Hi all,
I have been trying to follow the “stop caretaking” and “stop walking on eggshells” for 4 years now, with varying results. I have noted that some caretaking is essential, if you want the bpd relationship to succeed, and this is why pwbpd traditionally have many short-lived relationships, unlike those lucky enough to find a caretaker, the classic bpd fam member.
Just a thought on this assumption. If a BPD-caretaker marriage is such a good thing to maintain- then- why are the people posting here unhappy in this situation? If it were necessary to be a caretaker to keep the marriage together- and the wish is to keep it together, and this is what both people want, then why would anyone ask for advice to make things different, especially if the advice leads to concerns about threatening the relationship.
It's been a while since I read that book but I don't recall it saying "don't take this advice, you need to be a caretaker if you want the marriage to succeed. Not caretaking is the reason for unstable BPD marriages so beware of this advice".
There's another side to caretaking that isn't so caring. It's managing a partner's emotions as a way of managing ones own. It's actually more self serving than to be doing caring things for the other person. I think this is why you discarded the gifts, to spare yourself your wife's reaction. I understand this- I saw my father do this many times. We did it ourselves on visits as it wasn't worth having a scene on a short visit. There were some times I chose to placate my BPD mother's feelings because, I just didn't want to deal with the reaction at the time. That wasn't all "caretaking".
The reason for the book suggestion to stop caretaking isn't to break up a marriage. It's because enabling, caretaking, someone's emotions doesn't allow for them to have the opportunity to learn to manage their own emotions better, if it were possible. They, then, remain at this level of ability.
This is your relationship to choose about what to do. What I have seen is the consequences of decades of emotional caretaking. While you said "lucky enough to find a caretaker spouse" may apply to my BPD mother, the other side of this is that she remained at the child level of emotional regulation. Yes, this kept the marriage together, but it also maintained the dysfunctional dynamics.
You have so far been able to regain many of your boundaries- like needing your job, playing your piano, picking your clothes, by not caretaking your wife's feelings and letting her deal with them. The work gifts were not a battle to bother with. There were two sides to this. One is "she couldn't handle seeing them" and the other "you couldn't handle her reaction if she did".
I don't know the road not taken. Would my mother have gained better skills or not? One doesn't know if one isn't willing to allow the pwBPD to have the uncomfortable feelings of seeing a gift from a co-worker. The book doesn't recommend going all cold turkey at once but taking this one step at a time. Everyone chooses their battles. But if you can let go of this assumption that caretaking is necessary to keep your marriage and instead see caretaking as keeping your wife from learning her own emotional regulation skills, it may not look like it's trying to break your marriage up.
