For those who thought they should have known years ago...

[Enabler]

I found an email I wrote my uBPDw in 2007 when she left me the second time. Incidentally she returned not long after I had sent this mail to her. To this day I don't know why she returned, I was so grateful that she did it was never discussed. Incidentally I put a few of the lines into google and guess what the first few hits were... .yeah... .BPD.

In the beginning there were two individuals; two individuals who were in very essence very different; from different backgrounds, different levels of relationship experience, different levels of maturity and different outlooks on life. Meeting in what was a very new and exciting environment for both, they found common ground in work and play. Soon they shared common ground and interest in learning and helping one an other in their university work they soon built up a relationship which was fundamentally based upon having a laugh, sharing a bottle of wine and combining two brains and a laptop to make coursework easier and more pleasurable in the process. For one reason or another whether or not it be making one another laugh, intrigue and interest through stimulating conversation about ideas and general opinions or physical attraction they found a higher level of relationship which became sexual. A sexual relationship which was intense, fulfilling, emotional and all encompassing. It dominated their lives and was exciting, wonderful, passionate and mutual. There were no complications, no pettiness, no squabbles and no disappointments. There was no excessive analysis of words, no misunderstanding, just passion and raw untainted fun and emotion... .and it was good, pure and they were happy. Times were good.

Soon there were decisions to be made, ties to be cut, and the past moved away from. Since their relationship was simplistic at this point, not enough time invested to warrant significant upset, if one was to change their mind, a few tears, a lot of drinks, and they could both walk away unscathed. This period was not to last long with emotions still running high it was a slippery slope to falling in love... .and both they did. With all serious relationships complications were not far behind. There were no longer individuals... .they were one, seen as one, deemed as one... .a couple. They say it is better to have loved and lost than never loved at all... .but is this true? Is it better to know what it's like to drive a Ferrari and yet know you're never to drive it again... .is it better to have tasted a fine wine and yet have to settle for plonk forever?... .I don't think so. They had tasted the garden of eden and neither wanted to see anything threaten it. Ironically the very protection of this nirvana was it's own ruin. Jealousy sometimes even bordering on fantasy,  possessiveness, lacking flexibility and lack of trust led to tears, misunderstanding, arguments, mutilation and a continual degradation of the garden of eden... .another weed introduced each time, another weed to choke the plants and fruit from flowing... .the fruits they so desperately wanted to preserve. At the time I thought this was a natural progression... .I didn't object to the attention, it reinforced the desire, emotion and most of all the NEED you had for me was still present. I felt so lucky to have you, you were mine and I had the prize... the prom queen, the princess and heaven was certainly missing an angel. I liked the fact that you wanted to spend time with me, it was almost  cute that you objected when I wanted to go out, I'd never had that before. No one had wanted me so much.
 
Soon however it became apparent that this was not a normal obsession, it wasn't a health obsession and in fact it became a destructive obsession, jealous rages and sometimes theory's which I can only imagine were dreamt up in some drugged state or hormonally induced psychosis. Why would she think this of me... .I have given her everything I could. I have done nothing to give her the impression I would ever risk losing her or even risk damaging what I had. I didn't even do the normal things that young men were doing, I found myself progressively reining in and already sober and controlled life to avoid damaging my relationship, my relationship which was the only thing in the world which mattered to me... .Since I thought that I had to change, I was doing something wrong, I thought that by changing I would eliminate problems you saw in me... .eliminate all the problems... .eliminate all the needs for upsets. Sadly this was not the case. It was although there was always something else which had to change, another restriction on me from being normal... .soon I was to turn into a freak. Someone who was scared of his girlfriend. Scared what effect his own actions would have on her. Since his only ambition was to preserve and possibly by this point rekindle the Eden it was a self perpetuating spiral of decline. Ever changing and ever disappointing, getting ever further away from where I wanted to be.

