mom with BPD and then I married one?

[Toad Prince]

Hi, everyone, thanks for being here.

This all originates with my mom, but it has followed me into my marriage.

Maybe 2.5? years ago my wife threatened me with a divorce for the first time. There have been a bunch of times since then; it was scary the first time but she got over it and every time after that it was a bit less scary. Until last summer, that is, when it became obvious that 1), she was really seriously upset and ready to walk out and, 2), that she wasn't any more upset than before, only more frustrated because trying to talk to me was apparently not very productive. And the frustration and the end of her willingness to endure it is what ultimately resulted in me seeing a therapist and us seeing a couples counselor.

So with therapy, it was determined that my mom has a lot of the flags for BPD. She's probably pretty high-functioning on the BPD spectrum, but then on the other hand her only stable relationships are with my dad, who alternates between avoiding and enabling behaviors, and with cats.

Anyhow, one time when wifey freaked out, I figured out that I just tune her out when she gets angry, exactly like I did mom, until the storm blows over and things are peaceful again. And historically, that has worked in this marriage! Not well or consistently, mind you, but enough to reinforce the behavior, which I am certain is not the best response.

She (wife) says that I treat her like she is my mom. I think in a lot of ways she acts like my mom; I don't know that she's really diagnosable but she probably has some sub-clinical features. My therapist has said as much. This afternoon, my wife left home in rage at me because I did not divulge the fact of my sister-in-law
being pregnant (my brother had asked me to not share with anyone). Pregnancy is kind of a hot topic for us; wife wants another child desperately. I would like to have another as well, but I have some real concerns about starting over when I feel like the relationship is not very stable and neither is wife. Naturally I'm in trouble for not impregnating her immediately. I'm also in trouble for not sharing the news of her impending aunthood immediately; apparently I am supposed to share everything, secret or not.

Wife came home this evening and we went back and forth. I'm honestly fed up with the histrionics and with always being the bad guy when I don't think I've really done much, if anything, wrong. It's complicated because I don't want to leave my daughter with her to fend for herself against her mother, or to sign on for another 20-year tour with another child, but it is hard to see the marriage continuing very long if we don't have another kid soon. Which I realize is a crazy thing to even consider, but again, don't want to give up my daughter in a bad divorce.

And apparently, per wife, this is all because of my mom (who is, in fact, terrible), and my conditioned responses to her behavior that are not appropriate in my current relationship.

Huh.

Anyhow, the big problem I have is knowing when to accept blame for something I did - because I am certainly far from perfect, and I certainly do sometimes get triggered or respond inappropriately based on childhood conditioning - versus when to decide that it's the wife's crazy coming out. And what to do with the wife's crazy, given that although she's very smart and psychologically-minded, she is also pretty blind to her own issues. As you would expect a pwBPD to be, probably... .


Anyone have experience with having a pwBPD parent of the same gender as your pwBPD- or quasi-pwBPD spouse? What the hech were you thinking?  But also, how have you handled it and what suggestions do you have?

[LittleBlueTruck]

Yeah, so I definitely didn't accurately read your situation in another thread. I see now it is a more nuanced situation.

Is your wife's behavior pretty steady or are the unsavory behaviors you reference more cyclical?

I think it is pretty common for people to seek out versions of their parents in some buried way of resolving past conflict. Which is extra interesting considering it sounds like you are very conflict avoidant.

Has your wife been receptive to therapy? Has she made any effort to modify her behavior? Have you voiced any of your issues about her BPD type behavior when you are not in the heat of the moment?

I'm sorry you're so sandwiched in emotionally turbulent relationships. How old is your daughter?

[Toad Prince]

LittleBlueTruck - thanks for the reply - you know, I think that it's got a lot to do with figuring out about Mom. I've gotten much better about setting clear limits and enforcing them, which makes it much easier to deal with her. I mentioned how I have been pretty avoidant about some of these situations, which is historically true, but has become much less the case since I've gained some understanding of what I'm dealing with. And that extends to dealing with other people, including wife, too, which is a good thing. Part of the process of re-growing-up, I guess.

Where it gets tricky is that, at the same time that my wife has started to assert her own needs and expectations more (she has her own history, as you may have guessed), I have become more aware of my own blind spots but also more willing to assert myself. It's a really tricky dynamic as we're both growing through some hard things together but sometimes it ends up pretty oppositional. Her lack of insight into what she's bringing is the really frustrating part for me, because I can see, and she will even acknowledge, the incredible growth in myself in the last couple years. It feels very one-sided.

She is very open to therapy; she's been going for 15+ years which I guess is part of the problem in the sense that she thinks she has things figured out relative to me. From my perspective, if somebody's been in therapy for 15 years and doesn't have much insight into their role in a tough relationship, that screams personality disorder. But I'm not a psychologist. And again, relative to my mom, she's a shining example of mental health.

Our daughter is 6 and, as I told my own therapist, I get it now why my dad never left my mom when we were young. Thanks for reading.

[Teak]

You sound a lot like my brother, actually. He is in his mid-20s and married for a couple years now. Both of our parents were/are Cluster B sorts, my therapists have thought our mother was BPD and then our father either AsPD or NPD. My brother has NPD traits and his wife has BPD traits. I have a grab bag of my own traits. It sounds like you are saying that you and your wife are the same?

My brother is similar in that even growing up as a child, he would just tune everything out, no matter how insane or dangerous any given moment was in the household. He plugged himself into fantasy and video games and just tranced out basically. He would do the same trance out thing in conversations a lot. Called dissociation in psychology. He developed a personality that is very emotionally cool, tense and logical, with little flickers of suppressed rage that come through now and then while he tries to pretend to be more mature and happy than everyone else. Such as sudden intense road rage and reckless driving, or glaring while smiling at the same time.

