Absolutely fed up, but have three wonderful children

[nesanel1a]

It's only been the last four years of this 19-year nightmare that I began to realize that the constant heartache in and of my marriage was the result of a disorder that my wife had--not that I had, though she had done a good job of convincing me otherwise for a long time! As my children started getting older and reacting strongly and impatiently with her, I began to understand that it was not me who had a hair trigger, but her who induced the same visceral responses in otherwise calm and rational people. The final clincher was a year ago when my poor mother-in-law, who is a very simple and kind-hearted person (also with her daughter), told me after interacting with my wife, her daughter, that she, my wife, "wants to humiliate her." Bingo, mother-in-law, I know that feeling very well!

I am too exhausted after a day of coping with the fallout from my wife's actions at the moment to go through the whole clinical history, which is in fact quite complex. I have not always acted like a prince and have my own issues, which makes the whole story very complicated.

But I am also tired of making allowances for complexity. I changed my bad behavior 15 years or more ago. I've worked on myself for a long time (and will continue to do so). I have approached my wife calmly and with understanding. I have given her support of all forms--emotional, in her academic career, financial... .It is never enough. The woman has not had to work a day since we were engaged 20 years ago. She has been trying to start and finish a dissertation since then. She did sacrifice herself and her academic career for our children, it is indeed true, as she reminds us every other day. But nobody asked her to make such a sacrifice in the first place. Now she's been back in school for four years. She is not a native English speaker, so I correct all of her papers, every sentence. It was my idea for her to apply to the university that accepted her in the first place. Still, it is not enough. I am the enemy and have everything to prove. Trust is not something that is built in a day, she reminds me. Yet have I really ever done anything to let think you couldn't trust me? Have I ever failed you even for one second?

It's not the utter lack of gratitude that has driven me to the brink of ending our marriage, but the constant humiliation. She can throw 4-5 hours of editing work at me in the middle of my working day without any advance warning and then become angry and nervous if I don't drop everything to get the paper done instantly. And, stupid me, I do, my paying clients and our only source of income be damned. Excuse me, lady, weren't you the one I and the children clearly heard screaming obscenities at me through the bathroom door just two days ago because I don't do anything for the home and that if I'm not more cooperative and don't assume my role as a member of the household community I can just leave? Wasn't it you who gratuitously threw in that I'm not making enough money to comfortably provide for my children? (Admittedly, her studies and absence from the home over the past four years have taken a toll on ability to work in an orderly fashion.) Weren't you the one who then didn't say a word to me when I came back after in fact having left for a few days? Did I really just see another letter in my inbox for correction, as if nothing had happened in the last few days? And now that you've toned it down with me because you want that letter corrected, do you think I am unfazed that you've now turned your wrath on your mother, who is staying with us and who couldn't sleep at all last night because of the onslaught she had to suffer from you in front of all the children yesterday?

We are under major financial pressure. But the one expense I wouldn't dare cut, risking her fury, would be the cleaning help. My wife has reduced her household duties to a few hours Friday afternoons. The rest of the time she is in the city at the university or staying up into the wee hours of the morning to fill my inbox with her brainy delights. She only comes home to complain about the dinner I or my daughter has made or about the mess in the kitchen--though it is not true. But for a compulsive cleaner, our standards are not hers. My wife, you see, is truly only happy when she has the entire family in the kitchen scrubbing the floors. Anything else is deficient and unproductive. I could make a thousand bucks a day but I'm a nobody if I don't have a mop in my hand. The cleaning woman thus performs a much more important function than her husband, who somehow thinks he facilitates all of this.

One of my wife's greatest problems in a nutshell has always been that she can't reconcile her compulsion to spend an entire day cleaning a bathroom (even in hotels in foreign countries when, before the Great Recession, we used to go on vacation) with the fact that she also wants to finish writing a doctoral dissertation.

I kept a diary for three years about our daily interactions. About a year ago it became too depressing for me to continue.

So you can gather from my cold tone above that I am at the end of my tether with her. She has said such cutting and hurtful things to me over the years--things that I would not even say to my worst enemy, even if I believed them to be true--that I really can't fathom going back to her emotionally. She never once took back what she said or apologized. It was as if for her she had never said them. We have been intimate a few times in the last 10 years, the last time about five years ago. I am in damage-control mode, for the simple sake of the children. But lately, she has been pushing the envelope so much, I am running out of energy fast. I just turned 50 a few months ago. Raising three normal children under these conditions is quite an accomplishment (though the youngest has a long way to go before he is out of the woods), and does give me satisfaction.

Yet I would like to live (and maybe love) now that I've grown wise enough to know how not to botch it. At minimum, I would like to be more productive again, without having to allow my wife's daily dish of craziness run interference with a solid portion of my brain activity. So, yes, I am seriously considering separation and divorce, even though in our financial situation this will certainly not be a picnic for me. But even roughing it like a hermit somewhere to save money sounds better to me nowadays than sticking it out at home, though I really don't want to subject the kids to that.

I'll leave it there and would be grateful for any reactions and advice.

[nesanel1a]

No response to my post below, which is a bit discouraging.

At any rate, I have a bit more energy now than when I wrote last evening.

Does anybody have any suggestions how I could get my wife to seek treatment? We all walk on eggshells, so I can't really imagine broaching the subject directly with her.

Any help would be appreciated. My wife is currently giving both myself and my mother-in-law the silent treatment! Normally, she sticks to one person at a time.

