Husband left me, 2yr old, and 4 month old...

[Depression = 72% of members]

I don't know where to begin. My life has been ripped out from under me. My husband has always cycled between he loves me more then anything and then the next day hates me and curses me. In the past 6 weeks he began suffering from a major depression (he blames me for) and was put on Wellbutrin. He has since spiraled out of control. The rage and hatred he expresses is verbally and emotionally abusive. I see a counselor once a week, she has read the text conversations between us and believes he has BPD.  My husband doesn't believe it.  Just that it's all my fault. No matter what I do, he will twist the story to make it my fault. He finally believes he's ready to be a dad but believes he can only do that by leaving me and my parents. He believes he doesn't have any feelings for me anymore and says he doesn't love me. He has always resented our two year old for taking me away from him as he said it and says he can't get  through theough that again our new baby. 

[JoFera]

I don't know where to begin. My life has been ripped out from under me. My husband has always cycled between he loves me more then anything and then the next day hates me and curses me. In the past 6 weeks he began suffering from a major depression (he blames me for) and was put on Wellbutrin. He has since spiraled out of control. The rage and hatred he expresses is verbally and emotionally abusive. I see a counselor once a week, she has read the text conversations between us and believes he has BPD.  My husband doesn't believe it.  Just that it's all my fault. No matter what I do, he will twist the story to make it my fault. He finally believes he's ready to be a dad but believes he can only do that by leaving me and my parents. He believes he doesn't have any feelings for me anymore and says he doesn't love me. He has always resented our two year old for taking me away from him as he said it and says he can't get  through theough that again our new baby. 

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[sad but wiser]

Sigh.  One of the hardest parts of discovering your spouse has BPD (or similar) is their competition with their own children for attention, time and resources.  Not only do they not parent, they effectively block you from parenting too.  Children growing up in this twisted and often scary environment do not thrive, they merely survive.
  Trust me, my kids have told me plenty that he kept hidden.  It isn't what I wanted for my children.  There are no easy answers in this situation.  It is good that you have a therapist and your parents to help with emotional support.

[hellsbells]

I'm so sorry to hear what is going on for you. I also separated from my expartner with a 3.5 month old baby while he walked away. I also cop and incredible amount of blame for aparantly "all" of his emotional problems. It's easier i think for him to deny there's a problem with him than to admit and seek help for his issues - they blame us bevause then they are alleviated of their responsability (in their eyes). You couldn't make someone mentally ill if you tried. Neither could I. If you are like me you were in fact supportive and caring ... .a person who is forgiving so much hurt and pain. I know how it feels to receive hundreds and hundreds of abusive calls texts threat ect. I'm so sorry to hear u have that happening to you. But just as you would be a like a tiger if someone threatened your babies - you need to be like this for yourself too. Protect yourself from harm. Put up boundaries. Draw a line in the sand on how you will be treated. And if he won't respect those boundaries then he is being harmful to you. I've struggled with self protective behavoir and boundaries and it has cost me so much pain. If you saw a mother in the street holding a tiny baby, and a man was treating her the way you are being talked to... .would you be ok with it ? It's not ok for anyone to emotionally or psychologically abusesomone no matter what their mental or emotional problems are...

[Meili]

I'm sorry that you find yourself in this situation. Relationships with people with BPD (pwBPD) can be very tiring and painful. Even if the person is never diagnosed with BPD, those with BPD traits can be just as difficult.

As hellsbells noted, defining and maintaining boundaries will be a big help to you. There's a great link in the sidebar to the right of the page to help you get started with that.

You can reduce the amount of conflict that you experience. One of the easiest ways to do this is try to stop it before it begins. Listening with empathy and not invalidating the pwBPD is a great way to do this. Again, there are some really good links in the sidebar to help get you started.

As an added benefit, by learning to utilize these skills you'll be teaching your children healthier ways to communicate as well!

Also it helps to understand BPD. One of the things that you'll probably realize as you research it is that the raging is about them, not you. I know how difficult this is at first, but if you can remember that and not take the insults personally it will help a great deal. When we don't take the insults personally, we are less defensive and it allows us to think more clearly.

Another thing that will help is to no justify, argue, defend, or explain (JADE) when he tries to tell you that everything is your fault. He's thinking emotionally and trying to approach the topic with logic will not help. There are better ways to deal with it later when he's calmed down.

What did you mean when you said "leaving me and my parents"?

