Wife revealed need for open relationship

[Futureunwritten]

I just joined this group, and it is my first post. (My apologies for the length!)

I strongly suspect that my wife of eight years has “high-functioning” or “quiet” BPD.  She displays many of the classic symptoms: intense swings in mood swings/extreme emotions, splitting/black-and-white thinking, dark depressive episodes sometimes accompanied by suicidal threats, feelings of emptiness, fears of abandonment, intense anger during arguments to the point where those close to her have to give in and apologize for their POV. She is high-functioning though. She is successful in her professional life, and she doesn’t engage in impulsive behaviors. When she is really struggling with intense emotions she sometimes thinks that she has BPD (usually because her experience matches what she is reading about in BPD message boards), but when she is feeling more regulated she usually convinces herself that she doesn’t have it. Her therapists won’t diagnose her with it (because of the absence of impulsive behaviors). Other people close to her (especially family members) have told me that they think she has it. DBT has been very helpful for her in the past. That said, she felt far more stable than the others in her DBT group who had been diagnosed with BPD.

I joined this group and am writing because I am dealing with probably the most difficult issue in our relationship yet and am desperate to resolve it to feel safe in our relationship: my wife revealing her new-found desire/need to be in an open relationship. Here’s the backstory.

About a year ago, my wife started communicating with an ex with whom she had a brief but very intense relationship with 13 years ago. She thought the relationship ended because he just didn’t like her and that he found her intense emotions too much. This breakup was extremely traumatic for her and really activated her abandonment issues. He, while now married with a child, wrote her out of the blue last year to apologize for hurting her. This initiated months of intense back-and-fourth emails (and long hours of her freaking out about him to me, and frequent depressive episodes), which culminated in the two of the realizing that were both deeply in love with each other but too scared to be open with each other about it back then. This came with the further realization that both still have strong feelings for each other. My wife has been extremely open with me about everything (she has a strong need for honesty and authenticity in her relationships, which I respect and appreciate). In June, she told me that if he told her he wanted to leave his wife for her, that she'd probably leave me. She then took back that statement and apologized, saying that she was confused and not thinking clearly. She then went several months thinking he is a narcissist. In September, for the first time my wife expressed her desire to be in an open relationship with me and her ex. While I have nothing philosophically or morally against ethical non-monogamy and polyamory, after much deep reflection, I came to understand that I could probably never feel emotionally safe in an open relationship. I never suspected that I’d ever be asked to be in one, so this all hit me pretty hard. The past five months or so have been an emotional rollercoaster. I became a nervous wreck. I lost weight and had to get on anti-anxiety meds. I have obsessive thoughts.
We’ve been to couples therapy, but it is a frustrating process because, while there are many good moments of true mutual understanding, it often leads to unproductive arguments where she gets angry and says unfair or hurtful things. She has explained that she still loves me and wants to spend her life with me and raise our kids together, but that she needs to have a relationship with this other guy because she has a really deep spiritual connection with him and that she has to be true to the version of herself that she was back when they were together, a version that never knew me. She frames a lot of it around her liberation and her realization that traditional monogamous marriage is patriarchal and oppressive to women (I should note that I consider myself a feminist and, aside from my emotional need for romantic/sexual exclusivity, I don’t think marriage should be a certain way, and I want my wife to feel supported by me as she pursues her goals and dreams.) She tells me that I shouldn't feel hurt because this guy is someone for whom she had feelings before we had ever met, and that because this relationship predates me, I don’t have any right to tell her what kind of relationship she should have with him now. I’ve tried to explain that I don’t want to control her and that I’m just trying to tell her what my boundaries are. I explain that it wouldn’t hurt if you just wanted to develop a friendship with him, but acting on romantic feelings and turning it into a physical relationship would really hurt. When I do this, she tries to relativize and minimize my feelings by going over all of the times I’ve ever hurt her over the years (something she often does when she splits on me). She’ll also say something along the lines of, well I guess I just have to be unhappy the rest of my life because you need to control my body. She tells me that I just don't understand her and that if I truly understood her I'd be ok with everything. At times, I have broken down and said, ok, do what you have to do and I’ll try my best to be ok with it, but it was clear (I hope) that I would not really be ok with her having a physical relationship with this other guy. Sometimes she’ll say that she respects my boundaries and that she doesn’t need an open relationship, but other times she expressed her frustration about it and says that she needs an open relationship.
  
