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VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?" Parental alienation is when a parent allows a child to participate or hear them degrade the other parent. This is not uncommon in divorces and the children often adjust. In severe cases, however, it can be devastating to the child. This video provides a helpful overview.
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Author Topic: My head is spinning... I don't know what is real...  (Read 363 times)
Beck3733
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
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« on: March 20, 2017, 06:34:03 PM »

I apologize in advance for the long post.

I have been so hesitant to post here, but I really need any advice and support that I can find. 
I am in the process of getting divorced.
My husband of 25 years was formally diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder during therapy and intensive counseling he received (at my insistence) in the Fall of 2015.

We had been together since 1990.  Married in 1993.  2 children, a son (age 21) and a daughter (age 17).
Approximately 7-8 years ago, I discovered that he was being unfaithful via internet pornography and that he was living a second life online and while he traveled for work. 
He also developed a very personally intimate relationship with a woman and I was completely devastated.
It's so hard to attempt to summarize all of the history, but I forgave him completely and we went through very intense counseling (both individual and marital) at a highly specialized clinic that works with his type of "addiction".  He was diagnosed by this clinic at that time as having a "sex addiction" and he did fit much of the criteria.

The counseling was so difficult and painful, but we really seemed to rebuild our relationship and I thought we were doing so well and that we were closer than we had been in a long time.
During counseling, he admitted that he had "checked out" of our marriage during the couple of years prior to my discovery of his sex addiction, but he could never say why.
Even though things really did seem so much better, the fighting and distance and strain were always in the background and it wasn't long before the tension and strain returned.
He didn't continue with his own counseling and he always had an excuse.  But, if we had the least little fight, and he would want to take it right back to couples therapy.

In hindsight... .I have to ask myself if he ever really checked back in to our marriage.
I promised myself that I would regret doing the work to forgive him because I really loved him with all of my heart and I wanted us to be together forever.
I held on to hope that things would keep getting better.  I have severe anxiety and I basically blamed myself for all of our problems.

4 years ago, we were not getting along at all.  We had just moved to a new home, and seemed to be constantly bickering and he was becoming more mean and verbally abusive with each fight. Just a few months after we moved to our new home, my mom (who was my best friend and our nanny and was almost like a 3rd parent to our kids) got very sick and was diagnosed with end stage metastatic pancreatic cancer.  It was devastating.  I quit working (I'm a family physician in private practice) and cared for her around the clock in our home.  She died less than 4 months after diagnosis.

About 5-6 years ago, before the move and before my mom got sick, and during a time that I really thought that he and I happened to be doing really well... .I received some very sexually inappropriate text messages from one of our son's teachers.  I immediately showed the texts to my husband because I was in shock. 
This was our son's band director and our son was doing very poorly in school and with friends at the time and band was his only outlet and fun activity.
My husband and I had a long talk about what action to take regarding the texts and how it may adversely affect our son.
We both agreed (or so I thought) that we would "look the other way" about the texts and that I would not participate in the texting and that we would keep things under control but not make a formal complaint which clearly was a very slippery slope.
While the boundaries got very gray, but I never developed - or considered developing - any physical or personal connection with this teacher.
I did work quite hard on shutting things down, especially once my mom got sick.
His reaction and his anger to my telling him about the texts was actually frightening.  I had never seen this side of him, but I was still recovering from his betrayal and constantly trying to understand how he could have "checked out" of our marriage.  And, then, suddenly I had texts coming in telling me how beautiful I was and blah, blah, and a whole bunch of other lies. 
In all fairness and honesty (which is really hard to admit) while I know that I did not check out of my marriage, I have to admit that I did not shut the texting down as completely as I should have and there were occasions where I responded inappropriately as well.  I wanted to just confess that to my husband, but the mere mention of anything would cause him to get so angry and to pick so many other fights that I didn't feel like I could be honest with him.  It's sad because the texts meant nothing to me.  It's probably not right of me to compare my husband's prior actions to my own.  But, I know what I forgave, and I know what I participated in and I know where my heart was, and at the time and even looking back, it seemed like they were 2 extremely different scenarios.

There was not enough time before my mom got so sick to resolve our own issues surrounding the texts I received.
At the time, my therapist suggested just showing him all the texts and they meant nothing to me and I chose not to because I knew he would just turn around and leave the marriage and then all the work we had done and all hope for the future would have been lost and for nothing and I loved him so much and did not want to lose him.
In some ways, I felt like he was looking for an excuse to leave me.
Even during the time frame that my mom was dying, he would pick fights with me about so many things, including those texts and he could not let go of his resentment.
He treated me with increasing unkindness and cruelty.  I offered to do anything so we could put it behind us and begged for forgiveness.

