Time to move on?

[DesertDreamer]

Hi out there,
I'm writing in this forum more than I ever have before (which isn't much), but it's been helpful for me to get reflection and just to vent. Thank you all

I've been taking space from my wife for a month (it's been about two weeks so far). I feel better being on my own, and it's clear to me that I can't return to the relationship how it was. I think now that I'm just freaked out by the amount of difficulty and change I'll need to face if I exit the relationship. How can I do this, when I feel isolated, emotionally exhausted, and depressed? How do I get the energy to find a new place to live, find a job, reach out to friends, etc?

I think I'm also second-guessing myself, which seems normal in this circumstance. I feel sure about leaving when I evaluate the relationship for how it feels to me right now - distant, emotionally unsafe, and very broken. But of course when I think of how much pain she's in as well, and all the ways she has been a loving partner, I feel incredibly sad and distraught. I worry that I'm chucking a longterm relationship because of short-term difficulty, even though as I type that, I don't really think that's true.

I've been through difficult things in life, but this is taking the cake. How can I muster the strength to make the needed choice?

[SuperDaddy]

Hi DesertDreamer,

I understand how hard and overwhelming it is to take a life-altering decision while being emotionally depleted and isolated. But you don't need all of the strength and certainty at once. Instead, you only need enough to take the next step (small, but concrete).

As you get more clarity, that will help you take action, and as you start moving, you'll feel stronger. And up to now it seems like you are already headed in the right direction.

If you hoped that the relationship could be better and you didn't let go of this, then it is natural to grieve about it. That may be reinforced by the compassion you have for her pain. However, the hope runs against your new feelings of being honest with yourself about what that was costing you. As part of a competition between those thoughts, your mind will try to convince you that your long-term pattern of feeling distant, emotionally unsafe, or broken was just a “short-term difficulty,” despite that you’ve been enduring it for so long. But as you observe what your mind is doing with you, you take control of it. Remember that grief for what it was and relief about leaving can exist at the same time, and neither cancels the other out.

A few questions come to my mind. Did this relationship make your depression worse, or was this depression already haunting you before you met her?

In regard to moving into her country, did things run out as you thought they would? Or did things go in a different direction? Was it she who encouraged you to move into her place, or was it you who had this initiative? Do you feel like this is an opportunity or that you fell into a trap?

Also, do you have the citizenship already? I believe this would make things much easier (or harder if you don't).

[DesertDreamer]

A few questions come to my mind. Did this relationship make your depression worse, or was this depression already haunting you before you met her?

In regard to moving into her country, did things run out as you thought they would? Or did things go in a different direction? Was it she who encouraged you to move into her place, or was it you who had this initiative? Do you feel like this is an opportunity or that you fell into a trap?

Also, do you have the citizenship already? I believe this would make things much easier (or harder if you don't).

Hi SD, thanks for your care in responding to my posts. That's been a kindness for sure. I really appreciate what you said about grief and relief existing together; I definitely feel that.

When I moved to her home country, I did have a notion in the back of my mind that it might not work out, and the reason would be because of our relationship. I cried a lot at the airport in part because I knew this. I did agree to leave the US for some of my own reasons, but it was largely her push because she felt strongly that the country was becoming unsafe for her (there is a lot of truth to this). So I left America, but I don't have citizenship in here, and I'm clearly floundering. I didn't think it would be this hard - I hoped it would be an opportunity, but it's not quite playing out that way yet. A lot of the economic problems that plague the US also exist here, and on top of that, I'm an immigrant with lesser language/social know-how now. So the fallout of our relationship may lead to a lot of other cookies crumbling, and I would need to accept/anticipate that.

I was definitely depressed before I met her (I've been depressed as long as I can remember, and have gone to therapy on and off for my entire adult life). New layers of severe withdrawal, emotional exhaustion, and nervous breakdowns have entered the picture over the years of our relationship. I don't ever remember feeling as anguished in my life as I have in this relationship. It's been intense, as I'm sure you've felt too. One thing that I'm trying to accept is that my mental health/general makeup as a human is a factor in wanting and needing to leave, and that's just how it is for me.

[SuperDaddy]

Hi DesertDreamer,

You said you don't ever remember feeling as anguished in your life as you have been in this relationship. Do you think that's because you are away from your country or because of her disorder?

I have been in all kinds of difficult relationships, but they never made me as anguished as major events in my life, such as the loss of a job or a kid being sick. I think that's because I protected myself. As soon as the relationship stopped working for me, I stepped away from my partner and kept myself busy with other stuff.

But in your case, as an immigrant with limited language/social know-how, it will be very difficult to make yourself happy. Being dependent on your wife, who suffers from BPD, is pretty bad, because it should be the other way around. For the relationship to work, it should be guided by a partner who is in good mental health status. However, it seems like your migration was more of her choice, which makes her the one who was leading the relationship. The problem with that is that when the partner with BPD has control of the relationship, their behaviors tend to get worse, especially the abusive ones.

So I think you only have two realistic choices. Either (A) you toughen up and overcome your current situation until you get your citizenship status, if that's feasible, so that you can get a real job, or (B) you get money to buy the flight tickets back to your home country.

Btw, I don't know which country you are living in, but there isn't any place with better job opportunities than the US.

[Mutt]

The relief you’re feeling from taking space is important. That’s your nervous system telling you something. It doesn’t erase the love or the grief ~ both can exist at the same time.

