Sorry for the tome, but this is something I have been journalling about for months now.
By the time we had been together for about a little over 2 years (and living together/ married), it started to get really bad. After another 6 months, it was completely unbearable.
What about everyone else?
Mine proceeded along the very same timeline, but with a run-out at 18 months and again at 25 months. It never recovered from there, but darned if I didn't over-try. I have the benefit of journals, extensive emails, IMs, and texts to help me have clarity on this.
Two weeks into the marriage, there were already considerable major red flags. We had dated in high school (and I see now the ID&:) there), then were friends over a long distance for over a decade (easier to make someone into a fantasy when there aren't those real world complications), then married 2 weeks after he moved out to join me. We had been dating for a year long distance.
Keep in mind, my STBXHwBPD has BPD with avoidant and dependent features (AKA hermit / waif, or discouraged / vulnerable). He also has some severe trauma that has led to psychotic symptoms from extreme dissociation. Therapists say it's beyond what they would normally see with BPD and is likely from longterm sexual trauma as a child. That still hurts my heart. But his comorbid ASPD / NPD tends to put a damper on how much compassion I can give since I was abused so terribly.
Red flags in the first two weeks:
1. Prior to very small intimate wedding (of 6 people, including us) he started playing games around whether or not he could go through with it because he "destroys things." He wasn't wrong. I look back now and smh that I didn't run for the hills. In normal love relationships, this doesn't happen. They treat you like a high valued member of their inner circle. He had nixed any readings for the wedding about us being partners, equals, giving to each other. Instead he picked "Love" by Roy Croft. Want to read something spooky about what is to be selected by a BPD? Read that poem... .it's like word p*rn for rescuers and honestly reads a bit like psychopathic grooming. Again, smh.
I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.
I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.
I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good,
And more than any fate
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
2. Wedding night, my brand new FIL calls me a schmuck in front of the extended family he invited to our home to "celebrate." Why was I called a schmuck? Because I have an honors certificate on the wall where my desk had been, but had just relocated since my STBXHwBPD had just moved in 2 weeks prior and I'm being "showy." His dad's a BPD / NPD - fun. BPDH defends his dad and says he was just joking.
3. One week later, I am asked to cover a $125 charge for his cell phone since he's still looking for work from the move. I'm in a full-time graduate program, making student money, working 2 jobs that bring in a total of $1,000 a month. I say yes, but he needs to get on finding a job. Turns out he signed me up to pay $125 a week to pay off that phone. There was "confusion" on the part of the cell phone provider, according to him.
4. He tells me he is taking care of yard work and cleaning up the house to help make ends meet while looking for work. There are weeds 4' tall in the back yard despite two straight weeks of raking a little bit at a time. His response? Really fast growing weeds.
5. At the same time, he tells me no one is responding to his resume. Turns out he hadn't applied to any jobs. Been a long time since I've seen any solicitors come to our door noting they read someone's mind and had a job for them.
It snowballed from there. Over the next 18 months it all just got so bad... .we separated because I thought it was plain old substance abuse. Then I read about BPD and was told to have patience, compassion, and acceptance. If I could shake the person who wrote that book, I would. That's only for those BPDs who are actively in treatment working their butts off to get better!
So let's keep going... .the next 18 months included:
- Lied about filing for government subsidy for school for 5 months. Only actually filed when I asked him to show me evidence of when and where it was done and said I would take off work to go to school with him to get the proof.
- Was sued for a $5k unpaid credit card bill that he had run up buying rounds of drinks at the bar (have to get those friends somehow, right?)
- Overdrew his bank account by $1200 on gas, food, and unknown purchases - he could never remember anything. It was like a fugue state.
- Neglected to return home each day to feed our puppies. This breed is known for hypoglycemia. The smaller of the two went into hypoglycemic shock and died while I was out of the country for work.
- Failing out of school, lying about it, then pretending to go to school while driving around the neighborhood for hours on end.
- Got fired from work and came up with crazy excuses for why the paycheck didn't show up. His boss had cheated him on hours and he tried to talk to him, but the guy was clearly unethical. Truth? He hadn't shown up for work for 3 days, got embarrassed and then couldn't go back. When was the truth outed? When I said his boss was violating labor laws and he had a right to be paid within 7 days of the final day of work and that we needed to contact an attorney. (See a pattern of delaying to the last possible minute of being outed before telling the truth?)
- Got fired from a second job because he couldn't ask for vacation. He thought he would be told no or be rejected, so he just didn't show up.
- Said he was going to AA, but was just driving around in my car. He chose to sell his to cover his bills, because I wasn't going to do it for him. Picked this up when the topic at the AA session kept going back and forth between 2 topics for weeks at a time. Pretty sure they move through topics when you keep going.
- When he ran out, he smeared me to his sponsor, his latest Rescuer in the Karpman Drama Triangle. I became persona non grata. Just before he ran out, he would tell me I was going to divorce him anyway, so why wouldn't I just let him leave? My "not letting him leave" was asking him to sit down and do a meditation, to hold ice in his hands, to count backwards from 100 by 7's, to pinch himself. But the request was heard as so authoritative, I was stopping him from leaving.
In the end, he blamed me for everything. And it was typical BPD stuff. If I could just stop attacking (AKA holding him accountable for unacceptable behavior in an objective manner) then he could stop being an *ss. Um, that's conflating cause and effect. If I could just stop buying things (like groceries) then he could learn to keep the pantry or fridge in order. If I could just be more loving, he wouldn't be mentally ill. Oh, and he never thought he was ill. It took us going to his psychiatrist and talking through the domestic violence he was committing to get him on anti-anxiety meds. The violence stopped almost immediately, but the marathon fights never stopped. We finally got feedback his dissociation that led to psychotic breaks were on the severe end of the spectrum and he needed anti-psychotics. We checked out a partial hospitalization program because he refused to consider residential. That was the last straw. He ran out. I still remember before he did so his face in the car. He was so shaken. He said to me, you always told me I was having psychotic breaks, but I thought it was just something you were saying. The next week he waited until I flew out for work then bought a $14k truck without doing any research on it - it was 11 years old and had 133k miles on it. Two weeks later, when his next paycheck dropped, he was gone and I was the devil. He smeared me again to all his family. And they're so disordered themselves, they graciously accepted it as true - ignoring the many calls along the way where he told them what was legitimately going on, what the doctors were saying, and undoing the smear campaigns (my condition for him being allowed to stay in the home), the psychiatric report I forwarded to them along with a note of what to watch for because he was having psychotic episodes and was at risk. Apparent competence fooled them. O_o Eight weeks later he was dating someone else, had completely changed his appearance (gained 20 lbs and had a weird goatee and half beard) because hygiene was one of the first things to go when having these episodes.
So, when did it become unbearable? :)ay one? When did it break? When I stopped chasing after him, trying to get him back to see his doctors, trying to keep him medicated, trying to keep him sane? That took me 5 years to learn and I'm relearning it each morning when I wake up with cPTSD symptoms.
Unbearable is a relative term. Most of us who are attracted to these types are empaths with high emotional capacity, which means we can almost always give more. Where does that end? Well, as a good friend reminded me last night, if we pour ourselves into someone else and never get anything in return, we become an empty vessel. If we pour ourselves into an irreparably broken vessel, both we and that vessel are empty at the end. Unbearable should never be the measure, but it often is. Healthy should be the measure.
