Am I Being Unrealistic to Expect Amends?

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

For those of you who are not familiar with my situation, here is a summary. My wife is diagnosed BPD, but doesn't accept the diagnosis. We have been together for 13 years. She has a S26 (my SS) and we have a S3.5 (4 in June). My dBPDw has been physically abusive of me over the course of our marriage, to the point of me having to call the police. She has hit me with heavy objects on the head that could have killed me on several occasions. She has also been extremely verbally and emotionally abusive, in addition to what I have come to realize has been sexual abuse (coercion to have sex when I did not want to, mocking me during the act, insulting me afterward, etc.). 17 months ago I started placing strict boundaries to protect myself from abuse because I couldn't stomach the idea of S3.5 growing up and thinking that a woman abusing a man is a normal relationship template. It has worked well and the physical abuse stopped after the police were called. The other abuse has lessened but is ongoing.

I have made the decision to stay in the marriage until our S3.5 is old enough to deny accusations of me being abusive toward him (6 or 7 years old) and until I finish my doctorate (approximately 2.5 years from now). At that time I plan on giving her an ultimatum to stop drinking (she drinks daily) and to enter individual therapy to work on her "anger issues" or that I cannot continue on in the marriage. I have been in individual therapy for several years and have been diagnosed with CPTSD due to the abuse that I have lived through. Right now, my relationship goals are very modest. I just want to live in a safe environment and have (more) peace in my home so that S3.5 can grow up in a physically and psychologically safe place. Past that I am completely content to have a civil, but emotionally distant co-parenting relationship with my wife.

This leads to my question. I have been told that an option for continuing on in the marriage is radical acceptance. That I have to accept that my wife is mentally and emotionally crippled and not expect things from her that she is not capable of. I totally get how that works for some people. However, given the amount of abuse, including pretty serious DV, that I have lived through I have come to the conclusion, with my therapist, that radical acceptance will not work for me in the long run. For the marriage to turn around and me to feel safe, seen, cared for, and heard I would need the following things from my wife:

• Her to acknowledge that she has hurt me in ways that have damaged me deeply, and to take full responsibility without trying to blame-shift
• A sincere apology for doing this
• A sincere promise to do the hard work to make things better
• An agreement to be held accountable for living up to this promise
• A sincere promise to try to make amends for years of damage and suffering

Am I being unrealistic about having this as a condition of staying with her permanently (vs. for now)? I know that all of the things that I have listed as conditions are possible for pwBPD who get into, and stay in, treatment. They can and do recover. They can and do rebuild relationships. The unknown factor here is whether or not she will be willing to seek help and stick with it.

I CAN and WILL continue to stay with her indefinitely IF she is willing to work on her issues. I CANNOT and WILL NOT subject myself and my son to her disorder indefinitely IF she remains untreated. I have a duty to protect him and I have a duty to protect myself. Now that I am finally out of the FOG (fear, obligation, guilt) and I can see clearly for the first time in years, I am dealing with a lot of anger over how I have been treated. Just letting it go and pretending like it never happened is not an option. I can forgive and move past it, but she needs to do some pretty serious work on making amends for that to happen.

I am not conflicted. I am committed to staying (for now). I still want the relationship to improve. I am just finally arriving at a place where I am starting to think about my own needs for once rather than only thinking about her needs, and this is what my gut is telling me needs to happen for the relationship to improve.

HurtAndTired

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[kells76]

Hi HaT;

It's a fair question to think through your own wants and desires and needs, and reflect on what's possible in reality. It reminds me of what a member here used to say (paraphrased): we don't get to deal with the problems we wish we had, we get to deal with the problems we actually have.

Sincerity seems important to you. I'm curious how long you think it would take for her to achieve sincerity/authenticity in those areas?

Have you heard of the Prochaska, Norcross, and Diclemente "stages of change" model?

[HurtAndTired]

Thanks for the feedback Kells,

I had not heard of the Prochaska, Norcross, and Diclemente "stages of change", but I looked them up. It seems like my wife would be at the "pre-contemplation stage" of change, where she is in denial of having any problems, although she occasionally will admit to having "anger issues" or "frequent nightmares" related to her childhood trauma. During these moments of clarity I'd say that she is in the "contemplation stage." Seeking anti-depressants from her GP and self-medicating with alcohol tell me that she knows there is a problem at some level. An ultimatum from me would hopefully give her the push she needs to get forward momentum and go into the "preparation" or "action stage."

