What should I do? Please help me respond appropriately

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

I need some practical advice. My estranged husband (pwBPD) makes demands based on a version of events that is delusional. He claims, for example, that I told him not to talk to me when I got home from work. That absolutely never happened.
Now he says we can go into counseling if I admit I did that. I sense a trap. I've fallen for this before--I say what he wants me to just to win some peace and it comes back to bite me.
Please, please tell me what I can say that won't JADE him and won't violate my own integrity. Please.

[Breathe066]

I need some practical advice. My estranged husband (pwBPD) makes demands based on a version of events that is delusional. He claims, for example, that I told him not to talk to me when I got home from work. That absolutely never happened.
Now he says we can go into counseling if I admit I did that. I sense a trap. I've fallen for this before--I say what he wants me to just to win some peace and it comes back to bite me.
Please, please tell me what I can say that won't JADE him and won't violate my own integrity. Please.

[Idsrvt2]

Im fairly new to BPD, but would it work perhaps if you said lets talk this out in front of the therapist and see what their opinion is to what you said that I said to you.  (this way your not admitting that you actually said anything and at the same time you are setting up a therapy session) 

[once removed]

are you considering reviving the relationship?

[Breathe066]

The therapy option is not doable. He has moved to another state (one week after separating he moved and is now, just two weeks later, in a huge hurry to divorce).
Once removed, no. We won't be.
I finally decided that, given that no reconciliation is realistically possible, I should just say exactly what I think/feel. He had asked, in very angry-victim tones why I had stopped having conversations with him during the marriage. I said that I stopped because every conversation was a minefield and I was, and am, afraid of his completely over-the-top reactions to even the most innocent statements. I wasn't arguing or denying. I was indeed justifying because my fear is justified.

[once removed]

youre committed to ending the relationship. he has demands for reviving the relationship.

doesnt seem to me that any response is necessary.

[Sadly]

Sweetheart, don't answer him, look what happened when I did 

[vortex of confusion]

If you are done, you don't need to discuss any of this any longer. That isn't to say that you won't be tempted to give him an answer. I know it took me a while to stop answering and responding. Then, it swung the other way and I started being a jerk. When he would say things to me that I blatantly disagreed with, I would state my truth and be done with it.

What are things that the two of you need to discuss? Do you have kids? Shared financial responsibilities? Other responsibilities? Figure out what those things are and stick to that. If he suggests going to counseling with him, tell him no thanks. It would be a good idea to try to find a counselor for yourself if you don't have one already.

Ex would try to back me into a corner and tell me that I am the one that invited him to leave. At some point after I started coming out of the fog, I stopped worrying so much about responding to him or invalidating him or anything else. If you are not trying to rekindle the relationship, then decide what you want and stand your ground. It takes time to get to that place where you stop wanting to respond to them. Ex has been out for over a year and still find myself wanting to respond to some of his BS. I am getting way better at not responding or even wanting to respond. I still have my days though.

[Rayban]

If you don't have any children with, stop playing games with him. This is just him trying to get a rise out of you to measure how much control he has.

He's trying to guilt you into councilling, when you know this relationship could not work.  Don't try to reason with him, you'll just expose yourself with more gaslighting, circular arguments, and ultimately stress and harm to your central  nervous system.

What reason has he given you to continue hoping that this time he'll finally give you closure?

[Breathe066]

