My Story----Affair related and possible BPD wife?

[ForTheKids86]

Well this is my first post and I will try to keep this as short as possible.  First of all I am not sure if my wife is BPD but in the last week I kept seeing the term pop up in an infidelity support forum I frequent and I clicked and sure enough, I seen many signs that my wife may in fact be BPD and if so that would explain a lot about our marriage and what happened.  I am still trying to figure it out as to what happened and I suspected something was different about my wife but it never really jumped out at me until now as to what was different.

So I'll just start with the basics.  We are early thirties and were married 8 years ago and known each other for 10 years.  We basically progressed through life like any young couple.  We got married, bought a house, had 2 kids together (now 2 and 4) and generally seemed to be pretty stable, or at least I thought so at the time.  Looking back now that I am coming to the realization that there may of been more wrong than I realized at the time.

So late last November my wife revealed to me she was having an affair.  It hit me like a ton of bricks to say the least.  She met a guy at work and claimed they were sending 1000's of text messages and sexting.  Right after the reveal she got us into counselling and it seemed like she was remorseful and wanted to save our marriage.  I want to at least try.  Well I kept finding more lies and soon enough she was contacting him again.  She still worked with him and was not going to quit her job.  After a rough 2 months of her saying she thought we had one more chance and me basically being a wreck with her on the fence, she moved out.  She got an apartment in the town where this guy lives and told me she needed to figure stuff out.  I learned that he helped her move in.  So fast forward to today... .they are now in a townhouse living together and she told me they are engaged.  In June she told me she wanted to try to work things out again but I told her that she had to work on herself before we would ever have a chance.  She told me she knew she has issues and that her and her AP were not seeing each other anymore.  I found out they were back together within a couple weeks.  So I have filed for divorce and it will be final after our one year separation.  I do not want this relationship back and as much as it hurts me to see the kids having to deal with all this, I will never be able to trust her again.

So most of the last year I have focused on my healing.  Exercise, counselling, self reflection, among other things.  I feel pretty good about things on my end and so far we co-parent quite well. But there is something wrong with my wife.  The way she just literally took her clothes and left our relationship is beyond comprehension.  She blamed me and the marriage and outside a few text messages saying she was sorry, she has not even acknowledged how she hurt me.  

1)So going back through our relationship the red flags are now waving.  First of all she was never able to stick with anything.  She started university and quit after one semester.  She is a very talented estetitian and started her own spa but got bored within a year and gave up on that.  We met at a manufacturing plant and she started and quit at least 4 times.  She mentioned wanted to start a spa again before her affair.  Just generally she never stuck with any of her life goals and seemed to get bored quickly.  

2)Some more flags is times where she would come off the handle for no reason.  There was never any physical abuse, but she would have fits of anger over trivial stuff.  I always had an excuse for her but looking back she had some issues.  She was not always angry but was very much a "glass half empty" type person, just a Debbie downer all the time.    

3) She has threatened self harm.  :)uring the time after the affair and when she moved out she claimed to be suicidal.  I took her into the hospital once to be examined and she brought herself in to the hospital once for a few nights.  She has always claimed to be depressed and was once antidepressents on and off for years but they never seemed to help.

4) Her mood would swing fast.  She would tell me one day she loved me and was so happy I was giving her a chance... .The next day she was texting and phoning her AP.  Even through out the marriage I almost had a "walking on eggshells" type of feeling.

5) She seemed empty at times.  She did not have much in the way of hobbies or interests it seemed and if she did it was short lived.  She never seemed interested at all in the world around her.  Her friends she knew from her hometown seemed to have dwinded away.  She just seemed to have a hard time making friends or keeping them.  Towards the end she said she had trouble with self identity figuring out who she was.

6) She has always said she had low self esteem.  It seems to be a family issue.

These are just some things I have noticed.  She was in counselling during the affair but she would never stick to their advice.  If they told her something she did not want to her she would not listen or try a new one.  I am sure she is not in counselling anymore.  But one thing I thought was interesting is she said she wondered if she was Bi-polar.  She asked a therapist and she said she may of been Bi-polar but I noticed that her mood swings would be way faster than the longer mania with BP.  That is the closest she came to figuring out that something may be wrong.

So there is my story so far.  I am still working on fixing myself but just reading the stories on her have shown many similarities to my story.  I just want to know so I can be prepared.  I am somewhat worried about my kids.  We share 50/50 custodty and after only 4 months she wants to change living arrangements from 50/50 to me being the weekend dad.  She is also telling me she is having trouble managing the kids while she has them.  I watch them essentially as a single dad and I manage pretty good as they are good kids.  I'm worried about the environment my kids are in when they are with her and the affair partner (he has some issues).  I know they already fight and I'm certain when in all blows up it will be bad.  

So ya that it the short story.  I want to tell her that she should get a diagnosis at least.  She would probably blow up at me if I told her this now.  Anyways it has been a hell of a year.

Thanks for any insight.

[Mutt]

ForTheKids86,



I'd like to welcome you to the family. I'm so sorry that you're going through. I completely understand how painful it is when a spouse betrays you with an affair it's tough.

I'm glad that you decided to join us. Did the divorce group give you advice that didn't seem to quite fit with your situation or maybe you followed advice and blamed for your spouses actions?

