Separating from (BPD?) Spouse

[1KitKat]

Firstly, I must say that my husband has NOT been diagnosed with BPD, but I have been in therapy with him so much and our therapist has said that he does have a personality disorder, but that she is reluctant to label it at the present time.  So, I hope that I am in the right place and that some of the users here can see some common threads between what I am going through and what they are going through, because I need all the help I can get.  So... .   thank you all in advance.

My husband of 17 years has finally gone off the rails.  This was a relationship that started 19 years ago, full of promise (from him) of truth, clarity, love and support.  Since then, I have raised his two children plus our own, mostly single-handedly, even though he was present. 

Things were great in the beginning; he wooed me, told me I was his twin flame; nothing could have been better.  He said and did all the right things.  He proposed marriage after six months of dating.  In retrospect, he morphed into someone that he knew would be very appealing to me.  We never fought.  I got everything I wanted and needed (ALARM BELLS).  Then, the holes started to appear. 

He became emotionally distant.  He would not deal with difficult issues surrounding his two children or his ex (like never asking for child support even though they lived with us full time!).  I caught him texting and emailing an old girlfriend, but not before he physically met up with her.  He swore it was innocent, that she had to give him something back that she had taken of his when they split up.  He surfed porn on the internet; I caught him dozens of times and he denied it every single time until I showed him his google history.  Then he denied that he had surfed it again, until I showed him his YouTube history.  Every time I caught him, I gave him more ammunition to go further underground to hide his activity (secret accounts, new passwords etc).

He lied about anything and everything, and still does.  He lied about past relationships (the splits were always the other party's fault).  He omitted critical information.  He did not tell me that he had an STD (which I ended up getting from him).  Then when he confessed, he told me that he had contracted it from an old girlfriend.  He has since changed his story several times.

I caught him visiting strip clubs for full-contact private VIP lap dances last year.  I asked him to leave the house last June.  Since then, he has moved three times without telling the kids or me, lies about small stuff, big stuff, will not tell me what is going on in his head.  The worst part, though, is the coldness in his behaviour towards me, which he alternates with baiting techniques (or gaslighting).  He deliberately creates situations that he knows will precipitate an emotional crisis in me, and when I blow up, he tells me I am imagining things, or that I am overreacting.  Then he does it all over again.  This emotional abuse nearly did me in last summer; I had a complete nervous breakdown.  I have since realized that he feeds off of my discomfort and that it gives him a sense of power over me.

In all of the reading I have done on the subject, it seems to me that this man is not a sociopath.  The violence (both verbal and physical) is not there; indeed, his modus operandi is to remain cold, distant, non-reactive and bait me from afar.  We only come together for therapy, and I even ended THAT this week, because he uses what I say to further bait me.  I have told the therapist this and she agrees.

He seems to have a lot of BPD traits, but whatever he's got, I have recently realized that none of this is my fault (he got away with blaming me for a year), and that he is unable to commit himself to relationships.  All of the other ones have ended badly; he has either cheated on them or lied his way out of their hearts.  His own sister has even told me that she doesn't think he loves his family.  For my part, I don't think he ever loved me at all; it was more that he observed what he needed to do in others and then set about moving through the motions.

I am devastated, but I think that I am on the right track towards moving away from this guy.  I told him last session that I would never allow him to get inside my head again.  I hope I can hold up to that!  If any of you have similar stories, I would love to read them.

[going places]

I could have written your story... . it was chilling to read.

Husband of 24 years.

We have 3 children together (all adult)

He has lied to me every day since the day we met (he confessed), from big things to what he had for lunch.

He has been addicted to porn since he was 13, BUT I HAD NO IDEA until 3 years ago.

He is sneaky, and deceptive.

I caught him 8 months deep in an affair (one that I NEVER EVER had any idea it was happening. No red flags. Never suspected.) His comment was 'he just wanted his cake and eat it to'.

He allowed me to be / or manipulated things so that I was always, the bad guy.

He won't do ANY counseling.

I have been to several over the years (because I was told *I* had the problem)

I could go on.

It's like he stopped maturing at age 13.

I am not being a drama queen or a smarty pants, I am dead serious.

He has the maturity of a 13 year old boy.

I can't wait to get away from him. Pack up my adult kids and get the snot outta here.

I just want to get as far away from all of this as I can AND heal AND learn why I accepted the garbage I did for so long and HOW NOT to ever, ever, ever be with someone like that again.

I am so sorry for your hurt.

I know what it's like, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

[1KitKat]

I wish that I could say that I can't wait to get away from him too, but it wouldn't be the truth.  I'm still stuck loving him, being in love with him, etc... .