I know that ultimatums are less than ideal, but I have had to resort to using one once before when we hit a "deal-breaker" in our marriage. She had changed her mind about having children. I said that I was ok with adopting instead of natural conception after we had suffered a miscarriage several years before, but as we approached her early 40s time was running out and we needed to get to work on one or the other. I had waited for 2 years to give her time to grieve and be ready again, but she never was willing to talk about it. When I finally brought up starting a family again, she said that she no longer wanted to have any more children. She already had my SS and was ok with that. I was childless and was not ok with that. She not only refused to try to conceive, but refused to consider adoption. I tried for 9 months to convince her otherwise, but to no avail. I finally separated from her for nearly two months because I said that not having a kid was a deal breaker for me and that she knew that going into the relationship. After two months, she begged me to come back and said she had changed her mind about kids and was willing to try. A year later our son was born.

Not getting treatment for her mental illness is also a deal breaker for me. I am committed to her for "in sickness and in health" but that assumes that one will see a doctor when one is sick to seek treatment. I told my therapist once that it is like my wife has a knife sticking out of her chest. She complains about how much her chest hurts constantly. The knife keeps getting pushed in deeper. The wound is infected and festering, but all she has to do is go to the doctor and say "can we do something about this knife?" to get some help. However, she refuses to even acknowledge that she has a knife in her chest, and how dare I suggest it? "You're the one with the knife in YOUR chest! Mine just hurts for something totally not related to the knife that is definitely NOT sticking out of my chest!" she would scream at me if I brought it up.

This is kind of the same. She has a serious, but treatable, illness. It causes her great discomfort and she complains about it constantly. She suffers, as do I, because she refuses to seek treatment. I am fully aware that an ultimatum could lead to divorce, but that is preferable to continuing to suffer alongside her until death takes one of us.

You asked how long I think it would take for my wife to achieve sincerity and/or authenticity in the areas that I indicated. I don't think it is a matter of time so much as it is a matter of being pushed out of her comfort zone. Left to her own devices, she would never reach sincerity or authenticity. She gets stuck in inertia time and again and expects an external factor (usually me) to push her out of it. She is a stubborn woman, but not stupid. I found a journal of hers once, years ago, in the basement where she wrote something along the lines of "I have to stop treating HurtAndTired so badly or he is going to leave me!" It went on like that for several pages. I never brought it up (I found it by accident and didn't want to be the snoopy husband) and have no idea what happened to the journal. However, this tells me that she is aware that she treats me poorly on some level and either does some pretty amazing mental gymnastics to justify it to herself, is just unable to stop herself, or some combination of the two.

In any case, I have been through hell and back and her acknowledging that she has played a large part in that is what I need to be able to truly forgive her and move past it and repair the relationship. Right now I am just limping along and surviving. I have been putting in 97%-98% of the work in maintaining the relationship. For the marriage to not just survive, but thrive it would require that to come closer to 50% from each of us and for her to clean up her side of the street. I have already reached the limits of what I can do on my own.

HurtAndTired

[GaGrl]

My husband and I married in our 50s. He has an ex-wife with which he spent 20 years before she left, then another 10+ years in which they did not divorce but lived separately. (She is from an Asian culture in which women, having raised children, are pretty much free to do as they please in their 40s -- so she did. Well, she also did as she pleased all along.)

Ex is uBPD/NPD. She was verbally and emotionally abusive, engaged in constant and flagrant infidelities, and eventually went into sex work. She has been arrested multiple times for physical violence with other partners.

We are now in our 70s, sharing adult children and grandchildren. Her now-partner is not only verbally and emotionally abused but also physically threatened -- he cannot leave. She has never sought treatment -- once made an appointment but cancelled it.

In all the years since the original marriage in 1973 -- 52 years now -- she has never apologized nor acknowledged that her behavior was hurtful or damaging to anyone in her family, friends, or social structure. Once, she looked at my husband and suddenly said (with no admission of wrongdoing), " Can you ever forgive me?" As if both understood without speaking of it what he was forgiving her for.

So...your wife might find it in herself to acknowledge her behaviors and make amends.  Or, like our family, she might live many, many more years in exactly the same state of denial.

