PwBPD's unhelpful family

[wundress]

Can I stop my wife seeing her family? I know I've had advice on this a bit before but the situation is getting worse and I feel horrible about it too.

My wife got her official diagnosis on Thursday. She rang her mother to let her know how the appointment went. She was even considering telling her about the BPD even though it may open a whole can of worms. Unfortunately she rang and her mother was completely disinterested. In fact, I think she was mostly just jealous because I went to the appointment instead of her! She brushed my wife off and refused to speak to her about it because my wife was in my company at the time! She hasn't bothered to contact my wife since either.

Her family seem to have taken a disliking to me. They addressed Xmas cards to her, refused to invite me places, talked about me behind our backs. All the while I'm the one trying to support her yet getting all the abuse from her during her low periods and then getting flack from her family too.

Meanwhile my wife is upset because she found out her family are all b**ching about her behind her back too even though they know she has been v unwell. I'm trying to help her manage her feelings about that but frankly I feel like encouraging her to feel badly towards them. I want her to walk away from them. I certainly don't want to see them! 

What can I do? I feel myself getting more and more worked up about it and their attitude towards me is starting to affect my self esteem. I want to scream at them and tell them all how crap they are as a family.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[pallavirajsinghani]

... .there are a lot of ifs and buts here... .

Could it be that you are being triangulated here with her family?

Could it be that this is a cycle of her identifying herself as a victim beginning once again with you as the rescuer from her big bad family?

Could it be that you are being considered "bad" by her family because she may have perhaps devalued you to them inadvertently?

Could it be that they are afraid of her if they address the card to both of you?

Could it be that her family is walking on eggshells... .has been walking on eggshells for a long time... .

Could it be that they are unaware of this mental disorder and what it implies... .

Please take a deep breaths, several deep breaths and try not to become one of the points in this Karpman's triangle.

and forgive me as I cannot communicate the soft tone in which the above is being spoken... .the written word seems harsh... .the emotion behind the above is caring and respectful... .of you, of her and of her family... .

[wundress]

Unfortunately her family are far from caring. Her mother is incredibly selfish. My wife is a victim of interrors generational sexual abuse as well as physical abuse and neglect.

I'm sure to some extent she has devalued me and I have raised this with her.

Her family aren't afraid of her. In fact I think she is afraid of them. The card thing is their way of being manipulative I think.

[waverider]

Regardless of the rights and wrongs, and all the blame slinging, the simple fact is they are a toxic influence. trying to influence your wife one way or another is adding to the toxic interaction.

You are probably in a position whereby when your wife plays the victim due to their behavior, you want to believe, she knows you do so you are an easy and rewarding source to vent to. This adds to your  resentment.

It is very hard to get out of this, not reacting and not being affected is your goal as you are probably inadvertently adding to your wife's conflict. You really need a "whatever" stance.

FOOS often have had a lot to play in this disorder developing so are often not all that open to to acceptance, they often see it as a reflection on them. This will trigger a defensive stance which results into projection on to you, as you are the "exposure risk".

I go through the exact same. In my wifes circumstances, her mother needs to control her environment and fix everything. My wife has a huge fear of being controlled, or told what to do, so there is no chance of harmony between them. All contact reverts to the superficial, and at times "babytalk' with very little truth or reality.

Unfortunately add to this mix my wife is entrenched in victim personality, her mother in rescuer personality (her ego believes she can fix anything). The result is they can't keep their distance and get on with their lives, as every victim needs a rescuer and every rescuer needs a victim. So they are always drawn together, then clash terribly. It is completely self fueling, almost perpetual and toxic.

Getting in the middle will always see you off side with one or the other

[wundress]

The trouble is that I agree with her anger at them. My wife is very angry but then puts up her facade and pretends it doesn't bother her. She says she doesn't expect anything else from them. She doesn't really do playing the victim as it doesn't suit her "butch" personality.

I feel really sad for her. I'm not sure she expects me to rescue her. I think it's probably me feeling bad on her behalf.

I just can't believe their selfishness. Her one brother was rude to her on a "family" night out. Her other brother is talking behind her back and being rude about her because she didn't attend a different family event. At both of these her mother was drunk and because it's a trigger for my wife she doesn't want to be around that.

[waverider]

The trouble is that I agree with her anger at them.

Ditto, but consolidating that anger gets you nowhere, if you can't let go she never will. It just compounds and takes over your life at times.