The important thing here is that I finally realize that loving him will make no difference, and that I have to leave for me and our son.  The other two kids are independent adults, so I no longer have to worry about them from a financial perspective.

This man has cheated on me, lied to me, denied any wrong-doing, emptied my bank account (Okay... .   I went willingly on that last one) and otherwise decimated me, because I spent the last year enabling his behaviour.

I hope that I fall out of love with him.  And, in closing, I believe his development arrested somewhere around the age of 15 or 16.  I hope that he will continue to work with the therapist  to discover what made him jam up at that emotional age.  Fortunately for him, he has decided to dig into himself and try to fix this stuff.  At least, he SAYS that's what he wants to do.  As I mentioned last week, talk is cheap.  Hopefully he acts on it, if not just for himself and our son.

I saw another post by somebody who mentioned being 'creeped out'.  I, too, am feeling creepy about all of this. 

[ziniztar]

Hi both,

I feel for you. Finding out that a person you love lied and makes you believe you're the one that's got it all wrong is terrible.

To me, this also sounds like NPD Behaviour (narcissistic personality disorder). Perhaps it helps to look at those descriptions as well?

Good luck

[1KitKat]

I have looked at those as well (NPD).  Some of the symptoms just seems to cross over most of the time.  He doesn't lose it in anger; rather he is cold and aloof most of the time (?).

[SweetCharlotte]

Only a professional can diagnose him. Offhand, I don't think lack of violent actions rules out his being a sociopath, nor does lack of angry outbursts mean he can't have Narcissistic PD. It's like with BPD, he has to match a certain number out of a total. One can still have BPD without a trait considered central, such as self-harm, if one has enough of the other traits.

Whatever his diagnosis, he is a very sick person. You have gone through so much trying to make this work, only to see it get worse and worse. I can well understand your having a nervous breakdown. I hope that you will take care of yourself with counseling and whatever relaxes you and helps you to forget in a healthy way.

[1KitKat]

It looks to me as if it is quite difficult to diagnose people with these disorders; I guess that is why our therapist is not doing so right now.  She told me that whatever he's got, it's going to take a long time to unravel it, and it'll all depend on his level of willingness to go to the bad places in his life. 

As for NPD, he does not have the delusions of grandeur, but he has a lot of the other traits.  Similar for BPD.  And, in thinking about it, it doesn't really matter to me WHAT he has.  This forum has already been a great help to me... . just reading others' stories and seeing my own interwoven in them is enough to make me realize that I've come to the right place.  His behaviour is close enough to the behavioural traits that I see here to make me understand that I can get support here.

I think he's very uneasy that I have implemented 'limited contact' and is watching me to see if I'll keep it up.  I wish that I could do No Contact but that is not an option right now.

Four hours of consecutive sleep last night... . that is pretty good for me.  I've been an insomniac for a few years now.  I'm going for coffee right now - thank you for supporting me everyone!   

[Hudson]

I really feel the tears welling up reading your stuff. I've had about 10 years all up with my NBPDx. As far as I know mine wasn't diagnosed either, but really, they lie so much, how would you ever know. The thing is, my opinion, if you still love them or not, you have to get out for your own sanity, because staying only ends up bringing you down.  You're on an emotional roll-a-coaster, never knowing how it's going to end up from day to day.

We aren't divorced yet, I've told him in a registered letter in January this year, I need to move on. I've been gone now from our together marriage almost 2 years. I do still have feelings for him, no doubt... . but my goodness now I'm out and after I started to 'live' again, my life has improved emotionally, physically and spiritually.

I have bumped into him a couple of times, get this, once in the supermarket, he was leaving, walking to the car and I was going in... . he walked straight past me, he looked directly at me and kept going, didn't look back. I stood there (virtually with my mouth agast), thinking to myself; that was MY HUSBAND who just walked past me. I think I'd moved out 6 months prior. He's the most confusing, unemotional person I've ever known.

The thing is if you stick around, your friends and family who know you, know something's wrong. How can you continue to humiliate yourself by staying in such an unhappy environment? I was a completely different person and EVERYONE could feel it coming thro me. Otherwise, if I decided to stay longer and tough it out... . then I was on my own because I couldn't keep going to family for instance and crying on their shoulder, which I did often; and not fixing the problem!  I needed to do something more as it'd been 3 years now with no change. Someone HAD TO DO SOMETHING! We'd both been in therapy, together and separately etc. Nothing was working.

The other thing to consider, which was really important to me was I'd stuck it out and tried everything to flip this sucker over.

