant from the affair, now there are 2 kids.

Several years later i ran into her, a few months later we talked on the phone and became closer friends and soon were in a very serious relationship and later married. the early years were good, very little conflict in the relationship did not see problems. a couple of years into the marriage i started seeing a change in her, she became more controlling, very pushy about what she wanted, she was handling all of the financial affairs for our family and that became a major problem, she is a compulsive spender and we had major issues with money until i took over the bills. we had a child together and that was a tough experience, she almost died during deliver due to complications and struggled with what was diagnoised as tramatic post pardom depression, she struggled with depression for over a year before it was diagnoised and it was caught then because the doctor ask her a question and she broke down and cried uncontrollanbly in the doctors office and he put her on anti depresants and they worked wonders.

The year leading up the the medication was terrible, that is when i started seeing problems in her personality and we almost ended up divorsed that year. she took the medication for about a year and that was a wonderful year, very little conflict our marriage was good. she took herself off the medication after about a year and things made some changes, not drastic but the started going down hill. she could not handle any comment that even hinted that she had done anything wrong, not even a minor item. she them began to hold me to a standard of how she was to be treated and how things were to be done but she did not adhere to the same standard when it came to me and she did not think that was an issue and would become agitated and argumentaive if i mentioned anything about it.

The parenting was very inconsistant, she has joint custody with her ex for the oldest and they were and still are today in competition for the attention from our oldest, she has been allowed to from the age of 5 years old decide where she lived and has been back and forth. that has been an issue that is a major problem today with her. my input in the rasing of the children has been mostly ignored and she always wanted to be the good parent and make me be the bad parent that had to disipline and correct the kids.

As time went on the arguments got worse and more intense, she would start screaming and yelling and accusing me of things that had not happened or accusing me of things that she had done herself,i was always made out to be a terrible husband and father and our whole marriage had been a miserable experience, when this happened i made the mistake to try and rationilize with her and that did not work so... . i would tell her that i was not going to deal with her in this fashion that when she calmed down and could talk about the issues rationally i would talk to her but not until she was ready to talk rationally. i would not talk with her or deal with her until she calmed down.

The early times it would take a couple of hours... . then it would take longer and longer until sometimes it could take days... i would always come home, always be there just not deal with her or her bad mood and sarcastic comments and trying to pick fights, she would always come around and we would talk through our issues and move forward. the problem became that the issues started coming more often and the mad period lasted longer. she threatened me with seperation a couple of times during the arguments, blaming me for causing disruption in our kids lives, to turn around a few days later and praise me for being a great husband, father and provider.

At this point i am really confused but not to the point to look for ideas to the problem. the stress in my life created a problem for me, low testostrone, which slowed our sex life down. after a period of time i went to the doctor and began treatments for the problem but the sucess was limited but i kept working with the doctor to try and resolve the problem. about 6 months ago one night she wanted to have sex and i was sick and not feeling well and couldn't, from that night forward it has been miserable. she has shut down to me, barely communicates at all, has shut down to the youngest 2 children, sees everyting in her life that is wrong or a problem as my fault. She acts as if she is single, comes and goes as she pleases to the point that she left our youngest 2 kids at home while she is out on the go with friends, she planned a 35 day trip out of the county for the summer against my wishes as well as all 3 of our kids and a lot of our friends.

On the subject of friends, i have no friends that are outside of our marriage, the ones i had when we got married have been pushed away by my wifes complaints about them or their wives. my wife expects that i dedicate all of the time she wants or demands to her and her wants and needs, but she does not resipercate that with me. when she shut down to me and the kids 6 months ago we started going through very bad time, so bad i called a marriage councilor and we went. the first session was rough, when ask individudually if we were invested in the marriage i said yes and to my devistation she said she was not... . we went to 2 session and it fell apart and we both ended up in counciling individaully to try and help us get to a point to where we could come back together as a couple.

2 days later i found myself on the internet looking for answers and books to read on what to do, i found a book by the title "When Love Hurts" and it was a self help book that was about restoring a marriage when only one partner was intrested in restoring the marriage. i went to the book store to get the book and stumbled up on the book "Stop Walking on Eggshells" and read the paragraph at the top of the book on the back page and it sounded like my situation... . i did not read enough of the trailer on the back of the book to see that it was about a personality disorder or i might have put it back and not read it.