[wundress]

How can I let go of it? I've never learned to deal with anger. My family are terrible for holding grudges, my father used to have frequent angry and violent outbursts seemingly over nothing, yet I was taught I was not allowed to be angry.

So now when I feel angry I don't know what to do with it.

[Notwendy]

I think, Wundress, you have touched on the heart of the matter. When we have a problem with something, we can think- how does this reflect that the problem is ME? This doesn't negate the other side, but our side of the fence is the part we can work on. Your wife's family could be horrible, but you have no control over their behavior. You do have control over your reaction to it.


FOO patterns are strong. They can drive the family behavior and are intergenerational. Many of us are not aware of our own FOO's dysfunctional behaviors ( unless they are so far out that they are obviously unacceptable) because when we are small, and grow up in an environment, the behaviors in that environment are all we know. We adapt to them by forming our own adapted behaviors- humans are resilient. However, when we leave that environment, the behaviors that worked for us in our FOO may be maladaptive in other ones.

Family ties are strong. Even abused children love their parents. A family could be just horrible, but the act of leaving, cutting off one's family is very hard, and not something someone may wish to do. Often loved ones are enmeshed, and so leaving one family member may result in being cut off from people you don't want to leave.

One example of this is that my mother with BPD was angry at me, painted me black to her FOO, and since then, her FOO- aunts, uncles, cousins, have distanced themselves from me. Breaking the family patterns of behaving with my mother resulted in the loss of a relationship with other family members. Your wife may choose to tolerate the way her family acts so as not to lose relationships. That doesn't mean she likes it, and she still may vent to you.

But her family, and her relationship to them is her business. If you intervene, it may not go so well. You can, however, validate her feelings while being careful not to criticize her family. If she is enmeshed, she will perceive this as a criticism of her. Be careful to validate her feelings without making them into facts, even if her family isn't nice.

Now for your side of the fence. Of course it is upsetting to see your wife's family act this way. Yes, you are allowed to be angry. Like all emotions, anger is an emotion. It is real, it has a time and a place. It isn't wrong to feel anger. What makes anger a difficult emotion is how it works physically. It floods the brain with activity that is designed for survival. This represses the thinking, planning, "better not say or do this" part of the brain. Know that, when you are feeling angry, you are using your lizard brain. Most people can recall saying or doing something they later regret when angry. We need healthy outlets for it so we don't do this. It could be punching a punching bag, running, writing something ( and then deleting it). It's important to be aware of our feelings and accept that we are humans. Your family didn't have an emotionally healthy way for dealing with anger, but you can have one.

[wundress]

Thanks for the reply. I think one part of my problem is that I DO recognise the dysfunction in my own FOO and have done since I was really quite young. I too have been the victim of family members painting me black to other family members. The result being that I am the black sheep of my family and at times it is difficult to have relationships with my siblings as they have been fed a pack of lies about me since they were young.

It's frustrating because she knows what they are like. She says there is no one she wants to continue having a relationship with from her family and sometimes wants to blurt out to them all about the abuse. Yet she makes me look bad to them. She will let them say all sorts about me and behave terribly towards both of us. Yet she won't walk away.

Last night she was again upset by her family (it happens nearly every day), she cried to me about it, then went to her own house and had nightmares so bad that she was screaming and woke up a visitor who was staying with her. Then today she is sad and mad at me!

[Notwendy]

I recognized it in my family too, but not everyone does, or if they do, they still can be enmeshed. I didn't realize how much my FOO influenced me even though I was aware of the dysfunction. It took a lot of work on co-dependency and an ACOA group ( which also works with dysfunctional family patterns even without alcohol) to change some of the maladaptive reactions I have. Many people can identify with the "Laundry List " of ACOA.


I have a sibling who I think gets the best and the worst of the FOO. This member has been treated both wonderfully and horribly. The thing about most families is that, even with dysfunction, they are not usually all bad. The good times are sometimes intermittent reinforcers, the strongest of behavioral reinforcement. This family member is strongly enmeshed, and even aware of it, but can be pulled into the dysfunction.

Also, try not to get sucked into the emotion of the moment. Your wife can one moment love them, hate them, but her ties may be so strong she can't break them. At some level, this feels normal and comforting to her, because it is what she grew up in. That can look strange to someone on the outside. The sib that I mentioned describes this as being under some kind of spell. This behavior would not be tolerated from someone else, but it is from my mother for some reason. I don't feel that way, I will stand up to her, but I also risked the loss of a relationship with her FOO. Ironically, when she painted me black, it was the "emotion du jour"- and she does not feel that way now. However, the words are hard to undo, and so my relationship with her FOO remains strained, even though she has long forgotten about the reason. Your wife's feelings may change more frequently than the weather.