Over this time it wasn't just our personal relationship which came into question or caused significant disruption to our lives. Serious personality black hole including eating issues, self harm, vanity, hypochondria, inability to make decisions through not wanting to make the wrong move, misunderstanding about the concept of the right way to treat people and lack of understanding of responsible drinking. For such a beautiful girl you grew to be such an ugly person. Whether it was hormonally induced or whether it was just the way you thought (or had been allowed to act in the past) it was acceptable way to live your life it became my JOB to support you through almost every aspect of your life. Whether this was the case, or whether it became my perception due to an extended period of time taking the pressure, relieving the slack and ensuring that there was a happy continuation of a stress free life for you. I became an emotional crutch and making you happy pretty much was life absorbing. My own university work probably suffered, certainly my social interaction suffered due to ensuring you weren't getting upset, angry, depressed, suicidal or unhappy with me. So from an already constrained life I was being boxed even more... .squeezed. Interestingly although there were significant constraints on my own activity there seemed to be very little constraints on your own life... .you did what you what when you wanted and how you wanted... .possibly safe in the knowledge I would pick up the pieces. You could have deep and long last and often contentious relationships with members of the opposite sex with very little regard as to how this would be perceived by me... .as laid back as I was I allowed relationships to get beyond hypocrisy to the point where even their girlfriends had serious issues with you without making it clear that I wasn't comfortable or that it made me angry that you lived a life of double standards, squeezing me on the one hand yet taking with both hands on the other. You were selfish, disputing any interaction you deemed vaguely threatening, paid little thought to what you said, your reactions were sponanious ill considered (if at all) and with no thought about me, only your feelings, not what I deserved, the respect I had earnt the hardships I had gone through and the changes I had made unquestioned and unwarranted. I was losing respect for myself.

Now at this point you might ask, why did you stay with me. Once you have loved... .you never want to lose. Those pockets of good times during this hard time made the efforts and change all worth it. I suppose there was still a hope that as I said before I would eventually eliminate all the issues and they were matters of circumstances of being at university. Over the years we had obviously discussed our common goals... .our aims for life, our objectives and our ambitions. Clearly we had different ideas about careers but on the whole we wanted the same things. I saw future and an aim to the rock hard road we had travelled... .a light at the end of the tunnel. And yes... .you were changing, little by little you were changing. Unfortunately I had already changed so much that there were no longer an significant tests to your emotional changed and maturity. So why not... .I loved you more than myself, I had changed myself into what I thought was a model man, new age man, fully understanding of her needs... .an emotional crutch. Lets get married. Maybe this was another thing you needed to convince you I wasn't unfaithful... .maybe now I can regain some of me, start to live my life knowing you're happy, you didn't need anything else from me other than to know you were the only one I would ever want. In sickness and in health, for better for worse. To know that I would do everything humanly possible to ensure that you were protected, happy and we achieved those ambitions we talked about at university. What bigger commitment can someone make to someone else? What could ever come between that... .I thought? Why wouldn't we get married? There was no way I wanted anyone else, I was in love, we had common life goals and I thought it would be a perfect start for our future and line under our past.
 
By this point you had done some life changes, grown up a little and left some of your childish days behind... .however by then there was little for you to accept only to tolerate the deminimus amount of early 20's male left in me. So now you think you have changed and in many ways you had, you think you have got yourself to the levels of tolerance and understanding of your piers... .We go travelling... .Best 3.5 months I have ever spent in my entire life, we had a great relationship worked well together and saw lots of cool things. This wasn't really reality so unfortunately when we did come back to earth... .it was with a bump. Cohabitation at my parents house although a necessity to saving money for a house and working in London it appeared to be a continual battle of objection. By the time we got to the alter I was being torn between you, family, work and my commitments to all of you... .and yet again my desire to make everyone happy.
Our wedding day was wonderful, all the aspirations I had of finally closing one book and moving towards a happy future full of promise, dreams, aspirations, children and happiness, were going to come to fruition. You looked gorgeous, all our friends and family were there, we made some wonderful promises and I think we meant every word of them.
 