It's been made more difficult by seeing my wife periodically become very depressed (near suicidal sometimes) about her ex and freak out on multiple occasions about the possibility that will stop talking to her and leave her again. She often engaged in splitting, going from feeling intensely positive about him, then telling herself that he is just a narcissist seeking attention.
Throughout all of this, my wife and this guy talk on the phone about once a month and email more regularly. She doesn’t know where he lives, and my understanding is that this guy’s wife would also not be ok with the open relationship idea and that he, like my wife, is devoted to his marriage and family.  He has never talked about making plans to meet her in person or anything. So, one thing that helps calm me is telling myself that it is that a rendezvous between them is not likely to ever happen, at least not any time soon. Despite the unlikeliness of anything happening in the near term, whenever we talk about the situation, and she describes her desires and her need for an open relationship, I get triggered and my anxiety spikes. She gets resentful and cold when I suggest that maybe I need better boundaries around this topic and that she shouldn’t talk to me about it anymore unless something in the situation changes. She expresses a deep need to be totally authentic with me and not hide any of her feelings. As such, I convince myself that I need to get to a point where her expressing her desires doesn’t trigger me.  
My hope is that someone might have advice about: (1) whether couples counseling is worth pursuing (it is expensive, so we’ve only been to like four sessions) and how best to navigate it to get the most out of it; (2) de-escalation techniques so that I don’t get so upset when she expresses her intense feelings and brings open the open relationship stuff; and (3) whether anyone has had similar experiences and how they’ve dealt with them.
Thanks, and my apologies for the length of this post!

  

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[EyesUp]

Hello and welcome.

Thanks for sharing your story and clearly outlining where you're at.

If you had asked me about how I'd respond to infidelity in marriage, I would have said "it's a game ender" - but when the details of my uBPDxw's affair came to light, I was unprepared and I explored every possible option I could find to try to figure out how to get through it.

Like you, I wanted to support my wife.  Like you, I'm not interested in polyamory or ENM, etc.  Like you, I lost a lot of weight, and struggled to find affordable/effective resources for counseling, etc.

Marriage counseling was not helpful. Esther Perel's Intimacy Worksheet and general MO was not helpful.  Love Languages... not helpful.

On the other side, this community was helpful. Reading was generally helpful. Joining a coed divorce group, long before I was resolved to divorce, was helpful. 

But the most helpful thing was straight talk from a detective who came to my house after my W threatened self harm during a remote (zoom) couples therapy session... the therapist called 911. 

After my W was taken to the hospital for observation, the detective asked a lot of questions, and I explained, as best I could, what led to the 911 call.  The detective said, "I'm going to be super direct with you. We see every possible kind of domestic issue, and we deal with it every day. You love your wife, you want to save the marriage. But the fact is: She's telling you, clearly, she wants something else. Whether she has a personality disorder or not doesn't matter. This happens with all kinds of people all the time. What we know is: Once this happens, and once you get to the point where 911 call has occurred, something is beyond your ability to repair. The police are not able to fix your marriage. For most people, the only way to deal with the situation is to accept that you need to go your separate ways. You can't help her, she doesn't want your help, and at this point you need to focus on yourself"

It was the first time I got the straight talk express from anyone in the BPD Industrial Complex, including highly valued and balanced voices here in the BPDFamily community. 

Marriage Counselors / Therapists generally don't take sides.

No one at BPD Family is going to take a stance on what you should do in your marriage - we don't really know you, and it's really not our place.

