So he left

[Pinkcamellias]

My husband left last night.
I had been praying without ceasing for peace and a way out because he was scaring me. He split and everytime I thought he was “back to normal” he would turn on me again. He acts normal long enough to go to work, and be a productive member of society but something about coming home makes him loose his mind. He’s said “ I hate being here”…referring to at home . Lately he’s been telling the kids and I “ I hate yall “. This is in addition to the constant accusations of having an affair with his father . If you recall in my previous post he had asked me if his father could stay temporarily but that quickly went south. I was hoping they could move out together . So I can just escape all the craziness completely. His father said he needs until the end of December to leave and I said okay because he’s innocent in all of this and doesn’t deserve to be thrown out on the street but   that meant my husband wouldn’t leave until he left and I’d have to get through the holidays walking on egg shells and have him yell at me , name call, cause division between the kids and I …etc. Well yesterday after he swore he’d behave long enough to save up and leave he changed his mind and packed all his things and left. He went to his moms which is an hour away. I feel a sense of relief, sense of failure . My heart breaks for my kids but they say they understand. My father in law never comes out his room so I don’t know if he heard him moving out or not yesterday but I really hope that with his son not being here anymore he leaves sooner then December 31st.

[JazzSinger]

My husband left last night.
I had been praying without ceasing for peace and a way out because he was scaring me. He split and everytime I thought he was “back to normal” he would turn on me again. He acts normal long enough to go to work, and be a productive member of society but something about coming home makes him loose his mind. He’s said “ I hate being here”…referring to at home . Lately he’s been telling the kids and I “ I hate yall “. This is in addition to the constant accusations of having an affair with his father . If you recall in my previous post he had asked me if his father could stay temporarily but that quickly went south. I was hoping they could move out together . So I can just escape all the craziness completely. His father said he needs until the end of December to leave and I said okay because he’s innocent in all of this and doesn’t deserve to be thrown out on the street but   that meant my husband wouldn’t leave until he left and I’d have to get through the holidays walking on egg shells and have him yell at me , name call, cause division between the kids and I …etc. Well yesterday after he swore he’d behave long enough to save up and leave he changed his mind and packed all his things and left. He went to his moms which is an hour away. I feel a sense of relief, sense of failure . My heart breaks for my kids but they say they understand. My father in law never comes out his room so I don’t know if he heard him moving out or not yesterday but I really hope that with his son not being here anymore he leaves sooner then December 31st.

Pinkcamellias,

I pray this works out for you.  I sense you’re already feeling relived, but I know this is complicated, especially since there are children and  in-laws involved. 

But I can relate, elven though we don’t have kids.  I too have told myself I can’t just throw my H out into the street. But, like you, I’m sick and tired of walking on eggshells. 

Good luck to you. I wish you and yours all the peace and happiness you deserve.

Jazz

[Pinkcamellias]

Thanks Jazz
I am going to take it one day at a time and  find a therapist.
Everyday I wake up and think, “ how did I get here ?”
I’ll report back if things get crazy again.

[CC43]

Hi Pink,

Wow, it sounds like you've been through a lot.  I bet having your FIL in your home was meant to be a loving, helpful gesture, but the reality is that it increased stress for everyone, especially your husband.  Maybe your husband is level-headed enough to be successful at work, but by the time he gets home, he feels absolutely exhausted from "faking" normalcy, and he breaks down.  Maybe he needs extensive time every day to "recover," but it seems impossible to do that in a home with so many people in it, especially needy people (children and an older parent).  Maybe up until now, he thought he could "recover" and "cope" by bossing you around, ensuring you serve him like a slave/mother/emotional caretaker.  Does that sound about right?  The problem is, you are not a slave/his mother/emotional caretaker, and your attention is necessarily divided, because there are other people in the household, including yourself.  The other problem is, he is incredibly jealous of any attention that isn't squarely on him.  Underneath it all, he's really insecure, and I bet he acts like a toddler sometimes.  It's really disturbing because he seems so "normal" when he wants to be, such as in the workplace.  But when the stress ratchets up, he quickly self-destructs.  Is he concocting crazy narratives about how you hurt him, creating excuses for him to act out?  Is he blaming you for everything, even if you've been nothing but supportive?  Does he blow up at the smallest infractions; does he seem to invent reasons to hurl his rage your way?  I'd say, rest assured it has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with his feeling insecure, powerless, dissatisfied, jealous, stuck, stressed out.  He might need constant reassurances, praise and attention, and yet he can detect insincerity.  He's really a piece of work.

