How do I untangle myself from this...

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hi Everyone,

This is my story. I will try and fit it in the one post.

I have been married for 4 years and in a relationship with my wife for 10 years. We have a 6 year old son, and she has 3 children from her previous marriage. The ages of her children are S21/D20/S16. The two eldest are at University and the youngest is finishing high school this year. We live all under the same roof in a house we built together just before our son was born. I am 42 and my wife is 41. We are both professionals and have degrees. I travel regularly for work, and my wife work occasionally takes her to conferences overseas. She could be away from home 5 to 6 weeks a year.

I am now separated from my wife, and this is how it came about. We had came back from a family vacation in late January 16 in the USA. The whole lot of us went including my step daughters boyfriend. We returned two days before the start of the school year. All through out the holiday my wife was distant towards me, and more easily upset than she would usually be during a vacation. This was a common theme through all vacations, but ever so much more during this one. She turned 41 two days after she returned and  then asked for a separation two days later. For the three days after we returned, I had woken in the morning with her literally clinging to the side of the bed. I asked her what was wrong, she became upset left the house and then I received a text message saying our marriage is over and she wants a divorce. I was devastated.

My wife then refused to speak to me for two days after this. it was as though I did not exist. I did not want to cause a scene in front of the kids so I gave her space. On the third day I found a time late at night, when the kids were all in bed, and we spoke. She then again went to her cell phone and sent me a picture text. The picture text was from an advertisement of a dating website that she saw on my personal email account in August 2015. She then accused me of cheating on her. I was aghast. This was a junk mail ad, that I had received, it was not anything more. She did not want to hear anything I said. Then she just slowly started to work herself into what somewhat what was a  familiar pattern over the years. Her eyes were cold, and piercing and while she did not raise her voice her tone was unfamiliar (this was new and scary). Then she started: "If you died tomorrow, and our son asked what my dad was like I would not know what to say": "I should have not married you": "till my las breath, I will never know why you and my previous husband treated me like this" and on it went. Arguments with my wife over the years had always been like chasing my tail. They went round in circles, and it has always seemed about what she wanted, and would never back down. I disengaged and went to my room in tears. I returned to her and I asked a question. If you saw this 7 months ago, why did you not say anything. She just looked at me blankly and just stared at me.

My intuition got the better of me. I know my wife, and I knew that she was confrontational, always had been and always would be. Our relationship had been like a roller coaster since we moved into the house we built which was just before our son was born. I always felt, that I was either the best husband/father in the world or the biggest piece of excrement that ever existed. I used to get upset when work colleagues would tell me, how much their wives would miss them, and even though their wives  did not like their husbands travel they would appreciate them when they got back. All I ever got was "when is this going to end". I would pull into our drive way on a Friday evening, go to open the door and stop. I would then jump back in the car and go for a drive around the block, maybe two. I just never knew what I was going to get when I opened the door.  It was either the cold shoulder, abuse about dishes been left by the kids on the bench top. I would give her a hug and a kiss, tell her I missed her, and would be lucky to get a peck on the cheek back.

I never had been a snoop, unlike my wife. Over the years, I had been accused of cheating numerous occasions, and usually over frivolous clues. As an example, I  received a text from a fellow female coworker, on what time we would meet on a job site the next day. The text came through at 8pm. My wife saw it, and instantly confronted me and had accused me of organising a time to meet to have sex. Dumbfounded, I showed her the contact details. She went into a rage and demanded that she ring the co worker. I handed her the phone and told her to dial. She stopped, and then threw the phone away. She walked off, I went to bed. At around 11pm she came to bed and started again. She started to shake me, and while not screaming, repeatedly in my ear was repeating my name, over and over again to get my attention. I just wanted to curl into a ball and be transported elsewhere. She woke the next morning as if nothing had happened. I went to speak to her about it, but she would just get upset and walk off. I let it go, and I knew I should not have. I never had anything to hide. She knew all my passwords, I had a common username and password for everything and my apple id's were linked from phone, Mac to iPad's.

I checked our phone bills for the previous twelve months and my heart sank. She had been texting and calling two numbers since September 15, and in the space of 6 months she had sent over 6000 texts to these two numbers. The times would vary between the weekdays when I was not home, to weekends when we were at family functions. We host a BBQ for close friends every year, and even on that day she managed to get away over 80 text messages to these two numbers. I was frozen. I did not know what to do. I rang my closest friend who is also close mutual friend of my wife. He rang the numbers for me and managed to get both names. Both male, and both co workers. One from the same campus, and one from a different campus. My wife is a teacher. I confronted her with this and asked her the question. "Are you seeing someone else". She flatly denied, and then went into a rage about invading her privacy. I backed off and left it at that.

