Conflicted but not wanting to slow down on Divorce....

[boundriesrus]

So recently my UBPD Wife's father passed away. He had been battling stage 4 kidney cancer for the better part of 2 years, almost to the day. When we got the notice that he had only a day or so left to live, I told my wife to pack and bag and get heading to see her dad and spend the last waking moments with him. I stayed behind to care for our 6 yo daughter as she had testing that week and she had already been sick a few days the week before and was having to still catch up. That and the hospital would not let her in, and there would be lots of emotions, that I, nor my wife, are ready for her to experience up close yet. Minus the fact that we are currently down to one vehicle due to my wife blowing up the engine in her car while driving us all back from Thanksgiving a few years ago as she never took in her car to get the chain guide removed from the engine block after 3 months of being notified. So she drives my car now and since we are 6 figures in debt due to many legal issues, her spending issues, and refusals to go back to work for the longest time to help with the bills, its just been the perfect poop storm to deal with running around with a 6 yo to school and activities via Lyft or asking friends for rides, or boring my friend/neighbors car from time to time, which honestly I feel like I am over asking for that and don't want to abuse the friendship.

Either way I have been planning on divorcing my wife for almost 9 months now, but during marriage therapy due to her missing sessions, our therapist being out for months at a time dealing with miscarriage issues, and not wanting to start this crap all over again, it has taken a very long and drawn out amount of time to pull this plug safely, as I am trying to get her to see what happened, actually did happen (sexually assaulted me a few times while we were trying to get pregnant on nights I was having manic attacks and couldn't perform nor did I want to perform...but that didn't stop her from trying ...and lots of other reasons, but ultimately the most messed up/traumitizing experience I have ever had sexually...and I was an altar boy...LOL).

The question I have is I am feeling conflicted as I was so close to wrapping this all up by Halloween and telling her this is the direction we need to go and pressure her to get some serious help, for the betterment of our daughter and coparenting relationship moving forward. I really want to keep things moving forward in a timely manner as to give us both time to heal and figure things out...but with her dads passing within the past month...it has made me feel uneasy as I am afraid of pulling the rug out from underneath her and afraid of pushing her over the edge. She fakes the "happiness" really well...but I know she is suffering. She just hides it from me and others, lord knows what she is telling everyone of her friends as to what is going on. Thoughts?

[ForeverDad]

I have two thoughts...  First is that there is no "perfect" time to separate.  There will always be something to make you feel inclined to wait for a better time.

Second is that by waiting and waiting, there may be some incident (in my case it was my first time calling the police during a ragefest) where you lose control of the matter.

I had only just discovered about "personality dysfunction" a couple months before.  I was woefully unprepared, the only things I had done right was (1) I had separated my checking and paycheck account from our joint household accounts which simplified, (2) we never had separate credit accounts, not joint, and (3) I had recorded that ragefest incident before the police had arrived.  While my voice recording wasn't available right then due to a broken speaker, it was invaluable in the aftermath.

[boundriesrus]

Thank you ForeverDad for the good advice. I am still keeping my hopes up that I am wrong, as her "outburst" only happen every few years, but moreso when in stressful situations, like when I left my company 2 years ago due to the other partners stealing. I really do hope that I am wrong, and if she does have BPD, it is moreso on the high functioning kind, as her symptoms really didn't start showing until after we got married...of course. a few red flags before hand, but given my childhood i was taught to expect that kind of behavior was normal.

I do agree there is no good time and in order for both of us to heal properly, it is going to take time, but the healing can't start until the deed is done, sadly.

Fingers crossed it goes smoother than in previously mentioned stories on this forum. Honestly it scares the crap out of me.

[kells76]

I wonder if there are two different goals tangled up here, so you're getting the "worst of both worlds" instead of getting more effectiveness with each goal seperately.

