How to give space without becoming a doormat?

[LightningRod]

I’ve been posting elsewhere on the board about my wife’s changes of behavior and trying to understand the potential causes of her dramatic deterioration, but I have a specific question here about how to navigate the seemingly impossible task of setting boundaries while also giving the space that she says she needs.

In January my wife said she’d lost all feelings for me after feeling unloved for 20+ years, that we've had an unhealthy parent/child dynamic (we have, but guess where it originates - she sometimes calls me 15+ times a day) and that she needs to end our marriage. In February she said maybe there’s 1% chance for us. In March she said she only said 1% to make me feel better, and we’re back to 0%. In April, she suggested we pretend everything’s ok for a six week period to see if she got her feelings back. Two days later, before we even got started, she said didn’t know why she said that and thought perhaps it was because it was a full moon, so we’re back to 0% again. In May I say if it’s really 0% why aren’t we just getting divorced. She said she never wanted to divorce, only space, but since I haven’t moved quickly enough in giving her space, she now needs to physically separate and have complete independence, including the right to date other men. Quite how I was supposed to move in *any* direction with her changing emotions is beyond me, but I guess it had to be my fault.

After my initial efforts to change her mind failed (I didn’t know it was BPD at the time and definitely took the wrong approach by telling her I’d try harder etc.) I’ve tried to give her space. I moved into the spare room months ago at her request and started to carve out my own time and go out and about without necessarily telling her where I was going. Whenever I do this it seems to make her angry and she asks my 10-year old if she knows where I am so she will text me to ask. Is this fear of abandonment, or projection because she knows she does things behind my back? She told me that she wants “friendly space” and that I’m being cold and distant which makes her feel nauseous and just confirms that we shouldn’t be together. It feels like I can’t win, which I know is common.

By the way, is that nauseous feeling a BPD thing? She said she’s had that feeling almost constantly for 6 months and took it as sign we should break up. She also used to say she got it when I told silly jokes to our children when they were younger. I mean, literally, my silly harmless jokes would make the children laugh and she would ask me to stop because it made her feel like throwing up. A month or so ago, I mentioned that my daughter’s hair smelled like it could do with a wash, and again she said the struggle to get our daughter to look after her hygiene made her feel like throwing up. She asked if it had that effect on me, too, as if it was a normal reaction. I guess to her it is.

Anyway, she’s now presented me with a list of items for discussion with a mediator to agree the parameters for separation: custody (50/50), finances (I pay for everything she wants!), medical appointment responsibilities, etc. I’ve learned so much about BPD already but I can’t work out how to respond to this because on the one hand I’m learning that it’s important to set boundaries for what’s acceptable and not be a doormat/sponge, and on the other hand that I mustn’t invalidate her feelings and should apparently give her space if that's what she says she needs. Her idea of space is us renting a small apartment and each living in it on alternate weeks while the other lives with the children in the family home. At one point she said perhaps we could even do that until our youngest graduates high school if neither of us found another partner … that’s 8 years away. How could anybody think moving house every week for 8 years is a good idea?

She’s used to getting what she wants (I think there’s possible NPD here as well) and has threatened that if I don’t play by her rules she will file for divorce. So, how do I navigate the need to try to give her space, without feeling completely taken advantage of and failing to create appropriate boundaries? At one end of the spectrum, I could go along with her absurd idea and continue to finance her somewhat lavish lifestyle (including a new $3000 mattress, it seems). At the other end, I tell her I’m staying put in the house, cut off her access to my income other than what’s legally necessary (no more new clothes, no new mattress, no funding lunches with friends at restaurants, etc) and make it clear that if she goes on a date with another man *I* will file for divorce. The latter approach feels entirely appropriate given the way she’s behaved and the things she’s said and done. I go back and forth on this spectrum of how to respond to her demands in our mediation session, and would really appreciate any wisdom or insights from others here.

My hope here is that somehow she reverts to her more moderate BPD behaviors which are tolerable and will keep our family together, at least until the children fly the nest. But she's in some sort of crisis mode at the moment and this just isn't sustainable or good for anyone.

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[AnuDay]

All I can say is that I am a similar situation.  Until someone knowledgable replies you can read some of my posts and replies.  I feel your pain.  It sucks.  We will do anything for the kids.  My uBPDgf hasnt worked a day in her life.  Personally I think Im going to continue to endure and try to fix this excruciatingly painful relationship but I am going to regain my life in the process.  I will let the chips fall where they fall. As long as I know that I did my part.  Honestly, I believe that both of our relationships are over and the best that we can hope for is a recycle which may buy you some more time with the younger children.