We at this stage had been living under the same roof while separated and she was sleeping in the spare room. The first weekend we were separated she went out for drinks with friends and said that she would not be back that night. i was upset but held it back, and in the back of my mind i knew something was up. I asked where she was staying and she said it was a work colleagues house. My wife would always go out often, but she rarely had not returned home. That night i was sitting on the couch and my son had my wife's iPad. He was browsing the photos, and he turned to me a gave me a poke. I was watching TV, and he put the iPad in view of me, and asked. "Who is this with mommy". I looked and again my heart dropped. There she was in a selfie with her Affair Partner in a bed. i thanked my lucky start that they were covered by the blankets. I told my son it was just a photo of mum at work. I took the iPad of him and then scrolled through the rest of the photos. My wife has not turned off her iCloud on the iPad and all her phone photos had been live on her iPad. It was like an out of body experience, looking through all those photos. I stopped and could not take it any more. There was one screen shot which was an email from her affair partner, that got my attention. The email was dated before we had separated , on her birthday just after we returned from the vacation. The painful parts of the email went along these lines " you are a strong, caring and loyal person", "I have had the best fun of my life", "try to enjoy this day to the best of your ability, but know from this day forward, you will be free to do as you please" and "hope you get all the presents you deserve but hopefully next weekend will top them all". This weekend she was currently on.  At that stage it seemed quite clear my wife had not separated from me, but abandoned our marriage. I was distraught.

My wife returned Sunday morning, and any i immediately confronted her with all the evidence. She quickly turned it on myself, and accused me of cheating, and in the face of all the photos, phone bills and emails, just said i was crazy. I could not believe it. She kept saying she was the victim. No emotion, no empathy.  To this current day, and we are now two months out she is still denying the affair, but keeps on asking if i have told anyone. Since being separated she has been quite adamant that we have a unified front why we separated. She wanted everyone to believe that we had grown apart due to my travel for work. She was trying to deny me to be able to speak the truth. I felt so vulnerable. Whilst i have not sat on a pedestal with Loud speaker and have told the world, my close friends and family now know the truth. She went into a rage when I told her about it.

I have since moved out of the house, and into an apartment. I have been seeing my son regularly, but i have felt that she has started to try an alienate him from me. We have agreed on a temporary custody agreement. i have since gone non contact with her, and only communicate through email or text and only about my son. She keeps trying to call but i ignore her calls. I know I can not go back, and it hurts like hell as the person that i loved and wanted to be with to my last breath has betrayed me. I still love her and it just hurts. I have been having trouble sleeping, and my eating patterns have changed. I visited my Doc, who referred me to a phycologist. In turn that phycologist referred me to another that deals with high conflict relationships. I have been doing therapy and he is amazed at the break up and our relationship. He has agreed that I should not even bother trying to reconcile. He has said that most likely she has a PD, but won't say what. He has been professional about it and said that he would not like to judge that until she was diagnosed by a professional. He has mentioned Borderline in passing over the sessions numerous times. He keeps referring to triangulation which he explained. I was horrified.

Unfortunately he said the best is yet to come, and the divorce and the coming parenting of my son is his concern.

These are my next battles. Any advice anyone could offer would be amazing. I am two months out, still in love with a person that i know i can not go back to.

i will soon talk about my pre separation struggles with my now ex wife soon. My specialist just keeps on saying "seeing the forest for the trees'. It was abusive and I just out up with it.

Thanks for reading and any questions I will be happy to answer.

[cracker10]

Hi Everyone,

This is my story. I will try and fit it in the one post.

I have been married for 4 years and in a relationship with my wife for 10 years. We have a 6 year old son, and she has 3 children from her previous marriage. The ages of her children are S21/D20/S16. The two eldest are at University and the youngest is finishing high school this year. We live all under the same roof in a house we built together just before our son was born. I am 42 and my wife is 41. We are both professionals and have degrees. I travel regularly for work, and my wife work occasionally takes her to conferences overseas. She could be away from home 5 to 6 weeks a year.