The books on BPD can be a bit academic (theories about psychology and the underpinings and sources of BPD behaviors), or practical at a high level (how to avoid triggering/invalidating a sensitive person's feelings/perceptions).

As you grind through various resources, you may become addicted to hopium... just a little more info might help you navigate the storm you're in.  This can go on for a quite a while.

Meanwhile, your W is unhappy and increasingly attributing her unhappiness to you, and becoming entrenched in her conviction that a, b, c, d...  none of which align with your vision for a copacetic future together.

The thing I want to impart here, the thing that was helpful to me, was what the detective said at the end: "you need to focus on yourself"

One of the things I asked my W as we were going through all of this:  Do you want an open marriage?  Like you, it wasn't what I wanted.  But I stopped avoiding it, gave voice to it, and understood that the question at least partly aligned with what my W's words and actions were consistently telling me:  She wanted to be with someone else, at least part of the time. When I asked the question, it was the first time I gave my W a path to have what she wanted, instead of opposing it. Like the detective's straight talk, my W's response was eye-opening:  "no"

The hypocrisy was telling. I didn't need to point it out to her, argue about it, or discuss it.  I had my answer:  She was 100% thinking about herself, and not thinking about me, or how to have any kind of reciprocal/balanced/fair relationship at all.  I was turning myself inside out to try to make things work for her, and she didn't perceive it - certainly not appreciate it - at all.  She was simply entitled to what she wanted, and had a hundred ways to justify it.  I understood clearly:  I didn't want to be in a marriage on those terms.

Like you, we have kids. It took about a year to figure out how to approach a divorce, and then almost another year to complete the agreement.

During that time, my uBPDxw was often out of the house - "dating" - which turned out to be great.  I had maximum time with the kids, and she was in no position to claim that she was the primary parent or caregiver or that I was abusive, or, or, or...  because if any of those things were true, why was she constantly leaving the kids in my care?  Very helpful for the divorce process...

Suggestions:

As you continue your journey, start to keep a concise journal.  I used a password protected app called Evernote to create time-stamped entries, and I addressed the top level notebook to my atty, which effectively made the entries atty-client priveledged/confidential.
 
One journal to document any noteworthy interactions with my W, as well as pertinent activities.

A separate journal to document my activities with the kids.

I wrote these journals with two audiences in minds:  a) me, b) a judge or magistrate

Knowing that a judge is not going to read a long narrative account of my feelings helped me to focus on the most pertinent aspects of whatever occurred in the home.

The ability to go back and review what happened that week, that month, that year really helped me to see the forest through the trees and gain conviction through the process.

Whatever you decide to do - you'll find people here who have been through it, who can lend support.  Unlike me, there are others here who have navigated long-term BPD marriages.  Stating the obvious, whether you remain together or not:  Your W will remain in your life as a coparent, so the decision in front you is ultimately about what's best for you, your wife, and your kids.

Hope this is helpful in some way.  Take care.

[Notwendy]

I joined this group and am writing because I am dealing with probably the most difficult issue in our relationship yet and am desperate to resolve it to feel safe in our relationship

I came to understand that I could probably never feel emotionally safe in an open relationship.

The past five months or so have been an emotional rollercoaster. I became a nervous wreck. I lost weight and had to get on anti-anxiety meds. I have obsessive thoughts.
  


I don't have a similar experience but a part of navigating any relationship is boundaries.

Boundaries are not something we put on to another person. They are a reflection of our own personal values. We can not control what someone else does. Our boundaries determine what we do if someone violates them. Boundaries our our own actions.

One example is- "my boundary is to keep my possessions safe". You don't tell a robber "don't come in my house to rob us". The robber is going to do what they choose to do. Your action on this boundary is to lock your door.

Your post contained information about your wife but I pulled out the statements that reflect your boundary. Boundaries don't mean we are judging someone else- they reflect what matters to you. You can, at the same time, not judge someone for having an open marriage and also know this isn't something that works for you. You were clear: you can not feel safe in an open marriage. That is your boundary and there's nothing wrong with this.

