Spiralling towards the end

[round_square]

How do you know when you are nearing the end? Once trust is broken and there is betrayal from so many lies and so much deceit, is there any way to restore trust? Is there any going back?

My partner is in therapy and I think there has been a breakthrough, but I am not sure I can ever look at them the same after my trust has been betrayed and after the things I have found out. I worry they are too empty inside and that I will always feel their hollowness. We have been together a long time and have 3 kids together, but things that have come to light have changed the way I see them.

Can anyone share at what point they knew they had had enough and there was no going backwards? Can love be restored when the pain that has been caused runs so deep?

[ForeverDad]

How did I know I was nearing the end?  I've often mentioned my marriage imploded but it was on that path, increasingly so, ever since we had a child.  It was like watching a slow motion train crash, one I couldn't stop but had to watch unfold to the end.

The first years of my marriage were wonderful but increasingly my spouse was having incidents with her friends and co-workers.  We were religious volunteers but with her full agreement we left and moved elsewhere.  She didn't leave her issues behind.  Even decade into our marriage, she still was dissatisfied.  I thought if we had a child she would find joy in a new life.  Instead she pulled away.  I look back and believe becoming a father changed her view of me and she no longer perceived me as just a husband.  (Her stepfather was her childhood nemesis.)

The increased disparagement, belittlement and threats were devastating.  In those final months I foresaw a disaster looming but I couldn't reach her.  She refused counseling.  Then one day I called the police.  With legal consequences pending, we separated.  She blamed me for it, at the court she wouldn't even look at me and when I prompted her lawyer to ask her if she was willing to reconcile, she refused.  That's when I finally Accepted our marriage was over.

Since we had a preschooler, custody and parenting issues took years to resolve.

In some ways it was a relief to have separate homes as a buffer between us but in other ways I never quite recovered from those final years of mostly verbal abuse.  There was only one path left.  It wasn't my preferred choice but it was the reality I faced and never looked back.

[PeteWitsend]

...

Can anyone share at what point they knew they had had enough and there was no going backwards?
...

It's complicated.  For me, I had a gut feeling about a year and a half into our marriage that it was hopeless (I was married four more years after that though, or 5 1/2 years total); her behavior was just so angry, unhinged, and what I found most troubling, completely nonsensical.  Because I could not understand what her problem was, I had no idea what I could do to keep her happy.  I knew the best case scenario was a life of caretaking her emotional needs to minimize the fighting and screaming matches.  But I still did not know about BPD, and did not even know what it was. 

at that point, if you said to me "I have a magic wand you can wave and make your wife disappear, and you just raise your kid as a single dad" I would have done it.  But there was no magic wand and I received some lousy legal advice that a divorce would ruin me, so I decided to put forward a good faith effort to fix it.  We tried marital counseling, on and off over the next couple years.  She went to counseling, and then I went to counseling (without telling anyone) for a few visits to see if I was going crazy.  Her behavior was that awful to deal with. 

Around this time, I learned about BPD, and behavioral disorders in general, and as I read more about them and compared the symptoms to the things my wife did and said, I began to realize how hopeless it was.  From then on, it was only a matter of time before I pulled the plug. 

We nearly got divorced about a year after I learned about BPD (4 years into our marriage) after she threw out divorce as a threat and I was like "Okay, great, let's end this," but she begged me to call it off, and I did.  However, after that, I think she felt more secure in her belief that I would not leave no matter how awful she behaved toward me.  But I had in the meantime got better legal advice, and understood what the path ahead looked like if we divorced, e.g. what joint custody of our daughter would look like, how much I'd have to pay in child support, how our assets would be split, etc.  and was okay with it.  I made preparations for an end of it, and was ready to leave the next time we had a blowup fight.  That was more or less inevitable, and when it happened and she threw out the "we're getting divorced then" as an ultimatum because I refused to take responsibility for her behavior in starting that fight, I moved out, called my attorney, and filed for divorce.  I think she was honestly shocked it really happened.  Her behavior over the next couple weeks ranged from more threats and anger, to sadness, to begging me to reconsider... you could see the whole 5 stages of grief play out, but in random order. 

