Husband has been diagnosed. I'm back after a few years

[Graceinaction]

I was here briefly a few years ago. Then my husband was diagnosed with Bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features and PTSD from combat in Iraq.

After 18 months of meds not working, or working minimally, and 4 hospitalizations in 11 months, he has been diagnosed additionally with BPD.

I'm at my wits end. He clearly has Bipolar 1 and PTSD, he wasn't misdiagnosed. He also clearly has BPD. Is there any hope with all this mess?

He was released from the hospital after a 13 day stay on Thursday, had an intake appointment on Friday and was accepted into a partial hospitalization program.

He starts tomorrow morning and has been a disaster all day. Up to this point no counseling has worked because he triangulates and lies and won't address any real issues. I found out last week that his therapist has been requesting me to come to his appointments for months, but my husband didn't want me to. I know it's because he doesn't want me and the therapist to find out he has spent 8 months lying in therapy. This is an ongoing issue for him.

He accepts his diagnosis and swears he wants to get better, but when the time comes to address his problems he freaks out and lies. It's his way of getting out of facing the issues.

So I asked him to think of a way to hold himself accountable. Our whole family  has made major sacrifices for him to get better, and it's time to stop the games. So all day he's played the games he's a pro at: projection, crazy-making, talking in circles, and verbal abuse. All to avoid the issue at hand: holding himself accountable (and me being able to hold him accountable) so he doesn't spend the next several weeks lying and getting nothing out of this partial hospitalization program.

It's a good program, and it could help him. But it won't if he spends the whole time making things up.

How on earth do you even be supportive of someone with BPD without being codependent? I have NO desire to parent him, but most days it seems like his main goal is for me to be his mommy. The harder I resist the harder he tries, and in the end I'm called codependent anyway, just for still being married to him. Is there any way to manage this? I know to take care of myself, and I try. I know to set firm boundaries, and I try, but it is HARD! But I have given up so much without even knowing I was. I'm no martyr, I just didn't even see what was happening.

Accountability- what's ok, what's not, and how do I figure this out?
I have a feeling I will be very involved in this group now. I have about a million questions!

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[Chosen]

Hi, I've been here for a while several years ago, and now I'm back again.  You said your husband been lying in therapy.  Do you think he does it consciously?  Because my uBPDh "lies" about certain things as well, for instance he says he doesn't care about how people think of him, but he takes what people say about him to heart (and to the extreme- any tiny bit of criticism has the possibility of sending him raging) , but actually I know that he isn't aware of it- he just has a warped sense of reality.  Whether diagnosed or not, BPD is a disorder, and they don't necessarily see things in the same way as us. 

Also, the "games" that he plays, projection, verbal abuse, etc, while it hurts you, are likely not a conscious choice, but a BPD self-coping mechanism.  It hurts them a lot to accept that they were wrong and they had to be responsible for certain things in their life, so they project it on you, and shift the blame on everybody else instead.  I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying they don't know any other ways to express themselves- if they did, they wouldn't have a disorder. 

Is he committed to being in therapy (besides the lies/ warped reality that he mentions to the therapist)?  If so, then maybe just let him continue and see how it pans out, without worrying so much about the outcome- it's not like you can change it anyway.  Looking on the bright side, at least your H realises he has a problem.  Mine doesn't and will never, ever consider therapy.  He will not even let me go to therapy because he just doesn't trust people.

I think each and every one of us who are with a pwBPD has some kind of problem too... .I've been thinking about that myself recently.

[Tattered Heart]

How on earth do you even be supportive of someone with BPD without being codependent? I have NO desire to parent him, but most days it seems like his main goal is for me to be his mommy. The harder I resist the harder he tries, and in the end I'm called codependent anyway, just for still being married to him. Is there any way to manage this? I know to take care of myself, and I try. I know to set firm boundaries, and I try, but it is HARD! But I have given up so much without even knowing I was. I'm no martyr, I just didn't even see what was happening.

Accountability- what's ok, what's not, and how do I figure this out?
I have a feeling I will be very involved in this group now. I have about a million questions!

Welcome back Graceinaction,

Congratulations on your pwBPD getting into treatment. That's a pretty big step, even if past attempts have not been as successful. I hope you begin to get some traction.

Many of us nons are co-dependent. Just like our pwBPD has to accept and acknowledge their own mental health issues, we have to look at our own. And just like BPD, our co-depdendency can go into remission too. It's hard to look at ourselves and determine what our role in the relationship is. (For instance I realized that I have never had a normal relationship in my whole life. And the only factor that was the same in each of these relationships was me. OUCH!)

Your H may act like he wants you to be his mom, but I think both him and you know that is not healthy. You are his wife, not his parent. I used to parent my H too. And then I realized that I can't keep covering for him. I have to let him deal with his own consequences. If he hurts someone's feelings, I don't apologize for him. If he doesn't want to go to a special event, I still go but I don't make excsues for him. He has to make his own doctor appointments. I stopped parenting him. It's hard because us nons can do it so much easier and better and it doesn't cause us stress to take care of things, but we have to stop. If not, they can't learn.

Here is one of our workshos on Are you Supporting or Enabling . This might help you come up with some of your own answers about what is mothering and what is supporting.

