He's pissed and not completely unreasonably so. BUT then it just snowballs. He is talking to me, hasn't broke up with me but has expressed, very vocally, that I have abandoned him. There have been many harsh conversations and I am doing my best to reassure him but without him giving me another chance I don't know what I can do.
Hey there,
I have had variations of this scenario quite a few times in my house. The biggest things for me is acknowledging whatever I did wrong (short and sweet) and then letting my upbdh know that I love him and then I have to move on (with or without him). I don't mean that I am abandoning him again... .I mean that I have to move on with my day/ my life/ my plans until he decides to rejoin them. That gives him an opportunity to look at himself and make himself better (self soothe). I can't fix him and trying to get every situation back on track (and believing that I actually had the power to do it) was a big mistake on my part and its part of what landed me and my family (including my husband) so far down the path of BPD destruction (codependent behavior on my part).
By his own admission he loves me and I love him dearly too. I have since I was 17, when I first laid eyes on him.
Awesome! That means that you have history/ true commitment and that is the foundation of making a relationship with a BPD work! The bricks and mortar of your house will be the communication tools/ boundaries/ etc.
How do I get back in his good graces?
That is the funny part. You don't have control of getting back in his good graces (well at least I don't in my own relationship). I have to take the right steps to keep my own side of things clean and then trust that my husband will find his way back to me when he's ready. Often in our house it means that he disappears to play on the computer or watches a movie for a few hours until he has cooled down.
Doing some reading abandonment is HUGE so I don't want to ever repeat this. I would rather learn and move on but that will take cooperation on his part, which I am not getting a lot of.
That's another funny part. You don't actually need his cooperation. My husband told me at one point that he would never get help. That he would live miserable for the rest of his life. I took the lead. I took away his ability to use me as an emotional outlet and he had no choice but to leave or get healthier. So far, so good. Fingers crossed.
So in the here and now... .
If I were you I would make sure that I was brushed up on JADE. When he opens up making sure that I avoided Justifying, Arguing, Defending, Explaining. Keep your explanation short and sweet. When I stopped listening to my husband go on and on and on about things -- he finally realized that he was beating his points to death every time that we had a disagreement. (the day that lightbulb clicked was a relief for me).
If you need a framework for your explanation S. E. T. works well for me. See #3 in the lessons.
Finally tools to find way to move away from enmeshment will help. Realizing that he's going to go off sometimes... .and you can't help it. Staying strong (even by just distracting yourself) and not getting sucked into "the crazy train."
Hope at least some of this helps.
Oh and don't worry about when you try to reassure him and he calls it lies or BS. Mine does too. Just state your truth and validate but then move on. So in your situation I would probably say something like "I know that you feel like I bailed on you. That is totally understandable under the circumstances (ie I disappeared). It wasn't my intention. I got really tired and my back was hurting so I went home and got some sleep."