Because it is an important one for you, the idea of doing this causes you distress and anxiety- to the point of losing weight and needing medicine. That tells you it's an important value to you. If you agreed to this, you would be betraying a core value. It makes sense your emotions are responding to this.

Your wife has other ideas. At the moment, the two of you are engaged in hypothetical circular discussions where she tries to convince you of her idea and that your core value is something wrong. It's not wrong. Many people would not be comfortable with an open marriage.

You want to decrease your emotional response to her discussing why she can be married to you and also have her affair. That is, have an affair without consequences of losing the marriage. She says you can't control her. That is true. However, you can control your decisions.

How to decrease your own emotional response to her request when she brings it up? Don't decrease your emotions- they are telling you that you don't feel emotionally safe in this situation. The other option: stop talking about this.

There are tools on this board about how to validate the pwBPD feelings without validating the invalid, and also how to state your boundary. You can't control what she does so this needs to be in "I" terms, not about you.

She brings it up, this is how it goes. "I hear that you want to explore your feelings for this man and still remain married to me" is the validation (note- it doesn't mean you agree, it's simply stating you have heard her).

Then your boundary " I have thought about your wishes, but, for me, fidelity in marriage is an important value for me. I understand I can not control your choices but you will have to choose which is more important to you- to explore your feelings for this man, or a manogamous marriage".

She may bring it up again and you repeat your statement and then stop the discussion, find a polite exit, some way to end the conversation. "I don't feel up to continuing this conversation and need to take a break to calm down". (remember "I" statements not "you")

Then instead of you feeling pressured to compromise your boundary- you are leaving her with the dilemma- the affair or her marriage. You can not control her choices.

The circular argument isn't only about her feelings for him- it's her own struggling between wanting this affair (an emotional one at the moment) with this man and also wanting her marriage and expecting you to change your feelings rather than look at her own. When you state your boundary, you aren't controlling her choice- you are handing it back to her. The circular arguments aren't going anywhere- there's no resolution between the argument who is right and who is wrong. She wants what she wants in the moment.

You also aren't giving her permission to pursue this relationship. You are simply stating that you want a monogomous marriage. Once this is done, she needs to grapple with that choice. Chances are, once she is doing that, she may realize it's not so wonderful after all. Or she may go ahead and do it- I hope not- but she still has free choice. This other guy is also risking a lot and he's married too. He hasn't even revealed where he lives which also makes his seriousness about this questionable. The "he wants to leave his wife" story is an old one.

This is just a suggestion, and other posters may have more advice. It's your choice what to do. Just keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with wanting a monogomous marriage, just like you feel there's nothing wrong with someone wanting an open one, but- your value is monogomy and that is important to you.

[Futureunwritten]

Thanks, Notwendy.

Boundaries are something that have always been a struggle in our relationship. Frequently, when my wife has been emotionally disregulated at a certain point I will just give in and say ok, you're right. In this case it has been harder, because the consequence of giving in would be intense emotional pain, whereas in most other cases it has usually been just negating my philosophical and/or moral POV and then begging forgiveness for having ever thought differently than she.

It helps to be reminded of the importance of maintaining this boundary, so thanks. In her calmer, happier moments she tells me that she respects my boundaries and that everything's going to be ok.