[Grey Kitty]

Hello, and welcome here. You've found a bunch of people who have been through it before, and know how this works. You aren't alone. 

First off, it is very easy to let your own grasp of reality slip away and get distorted by all the crazy things you've been fed over these years. I'd like to point out a few things.

1. Her threats to divorce, her telling you there is a 1% chance or 0% chance for your marriage are just that--words. And they are words designed to have an impact on you, and they DO have an impact on you.

They are important, and they are worth listening to (somewhat), and absolutely NOT worth arguing with her over.

But they aren't actions, and she's been at this for months, and she hasn't taken action. She hasn't left the house. She hasn't thrown you out of the house. She hasn't filed for divorce, served you papers, or even started serious negotiations with you over it.

She *MIGHT* do this. She might not. Perhaps she will just continue the threats. (NOTE: You may want to prepare yourself for a legal battle if it happens.)

2. She has proposed dictating the format of a divorce/separation to you, and you don't have to accept ANY of it. This part in particular:

renting a small apartment and each living in it on alternate weeks while the other lives with the children in the family home.

I've heard of that arrangement, and can see how it benefits the children, and also is more affordable than having two houses big enough for parent+children. I've also only heard of it working where the parents are both very emotionally mature, had a non-rancorous split, etc. With mental illness, I guarantee it will be a disaster for you at a minimum, and probably spill over to the children too. Just DON'T.

Again... .if you do separate, you get to negotiate how it will work for you, and chances are it will be HORRIBLE for you unless you lawyer up and force her to accept a 'reasonable' compromise.

My hope here is that somehow she reverts to her more moderate BPD behaviors which are tolerable and will keep our family together, at least until the children fly the nest. But she's in some sort of crisis mode at the moment and this just isn't sustainable or good for anyone.

This is a possible outcome. But it is very unlikely to happen spontaneously.

The way to get there is to work on your boundaries, on better dealing with the "little" problems in your marriage, and by that I mean the things that bother you--not just her demands.

In your daily life, what is she doing that breaks your heart, or drives you nuts, or has you terrified? We can help you find ways to protect yourself, but the more specific you get the better our help will be.

[once removed]

hi LightningRod,

i think youve gotten some very good advice. it sounds like your wifes feelings and actions are fickle and may change in either direction. its hard not to get drawn into the swings.

you ask a good question. i think what i would ask at this point, what it is that you want, in terms of the arrangement.

[SpinsC]

As my father and uBPD husband both say - Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.

She's said you must obey her demands or risk her filing for divorce. This is a possible real threat and must be treated as such. My theory is that they threaten or follow through with divorce as long as they are in control of the proceedings. Then, it's not abandonment, it's empowerment.

Even if you don't intend to divorce, it would be a good idea to plan as if it is inevitable. Retain a lawyer, ask how long the retainer is good for (my lawyer only guaranteed a year).

Yes, it confuses me as well, reading that she has demanded space, but still wants intimacy with you. Isn't that wanting one's cake and having it, too?

She can't have both space and intimacy, they are mutually exclusive. Possibly, she wants the intimacy, but doesn't know how to ask for it. Not sex, but 'cuddles' that make her feel safe. I think part of this lies in her acknowledgment that your relationship is father/child in her own mind. She wants to feel safe and protected without all that grownup relationship 'stuff'. So, she asks for space.

This may also explain part of her 'nausea' when you are having fun with the kids. To see you, her husband and surrogate father, being silly may have been twisted in her mind based on her past. I don't think that the nausea specifically is a 'BPD thing', but I have seen how triggers can be as strange as hearing silly jokes told just to make the kids laugh. Also, the nausea could be the only way she understands to express her conflicting emotions right now. She may not even know she's suppressing emotions when she's complaining of nausea that 'you caused'.

I know this sounds like a strange question, but at what age do you put your wife's emotional maturity? It helped me deal with my mother (uBPD/Narc) and my husband (uBPD/uCPTSD?) when I realized that Mom is at about 12 and my husband is somewhere around 17. I look at people who ARE those ages, and the motivations become a lot clearer to me. My father, by the way, agrees with my setting Mom's emotional age at 12.

Reading your post, I had a sense that your wife may be operating at a maturity of younger than 10. She still needs 'daddy' to be all about 'his little girl' - her. Now that your daughter is 10, she's feeling competition. Now her 'daddy' has a REAL daughter who also needs to be treated as 'daddy's little girl'. That can feel like abandonment to someone with BPD. She likely loves her daughter and doesn't want to feel competitive, so that gets changed to nausea. Nausea that is 'your fault' because she isn't done needing you and doesn't want to feel competitive for your attention.