Sometimes I think this behavior is almost like a toddler's.  He needs lots of attention and distraction.  He's easily overwhelmed.    He shuts down when he faces a real problem and kicks and screams instead.  He relies on others to cater to some of his basic needs, even if he should be capable of caring for himself.  He needs down time (nap time), lots of it.  He doesn't care whether he hurts you, the only thing he cares about is his own frustration.  Though he's competent when it comes to things he wants to do, he refuses to do things he should do.  He seems to "forget" everything you've done for him.  He has you walking on eggshells trying to avoid an outburst, but it's impossible, because he's bubbling underneath.  He has you over-functioning for him, which really wears you down.  Does that sound about right?

Maybe this break is exactly what you need.  You might think of it as a time out.

I have an adult BPD stepdaughter with BPD.  She's still a young adult, so the comparison isn't perfect.  But I see a lot of parallels in their situations.  I would consider my stepdaughter to be a fairly "high functioning" BPD, because she can "execute" things she wants to do.  She can seem to be "normal" for stretches, especially during vacations or times of transition when she has few responsibilities.  (She has had a ton of therapy for her BPD, and so she seems to cope better than she used to.)  The thing is though, she has a hard time dealing with stress.  Instead of tackling tasks one by one, using persistence and problem-solving skills to forge ahead, her emotions take over, and she can't think straight or focus on the task at hand.  Rather, she's consumed with self-doubt.  If she manages to work a full day, it seems she needs a LONG time to recover.  Maybe she's totally emotionally drained from the work day, which is more challenging than school used to be, given the longer hours, unpredictable problems and complex social dynamics with co-workers and customers.  She's so afraid of making a mistake that she's practically paralyzed, and I bet her co-workers/boss misinterpret that as laziness or incompetence.  She needs constant praise and reassurance, and lots of breaks, and she's probably not getting them.  She takes coaching as criticism and internalizes that, thinking she's a bad person.  If she messes up, she's terribly hurt, but she won't take responsibility and blames someone else.  By the time she comes home, she's wracked with uncertainty and feeling like a failure.  Sometimes it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.  Maybe her boss sends her home.  Maybe she gets fired.  Maybe she quits.  That only makes her feel worse.  And when this is going on, she's taking it out on loved ones at home, but she's not telling us what's really bothering her.  She's just throwing tantrums for no apparent reason.  And she says she can't stand living in the home any longer.  She'll flee, in a classic "flight" response from her problems.  She mistakenly thinks the problem is her living situation, so she'll move.  Alas, she can't get away from herself (except temporarily on a vacation), and her problems crop up wherever she goes, because her problem is BPD.  She has the emotional skills of a young teen, but she's living in an adult world, and she just can't seem to hack it for very long.  Maybe if you understand that, you can relate to your husband.  Even so, it probably doesn't make you feel much better, because he's intent on being mean to you.  Just know that it's not your fault.

[Pinkcamellias]

CC43 a lot of what you said has been spot on with my observation with my husband. I feel like the more compassion I show my husband and happy I appear  the more he wants me to open up to him so he can use what I say to distort it later on. He and I both work a full time jobs but his job has more flexibility so he can work less or more on any given month. When I get home I don’t see him for maybe the first 1- 3 hours. He needs his “me time” which in all transparency he spends outside the house to smoke marijuana. He smokes a lot. So much so that others have told me I’m a fool to think he’s not really cheating because it doesn’t take hours to smoke. I do not believe he’s cheating but I believe he wants to “get back at me” for what he believes is being done to him.
I am going to enjoy the break.

[Pinkcamellias]

I wanted to add it so hard being with someone who doesn’t show me any grace . I can’t be sick or under the weather , I can’t have a menstrual cycle , I can’t hang out with my mom, I can’t have friends , I can’t eat lunch quietly in my car , I have to call him on the way home . Am I even a person ?

[CC43]

I wanted to add it so hard being with someone who doesn’t show me any grace . I can’t be sick or under the weather , I can’t have a menstrual cycle , I can’t hang out with my mom, I can’t have friends , I can’t eat lunch quietly in my car , I have to call him on the way home . Am I even a person ?