We're not doctors and cannot diagnose, but what we can look at are BPD traits and we can have boundaries set with BPD behaviors, what is and is no acceptable to us.

A pwBPD have chronic feelings of emptiness and sometimes complain that they don't know who they are, a pwBPD don't have a fully developed sense of self and may change their studies, jobs, friends often.

We share 50/50 custody and after only 4 months she wants to change living arrangements from 50/50 to me being the weekend dad.

I'm a single dad too, my kids are a little older than yours but they were close to your kids age when my wife had an affair and moved out with her affair partner. She wanted me to be a weekend dad too. Don't do it, it's going to be harder for you to get more time with the kids in court if you give up time now. My guess is that she may feel guilty and she's starting to realize what she did and wants to have her cake and eat it too, your ex made her choices, mentally ill or not mentally ill, this is her choice, don't rescue her.

The kids are going to need an emotionally stable parent to navigate through this. Have you thought about getting full custody of the kids?

How are the kids? Are they showing signs of stress?

[ForTheKids86]

Thanks for the reply.

Well many of the people I see on the forum I frequent have noticed many traits of mental illness.  I guess that makes sense, someone who engaged in an affair obviously has some issues that may be more far reaching than the thrill of the affair.  It seems the word NPD, phycopath, Bi-polar, and Borderline are terms thrown around a lot by betrayed spouces.  

She does show some signs of NPD, mainly her lack of empathy towards me.  But it did not seem that way before.  Also from the stories I read about people with NPD, their ex becomes totally unreasonable and visisous.  My wife has for the most part since we separated left me alone.  As I navigated the divorce process she pretty much just signed everything and throughtout the separation agreement almost agreed with everything I said.  There was not much back and forth at all.  Of course now she is wanting a change and I fear that this may be the start of a bunch more stuff.  

The Bi-polar sort of fits but her up's and downs seem to been very rapid.  

I just heard the term borderline in the last couple weeks and looked up the symotoms.  Almost immedietly I got the "ah hah" moment.  The emtptiness, the lack of close friends, general lack identity... .it just seemed like that was her.  I am just a industrial mechanic and I am in no way diagnosing her as borderline but I am leaning towards her having some form of borderline disorder.  

As for the weekend dad thing.  Our separation agreement is signed and we have already agreed on the 50/50 split so I am not going to change it.  I already got my work schedule worked around the kids and any change now would be a huge headache.  Also I do not want to be a weekend dad anyways.  I sent her an email back stating I had no interest in what she was proposing but I got no response.  

I have thought about full custody but so far as bad as this whole situation is... .so far my kids seem to be adjusting well.  Of course I have no idea what goes on while they are with her but I have been watching closely and the kids love coming to my house and love going to mom's house so I am leaving everything as is for now.  If I see anything or hear anything suggesting any sort of neglect or abuse I will take any nessessary steps to protect my children.  

For me I want closure with her.  I want her to get help if she is in fact borderline so I know for sure what I am dealing with.  And so I can make sense of all this.  I got a bad feeling about this one day blowing up and the kids do need their mom no matter what happens.    

[Mutt]

Hi ForTheKids86,

I honestly don't think that I'll ever find out what my ex would be diagnosed with, as much as I don't like to predict the future, projection seems to be a significant BPD trait.

You are right BiP is a mood disorder and the manic phases can take several months to switch from one to other. Now BPD is a personality disorder and emotions are quicksilver, your exe's mood could change rapidly within 30 minutes to hours. Now both mental illness can have several co-morbidities, more than one mental disorder can exist, she could have BPD, PTSD, clinical depression, NPD, DPD etc.

I think it's really important to learn about the disorder, the reason why I say is that it helps to understand that it's not personal, I know how painful an affair is with a young family involved. My ex was having an affair for close to a year, her affair partner had no qualms to walk right into my marriage. It was really hurtful, this us just my point of view and it may not be a popular one but it's the wat things are today, it telegraphs that he has poor boundaries and he wasn't thinking about how destructive their actions are, but it's something that both have to cope with. I can sleep sound at night and not have guilty feelings or worry if my partner us going to cheat on me because we were cheaters.

I'm happy to hear that you decided that you don't want to just be a weekend dad, as dysfunctional as my ex wife is, her actions telegraph that she tries to ge a good mom. My kids have unconditional love for me and for her, it us their r/s with both parents and I don't interfere width that, when they are of legal age and if they chose to decide to live with me, fine.

I know how hard that is when the kids are exposed to the affair partner, did she introduce right away? Its hard because we have no control when the kids are not with us, but what we can control is the time that we spend with them. Its not the quantity of time, its the quality of time. My advice is be a super dad, be the best father that you can be.

I know a diagnosis is important for you but the diagnosis us not important. I'll quote Skip, most of our members have an ex that is subclinical. Learn about the traits and depersonalize the behaviors, learn the dynamics and create boundaries with what is acceptable behavior and what bad behavior is not acceptable. If I set BPD for a moment and look at my ex wife,  BPD does not define who she is but we had different morals and values, I rushed into things and learned about who she is when she was pregnant. Now, all if our situations are different and I'm not saying that my situation is yours or any other members but our experiences and wisdom helps mend each others wounds.