Poisoned by blogs, reels, podcasts, and other social media

[GrayJay]

My uBPD wife of over 30 years has had a steady escalation of BPD symptoms since I retired almost 10 years ago and we moved across the country to a place we mutually selected and still enjoy. She has reinterpreted our entire marriage and now says I was abusive, controlling, and narcissistic. She has wasted her talents as a mostly stay-at-home Mom, and has lost her identity. For the first 15 or more years of our marriage we celebrated our wedding anniversary, exchanged affectionate cards and notes, and felt very close, despite episodes of sudden emotional dysregulation which gradually escalated and became more frequent. These were without exception initiated by her due to something I said or did, and I have always been 100% to blame.

I could say much more, but I’d like to cut directly to my topic. My wife spends hours every day watching reels, listening to podcasts (many generated by AI), watching YouTube videos, reading blogs, articles by self-proclaimed experts, and Facebook posts about narcissism, coercive control, cheating (I’ve never come remotely close to cheating, but a friendly greeting spoken to a woman in passing, or a second quick glance at a very attractive woman without any eye contact drives her insane, and she never forgives), uncommitted husbands, betrayals, triangulation, gaslighting (she still gets the definition wrong), and much more. Then she sits me down for hours and discusses these articles with me. We often have to listen or watch a lengthy program and discuss it, all while she is very dysregulated. Frequently, she asks me to journal on the topic of the day, and I will write an essay and try to understand her viewpoint and then we talk about what I’ve written. To the best of my ability I use tools I’ve learned from my  therapist, as well as many good things I’ve learned on this website, and especially try not to JADE. 

Has anyone else experienced this? I feel like she gets on a topic, and AI keeps feeding her more and more and more of the same topic. She goes down a rabbit hole and gets very depressed and very blaming of me. This will go on for several weeks, and then she’ll change topics and go down another rabbit hole, followed by another rabbit hole. Years go by.  It seems like she’s trying to force me to take all of the blame. I am pretty conflict averse, and can be pretty wimpy when she is attacking me, which is quite frequent. It is very depressing to me, and I’m trying my best to understand what is true in her assertions, make changes, and ignore the majority of it, which is not true. I cannot tell her not to pay attention to these things, but I have told her that she may be going down the rabbit hole and really getting overly influenced by material of dubious quality. I state this as diplomatically as I can. My stress level is very high, and I sleep very poorly, often lying awake for hours at night, unable to sleep due to the stress of the conflict.

Again, has anyone else experienced this? How do I cope? I can’t tell her she can’t look at these things, but I feel it is really poisoning our relationship. She is threatening divorce frequently. But some days, things are fine. It’s like nothing ever happened. If I say that it sounds like she’s wanting to end the marriage, she freaks out and says “don’t put words in my mouth - that’s what you want to do.” Any wisdom or insight would be greatly appreciated.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Pook075]

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm so sorry you're in this position and I can relate to a lot of what you shared.  My experiences weren't nearly as bad (in terms of projection) but I did get hit from both sides since my ex-wife was BPD and so was our oldest daughter.

A BPDs biggest fear is abandonment and when they're dysregulated, literally anything could be concrete proof in their minds that you're out to hurt them.  And like you, I'd try to tote the line, participate in the circular arguments that never went anywhere, and put up with constant judgement from friends and family because of something that was said.

For instance, my ex's parents are highly religious and against alcohol.  My ex had some wine coolers with a friend one night, the parents showed up unexpectedly, and they were told the alcohol was mine.  But as time passed, somehow I became an abusive drunk and her church was praying for me...all off one lie that led to disordered thinking and dozens of other lies. 

Stuff like this was so common and it ate at me- I rarely ever drank and I was never abusive.  Yet everyone had this entirely different picture of me.

What I've learned over the years is that you can't let stuff like that fester, and you can't pretend it's not there either.  You must face it head-on and clearly say, this is not okay.  It will lead to an argument and it will make things worse for the short term...but look how bad it already is in your home.  I mean, you're writing current event essays on your wife's paranoia.  Can you see why that wouldn't be healthy for anyone?

Have you refused to go through her "tests"?  How did she react?

[SuperDaddy]

Hi GrayJay,

I got interested in your post and took the time to read all of your previous ones. I'm interested because I believe that I have the explanation for what's happening in your life, the solution for that, and finally why this got so much worse after so many years.