Hi again.  I can relate to everything you said.  My husband doesn't have BPD but exhibits some BPD traits when he's stressed out.  That usually manifests as being uber-controlling of me.  When he's sick, he expects me to drop everything and baby him, but a week later when I usually get what he got, he gives me zero leeway.  I'm still expected to "perform" at 100%.  If I cough, it annoys him and he'll scream at me.  If I get up in the middle of the night to take some medicine, he'll yell at me for waking him up.  I'm still expected to manage the household and make a fancy dinner (even when I had a full-time job and generally worked more hours than my husband).  When he got home from work, my husband would generally unwind for the evening, but when I got home, he'd literally start barking orders before I even got through the door!  In short, he demands perfect performance from me at all times.  If I socialize with friends, he gets upset and "punishes" me for socializing, even for a short time (such as drinks with a girlfriend for two or three hours, once a month).  If anyone calls me--usually a family member--he'll shout at me to get off the phone, because I'm supposed to be paying attention to HIM.  If we're out together, and I take a moment to pay attention to what someone else has to say, my husband will typically throw a little fit because he thinks I'm "excluding" him.  And yes, if I act joyful, he can easily take it the wrong way, maybe because it reminds him that he's not joyful?  He's basically insanely jealous if I have any fun.  If I visit with family, I'll invite my husband, but he usually refuses to accompany me, because it's to "boring," and yet, he'll "punish" me for spending time with family, even if it's only for a few hours.  He'll call me demanding to know if I'm on my way back yet, and he manufactures some sort of crisis about dinner, even if I left him a meal ready for him to heat up.  It's as if he's more demanding than an infant sometimes!  And he doesn't even have BPD.

It took me a while to understand this behavior.  I thought, if I did what he wanted, and I "performed" perfectly, then he'd be happy.  But it doesn't work that way, because his infantile behavior has little to do with me, while it makes me feel completely depleted.  Over time, I pieced together what I think was happening.  You see, he was so stressed out and felt clueless about how to get his life under control.  His solution?  Try to control ME.  That included restricting my social life, reducing my access to friends and family, giving me a 6 PM curfew (though he was free to go out three evenings per week), and barking all sorts of orders.  If I made a suggestion or expressed an idea, he shot me down and ensured that his opinion was what counted.  If he changed his mind to what I initially suggested, he'd never admit it.  If I said UP, he said DOWN.  If I said something else, he told me to shut up.  If he wanted something, he wanted me to drop everything and do it for him immediately.  Or my favorite:  if he decided to do something himself, he insisted that I had to be right at his side acting as his "little helper."  He wanted constant praise and recognition for what he did, but he didn't reciprocate.  He'd get insanely jealous if something good happened to me (say, a promotion), so I thought hard before telling him, and if I did tell him, I played it down.  The converse also held--if I had an alarming health test result, or a medical issue that required a follow-up, he couldn't take the news.  I had to hide things from him when he was in his moods.

Anyway, my strategy is to live my life.  I make sure I spend time with my friends and family, even if it means he punishes me.  I found that the best way to deal with his meltdowns was basically to let him have them and ignore them.  Fortunately for me, he'd usually get over it by morning.  Even he realized he was being idiotic for being upset with me for helping my mom for an afternoon.  Even he realizes it's pathetic to complain that he's incapable of re-heating the dinner that I had left for him, or to make something himself if he wanted something else.  Even he realizes it's unreasonable for him to demand me to be at home at 6 PM, 365 days a year, when he's free to stay out later several nights per week.  Even he realizes that his numerous "emergency" calls to me were in fact surveillance, not "emergencies."  If he called me just to yell at me, I'd say, I'm hanging up if you're calling just to yell at me.  I don't want to get in an accident.  I'll see you when I get home.

You are a person, even if it feels like sometimes you're not, because your home feels like a battlefield.  I think it's a sign that you need to prioritize your own well-being.  If it's really bad, maybe you can ask your FIL to leave--he's an adult, let him (or your husband) worry about him.  You worry about you.  You could give your FIL until the end of the month to find another situation.  It sounds like you need to focus on you (and the kids) for once.  You deserve that.

[Pinkcamellias]

This is where the BPD traits and narcissism overlaps. My husband isn’t a malignant narcissist but he’s definitely on the spectrum. Years of anxiety had my blood pressure through the roof. In early 2024 I went for a yearly physical, which turned into an overnight ER stay because my doctor said my numbers were so high I could have a stroke at any second. I didn’t tell her I had to explain 3 ways to Sunday to my husband that I was going in late to work due to a check up, which led to him accusing me of the most heinous things . I ended up being admitted and having to see a heart specialist. Apart from the ER deductible I enjoyed the night away. He was nicer for like a week but once he knew I had a prescription he started up again.

[50andwastedlife]

I wanted to add it so hard being with someone who doesn’t show me any grace . I can’t be sick or under the weather , I can’t have a menstrual cycle , I can’t hang out with my mom, I can’t have friends , I can’t eat lunch quietly in my car , I have to call him on the way home . Am I even a person ?

