This post is going to be long... .
I have to consciously keep reading the success stories to find hope. I want to stay and fight for my marriage. I dream of a better future for us - but then I wake up and reality hurts. As for today, I have things on two scales: what I can live with now and what I can´t. The "can´t" is so heavy it´s hugging the floor.
I just read a whole bunch of threads and I guess the underlying truth is: can I live with him if he doesn´t change? There is no reason to be naive any longer and live under a dream. Life is what it is. I see now how naive I was thinking I could love him into getting better, or love him enough for him to seek treatment - or keep at it! I have no guarantees that life will be different.
I have had some people ask me to be a little more specific in my posts so they could better answer me. I hate talking about the past, because I feel like I´ve played the role of a highly stupid person. I mean honestly, how could I be so dumb?
But anyhow, I´ve decided to tell my story.
Here is a bit of my life: I have been a victim of domestic violence and abuse, BUT I had never realized it. My uBPDh fits all the criteria od the disorder, to the last comma, but I only ofund out recently.
I could spot abuse and violence a mile away in other marriages and could pin point even the slightest oddest thing in other marriages, but mine was so off the grid I din´t know where to begin. No communication/marriage conflict book could have prepared me for trying to talk to my uBPDh.
I knew something was odd about my marriage, but couldn´t say what. I looked for advice from family and friends and have had all kinds of funny advice over the years: he´s in the military. People in the military are under so much stress that´s the way they react.
yeah right... .Or my favorite: your husband is so perfect! I wish my husband was like that! Really! Want to trade? And this one: men react hitting things when they´re mad - that´s normal. You shouldn´t have provoked him. And I heard this one too: jealousy mean he loves you. :'(
Then I read the symptoms for BPD and it was right on - to the very last detail.
When I got married I had 3 things on my list and I told him: (1) I wasn´t going to be a housewife. That is what is expected in this culture (I´m not living in the US). I wanted a job and wanted a career and was very straight forward about it. He accepted that. (2) I would leave him if he cheated on me and (3) I would leave him if he hit me. For me, that pretty well summed it up.
I married at a young at to my first and only boyfriend. My parents were missionaries and I fell in love with this guy... .Since then, my parents have gone back to the US and I have married and decided to make my life in this other country. So I have had no other experience with men, and as being in a cross-cultural relationship, people advised me that it was going to be hard. Very hard. I didn´t have a problem with that. I am patient, understanding, very diplomatic, easy to be with... .Yes, Im near to perfect - LOL. Just kidding - I knew it would be hard, i just didn´t know it was going to be impossible.
I was doing okay with all the borderline in his life, and our marriage wasn´t swell, but I´d just do one day at a time, and I was ok. No marriage is perfect - that´s what I kept telling myself. We had very good times. Still do. We could laugh and love and life was ok. It wasn´t all bad.
I found out soon enough that we could talk about anything - the kids, the car, the dog, the neighborhood - but we could not talk about me. My wishes and desires where not a part of that talking process. If I brought up any subject that I would like to do something for me - I´d get the silent treatment. If I pushed just a little - I´d get the verbal abuse to the core. I mean he had the verbal abuse down to a fine art. I would be so crushed I ´d be shaking and gasping for air. Then he´d go to sleep - and snore. He was perfectly fine with beating me up verbally to the core and then acting as if nothing happened. And he wake up with a smile. And expected me to do the same.
So I learned early on that ME was not a good subject. And if i showed any sign that I was unhappy he´d give me the "Any woman would love to be in your place! You dont´ have to work! I give you everything you need, so just shut up and thank God you have ME".
Any fool would have seen where that was going, but in this culture, yes, he has a good paying job being in the military and I see families struggling to make ends meet, so he had a point - he did provide. Only financially though. It´s not that we´re rich, but we do make more than the vast majority of the poverty line here in my country. So I indeed, had to count my blessings, but that seemed a bit odd at the same time.
The more I pressured things, the more he´d act out, so I learned to be quiet. So I moped the floors and cooked the food and changed the diapers all very "happily"... . I learned to play the mask game and bee 100% happy all the time. That was his expectation - if I wasn´t happy he´d explode big time.
That´s the
only way our marriage would work. So that´s what I did - I wore a mask.
Anyway, He´s violated all 3 of my initial boundaries.
I am in a 16 yr marriage and in this time he has isolated me from all my friends. I have none. I talk to no one. When I talk about making new ones, he says I´m incapable of making friends. He says I´m too shy.
I had one friend over and he walked in the door from coming home from work, looked at me with a face like hell froze over and went the bedroom and locked the door. Needless to say, she has not come over again.
He thinks my mother is the devils´relative. She does have a strong personality, but I hardly ever see my family. And it´s all very wisely and logically played: we cant afford a trip now, you cant leave the kids, bla, bla, bla.
He will not let me work, and when I get down in his face, he agrees to the idea for a day or two. Then he comes around with impossibilities. He says: "who´s going to watch the kids? who´s going to drive them to school? Who´s going to this and that?". And he has a funny way or logical way of cornering me into doing what he wants. There are so many stipulations that I have no way out.
He will NOT hire a nanny because he says people are not to be trusted. He has no friends either - he hardly speaks to his family. He hates his brother and sister and keeps pushing his parents into hate/love groups.
I kind of relate because his family is clinical case study. He father was alcoholic and abused his mother badly. Poor thing, she has it worse than I do. She had no where to turn, so she emotionally created a bond with my h at a young age to survive her own marriage. So my uBPDh got the short end of the stick very young.
What hurt worst is not the borderline, it´s the cheating. Now I know for most people, porn is not cheating. Bu it is to me, it is. I´m not talking about the normal stuff you watch here or there, I mean every one does that once in a while. I´m talking when porn takes you away from the one you swore to love and protect and instead of focusing your efforts on your wife you seek pleasure and fulfillment elsewhere. So when porn becomes inhibits you of having pleasure with the real world, then, yes, you are cheating. At least that´s how I define it.