None of this may help. If not, I'm very sorry. Still, I've tried to work from the inside out, what would make someone act as you've described your wife acting.

For the sake of the children, though, be strong enough to act according to your values and accept the consequences even if they are not what you hoped for. Whatever your values are, those are the foundation stones to any boundaries you put in place. My husband calls them his deal-breakers. I call mine the core of who I am as a person. They are what you would defend if it is your wife or your neighbor or the stranger on the other side of the restaurant who tried to violate them. Allowing your children to see that they deserve to have core values that define them as people and that they deserve to defend those core values even if the consequences aren't fun.

[LightningRod]

I'm so grateful for the time taken to respond here, folks, and the words of wisdom and encouragement are greatly appreciated. There's much here for me to reflect on, and a couple of questions you've asked which I'll try to respond to ... .

 

In your daily life, what is she doing that breaks your heart, or drives you nuts, or has you terrified? We can help you find ways to protect yourself, but the more specific you get the better our help will be.

What a great question - really made me think. Over the years, I think the things that I've found hardest have perhaps been twofold. Firstly, the way that she has spoken to our daughters and makes them feel bad for so many things. I've tolerated way too much of it because I was trying to avoid a fight in front of the girls, and I'm not proud of that. The eldest (14) was resented from the moment she was born and feels that her mom has always hated her. She just told me tonight that the reason she spends most of her time in her bedroom is because she can't stand to be around her toxic mother. That makes me sad, angry with my wife, and angry with myself too for letting things get so bad. The youngest (10) had some behavioral issues in her early years and until now I never understood how my wife could sometimes say that she wished my daughter had never been born - I see now that she was being pulled into the role of an adult which she resented. The 4-year old daughter of my wife's BFF bullied my 10-year old while I was out last week (left marks from scratching, hitting, kicking, threatened to kill her, and caused her to run sobbing to hide in a neighbor's yard). Instead of showing sympathy to my daughter, my wife told her of things she'd kept in her memory that my daughter had done at a similar age and that it was perfectly normal. My daughter sat their looking shamed and guilty and I finally started to find my voice because my eyes are now opening to the damage she's caused my children over the years and I need to put a stop to it. My wife told me to stay out of it, but I stood my ground, as I did yesterday evening when I came home to find my wife raging at my 10-year old who had locked herself behind a restroom door. These things make me want to go for full custody if we separate, but I've read enough here to know that would be ugly and stressful for all concerned.

The second thing would be the complete and utter neediness. Asking me constantly to do things for her that she could do for herself. The other day we stopped by ALDI to pick up some groceries. My wife suggested me and the children wait in the car while she ran in. She came out carrying a bag of groceries and as my daughter pointed out, the way she walked with that bag anybody would have thought it weighed more than she did. We opened the door from inside and she huffed, puffed and heaved the bag in making straining noises the whole time. When we got back to the house my 10-year old picked up the bag without any difficulty and carried it into the kitchen for my wife. Another example would be that a couple of weeks ago my wife actually got me out of bed to write a two line work email for her that she said she just couldn't find the right words for, and earlier that day had asked me to move an item on a PowerPoint slide for her because she wasn't sure she would be able to line it up properly - it simply involved clicking on the item and dragging it the right part of the page. Years off this on a virtually daily basis has really worn me down, honestly.

What has me terrified right now? The fact that I've seen how callous she has become and not knowing what she will do next. She can talk about the type of sex she wants with some future (at least, I think it's future!) partner and that she considers herself free to date other men, and can't understand that these are painful for a husband of 23 years to hear - if I withdraw even one iota for my own sanity, she accuses me of being cold and distant. In January she told me she needed to leave me but would be happy to move into a dingy apartment and leave me with the house. Roll forward almost five months and she now talks of wanting to stay in the house herself and would quite happily see me in a dingy apartment. Her paranoid ideation is so off the charts that she makes stuff up constantly and has numerous people in my orbit buying into it and I know that could make a custody battle very stressful and very expensive.

Reading your post, I had a sense that your wife may be operating at a maturity of younger than 10. She still needs 'daddy' to be all about 'his little girl' - her. Now that your daughter is 10, she's feeling competition. Now her 'daddy' has a REAL daughter who also needs to be treated as 'daddy's little girl'. That can feel like abandonment to someone with BPD. She likely loves her daughter and doesn't want to feel competitive, so that gets changed to nausea. Nausea that is 'your fault' because she isn't done needing you and doesn't want to feel competitive for your attention.