[Graceinaction]

I do everything in my power not to mother him. It's not something I have to fight or have a natural tendency to. It's something he is constantly manipulating me to do, and sometimes he manages to slip one by on me. Does that make any sense?
I can't stand Freud, and the past few years I've seen plenty of Freud-ish thing she from my own husband. Honestly it makes me angry! I'm not sure if he's just a severe case or if it's the psychosis/BP1 that contributes, but it's really disturbing to watch. There are times I think he literally thinks I'm his mom. And he says things and acts out in ways that make absolutely no sense in the situation, but it's like he's seeing his mom when he looks at me. But then, the few times I have had to stand up for myself to his mom he freaks out. I don't like doing it, I'm not big on conflict in general. But there have been a couple of times I didn't let things slide and she did something that warranted me saying something. One of those times was a few days before his last hospitalization and it seemed to send him over the edge.

My therapist of 4 years says I'm not codependent, but I do get sucked into his drama sometimes. But far less than I used to. Now it's mostly me trying to figure out if he's going to get better (I know I actually have no way of knowing this,) and if he doesn't am I willing to stay or what my next move will be. I'm not in a position to just up and leave, and I don't want to do something rash anyway. Like so many people here, I still hope he makes progress and gets better, but I'm starting to lose hope. He is diagnosed and in treatment, but he just started and so far he seems to be using it to keep the whole family focused on him. He needs DBT, but we've had a hard time finding a program for him. That is one way I have struggled being codependent IMO, because I do help him try to find treatment, but his cognition is so poor that I'm not sure he's capable on his own. My therapist says she thinks it's fine that I help him with it because I don't try to control anything.

I think that's the biggest problem... .I have no desire for control of anything except myself. It took me a long time to realize that just because I'm like that doesn't mean he is. I spent many years being manipulated and controlled and not seeing the real reason it was happening. I have absolutely no desire for a power struggle and he sees almost everything as one. Which I still have a hard time wrapping my mind around.

The past 6 months have been so strange. He has admitted things that I didn't even know about. He's admitted things I suspected but he denied for years. He has admitted things that weren't even true but he said them just to hurt me, convinced me they were true, and now says he made it up to hurt me. He has torn apart our marriage and I don't understand any of it. I can read all day about BPD, but the things he has done are so extreme. And yet he doesn't fit the description of a narcissist.

I hope This isn't too disjointed. It's  been a long day and I'm exhausted. I know I have a million questions, I just can't think of them right now.

[Graceinaction]

Hi, I've been here for a while several years ago, and now I'm back again.  You said your husband been lying in therapy.  Do you think he does it consciously?  Because my uBPDh "lies" about certain things as well, for instance he says he doesn't care about how people think of him, but he takes what people say about him to heart (and to the extreme- any tiny bit of criticism has the possibility of sending him raging) , but actually I know that he isn't aware of it- he just has a warped sense of reality.  Whether diagnosed or not, BPD is a disorder, and they don't necessarily see things in the same way as us. 

Also, the "games" that he plays, projection, verbal abuse, etc, while it hurts you, are likely not a conscious choice, but a BPD self-coping mechanism.  It hurts them a lot to accept that they were wrong and they had to be responsible for certain things in their life, so they project it on you, and shift the blame on everybody else instead.  I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying they don't know any other ways to express themselves- if they did, they wouldn't have a disorder. 

Is he committed to being in therapy (besides the lies/ warped reality that he mentions to the therapist)?  If so, then maybe just let him continue and see how it pans out, without worrying so much about the outcome- it's not like you can change it anyway.  Looking on the bright side, at least your H realises he has a problem.  Mine doesn't and will never, ever consider therapy.  He will not even let me go to therapy because he just doesn't trust people.

I think each and every one of us who are with a pwBPD has some kind of problem too... .I've been thinking about that myself recently.

Sorry, I realized I didn't really respond to this. I just figured out the Quote thing!

I know you're right and that it's part of the illness. It just frustrates me to no end that he has help available and he's not using it in any productive way that I can tell. I can't make him, but it still hurts. It has done so much damage to our family, our finances, our marriage, and most importantly our kids. It's hard not to take that personally. I'm the exact opposite of a helicopter parent, but our kids range in ages from 4-17 and they need better than what they're getting. I can protect them as much as I can and I teach them positive coping skills, but who wants this for their kids?

He's committed to therapy as far as going. So yes, that is definitely a plus. Up until he was declared unfit for duty and had to take disability he was completely against it. I'm not sure why that's changed, I haven't really thought about it other than to be thankful it's changed. But I just found out a few weeks ago that he's been "lying," or manipulating, or using maladaptive coping techniques, etc. It's been a big blow. Like I said in my previous post, the past 6 months have been absolutely crazy. Beyond anything I ever imagined. And to find out he hasn't even brought it up in counseling? That's hard.

Six months before he was diagnosed with BP1 and 1 year before he became disabled, we bought our dream home/ small farm. This was his lifelong dream. That complicates things because now that his income is 1/3 of what it was, if I walk away or he leaves, we lose everything. Yes, it's just a house. But based on past experience, if that were to happen, I could see him then getting help and getting better. And then we would have lost the farm. That ticks me off. He has everything he ever said he wanted. He fully admits his issues. Why risk everything? I can't control what he does, but his belief that he will just keep getting chances in life to throw away is maddening at times.