What's next

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

It's been 15 years,  mostly bad times.  I ready to throw this relationship in the landfill because the very idea of recycle sounds like a groundhog day from hell. When I said I'm really done and won't spend another night under the same roof my husband spent over a week sleeping on his car.  I got pissed and told him he wasn't taking me seriously that he needed to live elsewhere for at least 3 to 6 months.  So he moved in with his mom. Then he got saved, and joined my lifelong church which he had kept my son and I from attending to the point that I gave up caring about church.  He got baptized and invited my mother. He took her $800, and two tvs we weren't using, and did yard work for her because I told him to stop buying me things and stop trying to do things for me.  When none of this worked and I told him not to remodel the bathroom at our house for me because I could never live with him again. Because I could not live with the idea of ever finding myself feeling like I was in that terrible cycle with him again. He supposedly tried to take his own life. Or more charming, depending on who you ask.  I'm just worried about what may be next.  Anyone had a similar experience?

[Belljarescapee]

It's been 15 years,  mostly bad times.  I ready to throw this relationship in the landfill because the very idea of recycle sounds like a groundhog day from hell. When I said I'm really done and won't spend another night under the same roof my husband spent over a week sleeping on his car.  I got pissed and told him he wasn't taking me seriously that he needed to live elsewhere for at least 3 to 6 months.  So he moved in with his mom. Then he got saved, and joined my lifelong church which he had kept my son and I from attending to the point that I gave up caring about church.  He got baptized and invited my mother. He took her $800, and two tvs we weren't using, and did yard work for her because I told him to stop buying me things and stop trying to do things for me.  When none of this worked and I told him not to remodel the bathroom at our house for me because I could never live with him again. Because I could not live with the idea of ever finding myself feeling like I was in that terrible cycle with him again. He supposedly tried to take his own life. Or more charming, depending on who you ask.  I'm just worried about what may be next.  Anyone had a similar experience?

[Mutt]

Hi Belljarescapee,  

I ready to throw this relationship in the landfill because the very idea of recycle sounds like a groundhog day from hell.

Recycling takes two people, you won't recycle the r/s if you set the boundary on yourself.

Do you two have kids?

[Belljarescapee]

I didn't say anything about kids

[babyducks]

 I'm just worried about what may be next.  Anyone had a similar experience?

Hi Belljarescapee

welcome to the family.    

my experience is like yours in that I experienced a lot of conflict, a lot of very intense conflict during my relationship.   there was a lot of push/pull... .go away I hate you... .come here I love you.

it was exhausting.

there were a lot of break up and make up cycles.    what it felt like to me, was it was very hard to know when ~things~, the relationship, the conflict, the insanity was over.

Mutt was right, it takes two people to recycle.    And I participated in that cycle in ways that probably weren't my best choices.

What specifically worries you?

'ducks

[flourdust]

I didn't say anything about kids

You mentioned your son.

[Belljarescapee]

I'm sorry. I did say I have a son. I'm not sure I feel safe here. My husband is really good at everything technical and electronic and I worry he can remotely check my browser history. He had rooted my smart phone and those of my son and step son and had installed spyware on their phones which he told them about as a way to keep them honest. I kinda felt like at least that way they would be more careful since he would routinely go through their phones when they were asleep or got in trouble and had them confiscated for sometimes months.  I told him I thought it was a horrible invasion of privacy and didn't agree. He criticized me for being a bad parent. I kind of assumed he had put something on mine too but theough research found out I could never really know. So I did a factory reset after all of the texts to my son and me from he mysteriously deleted themselves from my phone. All but some suspiciously benign old ones. I was purposely keeping the bad ones from our most recent and last EVER fight. It was like the fog lighting ive always delt with was even getting to me with no contact.  I dont know if I should even be posting on the broad open Web.

[Belljarescapee]

He also has the administrator access on our sprint account which I know he can see my call history and texts from. And he has remote access to the home WiFi. He bought a wifi security camera just before we split and I dont know for a fact he returned it even though he said he was dissatisfied with it's quality. I won't allow my phone to connect to wifi and if im home alone I turn the router off.  I can't wait to get my own applartment. I feel like im being watched. I work in ems and if he knew what unit I was he could turn on his radio and know where to find me at work. If im not he can just go in the Sprint account and track me like a lost child. I need a new phone service also.