In theory, BPD comes from an invalidating environment in childhood. So usually they didn't get enough reassurance and affection, at least not to the level they were needing, and then developed poor ways of dealing with it. So the accusations of you being disordered might be a projection of how they felt about their caregivers in their childhood.

When you stop directing your energy on them, strongly enforce boundaries, and redirect your energy on yourself, they see you as selfish and then call you a narcissist. Then they may provoke you as a last effort to rob your attention by saying the nastiest stuff to take you out of balance. But if you don't shake and don't cry, then they may accuse you of being a robot or a psychopath, someone without emotions.

Like you, I had already done some research to verify if their accusations made any sense, but I used self-assessment tools and then went directly to the diagnostic criteria from the DSM, so I quickly noticed it was nonsense.

I have seen this pattern with 3 of my wives, who are all affected by BPD, but not in my HPD partner. But if you pay close attention, you'll notice that this is a transient opinion, which they only withstand while they are devaluing you.

If you try to talk about her opinions in a moment that is being very joyful, you'll notice the difference. She might not want to simply drop the accusations because that would make her completely lose her self-confidence, but you'll notice that she won't be as sure as she was in the other moments when dysregulated. I know you might not want to bring it up in joyful moments because you are afraid of triggering her and ruining the moment. But talking about it when she is not dysregulated might be a beneficial activity (as long as it's a warm conversation and she remains stable).

One of the reasons why you care about what she says is because she is not a stranger. She is your wife. But as you notice that this is a transient opinion, it might not become so important for you anymore. And before taking the next step, it's important that you understand the volatility of her perceptions, because that will make you less worried about what she says. So please take the courage to bring it up in a moment that things are all good between both of you, but make sure you are doing it in the most lovable way that you can, while seeking to understand how she feels rather than expressing your resentment. Hopefully, you both still have peaceful moments together, do you?

Ok, now here is how you make her stop calling you a narcissist: You agree with her! In essence, inside her unconscious mind, it will feel like you're finally agreeing with her that her caregiver acted in a narcissistic way toward her in some moments of her childhood and that this interaction was traumatizing for her. What feeling will she have after that interaction? Relief, and finally the validation of her feelings.

Ok, I know that in my suggestion I'm telling you to validate a distorted perception of hers, and that can make BPD distortions worse. But here it's different because you are the one being accused, so it will have the opposite effect. Let's assume you get angry at your job and keep bullying/provoking your coworker, calling him gay. Then, unexpectedly, he publicly announces that he is homosexual. Would you continue with the behavior or choose to stop? Now imagine you call another coworker an idiot. But then he reveals that he has had brain surgery, that it lowered his IQ to 80, and that he has an official mental disability. Again, would you keep calling him an idiot? I guess you'd stop, right? So what have those two coworkers actually done? They agreed, and with that, they took control of the situation.

If you think about it, why would it be so bad to be a narcissist? Narcissists have problems in their job and their relationships and become irritated easily and very badly. But if you are retired and have friends and good relationships, then you would at least be a successful narcissist, right?

Accusing you of being a narcissist is the only way that she has found to express her own pain, and you'll then just be an actor for her by temporarily assuming the role of the narcissist. I say temporarily, because once you completely assume the label, she will then stop trying to convince you about it and over time will realize that she was wrong. What really matters is that she will stop pushing this campaign.

As a first step before agreeing, you might want to tell other family members that you'll agree with her accusations, but make sure that they won't tell her. Then, wait for her next round of accusations, and then do the agreement process gradually, in baby steps, so that it doesn't look like sarcasm.

To be continued...

[GrayJay]

Pook and SuperDaddy, thank you so much for your comments. Just knowing that other people can relate, and take some time to respond, is very meaningful to me.  To reply to some of your questions and comments ... I have never refused to go through her "tests," at least not yet, because even as painful (and often absurd) it feels, she is the love of my life and I want to understand what she feels.  As many others have pointed out, if a pwBPD is so inclined, no response is acceptable; all options lead to escalation. The least escalation happens when I at least try to cooperate with her and she gets her feelings out.  But it's getting worse and worse and she now seems, when dysregulated, to consider that marrying me 30+ years ago was a huge mistake because in her mind, I controlled her, abused her, and snuffed the joy of life out of her. She has a long list of my abuses, and it gets longer and longer - things she never mentioned when they were happening.  As long as I don't escalate, her anger and contempt is still strong and can last for 1-3 days. It feels like the world, and our marriage, is ending. My stress is extreme, I sleep very poorly, my blood pressure is high, and I feel pressure in my chest and throat.

