Welcome! You will find excellent peer support here as well as a wealth of time-tested approaches, explanations and strategies. We've "been there, experienced that".
one morning she woke up and immediately began complaining about how I wasn’t good enough for her as a partner. She began throwing things and punching me. I got angry and yelled a little and left the house.
Angry and yelling, not good reactions yet understandable if you didn't know how to address the conflict coming out of nowhere. Leaving the house, a very good boundary and immediate solution to lower the conflict and give your spouse time to reset a bit.
People with BPD traits (pwBPD) resist Boundaries, they typically despise others telling them what to do. Therefore, boundaries are for us and depend upon us. In its most basic form, an effective Boundary for us is, "If you do or don't do ___ then
in response I will or won't do ___."
In this case, a good boundary is to state I will leave when I feel uncomfortable, abused or threatened. However, that is not a long term solution. The issues - her perceptions and her overreactions to them - will still be there.
A few days after this I told her I wasn’t sure if it would be good for us to be together. She begged for me to not leave and asked what she could do for me to reconsider. She also told me she would most likely kill herself if we were not together.
On the one hand, you stood your ground that there was too much conflict. Then she begged you to stay. This is a well-known disordered dance, repeated push apart then pull back. This is dysfunctional since it is an unhealthy back and forth with little getting resolved.
On the other hand, she responded to you pondering - she might see it as threatening - whether it was best to separate with her own threat to suicide. Yes, not comparable but in a pwBPD's minds, perceptions and moods mean more than facts and reality.
I love this person very dearly but it is very hard to see a life with her that is stable in the future. I want kids but I don’t feel comfortable having children in an environment like this... She is constantly talking about wanting kids and I don’t feel comfortable being permanently tied to someone who I don’t feel like I can fully trust right now.
While I am a strong proponent of marriage and family, the reality is that your spouse is, just like when she is with you, unlikely to be a consistent example of good mothering. There will be some good times yet many bad times, quite inconsistent. The extreme behaviors will not be a good example of parenting. So until you are quite satisfied that these behavioral issues have been resolved it is a wise course to avoid having children.
I and many others here have been in your shoes facing this dilemma. As for me, I was so clueless that I imagined that having a child would make my spouse happier with me and with life in general and stop being so dysfunctional. It was the reverse, life became worse with a child.
For years I'd known she came from a dysfunctional, even abusive, home. Her stepfather abused her and her sister while her mother appeased him and chose to be blind to his behaviors. I thought I'd saved her. However, in time small issues became major ones in her mind. She caused conflict with her coworkers, then our mutual friends. That's when we had a child, my hope for a positive solution. Instead, she drew away from me and acted as though I was as bad as her stepfather. It was only years later I came to conclude she had changed her perceptions of me when I had become a father.
But once we had a child together, our lives were forever connected. Though I still had to separate and divorce, ending the adult relationship was vastly more complicated with the custody and parenting aspects. Our child is now grown but his mother still has issues to this day.
That's why I recommend you find a solution to your current relationship issues before venturing into long term parenting life.