[Belljarescapee]

I'm worried that a person who doesn't value their own life or those of their children enough that they could commit suicide is capable of anything.  Maybe even killing someone else. I'm worried the next stage after grieving is anger. I worry he is going to try to take my son just so he can control his every minute like he tried to do before and make him miserable.  The very thing I've always been too afraid of to leave. The last straw was that my son didn't ever want to come home because his dad was always trying to find something he did wrong to punish him for. He spent every night with a friend or even grandma. Then one of his friends mom told me he had talked to them about suicide because among other things he was so unhappy at home. I just waited for the next time my husband treated me horribly so my son wouldn't feel responsible. I actually went against the safe behaviors I had adopted to keep us from conflict and had a date just the two of us. Its sad really how predictable BPD is. I know a nice time almost always ends with me being treated like a dog and never having any idea what I did wrong. Its why I became a hermit,  conditioning. Self preservation. So it ended.  I guess, or I hope. I'll believe it when it really happens.

[heartandwhole]

Hi Belljarescapee,

I'd like to join the others and welcome you to the site. I'm sorry that you are going through this difficult time. I can understand your feelings of apprehension posting here. Especially as your husband is so technically savvy. It can feel violating to find out that someone is monitoring you. I had a boss many years ago who monitored our private phone calls from work. When I found out, I was aghast, as I had made one very personal phone call (this was before mobile phones) from the office on my lunch break.

Fortunately, this site has 100,000 members and similar stories. The likelihood of your husband finding you out of all the members is next to zero, unless he has access to the device from which you post and/or your username and password. It sounds like you are very careful with your privacy settings. There are lots of tips in this thread that may help as well:

Could I be found out?

As babyducks said, the breakup-makeup cycles can be exhausting. Do you have supportive people around you? It's important to rally as much support around you as possible, especially if you are thinking of leaving.

Is your husband aware that he has issues? Has he/have you reached out for help to professionals?

Keep posting. It helps to get it down in black and white. We are here for you.  

heartandwhole

[Mutt]

Hi Belljarescapee,

Its why I became a hermit,  conditioning. Self preservation.

Good idea with not using your home wifi on your cell. I just wanted to re-iterate what heartandwhole said about support, it helps to spend time with family and friends because your husband probably has mostly negative things to say about you, that's not your true self image, it's his distorted reality.

This is a safe place where you can share your thoughts and feelings with being invalidated or judged for having them, we're here to help.

[Belljarescapee]

Thank you for the encouragement heartandwhole,

I do have some support.  My mother and son are my most important people. My mother had been kept in the dark about my entire marriage. The way I've actually been treated would have broken her heart. I should have realized that I was protecting a relationship that was harmful to my son and I but until my son got older it was harder for me to see. So she still thinks her son in law is redeemable. He has been working really hard to convince her how much he's changed.  Spending more time at her house than he ever has. He says he just never appreciated what a good Christian person she is.  She is, I won't argue with that. She sees the best in people and could find a silver lining in a black hole. But she is also naive when it comes to peoples true motivations. So occasionally she throws into a conversation "I would love for him to change and be a good husband and father and Christian for you family for the rest of your life and you two stay together" which doesn't feel like total support to me.  He has gone to church marrige counseling without me. I'm not going to go and be convinced to work on the relationship. Other than that I don't think he has a true concept of his problem. I've never mentioned BPD, even though I've had two books on the subject sitting on my shelf for years.  One thing that really bothered me is one of our conversations about my struggle with my son and his temper after we began living separately.  He brought me a Christian parenting book to help. I was pretty irritated and indignant. I thanked him but had to say that my son's true problem was that he was raised not to respect me and that I am the person to yell and cuss at and blame for all of life's little frustrations. And I admitted that I was partly to blame for that because I should have gotten us out of that environment instead of letting it become his example for 15 years.  He said "thank you so much for those 15 years". That is how i know he has no concept of what he does to us and is so selfish all he can see is what he gets from us not what damage he does to us. He asked did I not love him still.  I said it wasn't that I loved him less but I was done loving him more than myself.

[Belljarescapee]

Thanks Mutt,
I'm trying really hard to not interfere with what could be my husband reaching out to any and every kind person he can find because I can't be there anymore. But it really rubs me the wrong way. I had to protect my mother from his anger and disrespect or she wouldn't even be speaking to him and now he gets to be a new person over night.  He didn't have to earn it: grace. And everyone is supposed to trust its real. It doesn't make me any less anxious that a giant split is looming. I did warn my mom that he has his phone set up to record EVERY conversation and save it. And that she couldn't let him say negative or untrue things about me and not deny or dispute them because her conversation could be used as evidence of my unfit parenting in the future. I'm reading "splitting". Other than that I'm trying to let him share my loved ones and not be bothered by it.
 

[Mutt]

You can learn to depersonalize the behaviours, become indifferent to them, you neither like them or hate them - which is what you're doing, you probably haven't reached indifference yet, that can take time.

What I would like to stress though is that you can have your feelings about his behaviours, personally nobody in real gets it because they haven't gone through the experience, the behaviours are not directed at them, you said it yourself people are supposed to trust that it's real. Some may buy unto it, some may not, regardless if they do or don't shift the focus over to you and talk about these things with us.