Thank you for this - I find it very helpful. As the grocery bag example above indicates, I think you're right that my wife's emotional age is probably less than 10. Funnily enough, during a heart to heart with my eldest daughter this evening before I even read your post, she volunteered that she thought she was more emotionally mature than her mother. I would agree with that, and I would have to say the same is true of our 10-year old. Let me give you another example. Recently, my 10-year old chose to ride home with me instead of my wife after an event. I realized I needed gas and wanted to pick up something to cook for dinner so I texted her "Quick gas and food stop" so she wouldn't be concerned about the delay. 15 minutes later I got a crazy text about how awful I was and how she would never do anything like this. I honestly couldn't work out what was happening until my eldest texted me saying my wife was sobbing and very angry at home because she'd decided I had taken my youngest to a restaurant without her for a celebratory meal of some sort. It was all in her mind of course (in reality, I was buying a single piece of meat to cook at home!), but in her emotional state she put three boxes of cereal on my bed. Why? She later told me when I found them that it was because she wanted to show me that even though I was doing nasty things to her by taking my daughter to a restaurant without her (paranoid ideation), she was doing nice things for me by buying me nice breakfast cereal.

It never occurred to me to consider her emotional age before, but in light of a couple of the examples I've given above along with others I'm recalling, I'd say it might be as young as 5. What do you think? I remember reading somewhere that one of the challenges with adult pwBPD is that they can have the emotional age of a child but wreak the kind of havoc only an adult can.     

[SpinsC]

Wow. Just wow. Yes, I think you have given a great description of a 5-6 year old child living in an adult's body. But, to make this clear to her would only be the shot that started world war III.

Validate your daughters. I only heard a couple of stories and figured this out. How scary must this be for your daughters to realize that they have 'out-aged' their mother. I can tell you from experience that this hurts. It's confusing and the natural reactions of your daughters (the rolled eyes at Mom being drama queen again) can be the spark that sends their mother off on them. There is no manual for how to be the daughter of a mother who's emotionally younger than you.

I suggest, whether you stay or divorce, get yourself and your daughters into therapy. Really. The teen years are going to be really tough on your girls. This is the time of natural rebellion and growing independence. They do need good coping skills for dealing with a mother who reacts all 'wrong' to their natural growth. You will need really strong tools and boundaries whether you're still in the same house or trying to co-parent with her at a different address.

The whole drama-soaked thing about the 'dingy apartment' sounds like my son when he was 5 - dreaming of the most pitiful thing to make you change your mind, then putting you there because she didn't like the idea of being there herself. It has less to do with any kind of reality than with the push/pull so common with pwBPD.

If watching her actions through the lens of a 'father' watching a 6-year-old helps you understand where she's coming from, that's good. Balancing that this is her reality with the fact that she has a husband, daughters and a drivers' license is no easy thing. Your love for her got her this far before this meltdown season began. Deciding where to go from here can really come down to what you are willing to do and how hard you are really willing to work.

Because the truth remains that you can only change you. THAT is why so many of the books about pwBPD talk about the reader making changes and doing so much work. Because the reader is obviously interested and wants change. And there is no escaping the fact that each of us can only make lasting changes inside ourselves.

[Grey Kitty]

Firstly, the way that she has spoken to our daughters and makes them feel bad for so many things.

The first one is the hardest--because the only way you can truly STOP her from treating your daughters badly is to remove your daughters from her presence--very difficult to do in the short term, as it will probably escalate conflict, where she may attack both you and your daughters, neither of which she will see... .and far harder to do long term, as that would require you divorcing/separating and getting 100% custody.

It isn't quite that hopeless... .but all the "easy" solutions require some level of willing compliance from your wife.

The second thing would be the complete and utter neediness.

This you can enforce boundaries against, by refusing to accommodate her requests. It absolutely isn't easy, but it is more straightforward by a long shot.

The thing is that each request (on its own) is somewhat reasonable, and being kind would direct you to be agree... .at least in that one case. You have to figure out which ones to take a stand on. And also if because of the pattern, you need/want to take a stand on ones that would (individually) be reasonable.

And you also have to be prepared for her to launch into other forms of verbal/emotional abuse to "get you in line" when you do refuse.

What has me terrified right now? The fact that I've seen how callous she has become and not knowing what she will do next. She can talk about the type of sex she wants with some future (at least, I think it's future!) partner and that she considers herself free to date other men, and can't understand that these are painful for a husband of 23 years to hear - if I withdraw even one iota for my own sanity, she accuses me of being cold and distant.

Yes, if you try to withdraw, because she's saying something abusive, she will attack you to keep you there, stepping up her abuse in a new direction.

You have to be willing to leave for your own peace of mind (not forever, just out of a conversation) WHILE she is telling you that you are being cold and distant, or whatever you are doing to her.