[ForeverDad]

So...your wife might find it in herself to acknowledge her behaviors and make amends.  Or, like our family, she might live many, many more years in exactly the same state of denial.

Anything is possible.  However, the major changes you are hoping for is unlikely.  What would change that outlook is whether she would start meaningful therapy and actually apply it in her life, her perceptions and behavior.  That's the factor that is "unlikely".  It could happen but, as has been said before, past history is a glimpse into future history.

As for radical acceptance, my personal view - perhaps a limited scope - is that it means accepting "what is", not what we wish or hope.

I would not count on your plan to wait until your son is older so he could be old enough to deny false allegations of being abused.  I'll share the portion of my story that explains my reasoning why a child being older may not make the difference you imagine...

After a decade of marriage my spouse was becoming increasingly autocratic and demanding, even demeaning.  By the time my son was 3 years old I was beginning to sense the approaching demise of my marriage.  Nothing worked.  I tried joint counseling but she flatly refused.  When he was your son's age, I finally called the police.  We ended up separating and she was charged with Threat of DV, however after a few months of continuances, the judge ruled she was not guilty (based on local case law) since she didn't have a weapon in her hands.  By then I had filed for divorce...

[excerpt]  My divorce case took nearly two years... The preliminary Custody Evaluation report was reviewed by the judge and the two lawyers.  It was about 10 pages... Part of the conclusion was this:  "Mother cannot share 'her' child but Father can."

I say it was the preliminary report because after that my stbEx acted up and got herself fired by the pediatrician...  She of course felt she had to make me look worse than her and so sure enough, CPS stepped in to assess yet another child abuse claim which for the first time son joined in on.  He was in kindergarten at the time and clueless about what was truth and what was not when with her.  It helped him when I found and read with him a Clifford the Big Red Dog book, T-Bone Tells the Truth...

Even though I had had alternate weekends with him for two years by that time - and his mother had him in play therapy with a county agency's counselor - his disordered parent was still able to influence his recounting of reality.

One last thought... my experience, echoed by others, here is that judges generally ignore incidents that happened over 6 months before a case was filed.  (Think of the example of a person saying, Last week my ex said my house would burn down.  The emergency responder would reply, Call back when it is an emergency.  Timing matters.)  One would think everything ought to apply when documenting historical behavior patterns, but it seems most of us never had the professionals scrutinizing that deeply into the past.

[HurtAndTired]

Thank you for your insights GaGirl and ForeverDad,

GaGirl, I see your story as a cautionary tale. I definitely do NOT want to end up in my 70s and still be dealing with this. I am nearly at my wit's end right now. I wish to spend my twilight years in peace and tranquility. I also want to make it clear that I do NOT think that my wife is capable of taking responsibility and making amends as she is now. I also am dubious if she would be capable of doing so even after several years of intensive therapy with her willing participation. I am merely saying what I would need to truly give the marriage a chance for long-term survival. I am a realist and know that it is very, very unlikely that this will ever happen. However, I am leaving the path to it open until I have my ducks in a row and am financially and legally prepared to separate should she refuse to really give it a try.

ForeverDad, like you I can see the writing on the wall with my son at 3. I have tried marriage counseling for years and our last counselor (who specializes in BPD) told my wife point-blank that he could not work with us until she was willing to work on herself. He said to call him back and schedule an appointment if she ever decides to do the work on herself necessary to reach that point, and that was that. My plan is not really dependent so much on my son having the capacity of reason to deny abuse allegations (although that IS a part of it), it is more based on getting my financial ducks in a row and preparing for a drawn out legal battle. I read "Splitting" by Bill Eddy and Randi Kreger and it scared the hell out of me. I want to be PREPARED before I pull any triggers on legal action.

 My wife has pressured me into debt to try to keep her happy over the years. I am about a year away from having my credit card debt all paid off. I want to be able to pay for the legal counsel, psychologists/legal experts, etc. that would be necessary in a BPD divorce. I want to be able to buy out my wife's half of the equity in the house and keep our son in his home. It will take time to gather all of these resources. In the meantime, I am also documenting, documenting, documenting. I have a watch that secretly records audio and video (my state is a one-party consent state where I don't have to have her permission to record conversations that I am a part of).