If I practice SET, she completely ignores the "T" - truth, because in her mind what I'm saying is not true.  She wants everything to be my fault, and I think she truly believes this. She won't even take responsibility for not making her needs known at the time and stating any objections.  This has all come out since retirement.
 
If I do as many advise, calmly tell her I think it's too heated and I need some space, then try to walk away she goes into a blinding rage.  And if I JADE, she doesn't hear any of it, and we both end up raising our voices and it quickly spirals out of control.

I am codependent, no doubt about it, and I have a fear of abandonment and don't want to live alone (I'm almost 70). I am trying hard to practice mindfulness, meditation, rhythmic breathing, radical acceptance, and distress tolerance techniques, but it is so incredibly hard and painful - the hardest thing I've ever done.  It's easy to say that I should move out and seek peace on my own, but it is extraordinarily difficult. We have a large house in a stagnant housing market and way too many possessions.  It would take a couple of years to unwind all that, maybe more.
We do have many good days, and last fall set a record of almost 8 weeks without conflict. It was wonderful, and I was reminded of how suited we are for each other, when there's no BPD behavior involved. I'm not sure why she was in better spirits then. We've had so many good years together, at least in my opinion, and I don't want to give that up. I tend to be an optimist and quickly forgive her when she's her normal, better self. But I don't know what to do on a day-to-day basis.  She has reached out to a therapist but gotten no reply.
Her current position is that she is a Heyoka empath whom everyone is jealous of, and she is shedding many relationships because they are energy vampires.  I'm one of the last ones left to discard.  We have two adult children, but we keep them out of the extent of our conflict.  They would be shocked if they knew.
SuperDaddy, thank you for your concern and your detailed reply.  I look forward to hearing more from you.  I may try just fully owning the narcissist label even though my therapist says I'm average or below average on narcissism.  I hate to validate a false characterization, but if it calms her down it may be worth it.  I know who I am. (In your examples of the gay and the idiot, that was actually true, but it's not true that I have NPD.) But I'm willing to try.
She just has no forgiveness, not for anything in her childhood or anything she claims I've done.

Thanks for listening, and I look forward to more comments!

[SuperDaddy]

GrayJay,

There is another thing I need to tell you that is even more important and, in my opinion, should be the reason why her symptoms have worsened after so many years.

Some people will say it was because of retirement, the lack of having important roles in life, staying at home with you too much time, etc. That may seem to make sense, but it's not what we expect. We expect life to become better after we are free from our job duties.

Instead, I believe the issue may stem from biological aging. With aging, nutrient absorption decays and the need for some nutrients increases. And regarding the 8 weeks of well-being, that may have been hormonal. I can't give you guidance about supplements in this forum, but I can recommend you search for an "orthomolecular doctor" for you and perhaps later an "orthomolecular psychiatrist" for her. They prescribe nutrients instead of medications, and they use lab tests to guide their choices. The book Nutrient Power documents the pioneering work in this kind of treatment in the US. They began testing it on felons, then women in psychiatric hospitals, and finally children with behavioral disorders.

Start by yourself, by finding and fixing your deficiencies. After a few weeks, you should feel much better and healthier, including your sleep routine, so she will probably notice that. Soon she will notice that you're taking lots of pills at lunch and dinner, and she will see the link. She will then ask you if she also needs it, and then you can slowly bring up the information that you have learned.

You can even say something such as:

"Well, since I discovered that I'm a narcissist, I figured out that I need to take care of my mood."

Hopefully, after having the info and noticing your health improvement, she will ask you if she can also follow the same path. But you'll need to be patient because those nutrients do not act as fast as medication. So at first she will be taking them and still having outbursts. But in a few weeks or months, life should start to get easier. The treatment won't cure BPD, not at all, but will reduce symptoms, similarly to what medication could try to do.

And then she might get interested in looking more into herself. At this point, you might encourage her to see some videos explaining how DBT works. It is comprehensible that she is afraid of treatment by now, because trauma exposure can go really wrong. So it's up to you to find out how you can encourage her, just like I'm doing here with my wife. Yesterday I sent her the number of 6 professionals, but apparently she didn't contact any of them.

Warning: Never talk about the nutrients when she is dysregulated, or else she might see them in a negative way and permanently reject them.

