Today is my birthday.

[5xFive]

Today is my birthday. I am 37 years old.
Last night, I was up until 1am being raged on by my uBPDh. I do not have clear or strong boundaries. He raged so hard that he lost his voice and then he kept on.
It occurs to me that I am much closer to 40 than I am to 30, and I’m getting screamed at by a man-child on a regular basis. This is not the life that I wanted. This is not the life that I want for my children.
His biggest complaint is that I never helped him achieve his goals. My response to that is that his goals are never stationary. They ebb and flow and change. He lies to me about what he wants to try to make me happy and then punishes me for not knowing it was a lie. We moved south 7 years ago to be near my family. I have since allowed myself to become isolated from them all. And I am screamed at for my selfishness and lack of humanity for moving here. I’ve told him that we can put the house on the market after we repair the damage he has done to it and last night he told me for the first time that even if we moved, he will never forgive me for the time he lost doing winter activities for s7. So I realize I am making an assumption but that tells me that even if I do what he wants and move away from the place that I love and consider home, the raging about the fact that we live here now will never end.
Wtf is the point? I’m unhappy, he’s unhappy, the kids are unhappy. It used to feel like the reality was the good times but now the good seems fake - he’s lied about all of those other things, he’s probably lying about loving me - and reality seems like the rages. It has gotten so much worse since we bought this house.
I don’t know if I could support myself and the fact is that he will always be in my life because we have kids. I wish I had run and never looked back the moment that I met him. If I could go back and change only one thing in my past, it would be to alter the circumstances in which we met. I never thought I would feel this way. This is the first time in 17, almost 18 years that I have. My birthday seems to be really affecting me in a negative way this year.

[hope2727]

Aww hun I'm so sorry.

Happy birthday. 

 I am trying to come up with a well thought out response but I didn't sleep much so I am going to send you a link my psychologist gave me instead.

www.abuseandrelationships.org/Content/Behaviors/rage.html

Read it and let me know if this resonates with you.

[5xFive]

Yes. Thank you. That does resonate with me. I know I need to stop the bleeding if I’m going to stay. I need to work on boundaries. I’m just so TIRED.
I hope you get some sleep Hope. 

[snowglobe]

Dear @5*Five, Happy Birthday!
You’ve lived to be 37 years old, and counting, what a blessing! You’ve given birth and watch your lovely children grow every day, what a privilege. Not all people are able to live to this age, many fight and fought everyday with illnesses and frailties just to buy another day. You are given this gift of life, please, celebrate it. In the world where nothing is guaranteed, today you are alive and it’s a gift on its own.
I can see you are upset, no wonder, your h raged at you the night before your birthday. In your previous posts you’ve mentioned that he is usually nice to you on such occasion. You were expecting nice this time around. In a complex tangle of idealization and devaluation stages you were secretly hoping to be worshiped and celebrated. I’m making an assumption, it’s bold of me. Yet, it’s the predominant reason we all stay in this BPD relationships. We hope to feel “loved, needed and appreciated”. You did not get the experience you were hoping for, your central nervous sustem is putting you into fight or flight mode, you are wishing you never met him and you want to run away.
Now, let’s separate emotions from facts, let’s get deeper control of your feelings and stop the bleeding for today at least. First the breathing. You sit calmly unclench your hands and relax your spine. This excerise is called 4-7-8 easy enough to remember. 4 deep breath in on each count. Following 7 seconds of staying still and holding your breath, just counting. 8 small breaths out, also rhythmically on the counting. Repeat 4-5 times until completely relaxed.
Back to your h- us, nons always hope for a cure or enlightenment on the part on pwBPD. He isn’t going to wake up one morning thinking, “I’ve created a devastating turmoil to my wife and kids, there is something terribly wrong with me”. His pattern of thought is, and most likely remain: “I’m feeling terrible, Empty and angry, therefore it’s @5*Five that made me feel this way”. If you can start separating his emotions and facts, you will likely see the pattern.

[snowglobe]

Furthermore, let’s go back to boundaries and decision making. I’m struggling greatly to make joint life decisions with my uBPDh. He is so impulsive and unpredictable that making a decision and sticking to it isn’t always possible. In the past I submitted to his will and did whatever he demanded of me, just to stay together. A paradox of such compliance was, the more I went along, the higher his demands and more frequent ultimatums became. Then I read “stop walking on the eggshells” and found this forum. I strongly encourage you to read “stop caretaking borderline narcissist”. You need to sit down and consider reprocussuons of doing what he is asking of you. If you move, do you have any guarantees he is going to be happy there? Or, he will be blaming you for all of the lost years and his failures. Who is going to be the support group for you if you move?. I can’t tell you what to do. You can’t give him the ultimatum back- “bam, I’m not moving anywhere, fix the wall”. You have to start using your emotional intelligence. When my uBPDh broke walls in the past, I waited and waited on him to fix it, and then I just shopped around and found a cheap handyman who fixed it for me while he was at work. I also started inviting people over and hanging nice pictures on those walls.