My hard boundary is sexual non-monogamy. I accept that she has strong feelings for this other person. I'm ok with them talking on the phone. I'd be ok with the meeting in person. In fact, I think it would help take all the mystery and uncertainty out of it for me if they could just meet and not have these weird rules about when they can talk, how frequently, no texting, etc. It would help if they could just normalize their relationship. I'd even be ok with platonic physical intimacy (hugging, cuddling, holding hands, etc). These things don't give me the kind of intrusive thoughts the way that her having sex with another guy (despite my wish that it didn't). She's told me that her feelings for this guy are not primarily romantic and that her reason for needing an open marriage isn't primarily sexual. The problem is that what she needs is to feel like she can relate to this person (her ex) on completely her own terms, whatever those may be, as determined by however she's feeling in the moment. She doesn't want to meet with him and feel that the relationship has to be a certain way because she's married to me. So that's the dead-end that we're at. She's doesn't know if it needs to be sexual, but she wants to be the one who determines that (and ultimately she is, but of course it's hard for me to move forward not knowing what her decision will/would be). So that leaves me to feel all of this uncertainty, and whenever I try to simply state my boundaries in a non-judgemental way it usually goes to her talking about her need to feel completely free to do whatever she wants. I tell her that she's free, but that if she had a sexual relationship with this guy it would hurt me and it could affect my ability to stay in the marriage, as much as I really want to always stay in it. 

Also, thanks EyesUp for sharing your difficult experience. Thanks for the suggestion about keeping a journal. Also, I appreciate your point about the  importance of being open to someone giving you straight talk. I'm glad this community has been a helpful resource. I'm glad I found it. 

[Notwendy]

While I think we all have different boundaries in relationships, one suggestion I have is to re-examine yours. We may have an idea, intellectually, what a boundary is, but if it's working for us, we also feel in alignment with it. Your boundary may be a definining line for physical connection but are your emotions in alignment with that?

IMHO having a defined line for what is non manogamy may be biologically and emotionally unrealistic. Intimacy is ofen a progression. We know that most acts of sex don't begin at "4th base". It starts with talking a lot, meeting up, then physical touch, then cuddling and so on. While you say the talking and hugging isn't giving you intrusive thoughts- at the moment, all these two are doing is talking and emotionally you are distraught and having intrusive thoughts about them possibly doing more because you know that one thing could lead to another.

Talking, cuddling, and holding hands may not be the actual "act" but it isn't always platonic. I don't think you would be feeling this way if the other man on the phone was her brother and not an ex she still has emotional baggage with.

We don't need to judge boundaries. They aren't "right" or "wrong". Boundaries are there to protect our values and our feelings. You feel what you feel and she wants what she wants, and the more the two of you keep discussing whose has more of a right - that's not leading to resolution. Yes, she has the right to control what she chooses to do with this man. You also have the right to decide your response to that.

[EyesUp]

@NotWendy's comments align with what I learned when dealing with my uBPDxw's affair:

Emotional infidelity is often the express lane to physical infidelity...

@FU, you say that you're ok with your wife communicating with her ex. Can you elaborate on that?  My point isn't to critique or judge, but to explore a bit how you view this relationship in the context of the boundary you've described:  no to non-monogamy.

In my case, I came to understand that "radical acceptance" did not mean that I had to unconditionally accept my W, rather, it was accepting things about myself that I didn't want to consider or realize that I could change...

As NotWendy said, you have the right to decide... what's right for you.

[Futureunwritten]

@Notwendy

I've thought a lot about my boundaries during this process and the gap between my emotions and my intellect. And, sure, while it's been difficult to acknowledge that my uBPDw has an emotional or spiritual connection with her ex that makes their relationship something beyond "friendship." I also understand that whatever she has with him isn't the same as and doesn't overlap with what she has with me (@EyesUp, I think this and what follows helps explain why I'm ok with them communicating). She's tried to explain that that is why I shouldn't feel jealous about any aspect of her relationship with her ex--we don't intersect in her mind. We meet different needs (of different versions of herself, as she puts it). One thing I know for certain about my partner is that she can't not be honest with me, so I don't worry that she's hiding anything from me. She shares thoughts with me that she hasn't fully worked through--which can sometimes been difficult. I've generally been able to get my feelings and my thoughts in line when it comes to their relationship except when it comes to her desire for sexual relationship with this guy, which she says is only a small part of her feelings toward him. However, my sense is that the escalation of their relationship in that direction isn't likely (for various really I don't need to get into here). Recognition of that fact helps calm me down.