[waverider]

Your own vulnerabilities make you a prime player in a Drama triangle, with your wife entrenched in the victim role, she stays stuck in this role as to not be the victim is an alien concept. take a read of this article

Escaping Conflict and the Karpman Drama Triangle.

Your history makes you easily empathize with the victim role triggering the rescuer in you. To your wife even though she sees her family as persecutor she yearns for them to be rescuers, as that is what idealized families are, so she puts them in that role while handing your the persecutor badge to wear.

Be aware that not being rescuing enough, the abandonment it triggers can put you in the persecutor seat.

BPD black and white thinking tends to place most people around then in one catagory or the other determined on whether their needs are being met or not. Hence people swap camps a lot. Which confuses everyone.

The upshot is the "persecutors" and the "rescuers' who otherwise have no drama with each other end up in conflict, hence "closing the triangle".

Unfortunately stopping from seeing FOO, doesn't stop the drama as the anger remains, it needs to in order to stay away, resentment remains. The ideal is to learn to detach from the behavior, both yourself and your wife. As Wendy says her FOO will not change, but if you both manage to get on the same page and not take anything they say seriously it will help a great deal. This comes down to your own levels of self confidence.

I know its not easy to do, but it is the direction you need to take

[wundress]

Thanks Wendy and Waverider. The advice all makes sense. I've decided to be the bigger person. They caneed say what they like about me and I am going to be completely civil and pretend I know nothing about their comments and rudeness. I'll pay interest in them when necessary but refuse to get involved in conflict and drama.

As for my wife I will try to keep my opinions to myself. I've suggested that she will probably never get the answers and comfort she seeks from them.

[formflier]

  I still spend way too much time trying to figure out things in my wife's FOO.  I used to think if I could understand it, that I could be a good influence and help fix it.    Great idea, except they all think they are the "only" right people in the world.  They don't want to be fixed, yet can tell you in great detail what everyone else is doing wrong.  I'm trying to figure out the "right" distance to keep.  I need to be close enough to be aware of big upheavals, so I can be prepared for weirdness from my wife, or possibly "nudge" her in the right direction.    Also need to be aware enough to realize that some big ol' train of pain is coming down the tracks and it's time to get up off the tracks and go fishing.    The train wrecks happen often, and her FOO has their own way of cleaning up the carnage after it is all over.  Once the tension has gone down, they are decent people to be around.  So, advice:  If you can switch from analyzing, anger, fixing to "awareness", I think it will do you a world of good.  What to do with anger?    Feel it.  Consider what it is telling you.  Perhaps you can use the anger as "fuel" to power you through setting appropriate boundaries.          

FF

[wundress]

My wife ended up waiting over a week and a half for her mother to call her back. The call never came so she called her father and told him how annoyed she was and how she has been struggling with her new medication. Her father's response? To tell her they are annoyed at her for not telling them when she went to visit her nan! So understandably she got upset and told him how selfish they are and that they haven't bothered to find out how she is. I heard all of the call so I know that this is completely their fault. Fed up of it.

[Cat Familiar]

Well, at the very least, you know that she isn't the origin of this current conflict with her family. You can use that feeling to validate her without going into detail.

I've made the mistake of stepping into my H's family land mines and now I don't say anything critical about them--I just listen and try to be supportive of his feelings.

[waverider]

My wife ended up waiting over a week and a half for her mother to call her back. The call never came so she called her father and told him how annoyed she was and how she has been struggling with her new medication. Her father's response? To tell her they are annoyed at her for not telling them when she went to visit her nan! So understandably she got upset and told him how selfish they are and that they haven't bothered to find out how she is. I heard all of the call so I know that this is completely their fault. Fed up of it.

They may sound like plausible stand alone issues, but they are all just the latest symptoms of underlying family dysfunctionality. So who's to blame on which occasion is not that important. Its all delayed tit for tat.

You can't pick and choose when to be involved, you have to set a precedent of not being drawn in.

[wundress]

Hmm the thing is my wife is only 24 and she was 19 when we met. I could see for myself how her family are. She's not the one who causes conflict. They have always failed to be parents. Can't blame a child for acting out when a parent is failing to provide adequate care. In fact, when my wife was 13 she sat her parents down and asked them to provide boundaries and to stop trying to be friends rather than parents.  I know this because her aunt told me