He´s not just a porn watcher, he´s addicted.
I´m talking BADLY addicted! Watched it a work, at home, couldn´t stop. And while I was neglected for weeks, he was in some other world having a good time. And it hurt so bad because I tried so hard to make our marriage a good one - I worked so hard on making myself interesting. I was into all kind of new (but still normal and healthy stuff) and I tried everything - but he was never there.
I knew something was wrong, but not sure what... .so I tried harder. I looked for all the little signs of what he liked - long hair - I let mine grow. Thin waist - I lost 46 pounds. Yes - it took me 2 1/2 years, but I did it. I thought I was too white, since all the people here are considerably more tan that I, so I got tans. I bought lingerie, etc - I did what I could. Everything that I could. Every time I brought up the subject of our sex life he verbally abused me - telling me all my defects and how sensitive I was. He´d go on and then get physically abusive. He´d through stuff and scream and act out.
He is addicted to porn so bad that he has told me to my face that he has no sexual feelings for me what so ever. I can logically understand that, because after your addicted to seeing stuff that went from one woman, to two, to groups, to men... .I mean, it wasn´t just normal porn.
Kind of like drinking- one bottle of beer just doesnt´give you what it used to, so go get two. Then do whiskey. Then do drugs... .So it escalated into a yucky mess. He´s had plenty of time to escalate: he´s had 14 years of this. It was stuff that I do not have names for.
Past being past, how is someone like me, just a normal human, going to provoke any sexual interest much less intimate sexual relations with someone that deviated? Pavlov´s dog... .That´s what turns him on - not me.
In the past as I pushed for explanations, he´s told me that I am his best friend whom he occasionally has sex with. When he finally confessed about his secret non-relational sex life (that so intensely fulfills his BPD dream - sex with no intimacy or personal relationships) I fell on my face. I cried for 2 months straight. I lost 10 pounds because I couldn´t eat. I couldn´t function... I couldn´t read, eat, think. The kids got to school late for 2 weeks straight. I burned every meal I made. Or I´d forget to put salt on it. The clothes pile grew humongous. I lost it.
I could handle the borderline, I couldnt´handle the lies and the idea that I was never in this marriage to start with... .
What´s sad is that I wouldn´t cry in front of him. I´d wait for him to go to work. I´d wait for him to go to sleep, then I´d cry in the bathroom. I was so sacred of him finding out I was sad - until in dawned on my one night in the bathroom... .what am I doing?
But then he said it was time I quit crying because it wasn´t such a big deal. He said he was tired of my tears. He was tired of my sadness. I had to happy 100% of the time.
I said I was leaving. FINALLY
- yeah! Points for me!
That´s when he said he´d change - and what I don´t get - is that he has. Or it´s a pretty damn big mask he´s put on. He´s more involved in the kids lives. He´s more involved in my life - well some of it at least. He said he´s let me study - not work, just study. He said he recognizes that he has abused me and will seek treatment. (That is yet still a promise - I´m waiting for action.)
Yes, he says he loves me, but when it comes down to it, can he ever love me for being who I am? Nope - I don´t think so. The images of what he wants sexually haunt me. He´s lied to me so much, I cant´even trust him. If I am to stay in this relationship, how can I trust him, if EVERY single time I´ve confronted him, he´s lied to save his ___?
From what I´ve read in the posts and lessons is he can get better with treatment, but he has to be in this big time. But then I think, yes, the mental part might be able to get better, but the sexual? What about me? Do my feelings count? Can I ever really truly forgive him for all the abuse and act as if it didn´t happen? I mean every time I confronted him about something he lied - for 16 years. How in the world can I trust him again? Why would I even want to?
Is it worth it, or should I just through 20 years of my life in the trash, start over and be happier, healthier and wiser? Should I just move back to the US, pack the bags and the kids, forge his signature on some paper so we can travel, and just hit the road? I don´t see him signing a paper so i can travel with the kids. That´s what I have to do if I leave the country. I have to have a signed paper form the other party. I could imagine him exploding over that and becoming very very violent. I think I´d become violent if he did that to me.
Or is there hope that now, and this is the moment I´ve waited for my whole life. The eye opening moment when the truth had come out, the hurt is on the table and now that everyone knows who everyone is we finally have some hope? It this Am I too naive to believe that I need a miracle? Expecting one? He has said he´s let me study - so I could just put up a fight and get a degree. He agreed to it now, but I have a feeling that´s going to change when I start actually going to campus. In five years I could have a degree, get a job and pay my way out of this mess. That would give him time to look for treatment and also would give me time to heal my wounds. I´ve had a mask on for 16 years, 5 more isn´t that hard.
One blogger asked me if I was safe. I am now, today, but I´m not so sure I will be when I hit the road and take the kids. I mean, even if I could get out of the country with out him knowing. He´s in the military, let me remind you. I´ve gone to the American Embassy, (I am an American) and they said I´ve stayed overseas so long I can´t even request my children be american citizens. Sum it up - I´ve been married so long that I´ve closed the doors for my children.
I can get a tourist passport for my kids that are legal for just 30 days. So I´d have to go back to the US with 2 illegal citizens. In in such a mess... .I decided once that if i can put my mask on for 5 more years, I´ll get a nursing degree, find a job and then move to another city in this country.
I have a lot of questions (legal, emotional, sexual, psychological, educational) a lot of insecurities and really dont´know if it´s going to be worth it. I don´t know how to get out either. I want out - I really do. But then there are days that I love him. I want to stay and fight for the man I love (or at least am trying to right now).
I have faith of a better future, whatever it may be.
So, that´s my life´s story.