[Cat Familiar]

5xFive,
Birthdays can be a time to evaluate your life and get an overview of where you came from, where you are, where you want to be.   

My ex-husband threw something at me and chased me down the driveway the night before my birthday. I gave myself the birthday present of breaking up with him that evening. It was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Only you know what is right for you, but I'll tell you that you do not deserve to be screamed at. As formflier says, take your ears elsewhere.   

[5xFive]

I got the standard I’m sorry, it won’t happen again when he woke up. I mean it seemed genuine but I know better than to believe it won’t happen again. He wanted to take s7 to get me a birthday present and because he has trouble buying me gifts, he asked me what I wanted. I told him that I wanted our walls fixed and that’s all. So he went to lowes and got drywall and spackle and sand paper. Now it’s still sitting in the car and it may be that I’m the one to actually FIX the walls but up until this point, every time I’ve asked him if we can get the stuff, he says tomorrow or this weekend so at least it’s here. And he got me a beautiful chocolate cake. Otherwise it’s just another day. Laundry, cooking, dishes.

Thank you for the kind words and I will remember the breathing. I always forget but I know I need to center myself.

[Radcliff]

5xFive, I'm sorry I missed your birthday!

                                   HAPPY BIRTHDAY!



I am so sorry you had a cr*ppy birthday.  Of all the days of the year, if one of the good days could have fallen on this day, it would have been nice.  It would have been what you deserved.  I'm sorry it didn't work out.  But I'm glad there was chocolate and drywall.  Really, what else could a girl ask for but chocolate and drywall?  As a matter of fact, I think that traditionally 37 is the gypsum birthday.

Hey 37 is still young.  I know it does come with the expectation of adult behavior, but you are still just a pup as far as I'm concerned   I've got you beat by a dozen years

And about those good times.  They were real.  Absolutely no doubt they were as good as you remember.  For our pwBPD, the highs are real and the lows are real.  Yes one day they really think we are the love of their life, and the next day they really want to divorce us.  It boggles the mind.  But once I realized that my wife's emotions were real and she wasn't just manipulating, it helped me understand, and helped me retain my sanity a bit.  But the important thing to remember for now is that all those good times were genuinely as wonderful as you remember.

About doing things to please your husband -- I think you've figured things out for yourself, but I want to back you up.  Making a major life decision just to appease him is a bad idea, because something else will always be wrong.  There will always be a reason you "ruined everything."  Do not feel guilty living near your family.  I say this humbly as a guy who moved his wife to the opposite coast from her family, but looking back I now understand what a burden it can be to raise children away from family.  I also think that even with a very helpful husband, the wife is likely to take a heavier load especially with young kids.  In my book, raising kids near the wife's family, if she finds them supportive, is a good thing.  It trumps snow play any day.  So many members have been pulled away from their families by their pwBPD.  On another day, not your birthday, I might ask you how you might challenge that and get closer to them.

You mentioned some heavy thoughts about changing the past if you could.  I bet we all wish we could go back in time and put a 40 year-old's wisdom into our 20 year-old bodies.  I am sad that I've lost so much time and energy to drama, but we can only change things from this day forward.  You are doing exactly what you need to be doing to make a better future -- raising your kids and starting a business so you can help support your family.  You are also recovering from a job loss, which is tough and still may have you down.  When you're successful in getting the income flowing, your and your husband's stress levels will go down, and you will also feel more in control.  If you're staying, you're staying out of choice, not because you're financially stuck, and if you want to go someday, you have that option.  So, in the words of Dory from Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming!"

WW 

p.s.  If you end up fixing the drywall yourself, I'm happy to cheer and answer questions.  And if you end up doing it, do you know what we'll call you?  Wait for it... .a SHEETROCKSTAR!   

[formflier]

5xFive,

First of all... belated Happy Birthday!   

I'm also going to join you with a bit of a "groan" as I look at getting close to 50 and I reflect on how 8 years of BPDish stuff has impacted my life.

I'm sure you will agree... .sometimes it's overwhelming to look into the future and try to "figure out" how/where BPD will be.

  This is the first time in 17, almost 18 years that I have. My birthday seems to be really affecting me in a negative way this year.

So... .what do you think you are going to do with this negative feeling?

Are you up for making some changes to see if this feeling changes?

FF

[Greencane]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

43 here, and just had a birthday myself. It was a good one, this year. My BPDw(?) (wife, still working on the abbreviations) was in a good mood, but it's a crapshoot. Last year was sitting at a restaurant while she told me what an awful person I am and all the ways I've failed her.

I feel ya! You're not alone.

[5min]

Happy Birthday!
53 here in a few days. My 40th was spent flying with my dad. My 50th was spent with my forehead split open by my uBPDw followed by sleeping in the hanger. I should have had her arrested then and many times since for violent outbursts. Having been with my uBPDw for 11 years, my point is cherish the good times but be on the lookout for any sign that things will progress in an unsafe manner at which point be prepared to protect yourself and the kids. 

The rage article was spot on.