This sounds like one goal:

I have been planning on divorcing my wife for almost 9 months now, but during marriage therapy due to her missing sessions, our therapist being out for months at a time dealing with miscarriage issues, and not wanting to start this crap all over again, it has taken a very long and drawn out amount of time to pull this plug safely, as I am trying to get her to see what happened, actually did happen

telling her this is the direction we need to go and pressure her to get some serious help, for the betterment of our daughter and coparenting relationship moving forward.

which could be summarized as "getting through to her"

and this sounds like a second goal:

Either way I have been planning on divorcing my wife for almost 9 months now, but during marriage therapy due to her missing sessions, our therapist being out for months at a time dealing with miscarriage issues, and not wanting to start this crap all over again, it has taken a very long and drawn out amount of time to pull this plug safely, as I am trying to get her to see what happened, actually did happen

I was so close to wrapping this all up by Halloween and telling her this is the direction we need to go and pressure her to get some serious help, for the betterment of our daughter and coparenting relationship moving forward. I really want to keep things moving forward in a timely manner

which could be summarized as "not dragging things out"

...

I'm not sure that it will be effective to try to have both goals at once.

The first goal, of getting through to her, can't be rushed. If she has eyes to see, then she'll see it on her timeline, not yours.

The second goal, of wrapping up a divorce in a timely fashion, doesn't actually depend on her -- it's the year 2024 in the USA; her cooperation isn't required for you to move ahead.

So, I wonder if it'd be helpful for you to pause and think through your goals, and think through which one is at the top of your priority list, and kind of "eyes open" make a choice about which one you'll pursue. Otherwise, each goal seems to undercut the other, leaving both of you frustrated.

Any of that sound on target?

[boundriesrus]

Hi Kells76,

Thank you very much for your thoughts. I do see where the goals can be conflicting. Right now I think my primary focus is still getting her to recognize the sexual assault and the other things she claims she "can't remember" but did admit to seeing a therapist that specializes in dissociative disorders after her first marriage and that she "didn't" check enough of the boxes to be considered DID or something along those lines. My first question in response to that notice is...why did you start seeing one in the first place? What were you " not remembering" back then that made you seek someone to look into that specifically. And now all these years later, your husband (me) is trying to tell you that you these events happened, and things were said, with no recollection from her on the events. Something just doesn't seem right and I always had a feeling since we got married that something might be off, but I could never put my finger on it. Having grown up in a household where I developed codepency issues, it all makes sense now, but finding out all these things at 40, is the perfect set up for what most people around me will view as a "mid life crisis" without anyone really knowing what happened, due the embarrassing stigma behind a man getting a trauma disorder from a result of his wife not liking the word "no". So its lots of living in pain in quiet and I guess its time regardless to worry about my own self.

More importantly it concerns me to leave her without having a bit more knowledge about her "not remembering" things since we share a daughter and will end up most likely having split custody. It doesn't sit well with me that a person, of which I have to coparent with, cannot remember things that she has done to other people in extreme cases, and Im sure no court will side with me on this matter, given the fact that I am a male, and she is a female. In short...just trying to cover my butt.

[Skip]

I think you might rethink priorities a bit. Something like:

Priority 1: Maintain as much a cordial relationship as possible so that you can eventually co-parent.

What will threaten that?

Shame: Rejection is shame. Rejection with blame is triple shame PAS: Fear you will turn her daughter against you because she is unfit. Debt: Your state is not a community property state and she will be motivated to prove the debt is mostly yours. Living Expenses: She is not working. She'll want spousal and child support.

I'm not sure trying to get her to see her evil ways (which is likely how she will interpret you comments) is the way to start this.

What do you think?

[ForeverDad]

More importantly it concerns me to leave her without having a bit more knowledge about her "not remembering" things since we share a daughter and will end up most likely having split custody. It doesn't sit well with me that a person, of which I have to coparent with, cannot remember things that she has done to other people in extreme cases, and Im sure no court will side with me on this matter, given the fact that I am a male, and she is a female. In short...just trying to cover my butt.

I am one of those who did separate from a spouse who had selective memory.  Of course it was the rants and rages she claimed not to remember.  (After all, it was all my fault...)  Over the years I've come to understand that she could have been in dissociative states and didn't remember afterward.  However I always found it curious that somehow she knew how to avoid those topics.

Eventually, after several years court did observe that she needed counseling but never ordered it.  To my knowledge, she has never sought counseling or therapy.  And if I asked her now, some 15-20 years later and with our child now an adult, I think I'd get the same answers and non-answers.