This is so familiar. I have the same dynamic with my husband...he has got so obsessed with how my working has ruined his life, that he forgets that before that, he hated me seeing family, friends, having any life separate to him. He is constantly threatening to leave, but obviously doesn't want to without someone else to go to or he'd be on his own even more, so now he is threatening to find someone else.

I really symathise with your situation. I hope you get a chance to rest, to breathe, to be a person...

[ForeverDad]

Likely your H will return at some point, so it may be that his absence is just a breather for you.  So I will ask the elephant in the room question.  Have you worked up goals for yourself and the kids?  Then a strategy to reach those goals?

I don't know how helpful your FIL's presence is in your home but he's certainly a trigger for your H.  His return would just flame his issues again.  How soon will FIL be moving to his 55+ housing?  Anything definite there?

Your health is suffering (to the point that you spent a night in the ER) and so too surely are the kids being impacted.  Have you faced the issue whether it would be safer, calmer and better all around to separate?  Yes, he departed for his mother's home but likely he will show up again all too soon, perhaps without advance notice.  It would be wise to take control of your life and parenting Now than to wait, find yourself back in the chaos yet again and have a harder time getting your life in order.  Does that make sense?  How can we help?

[Pinkcamellias]

Likely your H will return at some point, so it may be that his absence is just a breather for you.  So I will ask the elephant in the room question.  Have you worked up goals for yourself and the kids?  Then a strategy to reach those goals?

I don't know how helpful your FIL's presence is in your home but he's certainly a trigger for your H.  His return would just flame his issues again.  How soon will FIL be moving to his 55+ housing?  Anything definite there?

Your health is suffering (to the point that you spent a night in the ER) and so too surely are the kids being impacted.  Have you faced the issue whether it would be safer, calmer and better all around to separate?  Yes, he departed for his mother's home but likely he will show up again all too soon, perhaps without advance notice.  It would be wise to take control of your life and parenting Now than to wait, find yourself back in the chaos yet again and have a harder time getting your life in order.  Does that make sense?  How can we help?

Right now im in survival mode. My H and I had a system. I get everyone to school and he was the one picking the kids up from school.  He told me as he was leaving, I’d have to figure it out or ask my fil. I didn’t want to feed into his narrative (and my mom agreed) so she picked up two of my kids on her lunch break a couple days this week, I sent my high schooler home in an uber twice , and the day he had afterschool activities,I picked him up  after work. I had to explain to my employer the situation in order to leave work early. He also told me he won’t be helping me financially until he’s court ordered to. Despite how unnecessarily hard this week has been it’s shown me that where there is a will, there is a way. I  am expecting my fil to hold to his word and leave by the end of the year. My H has not spoken to me since he left but he speaks to the kids daily and promised he’d come by tomorrow. His refusal to help with the kids this week tells me he’s trying to make things hard for me. He works 15 minutes from the kids school.God forbid he comes back AND my fil doesn’t leave by Dec 31st, my thinking at the moment is I will pay to break my lease sometime thereafter , hire movers and vacate. I have a lot to mull over ….

[dtkm]

I have been in a very similar situation as you. I came home one day and my uBPDh had “moved out” without telling me he was going to do so. I tried to call him once, but he didn’t answer. Later, he told me I should have tried more times, but I wasn’t going to play those games.  It took a lot of talking to my T and did a lot of emotional damage to me, but ultimately what was best at the time was proving to myself that I can do it alone. Like your H, mine would often tell me that he wouldn’t do anything to help with the kids, unless it was on his terms if he left. I learned to lean on friends and family. I have never done so before, but it showed me how amazing people can be…and that I am not that horrible person that my h said I was. My therapist advised that I organize the kids (4 of them) lives as well as mine, how I wanted them to be, to set it as the new normal. Similar to your H, mine refused to pay for anything. We did have a a temporary court hearing and his actions (and my records of his actions) did not do well for him in court. He was ordered to pay the mortgage plus pay me back pay on the mortgage he made me pay, a large amount of child support and a good chunk of my lawyer fees. I used his leaving the house, and thus the kids, as a point that he wasn’t the primary parent that he said he was in many documents. He tried to bully his way into doing things for the kids after, but I had already set up people to help me and wouldn’t allow him to do so as it wasn’t appropriate for the kids. Ultimately, we ended up reconciling, but reconciling with someone with uBPD means we are pretty much back to square one, but at least he is in mandated therapy now. I agree to take this time as a breather and to organize your life how YOU feel is best for you and the kids, as he will most likely be back before you are ready for him. Side note…if you have an alarm on the house or anything like that, be aware that he is most likely watching you.