The challenge for me, though, is when she brings up her need to be in an open relationship as part of her process of liberation. It makes the idea of her crossing my boundary seem more real and imminent than it actually is. The problem is that while I can understand her perspective about her preferred way of relating and loving outside traditional monogamy, whenever I state my need for sexual exclusivity for my own emotional wellbeing and safety, she interprets it as though I need to control her body. I think that's where things breakdown and we get into these circular arguments. I don't want to control her, I'm just stating what I need, what I've always needed to feel emotionally safe in a romantic relationship. In a perfect world both people would feel the same so that there is no imbalance of needs being met. I think, for her, this argument we keep having is less about her desire for multiple sexual partners as it is about her need to feel like no one is controlling her and she being her authentic self. My feeling is that if my need for sexual exclusivity in a relationship is unacceptably stifling of her ability to be herself, that's something she needs to figure out. I don't want to control her. I want her to be herself. I want to keep our marriage and family together, but I want to feel emotionally safe and I want her to feel like she's not making unacceptable compromises to stay in the relationship. Sometimes it feels like this isn't a major issue for her, while other times she says things that make it feel like it would be an unfair and unacceptable compromise for her. That's what makes this so frustrating. We seem to move forward and then move back, depending on how she's feeling at the moment.             

[Notwendy]

While your wife may think your need for monogamy is "controlling" her- that is her thoughts. Yours are different. You need monogamy, she wants to have an open relationship. This doesn't have to be a right/wrong situation. You each have different "needs".

Yes, you want to keep the marriage together, and have monogamy. She wants to keep the marriage together and have an open relationship.

She's also correct- you can't control her. She can do what she wants to do. She also can't control you unless you choose to allow her to.

No two people are alike and relationships involve sometimes being willing to go along with the other person's wishes. But when this involves a core value- sometimes we can't do that. This isn't a decision between ordering pizza or Chinese food for take out. If this was the case, you would not be an emotional wreck for that choice.

Your wife can say or think what she chooses but that doesn't make it true. If she thought you were a pink elephant, would that make you one? No, because you know you aren't one. She can think you are controlling but if you could be certain you aren't being controlling, then it's not true.

IMHO, this "liberation" talk sounds like something out of the 1970's. You aren't not allowing her to work, or to make her own choices. I am not saying all inequities are resolved yet, but the situation is different now. I recall when my BPD mother and her friends were interested in this. In her era, most women were housewives. The original movement was that women wanted to also be in the workplace, but the housework didn't just go away, the hope was to have shared duties.

The movement also coincided with the development of the birth control pill, which gave women more freedom to explore their own sexuality, but not ever did it guarantee the right to have an open marriage without consequences for a marriage. Yes, people have the right to make that choice but so does the spouse have the right to stay married or not.

Your continued discussions, intellectual discussions, with your wife over whose core value will predominate are a waste of time and also they are emotionally distressing for you. You value monogomy, she wants something else. Your core values are not in alignment.

You don't have to give her "permission" or agree to her request. Your part is to get centered on what you can live with and what you can't and if she chooses an open relationship, what would be your choice.

It's possible that a part of her "longing" is the forbidden fruit. You are in a Karpman triangle, in persecutor position, she's victim, he's her rescuer and the two of them are aligned in woe- "we can't be together because her H won't allow it". But this guy is also married with a child and he doesn't reveal where he lives? Just a wild guess here but it makes me wonder what kind of man he really is.

It may be a risk you don't want to take but by stepping off the triangle, she is then left to face whatever consequences there are to pursuing this guy.

IMHO, I think it would help for you to get focused on your core values and stop the circular discussions.

[Futureunwritten]

Thanks @NotWendy
You’re of course right about the futility of continuing these circular discussions. I need to affirm my boundary and be ok with whatever intense negative reaction she might have to it, rather than continuing to try to find a way for her to be ok with it.