so fast forward to today... silent treatment from her before going to work(actually cant complain it was kinda nice)get to work and find she slips a note in my lunch box... .Im sorry... I love you... .Told you I was broken with a sad face... does anyone else go through this... to be honest not sure to believe the notes(had a few in past) or is she just hitting her own re-set button to get my guard down to clobber me again... ?
Obviously, I don't know your wife, wilsonian, but that note sounds like a real apology to me. And, from what I can tell from the behaviors of the BPD people in my own life (dBPD adult son; Husband with BPD traits, uD-I-L & uM-I-L), when they do apologize--and my M-I-L
never does!--they mean it at the time they do it. Now, that doesn't mean they won't go back to the same behaviors at a later time (and sometimes, only minutes or hours later), but in my experience those apologies were true for them when they gave them.
It's just that, the things that set them off to dysregulate in the first place seem to continue to set them off again and again... .When they realize it was unwarranted and apologize, they are out of the heat of the emotions and able to reflect. Unfortunately, unless they can learn to
not get set off by those particular things (in Therapy, DBT, etc.), the emotions will probably take over again in the future. Is your wife in any sort of Therapy? Does she know she has a problem and could use some help for it? Are you in some sort of counseling yourself, to help you through all of this?
I'm really glad to hear that things have been getting better, and congratulations on the new house!