I kept going to my therapist and I started to realize that he had never really dealt with his own personal issues regarding why he betrayed me or why he struggled with his sex addiction.
Every fight we had, he would treat me more and more cruelly and say the exact most horrible things that hurt my most fearful or sensitive spots. 
I constantly felt like I was the one apologizing and little by little no apology was ever good enough. 
He was never physically violent during that time, but he would corner me and behave in very intimidating ways.  He broke a door down once when I used a therapy technique to stop a conversation appropriately.  My kids actually thought I did it because I was always the louder or more emotional one and I was usually the one to discipline since he traveled for work more than half the time.
He had many suicide gestures over these years and had constant threats of divorce and the marriage being over.
At one point, we talked and I felt like I had no boundaries left.  I told him that my final boundary was a firm line that he could not cross about the threats of leaving me.
He agreed and less than 3 weeks later through clenched teeth and in such a hateful voice, he screamed at me that he was leaving yet again during another fight.
His typical pattern would be nearly emotionless, to quick anger and rage, to remorseful tears and begging and sobbing asking for forgiveness and telling me how much he loved me.
All the while, he functioned SO highly and since I have anxiety and was suffering from such grief, I would always seem to look like the more troubled one to anybody else.  He was very calculated about when and where he showed his moods to.

I never wanted to be the one accused of refusing therapy but I finally told him in the Fall of 2015 that he needed to do deeper work with his therapist to look at his childhood issues and to try to figure out why he violated all my boundaries and could treat me so badly.
This was when he had an intense personality test done (not sure of the name of the test, but it took several hours and he went back a week later to review the results).  Twice he was told by his group of therapists that he had Borderline.
He had been sexually abused as a young boy and was supposed to be working with his therapist to disclose this to his mother.
I don't know for sure, but I think he was dishonest with his therapist on many occasions.
He - and his whole family - have a sweep it under the rug and pretend nothing is wrong pattern of dealing with problems.

So, last December we had a small fight about the cable box.  He had a very serious suicide attempt (sent me a picture of himself strangling himself with a belt around his neck in his car after storming out in the middle of another huge fight).  I called 911.  He agreed to go to the hospital and they called me to come get him several hours later.
I'll never know what really happened but he saw his therapists the following day and sent me another link to Borderline Personality and told me via text how sorry he was and thanked me for not giving up on him.  The very next day, he had lunch with his sister (who I was very close to).  He called me screaming something incomprehensible about naked band director photos and told me he was leaving me forever.
He would not talk to me at all.  Basically moved out of the house in to his mom's house but continued to return to the house and acted VERY disturbingly.  He refused to talk to me about our marriage and actually became paranoid and delusional.  He thought I had been recording him through our security system and things got very crazy very fast.  He lost his cell phone and called the police to report that I had stolen it.  He kept telling me that all of "my truth" was going to come out.  He then told me that he and his therapists had worked very hard and that his diagnosis of borderline had been "rescinded" but that he (and apparently his therapists) was convinced that I had diagnosed Borderline and that I was not getting the right therapy. 
He told me that my dead mother was sending him the signs that she wanted me to get the help I need.
He suddenly had everything figured out that he was fine - except for the PTSD from being gaslighted by me for 25 years.
I have worked with the same group of therapists and my psychiatrist for almost 15 years because I do have severe anxiety and some OCD and now, severe grief.  I kept asking them if they thought that I could have BPD all along - almost in an "I can handle the truth" way.  They reassured me then and continue to reassure me now that I don't have borderline.  At many points over the years, they suggested I leave him and I'm sick to think back and realize the level my denial was at.

He couldn't contain his delusions and later that same week, he attacked me for video taping some very erratic behavior he was exhibiting in front of our then 16 year old daughter.
A friend of mine and my daughter were both home at the time and the friend had to pull him off of me - I weighed less than 100 lbs at the time and am 5 feet tall and he is over 6 feet tall and was over 200 lbs at the time.  The friend called 911 and he spent 1 night in jail.  He got out and filed for divorce and has been making my life miserable ever since.
He has done everything he can to turn as many people against me as he possibly can - including both of my children.  I can't fathom what he tells people, but it must be good.