The other consideration is that I am a semester deep into my doctoral studies. I will have my Ed.D completed (fingers crossed) in May of 27. I don't have the bandwidth to deal with a divorce while trying to finish a dissertation. I have read your posts about the nightmare that you lived through and want to avoid all of the pitfalls that I can by carefully planning. I can't possibly handle a fraction of what you lived through and hope to finish school at the same time.

I am hoping for the best, while planning for the worst. I am planning on giving my ultimatum at the end of my doctoral studies when I am financially secure, have lots of legal documentation and evidence of disordered/illegal behavior and abuse, and (hopefully) have an administrative job lined up that pays roughly double of what I am currently making as a teacher. I am still going to give her the option of seeking help, but I think that it is unlikely that she would do anything more than go through the motions.

My desire for amends is more about me realizing exactly what it would take for ME to want to continue on in the marriage indefinitely. I have finally started to have the gravity of what I have lived through sink in. I am a survivor of domestic violence. It has been very hard for me as a man to admit that and not feel shame. To admit that and not try to minimize it. To admit that and give it the same weight that society would give it if the genders were reversed and I were a woman and she were a man. Forgiving and forgetting is not going to cut it. I can't pretend that my wife hasn't assaulted me in a way that endangered my life multiple times. I can and will do what I have to do to survive in this marriage and make it livable for now, but I can't do that forever. Something has to give. I cannot radically accept being married to a violent abuser. She would have to do some major changing for me to even consider staying for the long-term.

If I am being honest, if money were no object I would probably have been out the door by now. Money is an object though. I need to have a good home for my son and my dog. I need to have my finances rock steady and ready for a potentially very long and expensive fight.

HurtAndTired

[thankful person]

Hurt and tired,
I think one thing that’s made life easier with my dbpdw is my eventual acceptance that she does not seem to ever see herself as being at fault, she does not seem to feel remorse, or regret, and she rarely seems to apologise, for anything. We’ve been together ten years… and I remember her apologising… once. I can’t remember the exact circumstance. But it was during our eldest’s first year, when she had spent most of the time criticising and/or screeching at me about how incompetent I was in every way imaginable. I made a note of her words on my phone. I can’t find it now because I suspect she deleted it. Ahhh, but I also recorded her words in my memory. “I took it out on you, and I shouldn’t have..” She was not speaking of an isolated incident but rather, hours and days and months of screeching and criticism. I hold onto that apology. I think it is the deep sense of shame that means that these unconventional pwbpds hold any regret or remorse very close to their hearts, as they see apologising as a weakness, they do not want us to know their true feelings. In my wife’s case anyway. I do not stand for abusive behaviour. But I let things go without apology, because it’s the only way this marriage can work.

[Notwendy]

I don't know if your wife with BPD is capable of making amends, but it may help to consider that she may not be.

One reason is victim perspective. If someone is in victim perspective, then they don't see a reason for an amends. It's not the victim's fault. The other is shame avoidance. PwBPD have difficulty with uncomfortable emotions and shame is a very difficult one.

My BPD mother doesn't make amends. I don't believe she is capable of one. One reason is shame avoidance and feeling as if she's in victim position. The other is that, while sometimes, she is aware of her behavior, other times, she's dissociated and so much that I don't think she remembers.

She does have her own way of apologizing and it's to act very sweet and nice and pretend nothing happened. "Look, I'm good now" and it's an unspoken expectation that you go along with it. In a way, it's true for her. The rages and abusive behavior are coping mechanisms for her feelings. Once her feelings have been projected and "raged" out, she feels better. Since she feels better, she expects you to feel better too. Trying to bring up what happened or anything in the past doesn't lead to resolution- she either dissociates or gets angry.

I believe this kind of apology is her best effort at one. I don't expect her to do more than she's capable of.  I also don't wish to tolerate abusive behavior but I can only respond to what is in the present.  Whatever she's done in the past- it's not effective to bring that up with her and since on her part, she feels she's being "attacked" if you do, it adds more hurt feelings to the situation.

It isn't unreasonable to have expectations in a relationship- according to what is reasonable for both people. I think some basic ones are to be treated with courtesy, to not have abusive behavior. We are also humans and humans mess up sometimes, have a bad day sometimes.  Making an amends is a way to repair these incidents. You have identified these as what your needs are to be in a relationship. What is unknown is if your wife is capable of this. You are giving it time, and then you can reassess the situation and decide what you can accept and what you don't. In the meantime, you can have boundaries with the abusive behavior.