[JoFera]

He associates me an my parents basically as one person. We live an hour away from his parents and 16 siblings, while we've lived with my parents as well as recently purchasing our own home 15 minutes away. He has gone through small bursts of sending my dad texts that he's like a big brother to him or more of a dad to him then his own dad. But those moments are always overshadowed by feeling like he is ganged up and criticized for everything he did around our babies. Some part of me feels like he's right, he was criticized at points because when he would actually try to be an involved Dad, he wouldn't do things the way we were used to. But more often then not, he creates these scenarios that everyone hates him, everyone criticizes him, everyone is against him,  etc etc. when in reality he was never around... .so my parents stepped up to help me when he didn't. Did they become overly involved in our lives and kids, yes, we lived with them. But when he was out doing whatever he wanted whenever and I was working at night, they watched the baby. He just holds so much hatred for them. Recently we found out his dad cheated on his mom with several different women and had a child with one of the women. But he has since talked to his father constantly after hating him for the longest time. But yet he hates my father and says because my father is an atheist he is a threat and toxic person to his children?

[Meili]

But those moments are always overshadowed by feeling like he is ganged up and criticized for everything he did around our babies. Some part of me feels like he's right, he was criticized at points because when he would actually try to be an involved Dad, he wouldn't do things the way we were used to.

Regardless of your point of view, he is right that he feels that way. Whether his is justified, in your mind, for feeling that way, that's how he feels.

To a person with BPD, feelings = facts. So, if he feels criticized, in his mind, he was criticized. No amount or explanation of logic is going to change that. The best thing that you can do in situations like that is to validate the fact that he feels that way. By validating, it may feel to him against you and your family.

[JoFera]

I guess where I go etc confused is if his feelings = fact in his head, by me validating his feelings am I admitting he's right?

He also uses the example that I coslept with our daughter in the months leading up to our new baby's arrival. He says he always felt lonely and abandoned and that I never loved him. Which is not true, I've always loved him more then anything despite what he's done or said. But if I say "I understand you feel that way, I understand, that was never my intention was to make you feel that way. He says he doesn't believe it, that I will never know the pain he went through and that if I loved him I would've never done that to him.

[Meili]

Well, again, he's right, you'll never know his pain. One person cannot experience the exact same emotion at the exact same level as another. All that you can really do in that situation is agree with him that you can never know and remind him that you do love him.

pwBPD have a lot of trouble, if they can at all, trusting others. It takes a great deal of patience and consistency in words and actions for them to start to feel safe. If that whatever level of trust he had has been broken, it's going to a while to rebuild it. If there is no trust, he probably cannot believe that you loved him and didn't intend to hurt him.

As for the validating, no you are not admitting that he's right about the facts. You never want to validate the invalid. What you are validating is his feelings. In the situation that you described about feeling criticized, the conversation could play out something like this:

Him: You family criticizes me all of the time about what kind of father I am.

You: I know that you feel criticized. I hate that you feel that way. No one likes to be criticized!

At no point are you actually acknowledging or refuting that he is criticized. You are addressing the feeling only. It seems really sterile at first, but when you incorporated it into your life so that it's habitual, it becomes part of your normal speaking and flows much better.

Many find it far easier (and beneficial) to start by not invalidating the feelings. There are a lot of ways that we invalidate another person that we often don't realize. The lesson on Validation Skill - Stop Invalidating Others provides some examples of things that we say that are invalidating:

"I didn't mean it that way!"

"... .but that's not... ."

"This is what happened"

"NO, you've go it wrong!"

"I AM doing it right"

"you're not doing that right. Let me do it for you"

"I was only trying to... ."

"Why can't you just let it go?"

"why do you always have to do this?"

or it may just be the way we sigh, raise our eyebrow, or even worse - roll our eyes 

There's a lot more useful information in the link I provided above about not being invalidating. It's well worth the read.

[JoFera]

I definitely need to work o this... .I have tried in the past apologizing and explaining g what I really meant, or in the case of resenting our daughter explaining that I never replaced any love for him with her and apologizing some more. I feel like I've given up so much and tried to do the right thing but often times I'm in the scenario of if I say something, it's the wrong thing and if I don't say something he accuses me of not caring or not paying attention. I've even gotten frustrated in the past because I felt like the same problems were coming up over and over again and each time he'd expect something different and I'd attempt to solve the problem that way. At this point he says he's totally done being married. He doesn't love me, in fact he hates me more then anyone's else. I don't want to be done... .I want to help him. I know there's more to his pain then simply we argue. He has said before "you love your children more then you've ever loved me just like my mom did my entire life". That was my first red flag that something more was going on. I love him. I just don't know what the right move is here to try and help.