* moving out for a week at a time

* confronting him, rationally... . talking to him

* going to therapy

* praying

* screaming at him and slamming doors till they almost bent

* romantic dinners

* telling him I loved him; how could he do this to our marriage

* threatening him

* having others speak to him

* forgiving him... . time and time and time again

* crying, even at the dinner table with tears falling into my food, he never said a word!

Not worth it. As much as it almost killed me to pack up and leave,  it was so INCREDIBLY liberating after a while. I could laugh when I wanted, I had nobody to pick on me all the time, accuse me of this, that or the other, it was so amazing (not all the time, and not for a few months), particularly as we were still meeting for coffee or lunch etc.

The strange thing tho was I waited. And waited. And waited. After moving out. I eventually got a text asking me if I'd accidentally taken a dvd series from his shelf? That was it. A dvd after all I'd been thro, all he cared about was a dvd. I was as numb as the time he passed me from the supermarket. I was stunned. He didn't give a hoot how I felt, I'd physically moved and had given him a months notice. I thought a months notice might 'jolt' him into action, but no! The other thing was, I started to collect boxes for packing, by the time the date arrived, (a removalist was booked) he was helping me pack by saying things like... . don't forget your exercise ball and here this is yours (handing me a vase)!  Then I left the keys on the kitchen bench... . and then he said... . " I had no idea you were leaving till I got home that day"  I was just stunned. All my furniture is with about 10-15 different friends places. I've been living out of one suitcase for two years. Sorry, I'm now getting my career and health back on track. I'm working on me now as I can't help him as much as I tried and it still hurts deeply.

I'm a long way from full-recovery (if there's any such a place) but I tell you, IM NEVER going back to that life. I'm free! 

HUDSON

[1KitKat]

Incredible. I know that even when they show a complete lack of emotion, whether it be at the dinner table or at the grocery store, they are actually feeling. This was explained to me by the therapist. They just do not know how to explain, or even admit that they are feeling. And then there is the line, and the cheating. Apparently, it is all about self validation. Sometimes, when I sit here and think about it, it is really hard for me to process that he went to a strip club and had a 24-year-old naked woman sit on him and touch him and touch herself, and the chalk it all up to "self validation".  That's when the anger comes back. That 24-year-old stripper is only four years older than his own daughter. When I talk about creepy, yeah, that is creepy for me.

I appreciate your story, it makes me feel less crazy. Thank you, thank you.

[bpbreakout]

 Hi 1kitkat, this post rang a few bells for me on a few levels. As a guy some of the comments made me feel uncomfortable about myself and I would like to post something if only to make sense of things for myself.

I have been married 18 years to someone with BPD or something very close.

From the beginning, she always had high expectations with the romantic side of our relationship but also a tendency to be demanding and disrespectful if things weren’t going her way. From the beginning she could be impatient and dismissive if I wanted to talk about how I felt about things. Also maybe too focussed on how things looked on the outside as opposed to how they were underneath. From the outside she was seen as the vivacious one and I was the quiet dependable one. I ignored the issues and focussed on being the “breadwinner”

Over the first few years of our marriage it became obvious she had some major anger issues and a tendency to be domineering without always being prepared to apologise or make amends when she was out of line. For a long time I always felt as if I did most of the compromising and bridge building in our relationship.

Two children later (now teens), she has been treated for post natal depression, diagnosed with bipolar 2 for a number of years and in the last 6 months re-assessed  with a cocktail of BP2, attachment disorder, PTSD, borderline, possible ADHD and major FOO issues. Having lived with her for almost 20 years and knowing what her FOO is like, I believe, this final “diagnosis” is spot on.

I have tried to keep the romantic side of our relationship going for many years but there have always been hidden feelings of resentment on my part as I feel I am expected to make the running on all of this and at the same time turn the other cheek to the anger outbursts. I was quite good at it for the most part for many years bought flowers arranged dates and so on. However I always found BPDw’s anger difficult to deal with it would be fair to say I have also come across as stubborn and angry many times over the years when I have felt she hasn’t owned her issues especially if our children have been affected.

For a long time I tried to keep things going because I wanted the marriage to keep going, there was a BP2 diagnosis (in my mind this meant forgiving her because I believed she couldn’t help the regular anger outbursts) and also for the children.

We are at a crossroads with our relationship . For me this is partly because I feel I have been too many years in a one way relationship and partly because with the recent re-assessment of her mental health, I feel BPDw has a lot more choice over her behaviour than I had previously thought.