While I am a doctor, I don't make our money.  I always opted to be part time and in private practice so I could be home more with the kids when he was traveling.  And, my job had much more pressure at a much lower financial return, so we both seemed to be in agreement that his career would come first.  He earns 4 times what I ever earned - even in my most successful years of practicing.  He constantly reassured me that "we" were "fine" financially.  Even when we would fight, I would express my fear and he promised he would never hurt me like that.
We had just opened up a brand new private practice of mine less than a month before this all happened and we both signed all of the paperwork for the lease and loans and lines of credit.

And to this day, he is convinced that I am the one with Borderline and he has read the book Splitting and has caused the most high conflict divorce I could imagine.  He has not given me a penny and I'm left in our big home and he hired an insanely expensive attorney who will argue anything and everything that he wants. 
Seems their strategy is to run me in circles and wear me out and not 1 thing has been settled as regards our divorce since he filed.
We have mediation at the end of this month and I'm sitting here really too sad for words.
I miss our family and who I thought he was.  I miss what we had and the potential of what we could have had.  He's all I know and have known and now I'm really all alone and looking from the outside to be the crazy one.

I suppose I mainly write to ask if it's common to have the person diagnosed with borderline decide that the other has it or if it seems that I am crazy. 
And, I can't stop thinking about the darkness in his eyes and the pure raw hatred he has for me and wonder how HOW I could have missed that and how none of it seems like it was real.
I've heard that this disease makes the others feel like they are going crazy, but I really do feel that is the case. 
My emotions are such a mess and I just wonder if anybody has any validation or advice?  I try to read the books but I can't stop my mind from thinking that I'm reading the opposing team's playbook, in a weird way.  And, when my anxiety gets this high... .I almost can't function at all.  It's like a self fulfilling prophecy.
People say to use the anxiety or pain to get busy and get done and move on but I shut down.  I'm not a fighter.
I'm just not the person who he has made me out to be, but I don't feel like I can convince anybody of that and really, the only ones I care about are my kids.

My husband always had huge issues about his relationship with his father and he has used this to pull our son in so close and our son truly hates me and blames me for everything and doesn't even want a relationship with me and I can't even get him to tell me why.  It's like I'm so evil I don't deserve an excuse.

Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry for anybody still reading this.  Just looking for some insight and direction and feedback.

Heartbroken and spinning in AZ.
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Naughty Nibbler
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Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Sibling
Posts: 1727



« Reply #1 on: March 21, 2017, 08:58:16 PM »


Welcome Beck3733:  

I'm so sorry for what you are going through.  It's a lot to handle      To lose your mom in the middle of all of this had to be devastating, I'm so sorry.  My mom passed a couple of years ago.  She entered the hospital and then spent the last 6 months of life between hospital stays and skilled nursing facilities.  I can understand how difficult it must have been for you.  Then to have the problems with your partner as well.

My emotions are such a mess and I just wonder if anybody has any validation or advice?  I try to read the books but I can't stop my mind from thinking that I'm reading the opposing team's playbook, in a weird way.  And, when my anxiety gets this high... .I almost can't function at all.  It's like a self fulfilling prophecy.
People say to use the anxiety or pain to get busy and get done and move on but I shut down.  I'm not a fighter.
I'm just not the person who he has made me out to be, but I don't feel like I can convince anybody of that and really, the only ones I care about are my kids.

What books are you reading?   Do you have some healthy things you do to self-soothe?  Perhaps some meditation, mindfulness, exercise, breathing exercise, etc.  I struggle with anxiety myself, so I know how it can make things more difficult if it isn't tamed.  I found a great free phone app for mindfulness and meditation.  It can help to have some relaxation tools on your phone.

Are you still in therapy?  Is your therapist helping you with ideas to curb your anxiety?

Quote from: Beck3733
He called me screaming something incomprehensible about naked band director photos and told me he was leaving me forever.
Was the email exchange with the band leader just texting, or did it involve sexting?  I'm thinking you are indicating it was his imagination going wild, but though I'd check my understanding.

Quote from: Beck3733
And to this day, he is convinced that I am the one with Borderline.  He then told me that he and his therapists had worked very hard and that his diagnosis of borderline had been "rescinded" but that he (and apparently his therapists) was convinced that I had diagnosed Borderline and that I was not getting the right therapy      
It is common for pwBPD to project things onto their partner and say that the partner has BPD

Quote from: Beck3733
We have mediation at the end of this month and I'm sitting here really too sad for words.
I miss our family and who I thought he was.
 