What the above indicates is that your hope she will somehow gain - from you - an insight into her denials of poor behaviors has a low probability of succeeding.  Not that it can't succeed, but unless there is someone unconnected to her emotional baggage of the relationship - such as long sessions with an experienced therapist - then don't count on her reversing course.

And court may not care to force counseling since it treats both parents as they are not as you wish them to be.  The closest you may come to it is either/both (1) getting a Guardian ad Litem (GAL) for your child or (2) seeking a Custody Evaluation which can trigger in-depth review of both parents and their respective mental states for parenting.  But both cost money.

As for her not working... yes, court will look primarily at the existing scenario and may not be proactive in requiring her to start working.  So how can you make child support less onerous and less unfair?  What I did was I made sure the income calculator included imputed income for my ex, though it was itemized as though minimum wage.

[boundriesrus]

Thank you ForeverDad and Skip,

Good thoughts all around. i think in regards to her seeing the issue, I am under the suspicion that she does remember but does not acknowledge it. When the therapist was asking for a timeline of things, and made mention the assault took place after the first miscarriage, she responded, "no I think that was before". So how would you remember that specific if you don't recall the event at hand?

Thankfully when I brought up the assault in April this year, she immediately called and schedule an appt with a therapist of her own. The person does have a few certifications dealing with Dissociative disorders, so hopefully something comes from that. She has still very much been in "step ford" wife mode for well over a year now since I saw "this is not working anymore" and that we needed to meet with a therapist to discuss certain things.

She is also employed currently as a teacher and is making her own salary now, so thankfully that helps. Sadly I asked her to go back to work 2 years before that happened, and only took it seriously when I brought up "this is not working". She complains about the job everyday and is already counting down the time of which she can move onto a different place. (They are paying for her masters in teaching, so she is obligated to be there till a future set time.)

Thankfully our state is not community property, but it could hurt my company (which is still in start up mode) and my buy out from my last company that just got settled a while ago. And buying her out of her share of the house and I have spent nothing but more and more money throughout the years paying off her debts, buying her cars (only for her to run them into the ground not taking care of them), paying for special masters classes (of which nothing work wise ever came to) diets, gym memberships (only she ended up quitting or tiring out and would stress eat as a result, reversing and worsening the state of her physical health.)


I do not want to villainize her to my daughter and have no plans of doing so and hopefully what she has said therapy stays true and that she will not do that to me. Her mother did it to her father after their divorce and am highly suspect her mom has a variance of the same thing.

At this point I am not trying to "get her to see her evil ways", as upset and mad I get about the events, she has a mental illness and cannot control herself in extreme stressful events. (Which is why I believe she is high functioning) I am purely trying to get a therapist to see what Ive seen throughout the years a bit in order for her to get the proper therapy in order to continue being a decent mother to our daughter. It does not mean though I am going to take this rolling over, and i plan on protecting my boundaries and my future moving forward. Just trying to be a good dad (as best as I know how to be at least) and if there is something wrong with my wife, then to help point it out to her so she gets help. If I didn't care, I would have called it quits years ago. Alas, here am I just trying to make it one day at a time with always keeping my eye on the future.

[ForeverDad]

I do not want to villainize her to my daughter and have no plans of doing so and hopefully what she has said therapy stays true and that she will not do that to me. Her mother did it to her father after their divorce and am highly suspect her mom has a variance of the same thing.

There is a generational aspect of disordered thinking - passing it on to the next generations - where the children grow up without experiencing what reasonably normal behavior is nor how to identify it.

That is an issue we've dealt with here... how to properly validate the children when they've observed behavior that doesn't in itself make sense.  It's actually almost an art form to validate without being invalidating and in an age appropriate way.  When you have some time, read the Validation topics (examples and related links) listed near the top of the Tools and Skills Workshops directory.

A simple validation versus invalidation example is when predictably a child will exclaim, "Daddy/Mommy doesn't love me!"  Our immediate response is to jump in and respond, "Of course he/she does."  But such an attempt to smooth over the child's response could be invalidating the child's emerging sense of right versus wrong, fairness versus unfairness, etc.  We need thoughtfulness and insight on how to address reality perceived by the child's experience and validate properly in an age appropriate way.

[EyesUp]

@BRU,

Is your desire to reconcile - or merely get acknowledgement - for what's happened in the past for your wife's benefit, or for yours?  i.e., why is is this important to you?

