My wife has BP, and PTSD

[Coconutmilk]

I married my best friend and we have a child. My wife has BP and also PTSD from being a combat veteran. We got married at thirty, been married since June 2016. We had been best friends since we were 16. I thought it was a fairy tale vibe true. Wow was I ever wrong. Things were fine at first when we got together. She even quit drinking, she was an alcoholic at the time. The VA had diagnosed her shortly before we actually started dating. But I had no idea what was about to happen. After she got pregnant she stayed sick  the whole time. After the baby was born she started hating the responsibility of being a parent. Until the VA diagnosed her and told her it was because of her mother, she wasn't that bad. But after that it started it a way with her family and tore it apart. Now we're broke because she liked credit cards before we got together and the bills for it are too much. So she has decided it's all my fault, twisted reality to make me out to be the devil, started drinking again and is mentally and verbally abusing me to the point that I'm having to be medicated to keep my adrenaline under control. She is now threatening to leave and making a lot of crazy demands of me. Not to Nevin hard me knowing where she is or what she is doing even if it's being at her brother's house. She wrecked my dad's $65,000 truck at two in the morning just randomly leaving to go drink down the road at my cousins and she was sober. She has no sense of safety or responsibility and just wants to party with friends and stay messed up. I love her with all my heart and I am running out of ways to keep her from doing something crazy or leaving. She is always suicidal in her head, her brother is fed up with her, her friends don't wanna be around her and she thinks it's all my fault. I want my best friend back. Please help.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[flourdust]

Welcome, Grimm! Your situation sounds like it's gone downhill - badly! - in just the last year.  You mentioned that your wife was diagnosed by the VA ... .what was the diagnosis? Is she getting treatment now?

What about you - do you have a therapist who can help you?

As a starting point, take a look at the links on the right side of the page. There are some good articles & lessons there that might help you figure out what is going on.

[Meili]

I would like to join flourdust in welcoming you to boards.

When you say that you're running out of ways to keep her from leaving or doing something crazy, what do you mean? What kinds of things have you been doing?

[Coconutmilk]

Amazingly I seen a Facebook message of hers that was a cry for help to a friend about something that happened between us a few months ago that she wouldn't ever tell anybody what the problem was. Fortunately I found out in time and was able to confront her through a letter that she read while I was driving her home from getting drunk and staying at a friend's house without letting me know as always.

This entire time her outbursts towards me were fueled from her thinking I had tried to molest her in her sleep.
Luckily I found the help cry because she was too the point of taking our child and truck and running away out of state. After she cheated on me for reconciliation.

Yes she told me this after she read my letter. Now I will share with you what happened that fueled this rage that she rises to confront me with. And keep in mind that she was molested as a child and raped by a close friend whom she still refuses to name two weeks after we got together. She was to drunk to fight him off.

Do here it's what happened. One night my wife gets pass out drunk. We went to bed. She was sore so I decided to give her a massage like a hundred times before. What I didn't know was that soon as her head hit the pillow and rolled the other way was that at that instant she passed out. She woke up when I was down to get inner thigh, about three inches from her vagina. She asked me what I was doing and I said just massaging you like always, she tucked and rolled over under the covers and it was never mentioned again. So I never gave it a second thought. She however for three months had thought that I had tried to molest her in her sleep. She was to drunk when we laid down to realize what was happening and she doesn't remember.

Now she is willing to try and see if she can start loving me again and realize what really happened.

Bottom line, I learned early on that BP caused her to run, escalate situations in her mind took they become a false reality and that she is very very private and closed. If I hadn't discovered that message, I would have lost my family, my best friend, my son and all because she wasn't comfortable coming to me about it or anyone else. She said she would have never told me why she left after she did if I hadn't found that message.

I threw up all morning at the thought of knowing my wife thought I had tried to molest her in her sleep. This is a woman whom during a divorce got drunk and had to remove her dirty clothing and slept nude beside me in my arms all night with no fear of ever being touched because she knew out of all the people in the world, he is the one person who would in no circumstance do that.

It's a long road ahead but atleast there is light again at the end of the tunnel!

This should answer most of your questions and yes I do have a therapist who immediately called upon arriving to work this morning and is the only reason my wife is laying in bed right now waiting to watch TV with me. He is a brilliant man and understands BPD enough to help me communicate with her and he understands ADD enough to communicate with me.

And my wife tried group and therapy but she just always found another veteran who smoked pot and would stay gone all day when she went so it really did no good.

They medicate her as much as she will allow. She is very stubborn and alpha and demanding. Yes, she is narcissistic as well and so is her mother. But my wife is not diagnosed with it, she is too smart for them to figure out.

Wow I cried a little writing this. Bedtime

[opentoideas]

have you ever heard of mort ferrell marriage fitness?  this is not an advertisement my husband has BPD and it's an extremely excruciating reality. When I found this marriage fitness program and started really paying attention to it, it gave me this whole new set of strategies that have been like really really helpful. It might be worth a look you just simply Google his name.

I do believe that love is about what you do and not what comes back to you . What I mean by that is well just think of a good mothers love. A good mother gives and gives and gives and that love is so deeply unconditional. I think the challenge is not to keep giving, the challenge is to make sure that we are replenishing our own souls and our own internal well-being. So that we're not spending energy that's not coming back in but were actually giving in a way that strengthens us  and helps us to be and to feel like a more complete and loving human being. No matter what happens in this relationship with your best friend, you will be a better person for it in the end. It is not easy it is perhaps the most difficult road any of us can be on because so much and society tells those that love should be about how we feel and how someone makes us feel. But love is really about how much we give and how much we are able to contribute to the world around us. That is where deeper fulfillment and satisfaction rests. Wishing you the very best. Stay strong

[Meili]

So, where are things at for you today Grimm?