He was coming home for an hour or so everyday and then leaving, so I was alone 99% of the day with both babies. Eventually he said he wasn't coming home. So I packed the girls up and came to my parents house. My in laws are telling me I should be moving back home. That we should be trying to make it work under one roof. The tough part is he HATES me, he doesn't want me. He visited the girls for 2 hours yesterday and by the time I was picking them up he snapped and was MFing me because the baby was crying. I don't feel like that's a safe and healthy environment to be in with our kids, but I don't know if that's reinforcing him feeling abandoned even though he was first to check out and I've done nothing but fight to win him back.

He also has cut me off financially and closed our joint bank account. Everyone is telling me to file for child support. I haven't yet, he says he will give me money or get diapers or food if I need it. So far he's only given me $100 to live on and support the girls. Again I'm nervous to make a move, because he says he wants one thing but as soon as I make a move, he freaks. He was saying he wanted custody papers filed, he was going to court. Out of fear he would do it, I filed for sole custody. Which he FREAKED out in a rage over. There's just no right move for me.

[Meili]

I'm sure that is all tremendously difficult to deal with. I'm glad to hear that you're protecting yourself and the babies.

My guess it that he is feeling abandoned right now. Have you let him know that you are open to calmly talking about the situation?

We all handle things incorrectly with pwBPD until we discover what is actually going on. The best way to deal with them is often counter-intuitive.

There is hope though as long as you believe there is hope. One of the first things that you have to do is let go of the idea of trying to help him. You cannot help someone that does not want help. From the sounds of it, he's not asking for help. So, focus on the only thing that you have control over: yourself.

Stop doing what you've been doing: JADE'ing. Make yourself the strongest, most attractive you that you can be.

Do you think that you are strong enough yet to try to stop the conflict before it escalates to the point that he's yelling? if not, define your internal boundaries and maintain them. Well, define them first no matter what. Decide what you're going to do the next time that he starts to yell at you. Are you going tell him that you'll talk to him when he calms down and then leave? What is your plan going to be?

There are ways of coping with pwBPD to an extent. Think of him like a four year old when he becomes emotionally aroused. He's throwing a temper tantrum like a toddler would. This is because his emotional development was arrested at a young age. Accept this as a fact.

[JoFera]

We have tried to talk... .generally initiated by him actually.  However the "talk" has up to this point been "I feel this way, you will not change,  this is why I'm leaving you" followed by me sobbing, saying but I love you, I've always loved you, what are we going to do, we need you. So it goes no where. When we try to communicate over text he is SO ANGRY no matter what I do. I simply texted him I missed him yesterday and that I took the kids to see his grandmother, something he always wanted me to do. He immediately responded with "I'm glad you have time to make memories with the kids. I've never gotten that chance because you decided how to raise them. I hate you, you Effing c-nt." Even after that I agreed to drop the kids off at our house with him and his parents. He's never had the kids by himself, and especially when he was suicidal last week I don't trust him alone with them. ... which I'm assuming doesn't help the situation. But I feel like he should see I'm trying and feel SOMETHING... .anything. He swings between such rage to extreme sadness and sobbing. And his parents keep telling me that I should be moving back home. As much as I don't want him to feel abandoned or like I can just give up no matter how much he hates me... .I don't feel like it's a safe environment for my kids. They say to let him yell and rage and leave if he chooses to but I need to be home working to prove to him I love him. That just seems like a such a volatile and scary situation to be living with babies in. I'm so torn on what the right thing to do to win him back is.

[Meili]

If you feel that moving back would put you and the kids in an unsafe environment, then it's probably not a good idea to do so at this point. But, maybe you can communicate to him that it is your intent to go back when things are calm and stable?

We have tried to talk... .generally initiated by him actually.  However the "talk" has up to this point been "I feel this way, you will not change,  this is why I'm leaving you" followed by me sobbing, saying but I love you, I've always loved you, what are we going to do, we need you. So it goes no where.

Perhaps in a situation like this you can validate that he feels that way and ask him what a change would look like to him. Be prepared for a nasty response at first, don't JADE, and try to Listen with Empathy. Let him know that he is being heard.

When we try to communicate over text he is SO ANGRY no matter what I do. I simply texted him I missed him yesterday and that I took the kids to see his grandmother, something he always wanted me to do. He immediately responded with "I'm glad you have time to make memories with the kids. I've never gotten that chance because you decided how to raise them. I hate you, you Effing c-nt."

Is it possible that he felt that your doing that purposefully excluded him? You've mentioned before that one of his chief complaints is that he feels that you do not make him a priority.

He's never had the kids by himself

Why not?

But I feel like he should see I'm trying and feel SOMETHING... .anything.

This might be an unreasonable expectation at this point. You are looking at the situation the the lens of a non. He is looking at the same situation through his emotional filters. From the sounds of it, he doesn't feel that you're doing anything to show him that you love him, in his mind the fact is that you aren't. This is why I suggested asking him what it would look like to him.