A lot of what you describe resonates with me.  My un/BPDxw was/is highly functional - yet, she blew through a number of jobs (always someone else's fault), was unemployed by choice for an extended period of time (racking up debt, which she would not acknowledge), could not / would not participate in any sort of maintenance (her car, anything around the house - all my responsibility), and she self-soothed with unconstrained spending (yet accused me of being financially abusive if I tried to broach the subject), etc.

In my case, when I finally fully accepted that the relationship could not recover or continue, new ideas emerged:
- I no longer needed her to acknowledge anything, to agree to anything
- I gained the ability to think and act outside of marriage, e.g., I had time to interview attorneys at my convenience and to consider next steps carefully; therapy had naturally ended (it sounds like you may have been gifted a similar situation), and I simply did not push to resume with someone new - instead I put my energy into studying divorce and pre-planning

In your case, it sounds like you have some conviction to proceed with divorce, but you're still hoping to resolve certain things that exist in your relationship... 

I'll say this as plainly as possible:  divorce works best when you've already moved past whatever happened in the relationship.  It's not easy - or practical - to continue to seek resolution for perceived wrongs or past injustice - while also seeking to end the relationship.  Generally speaking, understanding what you contributed to the relationship, and why you participated or continued to participate - is work that you need to do yourself with your own individual therapist.

Getting past these points, and eventually letting go of that experience will enable you to move forward with peace - and hopefully a new awareness that will help you avoid these dynamics in the future. 

Again, to be super direct:  You probably cannot expect to get any meaningful resolution for your wife.  She's not a reliable narrator to herself, how can she possibly offer fair recognition to you - or anyone else?  Isn't that why you're considering divorce in the first place?

As Skip noted - that path leads to shame - for her.  This does not set a foundation for cooperative or collaborative parenting.  Without going too far, you might consider, instead, how to setup a situation in which you let her off easy instead of attempting to hold her accountable.

Finally, light at the end of the tunnel:  The closure and resolution you seek may be something that you can gift to yourself via introspection, self-awareness, therapy, meditation, and personal growth that can come from self-focus.  i.e., you don't need her permission or approval or agreement - you can grant all these things to yourself.  The path to get there is via acceptance:  These things happened.  What's next is up to you.

sidenote: 

I waited until after Christmas and my kids birthdays to file.   While there is no right or wrong time to file (or to broach the subject), my instinct is to remain beyond reproach...  unless there is an immediate safety concern, I'd let the funeral pass while you continue to get your ducks in a row.  And don't forget to check the oil level, etc., when she gets back...  ;) 

Good luck.

[boundriesrus]

Thank you EyesUp. That was a lot to digest, but I honestly needed to hear it. I discussed this actually with my therapist and marriage therapist last week. It makes sense. Ultimately it boils down to my fear of the situation and hurting peoples feeling in the process, both my wife and daughter in this case. The failure of the marriage, some of which I was at fault for to, by not establishing better boundaries with my wife earlier in the marriage. All of this is of course contradicted by all the things that she has done throughout the years, and the only reason I have held on this long was due to the daughter and making sure my wife didn't go off the deep end, as that is my ultimate fear. Yes I am scared of having to start over, but just like my last biz partnership, i am in process of doing that now. Lots of late nights and hard work to rebuild everything that was taken from me in years past, and having to do all this at the same time getting out of my marriage and starting over again on that as well. Lots of major life changes going on in a very short amount of time, but ultimately it is going to be the best for everybody. That is my hope at least. We shall see how the forthcoming weeks will go and take it one day at a time. Marriage counselor did say in a private session with me, that she is kind of expecting the marriage to crumble at this point, so it will not be completely out of the blue, despite how she acts at home.

ForeverDad....I will take that recommendation to heart, as that has been something I have been working on lately and trying to catch myself before jumping to the knee jerk reactions or rather some of the same bad parenting methods I learned while growing up and observing my parents. Also I just had both therapists confirm suspicions that they think my mother has traits of Cluster B...not sure which direction to lean, but its just a good thing to know and recognize the patterns of behavior. Just sad, but I know lots of others on this site have had it way worse, and for that I will always consider myself lucky.