[Coconutmilk]

So, where are things at for you today Grimm?

So I write these huge replies and they don't appear. Now I can't remember if there is a delay or if I forgot to send it. This is more or less a check on that.

[Coconutmilk]

So I write these huge replies and they don't appear. Now I can't remember if there is a delay or if I forgot to send it. This is more or less a check on that.

So on discovering that my last 45 minute reply didn't send in pretty upset about that.

I don't get much time to respond away from my wife.

Things are better. She is still trying to adjust and accept that I didn't try to molest her in her sleep but her affection seems stronger and sincere as to where before it seemed fake and forced. I'm still tying to assess whether she is cool now or still a current flight risk over a miscommunication.

Only time will tell.

I personally have an issue though in this relationship that I need advice on I think though.

6 months after we started dating and after we were pregnant, she came to me one night and said that 2 weeks after we started dating (she lived with me for that time but we were not intimate yet) she left one night to go help a friend in need. I remember this night. She came home the next morning and was distant for a couple weeks then we started getting intimate. She told me that she got drunk and was raped by this friend and that all she could do was say no that she was too drunk to physically try to stop him.

Knowing my wife I believe her, but she refused to tell me who and that if I couldn't get over it not knowing who then we couldn't be together.

I know she will never tell me and it's always in the back of my head.
Is there a guy dodging me cause he raped me GF at the time or laughing cause the woman I'm married to cheated on me with him when we first got together.

The only reason I question her honesty is because she won't say who. But this is the same woman who would rather run me in the ground and walk out over a misunderstanding rather than confront me with it.

[Coconutmilk]

So I'm still trying to recover from months of mental abuse and torture. Over nothing. I'm having a hard time believing it's real and that it's over.

It's hard to believe that she could actually believe I was capable of such a thing. Especially knowing her history of being molested. Luckily I know her and understand BPD enough that unlike most people I didn't get mad and leave her. Instead I threw up at the thought of it and called my therapist for advice on how to handle it to where she would stay if that was still an option in her mind. If course in my letter I gave her the option to leave with all the help from me she needed under the circumstance. I have learned to always show people with BPD that there is a way out that doesn't involve conflict if they so choose, never let them feel trapped, they will want to run away with or without a problem.

So she has to adjust to the fact that her best friend of 15 years didn't try to touch her in her sleep like she thought. And now I have to recover from the abuse of staying around trying to find out what the problem is so we could get back to being us.
It's hard to do. She is the ONLY person I would have ever endured that from, married with a child or not. Anybody else I would have sent packing a long time ago. My love for her has never weakened through any of it.

I have to take 90% of what she has said in the last few months and throw it out the window. She tried to make me hate her with words like your presence disgusts me. Made me stay gone, and when I was home it was take care of the baby. I haven't slept much in months, I have lost one hundred pounds since we got together. It was do everything and leave her alone to go nothing but drink and smoke or divorce her. That was the option I was given with just bull___ reasons as to why. She has run down me and my family to the point that they don't care for her much which is common. Her own brother was ready to punch her in the mouth for acting the way she was and the way she treated me. I asked him to please just let me deal with it instead. He doesn't have the ability to comprehend BPD and doesn't think she has  PTSD from Afghanistan. Believe me, she has it!
My friends stay away and she has pushed all of hers from here at home away that liked  me including her sister in law. She clings to one friend who uses her instead because that friend likes her view on things. I think her friend needs to stop staying locked in her room all day drinking and getting high while her husband goes to work. Most would have serious the same about my situation but it's a little different. My wife stays home to raise our son so a baby sitter isn't doing it.

Trying to convince myself it's all good now, it's still hard and I'm still unsure of her thoughts.
Yesterday she had bad anxiety so I left and came back. She assessed it while I was gone and her anxiety didn't lower like it normally did so she said she realized I'm not the anxiety source anymore. Unfortunately I know that can change at anytime.

[Coconutmilk]

I have definitely asserted that she is avoiding saying I love  you. That tells me that she hasn't decided yet whether she is staying or going.

I really hate feeling this way. The wait is killing me. I feel like I'm waiting on her to tell me it's over.

I'm so afraid it's still a game she is playing till she is financially ready to go.

[Meili]

I know what you're saying about feeling like you're waiting. I went through a lot of that until I decided that I would no longer wait.

By waiting, we give them power over our lives. I decided to take my power back by making a decision on how I wanted to live my life regardless of what my x was or was not doing.

I wanted her back, so I was going to live that way. She was going to do whatever it is that she was going to do. I had zero control over that. What I did have control over was what I was going to do. That's where my focus was. That's what gave me my power back. That's what stopped the pain.

A lot of us get caught up in the waiting part. We sit, we wait, we ruminate, we torture ourselves with the possibilities. It's all a waste of time and energy when we do that.

We have a choice. We can chose to wait and allow another to control our future, or we can choose to decide how we live and be in control.

If we choose to be in control of our own lives, then we can make the next choice: Do we want to live life with the desire to salvage the relationship and put in the work necessary, or do we not want to do that?

None of the choices are easy. They all are scary and have consequences. But, everything in life has consequences. Some are good, and some are bad. What are the consequences of sitting and waiting? What are the consequences of deciding to work toward reconciliation? What are the consequences of reconciling? What are the consequences of giving up and walking away? What are the consequences of taking control of our lives?

Are you ready to make the choice?