Advice

[amusement park]

To the person who responded to a previous post of mine, the daughter is hers by a previous marriage.  We have no children together.  I am willing to put everything into this marriage, to learn how to respond correctly to her when she flies off.  I haven't responded well and it escalated the problem.  I have no experience in the field of personality disorders.  There has been no diagnosis but symptoms.  Any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[takingandsending]

Hi amusement park.

I had sent some links on your previous post. Have you had a chance to read the communications and boundaries tools? If so, do you have any questions? I notice that you have been posting in the family law, divorce and custody board, but it sounds like you want to keep your marriage together, and your wife is the one threatening to leave (multiple times).

Without actively seeking therapy, your wife's BPD symptoms likely will not go away. My xw also would freak out whenever I spent any time away with friends or family. At the core of BPD is a fear of abandonment. Yet, their poor definition of themselves also causes them to push (very hard) away when someone gets close to them. This riddle of push/pull, idealization/devaluation keeps most of their close relationships in chaos. For some pwBPD, the chaos is every day. For others they can function a little better.

But there are things that you can do to not make things worse. One of the bigs is not to JADE (Justify Argue Defend or Explain). pwBPD often provoke, attack or accuse those close to them, and the natural response is to JADE. But their stated cause for the provocation often has little to do with what is actually going on in their thoughts. Think of a runaway train and that's what the pwBPD is experiencing in their mind. They lash out to get relief - not that they actually do get relief -  but it's all they have. When we JADE, we aren't arguing or defending a point in a rational discussion, we are dismissing whatever the pwBPD is feeling ... .basically to them, saying that their emotions aren't valid. For pwBPD, feelings=facts. We can be arguing/defending/explaining facts, but since their feelings are taken as facts, we are dismissing their feelings.

The other big is to validate pwBPD's feelings. Have to be careful here. Whatever anyone feels is a valid feeling, in that they are having that feeling and there is little use to denying that they are having it. So there's 4 basic rules: validate the valid (i.e. the feeling they are having), don't invalidate the valid (don't dismiss that they are having that feeling - that is where JADE falls), don't validate the invalid (i.e. don't agree to a feeling that pwBPD is projecting on to you or someone else), and invalidate the invalid (this one is lightly used and only in emergency, like if your wife is having thoughts of suicide or self harm and how much better that will make things, important to challenge those thoughts). Sounds easy. But it takes a lot of work and practice - I never excelled at it. I found it tough to actually identify the feelings and separate them from the words being thrown at me. But anything you can do in this area will help things to be less volatile.

If you are wanting to stay in relationship with your wife, I really recommend that you post on the Improving board, because the members on that board are very supportive and understanding when it comes to what to do to try to make things better. I spent 2 years on that board, and I really did receive a lot of help. My marriage did improve from daily volatility to less frequent eruptions. I did learn how to have boundaries around speech that kept our arguments from devolving into rage fests. For me, in the end, the effects on my small children were not enough to stay in my marriage. It is different circumstances for everyone who posts here.

I hope this helps. Please keep reading the tools and posting your questions.