[re_search1901]

I'm going to suggest your visit the tools/workshop section of the site and also check out the books Stop Walking on Eggshells and Stop Caretaking the Borderline/Narcissist. I have also found Why We Fight by the Gottman folks to be especially useful. I think these sources will lead you in the right direction.

No offense, but I think what SuperDaddy is saying goes against a lot of the collective wisdom that has been shared on this forum over the years.  That's the last I will say on the matter.

Best of luck and hope it works out.

[SuperDaddy]

No offense, but I think what SuperDaddy is saying goes against a lot of the collective wisdom that has been shared on this forum over the years.  That's the last I will say on the matter.

I think you are confusing the act of "agreeing with the accusation" with being an enabler. It's not the same thing when you are not doing it out of fear.

I'm suggesting it because it works.

My wife was constantly accusing me of controlling her and having bouts of anger because of that. She was also accusing me of being a narcissist because of my boundaries and of being a robot psychopath because of my emotional unshakeability. Even without me trying to argue against those labels, she knew that I wasn't agreeing, so she became increasingly invested in "forcing me to accept the label." As you see, it's very similar to the OP's problem.

Sometimes I tried to explain something I said, which she got wrong, but I didn't actually try to argue about the labels. Still, her campaign was getting stronger day by day.

That was until I began to agree. That was a few weeks ago. Now she hardly ever uses those labels anymore and doesn't expend energy on that. She still gets triggered by misinterpreting stuff and calling herself controlled but doesn't take it to the next level trying to convince me.

That's not a cure by any means, but it's resolving that specific aspect. In my view, the victimhood of a person with BPD has the intent of expressing what they felt in their childhood. And that's why being part of a theater can be very beneficial for them. I have participated in many message boards where people with BPD post, and some of them do express that theater has helped them a lot.

Also, I have had very extensive life experience, so I know a lot about the victimhood mentality. And by the way, I don't think I'm doing anything that is detrimental for them in the long term, because in such a case, I would have been dumped at some point. But I never got "dished" by any of my romantic partners. All of them kept trying to pull me back years after the relationship ended.

[Notwendy]

I might be able to add some insight to this situation. My BPD mother would read pop psychology books and quote from them to us- labelling us with whatever she was reading at the time. This was before social media. She didn't become proficient on the computer, or phone, so when it was available she didn't get into it. She was an avid reader- reading all kinds of books.

When we kids grew and left home- it was only my parents at home. Children require parental focus and also bring perspective into the home. Teens can be challenging too at times. We were pretty good kids- didn't do anything really bad, but if we were challenging, we were also another person in the home for BPD mother to "blame" for whatever. Dad's focus was on BPD mother and also on parenting. Once we were out of the house, this focus for my parents changed.

My father still had his career and so this also provided an external focal point. BPD mother didn't work outside the home, and also didn't have many other interests. I think we kids still "provided" some reason to "blame"- as being in college is a sort of "in between" childhood and full adult hood but less than when we were teens.

After my father retired, he was home more, and more available for the projections. We kids were fully grown, and less of a reason for BPD mother to be projecting on us. My father had enabling behavior- and also was emotionally caretaking BPD mother. With him more available, she turned to him more.

PwBPD have difficulty managing their uncomfortable feelings. Projection is one way to cope. I don't think this is as much of a change in your wife as it is a change in your availability to her, now that you are retired. It's also been a change in your coping- because going to work is away from the dynamic and interacting with other people. Going to work is a solid excuse to be gone, while other activities may be more negotiable. Retirement is also an adjustment for many couples. Now there's less of a schedule and the two of you are in the same space more often.

My father did keep a routine where he was out of the house at times. He took walks for exercise. He did go out for coffee/lunch sometimes on his own. My mother's emotional needs were high. She was a very anxious person. Her preference was to have someone with her all the time as an emotional caretaker but to be in this position is emotionally taxing.

Your wife isn't going to change her emotional thinking. What can change is your availability to her as her emotional "target" for her feelings. Even if she didn't have BPD but you were a caregiver for someone with physical needs,  you would need some time for yourself. Whether it's getting exercise, a hobby, going back to work part time- do something that meets your emotional needs.  It may be a struggle but self care is important.

[Notwendy]

Also to add- we kids were not the only "blame". Sometimes it was my father's work, she'd say things like he is stressed from work, or something else. When he retired, she also couldn't blame his job. Still, it was projection, and retirement also was a change in that.