People with NPD traits and people with BPD traits often attract each other and form relationships. That is the most common combination for them. I have heard from my a therapist of my own and also read from some professionals in articles that in cases like that, it is easier to address the BPD first since the BPD is more likely to be willing to admit to some of their own dysfunctions, while the NPD will usually be in a mode like what you describe of feeling like they have done nothing wrong and don't do much or anything most of the time to feed into the BPD's dysfunctions/triggers and trigger each other back and forth basically. This is just more in the nature of the false self with NPD and having a very strong defensive barrier, whereas BPD often goes back and forth between grandiose rage and severe self-loathing.

Personally my honest advice is that whenever you are unsure (even if it is very often) of when you were in the wrong or not, then let the couples therapist help. Make sure to have regular sessions and be willing to address it there. This may even need to be after bringing up the very issue itself with the therapist as far as, "What if I need to talk about something that my wife and I would likely fight about?" A skilled therapist should be able to establish boundaries, procedure and ground rules for both you and your wife being able to communicate in the session on the topic of contention. With my brother and his wife, it is often a case (to speak frankly) of both of them having very poor communication skills and they are both basically in the wrong and triggering each other's defense mechanisms yet simultaneously neither of them is actually in a mode of thinking of themselves as an aggressor.

[Teak]

Here are some examples, though:

1. You mention how in therapy you have discovered that you are the way you are because of your mother. You also mention that your wife tries to bring this up in conversation, indicating that she focuses on why you are the way you are in an effort to try to understand where you are coming from. I do not see in your post any indication that you do the same for her. Her issues are simply described as "the crazy coming out." Whereas empathy and psychological understanding is reserved just for your issues.

2. In a healthy marriage, the spouses are a team who do not play games of loyalty and secrecy with each other. Your brother asking you not to tell even your wife is also asking you to choose between him and your wife, and you chose your brother. You may very well even have your own solid reasons for feeling this way, but the message is that you and your wife are not a team and you will keep things from her if someone else asks you to do so, you do not trust her, etc.

3. And this is with you knowing that she has BPD traits, which likely includes paranoia about betrayal. You also do not mention how she found out about the sister-in-law's pregnancy or how she found out that you were keeping it a secret. So what happened there? Did you announce in some manner or another, "Hey I have been keeping this secret from you," or did she find out from someone else who... didn't keep the secret? And then you said you knew it all along? Then you explain how and why the pregnancy is a hot button topic and how she is being too pushy and demanding about it. Is this possibly a case of back and forth one-upping in the trigger department? As in, she triggers you by being pushy and enmeshing, while you trigger her by letting it be known you keep secrets i.e. act aloof.

4. At what point do you "tune her out" usually? As soon as she expresses being upset about something, avoiding topics of conversation, being dismissive about them, etc or only when she is completely blowing up? Tuning out a spouse when they are trying to communicate about something that upsets them would make most people agitated as it is disrespectful and invalidating, but for a BPD it will usually cause a massive explosion.

But of course it is the back and forth thing. If you don't know how to handle communicating when your spouse is upset without just tuning her out, and she doesn't know how to react other than by escalating her emotional display until you finally respond, then you would both be locked into a futile war at that point.

Knowing when you are to "blame" in my opinion is usually really a case of knowing when you are triggering each other.

[LittleBlueTruck]

l typed out a long winded blowhard response but changed my mind and will spare you. It sounds like you just need more time to evaluate the impact your mother has had on your ability to resolve conflict and remain emotionally present in your marriage. Maybe a different, non-triggering response will help lure her into more self awareness. But it sounds like time is something your wife isn't willing to compromise on right now (everyone I know my age who sought a professional career is in an epic battle against age related fertility decline, so I understand if that's a factor).

Okay, I can't resist, here is a small amount of blowhardedness:

If she's used to you spacing out, that could be especially triggering for her if she grew up around an emotionally neglectful parent (who either ignored her or de-prioritized her emotional needs in favor of their own). And her reaction to that trigger sounds like it is triggering you. Marriage is so hard. Even when it's wonderful and it is exactly where you want to be, it is hard.

I once dated a guy who would just go vacant during conflict. He was a ___ heel for a lot of different reasons, but that would make me just lose my mind. I never was a person who yelled in any relationship before and have never been since. But that emotional void when I was in pain and he just didn't have a reaction one way or the other, hoo boy, it turned me into someone I'm not and I acted out like crazy. Maybe if you tell her you want to work on identifying your triggers, it can pave the way for her doing the same?

[Turkish]

I LOVE my daughter,  now 5, 1 when her mom left,  to pieces. I can't imagine a life without her. We had a son,  and my ex convinced me to give him a sibling,  against my better judgement considering the experience with our son.  Things didn't get better; they got worse. Now I pay support for two kids for the next 13 years. 

Kids don't fix anything.  If anything they provide an attachment for a pwBPD on which to fixate at the expense of them delving into core issues.  This also can apply to us.  I thought it would fix things,  "I'm making her happy." It wasn't my job to make her happy.  It wasn't her job to make me happy.  We all own our own happiness.

Have you been reading the Improving Board and the lessons there? They can help make sense of things and reduce conflict. 

As to your original question, yes,  I "rescued" a version of my BPD mother.  At don't know what we don't know,  but now knowing,  we can move forward. The pwBPD may not be able,  or be unwilling,  to change,  but we can.