Do you have someone to offer you support, perhaps a family member or friend?

I'm thinking that you have a lawyer?  One thing to expect is that your husband is using negotiation tactics.  He is either asking for a lot more from you, or indicating he will agree to give you a lot less (depending on the situation).  A high conflict person won't start with the offer he might be willing to settle with.

Quote from: Beck3733
He has read the book Splitting and has caused the most high conflict divorce I could imagine.        
 If you haven't read the same book, you might want to do so.  I believe you are referring to the book: "Splitting: Protecting yourself While Divorcing a Borderline or a Narcissist" by William A. ("Bill" Eddy, Esq.  He, also has  books entitled: "BIFF" and then one called "High Conflict People in Legal Disputes".   His books are available in Kindle form.
You might be interested in an article on this website about the BIFF RESPONSE
Quote from: Beck3733
 My husband always had huge issues about his relationship with his father and he has used this to pull our son in so close and our son truly hates me and blames me for everything and doesn't even want a relationship with me and I can't even get him to tell me why.  It's like I'm so evil I don't deserve an excuse.      
 Your partner has likely painted you black to your son, so your son blames you.  Your son is 21, so I'm thinking he lives on his own.  How about your daughter, where is she living?  :)oes she graduate high school this year?

 
Quote from: Beck3733
He broke a door down once when I used a therapy technique to stop a conversation appropriately.  
  Do you remember what therapy technique it was?
It can be helpful for you to use certain communication skills.  The two lessons below can be helpful for you to avoid arguments and drama.  At the end of the article on the Karpman Drama Triangle, there is information about healthy communication triangles.

KARPMAN DRAMA TRIANGLE

AVOIDING CIRCULAR ARGUMENTS

We have a Family Law, Divorce & Custody board here.  If you have some specific legal questions, or want support for facing your mediation, you might want to make a post there.  

If you click on the green words above, it will take you to an associated lesson.  If you go to the wide green banner at the very top of the page, you will find additional lessons within the "tools menu".  At the bottom of the Tools menu, there is a link to Workshop Section.  Let us know how we can help further. 
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Sadly
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Gender: Female
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Very Single
Posts: 886



« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2017, 04:00:14 PM »

Hello Becks and welcome
I am so so sorry you are going through this and sorry for your loss too. You have come to a wonderful place here, the best, and you will get so much help and advice and lots of    .  Read as much as you can write and ask whatever and however much you need to.
Love from
Sadly x
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Never let someone be your priority whilst you remain their option
roberto516
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 782


« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2017, 04:08:17 PM »

Welcome! I'm sorry for everything that you are experiencing right now. I too felt like I was the crazy one. Truly believed it. Actions and words, and behaviors that would have validated that. And you know what happened as I started to detach emotionally? I became sane again! The days are still rough at times.

I do want to validate you because I felt really bad at certain behaviors I did. I never flirted on an extreme level, but as I saw her love for me decrease and become nonexistent I started to be a little more chatty when I'd go out with my friends. I feel horrible about that. I know it was my own stuff. The desire for attention and pure want.

I see you are going to therapy. That's great. We can't be too hard on ourselves. It won't do any good. Easier said than done. I'm glad you posted. Keep doing it. In the beginning, to probably everyone's annoyance, I was posting and commenting on everything! But it helped. The feeling of understanding and empathy along with similar experiences. And on days I don't get involved here I see that the emotions can turn for the worse. It's a great place. So please stay involved. And if you ever need to talk or vent you can always PM me.
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“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
bunny4523
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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 438


« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2017, 06:22:52 PM »

I can relate to your post so well.  I remember the confusion and I remember trying to tell my story to see if I was missing something.  Something I might have done to trigger him or something I could have done better but it all just gets tangeled and no sense can be made of it.

It's ok, keep writing, keep posting.  It will get easier and clearer and you will start to see the issue for what it is - a personality disorder and that it is HIS personality disorder.

Be good to yourself.  Recognize that his BPD will exist with or without you.   It's ok to feel like you have down everything you can and it's time to walk away, cut your losses.  It's also ok to try again if the option presents itself.  

So in the meantime, focus on you... .what was done to you.  How you got hurt.  You need to love and nurture yourself first so that you are ready when it is time to decide what to do.  For now, read, write, mourn... .comfort yourself.  

Bunny



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