I am now separated from my wife, and this is how it came about. We had came back from a family vacation in late January 16 in the USA. The whole lot of us went including my step daughters boyfriend. We returned two days before the start of the school year. All through out the holiday my wife was distant towards me, and more easily upset than she would usually be during a vacation. This was a common theme through all vacations, but ever so much more during this one. She turned 41 two days after she returned and  then asked for a separation two days later. For the three days after we returned, I had woken in the morning with her literally clinging to the side of the bed. I asked her what was wrong, she became upset left the house and then I received a text message saying our marriage is over and she wants a divorce. I was devastated.

My wife then refused to speak to me for two days after this. it was as though I did not exist. I did not want to cause a scene in front of the kids so I gave her space. On the third day I found a time late at night, when the kids were all in bed, and we spoke. She then again went to her cell phone and sent me a picture text. The picture text was from an advertisement of a dating website that she saw on my personal email account in August 2015. She then accused me of cheating on her. I was aghast. This was a junk mail ad, that I had received, it was not anything more. She did not want to hear anything I said. Then she just slowly started to work herself into what somewhat what was a  familiar pattern over the years. Her eyes were cold, and piercing and while she did not raise her voice her tone was unfamiliar (this was new and scary). Then she started: "If you died tomorrow, and our son asked what my dad was like I would not know what to say": "I should have not married you": "till my las breath, I will never know why you and my previous husband treated me like this" and on it went. Arguments with my wife over the years had always been like chasing my tail. They went round in circles, and it has always seemed about what she wanted, and would never back down. I disengaged and went to my room in tears. I returned to her and I asked a question. If you saw this 7 months ago, why did you not say anything. She just looked at me blankly and just stared at me.

My intuition got the better of me. I know my wife, and I knew that she was confrontational, always had been and always would be. Our relationship had been like a roller coaster since we moved into the house we built which was just before our son was born. I always felt, that I was either the best husband/father in the world or the biggest piece of excrement that ever existed. I used to get upset when work colleagues would tell me, how much their wives would miss them, and even though their wives  did not like their husbands travel they would appreciate them when they got back. All I ever got was "when is this going to end". I would pull into our drive way on a Friday evening, go to open the door and stop. I would then jump back in the car and go for a drive around the block, maybe two. I just never knew what I was going to get when I opened the door.  It was either the cold shoulder, abuse about dishes been left by the kids on the bench top. I would give her a hug and a kiss, tell her I missed her, and would be lucky to get a peck on the cheek back.

I never had been a snoop, unlike my wife. Over the years, I had been accused of cheating numerous occasions, and usually over frivolous clues. As an example, I  received a text from a fellow female coworker, on what time we would meet on a job site the next day. The text came through at 8pm. My wife saw it, and instantly confronted me and had accused me of organising a time to meet to have sex. Dumbfounded, I showed her the contact details. She went into a rage and demanded that she ring the co worker. I handed her the phone and told her to dial. She stopped, and then threw the phone away. She walked off, I went to bed. At around 11pm she came to bed and started again. She started to shake me, and while not screaming, repeatedly in my ear was repeating my name, over and over again to get my attention. I just wanted to curl into a ball and be transported elsewhere. She woke the next morning as if nothing had happened. I went to speak to her about it, but she would just get upset and walk off. I let it go, and I knew I should not have. I never had anything to hide. She knew all my passwords, I had a common username and password for everything and my apple id's were linked from phone, Mac to iPad's.

I checked our phone bills for the previous twelve months and my heart sank. She had been texting and calling two numbers since September 15, and in the space of 6 months she had sent over 6000 texts to these two numbers. The times would vary between the weekdays when I was not home, to weekends when we were at family functions. We host a BBQ for close friends every year, and even on that day she managed to get away over 80 text messages to these two numbers. I was frozen. I did not know what to do. I rang my closest friend who is also close mutual friend of my wife. He rang the numbers for me and managed to get both names. Both male, and both co workers. One from the same campus, and one from a different campus. My wife is a teacher. I confronted her with this and asked her the question. "Are you seeing someone else". She flatly denied, and then went into a rage about invading her privacy. I backed off and left it at that.