It's only been the last four years of this 19-year nightmare that I began to realize that the constant heartache in and of my marriage was the result of a disorder that my wife had--not that I had, though she had done a good job of convincing me otherwise for a long time! As my children started getting older and reacting strongly and impatiently with her, I began to understand that it was not me who had a hair trigger, but her who induced the same visceral responses in otherwise calm and rational people. The final clincher was a year ago when my poor mother-in-law, who is a very simple and kind-hearted person (also with her daughter), told me after interacting with my wife, her daughter, that she, my wife, "wants to humiliate her." Bingo, mother-in-law, I know that feeling very well!

I am too exhausted after a day of coping with the fallout from my wife's actions at the moment to go through the whole clinical history, which is in fact quite complex. I have not always acted like a prince and have my own issues, which makes the whole story very complicated.

But I am also tired of making allowances for complexity. I changed my bad behavior 15 years or more ago. I've worked on myself for a long time (and will continue to do so). I have approached my wife calmly and with understanding. I have given her support of all forms--emotional, in her academic career, financial... .It is never enough. The woman has not had to work a day since we were engaged 20 years ago. She has been trying to start and finish a dissertation since then. She did sacrifice herself and her academic career for our children, it is indeed true, as she reminds us every other day. But nobody asked her to make such a sacrifice in the first place. Now she's been back in school for four years. She is not a native English speaker, so I correct all of her papers, every sentence. It was my idea for her to apply to the university that accepted her in the first place. Still, it is not enough. I am the enemy and have everything to prove. Trust is not something that is built in a day, she reminds me. Yet have I really ever done anything to let think you couldn't trust me? Have I ever failed you even for one second?

It's not the utter lack of gratitude that has driven me to the brink of ending our marriage, but the constant humiliation. She can throw 4-5 hours of editing work at me in the middle of my working day without any advance warning and then become angry and nervous if I don't drop everything to get the paper done instantly. And, stupid me, I do, my paying clients and our only source of income be damned. Excuse me, lady, weren't you the one I and the children clearly heard screaming obscenities at me through the bathroom door just two days ago because I don't do anything for the home and that if I'm not more cooperative and don't assume my role as a member of the household community I can just leave? Wasn't it you who gratuitously threw in that I'm not making enough money to comfortably provide for my children? (Admittedly, her studies and absence from the home over the past four years have taken a toll on ability to work in an orderly fashion.) Weren't you the one who then didn't say a word to me when I came back after in fact having left for a few days? Did I really just see another letter in my inbox for correction, as if nothing had happened in the last few days? And now that you've toned it down with me because you want that letter corrected, do you think I am unfazed that you've now turned your wrath on your mother, who is staying with us and who couldn't sleep at all last night because of the onslaught she had to suffer from you in front of all the children yesterday?

We are under major financial pressure. But the one expense I wouldn't dare cut, risking her fury, would be the cleaning help. My wife has reduced her household duties to a few hours Friday afternoons. The rest of the time she is in the city at the university or staying up into the wee hours of the morning to fill my inbox with her brainy delights. She only comes home to complain about the dinner I or my daughter has made or about the mess in the kitchen--though it is not true. But for a compulsive cleaner, our standards are not hers. My wife, you see, is truly only happy when she has the entire family in the kitchen scrubbing the floors. Anything else is deficient and unproductive. I could make a thousand bucks a day but I'm a nobody if I don't have a mop in my hand. The cleaning woman thus performs a much more important function than her husband, who somehow thinks he facilitates all of this.

One of my wife's greatest problems in a nutshell has always been that she can't reconcile her compulsion to spend an entire day cleaning a bathroom (even in hotels in foreign countries when, before the Great Recession, we used to go on vacation) with the fact that she also wants to finish writing a doctoral dissertation.

I kept a diary for three years about our daily interactions. About a year ago it became too depressing for me to continue.

So you can gather from my cold tone above that I am at the end of my tether with her. She has said such cutting and hurtful things to me over the years--things that I would not even say to my worst enemy, even if I believed them to be true--that I really can't fathom going back to her emotionally. She never once took back what she said or apologized. It was as if for her she had never said them. We have been intimate a few times in the last 10 years, the last time about five years ago. I am in damage-control mode, for the simple sake of the children. But lately, she has been pushing the envelope so much, I am running out of energy fast. I just turned 50 a few months ago. Raising three normal children under these conditions is quite an accomplishment (though the youngest has a long way to go before he is out of the woods), and does give me satisfaction.

Yet I would like to live (and maybe love) now that I've grown wise enough to know how not to botch it. At minimum, I would like to be more productive again, without having to allow my wife's daily dish of craziness run interference with a solid portion of my brain activity. So, yes, I am seriously considering separation and divorce, even though in our financial situation this will certainly not be a picnic for me. But even roughing it like a hermit somewhere to save money sounds better to me nowadays than sticking it out at home, though I really don't want to subject the kids to that.

I'll leave it there and would be grateful for any reactions and advice.

[Deb]

Please don't feel discourage. It's the season and many people are busy. I am sure someone else will be along to add comments. But I would like to welcome you to the forum. Getting your wife to seek treatment may not be possible. You can learn some techniques that could help you cope. Things like SET and making boundaries. On the right of the screen, you will see a section that says "TOOLS". Check it out. Many here will understand what you are going through and can tell you what was most helpful to them.

[warhar]

We feel your pain, your frustration and your anger - we've been there. As to not receiving any answers - it is the holiday season and for those of us co-parenting with a BPD it is THE most stressful time of the year, be cool, someone more informed than I will answer, in the meantime explore this site, read the forums, read the self-helps and tools. You are not alone, be strong, be cool, we are here!