You don’t have to solve citizenship, housing, work, and your marriage all in one decision. Maybe the first step is just stabilizing yourself a bit more and building a small support net. Clarity usually comes when we’re not in survival mode.

[DesertDreamer]

You don’t have to solve citizenship, housing, work, and your marriage all in one decision. Maybe the first step is just stabilizing yourself a bit more and building a small support net. Clarity usually comes when we’re not in survival mode.

For sure. I did decide to end the relationship, and I told my partner on Friday. We talked for many hours and said goodbye, and I felt really relieved albeit devastated. Things change so much day by day now, I'm seeing that I really can only take my life one small step at a time. I think I've been running such an emotional marathon over the years that I don't have it in me to make any quick moves. I'll try to stabilize in this country a bit before deciding what to do next.

[SuperDaddy]

Hi DesertDreamer!

How are things going?

Are you doing exercises or some kind of treatment?

Are you digging into information about changing your current treatment?

[DesertDreamer]

How are things going?

Are you doing exercises or some kind of treatment?

Are you digging into information about changing your current treatment?

Hey! Kind of you to check in, thank you. It helps.

It's been about a week since I decided to fully leave the relationship, so I'm waffling back and forth everyday between relief and despair.

I'm still going to yoga, like 3 times a week, and it really helps. Even though I don't have my dear friends and family out here in Germany, I've built connections with some friendly people, so I'm getting out and about. I definitely feel lonely, but that makes sense - I'm trying to view it as a temporary state, and a tolerable one. It might also be really good for me to look at why I allow romantic love to be such a driver of my life's path & energies ;).

I got a temporary sublet in a calm, shared apartment, with a big room to myself. I'm proud of my resilience. I decided to stay here at least through the end of May because I don't want to jump ship impulsively. Even though Germany may not be my place in the long run, there could be new possibilities that come from living here for a bit, and I don't want to shut them out without some experimentation and time. I have faith that I can find at least a part-time job, with all the restaurants around here expanding their staff for the summer. Cross your fingers for me.

[PeteWitsend]

...
I've been through difficult things in life, but this is taking the cake. How can I muster the strength to make the needed choice?

I'd echo what Mutt said (which it sounds like you're doing) in your update: you don't have to do everything in one big step.  Break things into smaller steps and think them through.  Hopefully this also "feels good."  When I was married to BPDxw and miserable, thinking of how I'd get my own place, what I'd do, what I'd buy, how I'd arrange things, etc. was a relief and gave me some hope for the future. 

...
 But of course when I think of how much pain she's in as well, and all the ways she has been a loving partner, I feel incredibly sad and distraught. I worry that I'm chucking a longterm relationship because of short-term difficulty, even though as I type that, I don't really think that's true.
...

For me, creating a simple journal of how often we'd fight, or not be on speaking terms (silent treatment), and what the fights were about helped me see how lousy our relationship was, and yet how secure she felt treating me like that.  She would insist (quite angrily, which was ironic) that we did not fight a lot, or fight "too much" and that "all couples fight" and was apparently okay with the dynamic.  When I went back and looked at months I had been telling myself "were better" or "things had been better" I was personally surprised to see that even in those months we were either fighting or not talking close to half the time.  I'm talking about entire weeks.  And the fights were always about nonsense: one month it was because I got a bunch of work emails in the middle of the day on my phone and this made her think I was having an affair.  Another month, she was angry I didn't send "enough" pictures of her to my mom because I knew my mom hated her and this showed I was closer to my mom than my wife.  Ugh. 

I realized from all this I was more of an optimist, or maybe better at putting my head in the sand than I realized.  When I'd think back and remember what I was thinking in the midst of being on the receiving end of some unhinged screamfest from her, it was "I need to get out of this, this is miserable, no one should treat me like this, I truly despise her for doing this to me for years and want out." 

And so I finally drew my line in the sand, and after the next blow up (again, over nothing), I refused to take some degree of responsibility for it, and when she threatened divorce because of that, I said "okay" and followed my plan of moving out and filing for divorce. 

[PeteWitsend]

...  She would insist (quite angrily, which was ironic) that we did not fight a lot, or fight "too much" and that "all couples fight" and was apparently okay with the dynamic.  ... 

As an aside, I recall one time years before we got divorced when I mentioned that we were fighting a lot and that I was keeping track of it, BPDxw got really upset by that and kept focusing on it and demanding that I stop.  and for a long time after that, would bring up the fact that I had been keeping a journal and on demand to know if I was still doing it.  In fact, I noticed that if she picked a fight over something, she would completely forget about whatever she had ostensibly been mad about in the first place, and focus on the fact that I was keeping a journal of our fights. 

Eventually I just started lying to her and saying I stopped keeping a journal and was focused on making our marriage better, out of hopes she would stop picking fights over it so much (or picking fights in general).  This was futile of course, since her whole M.O. was to just pick fights. 

I wondered if this extreme concern about journaling was driven by simple paranoia on her end, or whether it revealed that she was intentionally trying to control the relationship by picking fights, and was concerned that by tracking it, it was exposing her?  I don't know!  I suppose it could've been both. 

In the end, her focus on the journaling undermined whatever point she was trying to make, and underlined to me that her goal was simply to fight: the fighting was the end in and of itself, and the basis for a fight didn't actually matter to her.  I started journaling fights to try to understand what the problem was, whether there was something in common with them, whether our marriage was as miserable as it felt to me, and I succeeded, but not in the way I expected.