We at this stage had been living under the same roof while separated and she was sleeping in the spare room. The first weekend we were separated she went out for drinks with friends and said that she would not be back that night. i was upset but held it back, and in the back of my mind i knew something was up. I asked where she was staying and she said it was a work colleagues house. My wife would always go out often, but she rarely had not returned home. That night i was sitting on the couch and my son had my wife's iPad. He was browsing the photos, and he turned to me a gave me a poke. I was watching TV, and he put the iPad in view of me, and asked. "Who is this with mommy". I looked and again my heart dropped. There she was in a selfie with her Affair Partner in a bed. i thanked my lucky start that they were covered by the blankets. I told my son it was just a photo of mum at work. I took the iPad of him and then scrolled through the rest of the photos. My wife has not turned off her iCloud on the iPad and all her phone photos had been live on her iPad. It was like an out of body experience, looking through all those photos. I stopped and could not take it any more. There was one screen shot which was an email from her affair partner, that got my attention. The email was dated before we had separated , on her birthday just after we returned from the vacation. The painful parts of the email went along these lines " you are a strong, caring and loyal person", "I have had the best fun of my life", "try to enjoy this day to the best of your ability, but know from this day forward, you will be free to do as you please" and "hope you get all the presents you deserve but hopefully next weekend will top them all". This weekend she was currently on.  At that stage it seemed quite clear my wife had not separated from me, but abandoned our marriage. I was distraught.

My wife returned Sunday morning, and any i immediately confronted her with all the evidence. She quickly turned it on myself, and accused me of cheating, and in the face of all the photos, phone bills and emails, just said i was crazy. I could not believe it. She kept saying she was the victim. No emotion, no empathy.  To this current day, and we are now two months out she is still denying the affair, but keeps on asking if i have told anyone. Since being separated she has been quite adamant that we have a unified front why we separated. She wanted everyone to believe that we had grown apart due to my travel for work. She was trying to deny me to be able to speak the truth. I felt so vulnerable. Whilst i have not sat on a pedestal with Loud speaker and have told the world, my close friends and family now know the truth. She went into a rage when I told her about it.

I have since moved out of the house, and into an apartment. I have been seeing my son regularly, but i have felt that she has started to try an alienate him from me. We have agreed on a temporary custody agreement. i have since gone non contact with her, and only communicate through email or text and only about my son. She keeps trying to call but i ignore her calls. I know I can not go back, and it hurts like hell as the person that i loved and wanted to be with to my last breath has betrayed me. I still love her and it just hurts. I have been having trouble sleeping, and my eating patterns have changed. I visited my Doc, who referred me to a phycologist. In turn that phycologist referred me to another that deals with high conflict relationships. I have been doing therapy and he is amazed at the break up and our relationship. He has agreed that I should not even bother trying to reconcile. He has said that most likely she has a PD, but won't say what. He has been professional about it and said that he would not like to judge that until she was diagnosed by a professional. He has mentioned Borderline in passing over the sessions numerous times. He keeps referring to triangulation which he explained. I was horrified.

Unfortunately he said the best is yet to come, and the divorce and the coming parenting of my son is his concern.

These are my next battles. Any advice anyone could offer would be amazing. I am two months out, still in love with a person that i know i can not go back to.

i will soon talk about my pre separation struggles with my now ex wife soon. My specialist just keeps on saying "seeing the forest for the trees'. It was abusive and I just out up with it.

Thanks for reading and any questions I will be happy to answer.

[heartandwhole]

Hi cracker10,

Welcome to bpdfamily. 

I am so sorry to hear about your separation from your wife. You have gone through a very painful time, and I am happy you found the site and decided to write. I want to say that in my opinion, you are starting off on the right foot, as strange as that sounds under the circumstances.

What I mean is, you have removed yourself from the situation, have worked out a temporary custody agreement to see your son, and have started therapy. These are HUGE steps, cracker10, that will help you recover. Two months is not very long, so understandably your feelings are intense. That is very normal, and with time, things DO get better. They really, do. You are not alone.  So many of us can relate to the sadness and hurt that you are going through.

Do you have supportive friends and family, cracker10? Self-care at times like these can be very difficult, but if you can manage to get some sleep and exercise and good food, it can help tremendously. That, and staying connected to supportive friends and family.

This site is a treasure trove of resources that can help, as well as members who have been in similar situations, so please avail yourself of everything there is on offer here—when you are ready.

Healing takes time, patience and self-compassion. I know how incredibly hard it is to deal with such a loss, but you can do it. We're here to support you. Keep writing, it really helps.

heartandwhole