For her part BPDw would and does describe me in very similar terms to some of the comments on this thread. Cold, emotionally distant, selfish among other things which I guess have some truth in them.  She would also say she had tried everything to “jolt” me into action though this has also included including threatening to have affairs, regularly calling me a useless husband and questioning my libido in front of the children and to her friends. I don’t feel loved by her and I think she has some intimacy issues (and I don’t mean just sexual issues) which she is unwilling to acknowledge.

I’m not sure where we go to from here as I don’t feel as if I can “switch on” the romantic side to our relationship if I am being threatened, and there is no willingness to recognise the difficulties she brings to the relationship.

For my part I am not a highly demonstrative person but I am a caring person and I have a sense of humour. I have not played around, lied and I’m not into lapdancing or strip joints. I have been a good hubby for years. I have cared enough about our relationship to have initiated several rounds of marital therapy and I care about our children. I also want to be treated respectfully.

As I said above I’m not sure how relevant my story is as I’m going through a process of make sense of things for myself. I’m not referring to your hubby who sounds very difficult, but maybe what I am saying is that things are not always what they may seem on the outside.

Good luck, it sounds as if you are moving in a healthy direction.

[1KitKat]

Hi bpbreakout

What an awesome post. Thank you for writing.

I don't think that I have ever referred to my husband as "difficult". The reason for this is that had I never confronted him with my discoveries of his aberrant behavior, he would still be living here. We would still be going through the motions.  I have to say that this is why I have never until now reached out to any type of support group that deals with BPD.

My husband is not difficult in the typical sense.  He does not yell at me. He does not hit me. But he is not here. He lives in his own world of pain. He does not deal with his children. He does not deal with his family. He does not deal with situations from his past life. He had a horribly traumatic early childhood, in which his birth mother rejected him and put him up for adoption. His adoptive parents were, as he puts it, "shiny, happy people". He was discouraged from expressing any feelings, any emotions, or any grief. He learned at a very young age that lying and concealing were better than telling the truth. He developed a major amount of anger, and then internalized it. He went through many, many relationships and either left when the chair got too hot or was thrown out. I have only found this out recently. But again, I will tell you that instead of lashing out at me, he retreated. And that invoked in me many trigger responses which resulted in him finally exposing his inner grief.

A piece of that retreat was to garner self-validation by visiting the strip joints etc. I understand that now. And I also understand that my behavior, because I had no idea of his illness, was not correct.  So, I can completely understand where you are coming from. But I would like to clarify that his anger is very real and very potent. And his anger has nothing to do with my behavior, except for the fact that I forced him to expose himself. He is seriously mad at me, this is why he baits and gaslights me.

I loved reading what you wrote tonight. It is so validating for me to hear of others who value their marriage as much as you do. 17 years ago, when I stood before God and said my vows, I seriously meant them. And I have stood by this man and his children and our child, through thick and through thin. But now, it is time to go.

Thank you so much for writing this.

[Hudson]

Dear 1KitKat and bpbreakout, thank you for your posts! Very interesting that you mentioned your husband 1KitKat is not difficult in the true sense, and he's not there, I can relate to all that, very much. Completely. Mine expressed a 'numbness' he felt he even expressed that 'he froze' sometimes, kind of not knowing what to do next or how to move out of a particular situation.  He was socially awkward and awkward sexually too!

The thing is tho I really loved him,  really deeply and I was very willing to accept things that were not 'perfect' about him. If that's all there was to bear, then I guess we'd still be together. It's ALL THE OTHER baggage that was from my perspective I WAS NOT willing to put up with that made me pack and leave running. 

Also really interesting what you say about the anger!   My husband didn't get angry either UNTIL, I exposed him too. He was so very angry with me and then all the sarcastic remarks came out. He turned really nasty. I flew to Canada to visit my boys just before I packed and left. I was skiing and trying to keep a brave face, chin up, but this Christmas morning at around 10am I absent-mindedly didn't push my boot into my binding, took off and quickly fell breaking my knee. I blamed the nBPD problems on this one as I've been skiing for 30 years, no accidents (bad ones, like a break that is).  When I arrived home (not having seen a proper doctor before I left), crazy agony flying home for 30 hours, Mr.mBPDh was not at all sympathetic, this was the next stage of me making my mind up to get the heck out.  I decided to not work, in fact threw my job in (didn't like it much anyway), he was demanding I go back to work on crutches, which would have been ok except the authopedic surgeon was adamant I was not to put any weight on it as I was a whisker of surgery and pins! So I didn't tell him I'd resigned. Oh boy, one day as I'm getting ready to go to church (he was one if our Pastors mind you! ) he yelled out "come on you cripple"! This was from the bottom story... . I came out to the balcony at the top of the stairs and said "what did you say?... did you call me a cripple?" I was gob-smacked and actually found that remark almost funny if it wasn't so serious! This was the type of treatment I was coping because I'd humiliated him by blowing the whistle on him to the head pastor (which I had to do)... . eventually he was asked not to come back after I'd left him.