When i started reading the book i could not put it down, i read the entire book in about a 7 hour period and was totally blown away by what i was reading. my wife has most of the symptoms listed in the book, the only ones that she does not exibit are self mutilation, cutting and she has never mentioned suicide at any point. i have shared with the theropist my belief in what is going on with my wife but because we are in indivdual counciling she will not discuss anything related to my wife with me. my wife make a comment that she has built a wall between me and her and she cannot let me in because she does not want to get hurt again. the only thing she will tell me that i have done to cause this is that we did not ahve sex that night and that i answered my cell phone with a call from work on a weekend trip we had made to the beach, she says that i have abandoned her.

My wife has told me a few thing that the theropist has said to her, she came home from a session one night emotionally upset and crying and made the comment that the theropist said she was suffering from severe depression and needed to see a doctor and get medication for the depression, she has resisted that and makes the comment that she is not crazy and lashes out about that at me. one of the things that i really cant understand is the masking process, she does not want anyone, except our oldest daughter whom she has drug in the middle of this mess, to know we are having problems. when someone comes over to the house she will act as if our lives are perfect and wonderful, as soon as they leave back to the problem. she does the same on public and at church. some people ask me what is going on because they can see a problem on the outside looking in.

I made the mistake of talking with my pastor when he ask me what problem was we going through, i learned quickly that no one outside of our house and immediate family have any clue or can even grasp a hint of what is going on. my wife is a highly educated sucessful individual that functions in society, from what i have read and learned that term is Highly Functioning BPD, and from what i am experiencing the most likely to resist treatment or admit that they have a problem. i struggled for a while but fortunatly i was seeing the therapist and she helped to get me settled down and see that i could not help my wife if my wife did not want help... . that was hard to swallow!

The big problem i have now is my 2 younger kids, her actions are tearing their lives apart and her treatment toward them has been an issue, she treats the oldest like she is her best friend and the younger 2 differently to the point they both have been hurt by her actions... my wife wants me to pick up and move out of the house and leave her and the kids, but i have refused to leave the kids with her actions and issues and i also have refused to leave the house.  we are both still seeing a theropist and i am holding on for a short period to see if the theropist can reach her and get her to accept treatment. i am glad i found this web site, i know how it feels to be isolated in a world with people all around you. i truely love my wife and i am willing to learn the skills needed to help me and my family cope and work through this disorder, i just pray my wife will come around. 

can anyone share any techniques that might be helpful in getting my SO to seek treatment?

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

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.

[Learning_curve74]

Hi metalone, it sounds like you have done a lot of research, good for you! And it sounds like you and your therapist have gotten you to accept that you can't help your wife if she doesn't want help, which is also good. You've been dealing with a lot. My BPDexgf is high functioning and she has had therapy intermittently, but she fits the mold of being resistant to doing it. She was on antidepressants but really hated the idea of needing a pill and thinking it was making her somebody different.

Have you looked at this link here about helping a loved one with BPD seek treatment? Here it is:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/how-to-get-borderline-into-therapy

I'm sure there are a lot of people here that have a lot of advice and encouragement for you. Hang in there.

[Overseas1899]

I also stumbled upon Stop Walking on Eggshells and could not put it down!  That was exactly one year ago and I felt immense relief that I was not alone and there was a name for all of these strange behaviours. My greatest concern is doing the right thing for our two children. I would love to remove them from this but I refuse to take a chance at only 50 percent custody. Any suggestions how to shield the kids and prevent, particularly or son, from picking up my uBPDh traits?

[Overseas1899]

What worked for me to get therapy for uBPDh was to research where to go in your area, talk to his doctor about it, have the info printed out of where to go for help, then talk very firmly and without emotion to him that he has something going on and it needs to be dealt with. I also told him that if I had a drug or alcohol problem that he would do the same thing - get me some help.

Metalone - this forum will reinforce for you that you are not alone at all. Keep posting.

[metalone]

Learning_curve74, i appreciate the kind words and support. i looked through the information from the link you posted on helping a loved one seek treatment, there is a lot of good information as well as good people on this site. i can see that there is a lot of great people posting here on this board, i am glad i found it. thanks again for the encourgement.

Overseas1899, Stop walking on eggshells was a revelation for me, i shutter to think what might have happened if i had not found that book and read it, i was getting to the end of my rope with the relationship, but that book and several others have helped me tie a knot in the end of the rope and hang on tight. i was on the verge of walking away from the relationship, the custody battle was a huge fear that i had also. shielding the kids is hard, i get questions from the kids daily and a lot of the questions are hard to answer, some i cant answer. i have had conversations with my T concerning the kids and i am working as hard as i can to keep things as calm as possible at home and love them through the whole mess. i to am concerned about my kids picking up the BPD traits, my kids are pre teen to late teen in college, very impressionable ages. i had not thought about the doctor, i wish we used the same family doctor but we dont. thanks for the post and the support.

Metalone