All,
He sent an email to summarize his thoughts on whether we could reconcile. He said he was "not allowed" to ask me where I had been or what I had been doing, because I became defensive. What I actually was, was scared. I was scared of setting him off. I was scared of saying anything that might trigger his anxiety which then fueled his fury which was a precursor to him being verbally and emotionally abusive and then stomping out. He left six times in 16 months. And he knew, and knows, that I, also, have abandonment issues. It had gotten so bad that he would yell and scream at me and then jangle his keys and walk toward the door to make me say the things, anything, that he wanted to hear, that would make him stay. I was like one of Pavlov's dogs. It's humiliating to think about, but it's true: We would be having an argument and he would take his keys out of his pocket and jangle them at me and I would panic and say anything he wanted me to say.
We were together for 16 months. We had begun therapy in month four because he believed that I was having an affair with a coworker based on... .nothing. Nothing I could do or say would convince him otherwise. When he's having a BPD cycle he still refers to this non-event as if it actually happened.
His way of asking what I had been doing and where I had been wasn't like when someone else might say "Hey, what have you been up to?" It was ":)id you go anywhere today?" as a portal leading to "Who was there?" which led to ":)id you talk to him? You've mentioned him before," which would lead to a couple of hours of his seething, chain-smoking and drinking a 12 pack in less than 90 minutes which would culminate in him jumping out of bed at 2 a.m. and saying something like "I'm sick of this sh*t! Those are his underwear in the washing machine, aren't they?" He would scream at me, call me a b*tch and a c*nt, swing his fists at my face or jump over a fence and slice open his hand and then yell for all the neighbors to hear "Look what you did to me, c*nt!"--in front of his daughter, but never, oddly enough, in front of my adult son (who would have crippled him if he had done so), and, grabbing his daughter, he would head for his car. I would stand between him and the door and tel him that if he wanted to kill himself behind the wheel, that was fine, but he wasn't going to kill his kid. I would stand between them while he called me a
"f*cking demon!" until he called a cab or an Uber. The next morning i would wake to a scrum of angry, accusing emails. He would tell me he had left the state, had quit his job and was moving out, the next time we would talk it would be through an attorney. This happened about every three months. NO wonder I became afraid to have a conversation with him. I tried to maintain the good, peaceful times by just ignoring the things that worried me. I would hope, hope, hope that he wouldn't go off the rails. I was always on high alert.
And then he had the nerve to email me tonight that it had been so hurtful to him that I had stopped "allowing" him to ask where I'd been, that he had been hurt by my lack of communication because it showed I didn't care about him.
We had so many arguments that were caused by my "interrupting" him--this was a capital offense--or not asking quickly enough how his day was. He once launched into a full meltdown because, seriously, I "didn't stand up" when he entered the room where I was chatting with my one and only friend, a woman we both knew. He got his knickers in a twist--no kidding--because I didn't stand when he walked in the room.
When I got that email and saw the old standby accusations: "You wouldn't even allow me to ask where you'd been... .You couldn't even bear to have a conversation with me... ." it was too much. I actually told him that I had been afraid of him. To say anything like that, to actually say "I was afraid of the way you acted, the way you yelled and screamed and threatened leaving," that is, to him, it seems, unforgivable. It's like I was not allowed to express fear, embarrassment or anger over how he behaved.
All day, I have missed him, as I do every day. Its a very difficult dichotomy to live with: I fear him, but I love him/I'm glad he's gone, but I miss him. I know he's sick, and that makes me want to "cure" him, that makes me want  to pull out all the stops to help him. But he's a mean SOB and I realize now why his two ex-wives look so cowed, so afraid, so miserable in all those old photos.
I keep thinking/worrying that I will never hear from him again, that he could be dead already having tied one on before driving on the freeway, and my heart absolutely breaks because I can't forget the side of him that wasn't BPD, the side of him that was sweet, loving, passionate and utterly, truly the best match I've ever had.
That's not a fiction. When he was not in crisis, he was everything I could have wanted.
I sit here now, tonight, having had a glass or two myself because the pain of the loss of him, the man I love, is so awful, fully aware that, given his track record, he is drinking and drugging tonight and that before the dawn he would have slept with someone else, of either gender. Fully aware that my telling him, outright, that his overblown tantrums scared me probably makes him feel bad and ashamed but he cant let himself feel that so he has to get wasted to not feel it. So, in a way, is it my fault?
I look forward to the day when I can wake up and not feel as though I am awaking in a coffin six feet under ground, more dead than alive because everything that I believed in, everything that I thought was love, has turned into something frightening, heartbreaking, confusing.  

[Breathe066]

Rayban,
Thank you so very much for snapping me back into reality. He is, more than likely, just trying to measure his control over me. His request for counseling was prefaced with "and we would each need many months of individual counseling" before more marital counseling. At any rate, I am burned out on counseling. We were going twice a week (we spent $10,000 on it). I just need a rest from it. And then I plan to go back to my old counselor, whom he hated and had fits about me seeing because she actually asked him "What is it that makes you feel that your wife needs punishing?"
We don't have kids in common. I don't feel I am playing a game with him. I truly love him. It's just very hard for me to accept that there is nothing I can do for him.

[Breathe066]

Oh, and his bit about getting his own counseling is a smokescreen. He made an appointment and cancelled.