I can give you a hundred examples equally as pathetic as the last one.

Honestly the heart-break is a killer and once you leave, even tho it's great to have the freedom of no one constantly picking on you, it's so hard from other perspectives.

The real antidote for me has been to meet someone else,   and he's normal! So my pain has gone from a 10 out of 10 to now a 3 out of 10. When I hear a sad song or movie that reminds me of either the pain or the way I loved him, the tears flow and I'm a bit of a mess.

All in all I'm so glad I'm out. 

Hope this helps, the only way forward in my 9 years experience is to head for the hills!

No regrets from me EXCEPT wish I'd done it years earlier. So sad

[1KitKat]

Yes Hudson, so many of our stories are nearly the same.

My ex has admitted to gaslighting and baiting me, being overly-critical etc... .   because of this anger that he has.  Last therapy session (and I MEAN last... .   I'm not going to couple's therapy any more just to listen to him twist what I consider to be the facts) the psychologist leaned over to him and said 'your behaviour towards your wife is SADISTIC.  Do you want to stop that?'  ... .   and he said that yes, he did want to stop it and he would stop it.

Fast forward to yesterday (NOT a good day for me)... .   he came over to the house to continue with the renovation work he started years ago but never completed... .   and it started all again.  I could feel myself getting very anxious, and finally told him that he was doing it to me again.  Rude, uncommunicative, and then when he did decide to communicate it was to criticize me.  Of course when I remarked upon the behaviour, he interrupted me and told me that I was being ridiculous.  Yup, that's me (and all the other women he's had in his life).  Ridiculous, crazy, hysterical... . you name it.

I just want the house finished so that I don't have to see him every weekend.  Give me strength, Lord.  He's on his way over again as I write this.  -_-

[going places]

My husband is not difficult in the typical sense.  He does not yell at me. He does not hit me. But he is not here. He lives in his own world of pain.

Mine does not yell (rarely does he yell), Does not hit me (which I would prefer then others would SEE the  abuse)... . but he is not here.

Mine is in a fantasy world.

Where he is the worlds greatest rock n roll drummer or the greatest skydiver in the world, etc.

When he's not fantasizing about how awesome and great he is, he is fantasizing about having sex with everyone on the planet. And that is because he is addicted to porn, and has been for 30 years.

He does not deal with his children.

He knows how to be the kids 'buddy' but has no idea how to parent.

I did all the parenting.

He does not deal with his family. He does not deal with situations from his past life.  He learned at a very young age that lying and concealing were better than telling the truth. He developed a major amount of anger, and then internalized it.

He is his father and grandfather to a T. This is a generational curse.

His parents were entitled thieves (taking from the work place and saying 'they will never miss it'

His parents were dishonest people who did dishonest things.

STBEX is sneaky, deceptive, and a habitual liar.

He went through many, many relationships and either left when the chair got too hot or was thrown out. I have only found this out recently. But again, I will tell you that instead of lashing out at me, he retreated. And that invoked in me many trigger responses which resulted in him finally exposing his inner grief.

A piece of that retreat was to garner self-validation by visiting the strip joints etc. I understand that now. And I also understand that my behavior, because I had no idea of his illness, was not correct.  So, I can completely understand where you are coming from. But I would like to clarify that his anger is very real and very potent. And his anger has nothing to do with my behavior, except for the fact that I forced him to expose himself. He is seriously mad at me, this is why he baits and gaslights me.

Gigs up when they are exposed.

THAT'S when the 'yelling' and the 'smart arced responses' and the hateful words began to spew.

It was easy for him to say "it's my fault, I accept responsibility for my actions'.

It was quite another for him to 'find out why he did it, and CORRECT that behavior'.

THEN came all the excuses, and the mean hatefulness, the silence, the ignoring... .

I loved reading what you wrote tonight. It is so validating for me to hear of others who value their marriage as much as you do. 17 years ago, when I stood before God and said my vows, I seriously meant them. And I have stood by this man and his children and our child, through thick and through thin. But now, it is time to go.

Thank you so much for writing this.

Ditto.

After I caught him in the affair, I did what God said, was following His Word, etc.

It has been 3 years since and I realized that I was "using God" to get what I want: For the marriage to work and be aweseome and bla bla bla.

Nope.

Jesus said "no divorce EXCEPT for marital unfaithfulness'.

So I am 'peace-ing out'.