Can love be restored when the pain that has been caused runs so deep?

I don't think so.  To rebuild affection would first require her to atone for the things she did and said, and how she behaved for at least as long as she put me through them, and in a way that I could trust was genuine, not just an attempt to win me back because she felt like I was the best option for her. 

Basically that would require a pwBPD to not be BPD, and that's virtually impossible.  She would have to become a completely different person. 

[Under The Bridge]

Can anyone share at what point they knew they had had enough and there was no going backwards?

It was simple; not only was she not changing but she was getting worse and seemed to be nearing the stage of violence, though she never used it - mainly because I ended it before she ever might.

That final day, I really saw someone who was so out of touch with reality, with the jet-black demonic eye pupils which signified she was totally disconected from reality and was capable of saying and doing anything - maybe dangerously.  She said things she'd never said in her previous meltdowns and just seemed to have escalated massively.

I realised this is the person, the chaos and mental strain I'd have to deal with forever if I stayed. Fours years was enough for me to be able to say 'I've treated her great, loved her and went farther for her than I've done for any other person, but the price is too high'.

Never saw her again, though I later learned she came looking for me. Many years later I spoke with her sister in law who confirmed she hadn't changed one bit so I've never regretted my decision to end it. We all have a 'can't take no more' limit, it just depends how much and how long we endure.

[ForeverDad]

That otherworldly look some have described here during rants may be an indication of dissociated states.  They may even later deny the incidents ever occurred but they must be aware of them at some level because they seem to learn how far they can push us in their ragefests.

Here are a couple of my older posts:

Yes, you're absolutely right! The next day my partner was back to normal and was basically like "I don't know what happened last night". Then I felt embarrassed for getting so worked up and even posting about it at all...

It's a cycle.  PwBPD gets triggered, goes off the rails and then back to the prior "normal".  Is it dissociation?  Or is it Denial?  I gave up trying to guess.

I've seen that in my ex, a transformation into another persona.  I had come home one day toward the end and my then-spouse started telling me her day and something she said reminded her of something else, nothing about me at all, and suddenly her face morphed and she got sidetracked into rant mode.  I think that's called dissociation.

My last time in family court in 2013 my lawyer played several phone calls where she disparaged me (magistrate's words in the decision) and played games with exchanges.  One example was No you can't get him early just because you got off early for the holiday, then an hour later demanded I pick him up from her location whereas I had already driven to the official exchange location. Well, in court when quizzed if that was her she stated as though third party, for all 9 or 10 of them, "That's my voice but I don't remember it."

Dissociation is a an educated guess but despite being inclined to believe it isn't fully remembered I also point out that their actions, what they later do and don't do, give strong indication they are aware of what they have done at some level.

He recommended 5 years of therapy for both of us... .He gave us a warning that day, he said 'it is very possible and likely that as you go through therapy that it will cause you to divorce.'

My wife has not improved (personality disorders are a hard nut to crack...).  I have become a much healthier person and recognize my defects and have changed much of them (work in process).  As I became better... .  our marriage got even worse.  I filed for divorce 5.5 years later.

One of our most prolific posters some 5-10 years ago was JoannaK.  In a few of her posts she made an observation that meshes well with your comments.  She wrote that if persons who work to attain some recovery then they would not be the same persons as before and there was a real possibility the relationship would not survive, one or both had changed that much.

[zachira]

I have had several highly dysfunctional relationships: long term boyfriends, close family members, and friends. At some point, I hit rock bottom and knew I could not do it anymore no matter what price I had to pay to end the relationships. Part of the difficulty in getting to rock bottom was the realization I was going to have to face all the pain I had avoided in being in these dysfunctional relationships. For a long time after ending these dysfunctional relationships, I was in many ways more pain than when I was in these relationships. What will be the last straw, can be very different for each person. The costs in ending a highly dysfunctional relationship can be huge. In my case the most painful ending of a dysfunctional relationship was with my sister with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). I am still shocked beyond belief of how many flying monkeys she continues to recruit, especially close family members and family friends, to cause me pain and problems. What do you expect will happen if you end this relationship?