It didn't take very long for disappointment to kick in. Jealousy crept back, and then the demands, the unreasonable lack of flexibility when I suggested going out with work mates (not that we were doing anything other than watching TV), the tantrums, the depression and the arguments... .all over nothing. I found myself feeling guilty for living in Leatherhead so would try and give you a lift to and from Godalming although when I picked you up you would often either be immensely rude, ignore me or kick off into an argument about something or other. I would make excuses at work why I couldn't go out after work or go to work functions, eventually people would rip the mick out of me saying that I couldn't go out because the Bill was on but in fact it was because I didn't want to rile you again. My level of frustration reached critical points. I had done everything humanly possible to make you happy... .all I wanted was you to be happy and I suppose rather selfishly wanted you to be happy with me, happy with the decisions I make, in the knowledge that none of them were malicious or that if they were slightly contrary to your  best interest it was because it was fair and disserved due to good service. You seemed not to notice and much of the response I would get would be objectionary, initial reactions tended to be negative, not thinking about my best interest but the inconvenience you might experience... .how much consideration to my inconvenience was given when your planned evenings out? I don't know. Despite not giving a damn about what I wanted you still expected princess treatment. What I should have done was ignored you and continued about doing what I wanted to do... .things which made me happy, made me laugh, with people who respected me and let me be myself... .instead I boiled over in a rage of anger, hatred and disappointment that despite all my efforts to be a fair, good, loving husband I was being made to feel like and @rsehole. I lashed out in a torrent of abuse and violence which had probably... .given the 7 pages proceeding... .built up over the previous 4.5 5 years and I can imagine would be very very very frightening. I think I reached a point when I could no longer tollerate the years of boxing in , compromising, inconvienience, unfairness and lack of my own and your consideration from ME. I had realised that I was no longer myself and that by trying to be someone else I wasn't winning any prizes or reaping any rewards. I lost any respect I had for you. It dawned on me that someone who couldn't make their own decisions, who got stressed cooking and couldn't handel the pressure of a day in the office, someone who was never happy unless drunk and who couldn't hold an arguement without walking away and crying was not telling me how and what I should be doing, someone who always said I can't do it then had an opinion how I should have done it after the event... .You were going to live by my rules as yours were clearly rubbish and if this meant ramming it down your throat so be it... .and so started the agressive backlash about anything and everything I disagreed with, any objection you had with me... .why tollerate it, why pander to it, why agree with it, it didn't get me anywhere before. Shouting, screaming, lashing out... .that made you get the message and in my mind it made you think twice about kicking up a fuss, emotionally blackmailing me or trying to make me change again. See the rubbish thing about that was I was now part of the problem, in fact I was the problem. Rather than it just you being irrational demanding  and a bit physcho it was me who was the nutter, me losing control and most of all... .me who was now and @rsehole. None of your friends, my friends or family would put much weight on a hormonal girl being possessive, jealous or nerotic faced with a monster who terrorises his wife and makes her fear for her safety. Did I achieve anything? No, you didn't learn to cut me some slack, you didn't learn to respect me, my feelings understand that I want to go out have a laugh... .quite the opposite. You cut me slack because you stopped caring, stopped respecting me, stopped understanding how I was thinking, what I was thinking and couldn't understand what or why I was doing what I was doing. So then I had to drum into you that I wasn't an @rsehole... .disaster.
We went to therapy and started to unravel the jumbled mess of feelings and emotions, mainly feelings and emotions wrapped up in the 2 years proceeding, feelings attributable to me being angry, arguments we had which didn't really explain the resulting violence and fear, arguments which didn't explain the fact that I was wriggling free from years of being pinned down with inflexibility, reasons which I couldn't really justify with anything other than frustration and the change of our relationship from little princess to looking after a spoilt child. Now you might say at this point it was due to getting married at a very young age... .

[Enabler]

... .I don't think age had anything to do with it, in fact I wouldn't even say it was the lack of love in our relationship, clearly there was a lot of love in our relationship. I loved you to bits, I wanted the very very best for you and you clearly loved me because you wanted me next to you every minute of the day, you loved spending time with me and I liked spending quality time with you. We had managed to get ourselves in a daft spiral of decline due to mistakes both of us made in the beginning of the relationship, you taking my love and attention for granted and me letting you thinking I wasn't good enough for you. We sorted many things out in the sessions and after 6 months of turbulence we came out the other side able to support each other through career changes, significant family events such as your parents moving out of Birch Dene and the death of Gran. I think in my heart of heart there have only been 2 or 3 several month periods where we have felt the closeness of the past in the last two years and our relationship has been slow to grow and move forward. There have been significant setbacks such as Jo and Lucas wedding, extended periods where you went off in search of drunken release and significant independence. Maybe it was blind ignorance or maybe in the hope that if I don't raise our relationship problems it would work itself out in time and you needed more time to learn to trust me.
 
I have gained something over the past year or so. You have started to become more flexible and in certain aspects started to exhibit what I had been striving to achieve when were first married. Alas this is because you were no longer in love with me, spending time with me had risks, was uncomfortable and often inconvenient. We now rarely go out together whether it be put down to tenuous excuses or "tiredness" we now live separate lives apart from occasional meals out or rare social occasions meeting with mutual friends.
How do we stop it happening again? I'm not sure. How do I stop myself shouting at you, calling you names, trying to hurt you? I'm not sure. I can't promise we will never have heated arguments in the future, I can't promise in the heat of the moment I won't call you names. What we do need to do I build up a mutual respect for each other an understanding that neither of us intentionally wants to hurt the other, neither of us goes about making unfair decisions intentionally diminishing the others ability to be happy, neither of us intends to be unfaithful. We both need to understand however that our reactions, moods and words have deeper and more lasting effects than the here and now... .sometimes days, sometimes weeks and sometimes years. We need to think not what we can get out of each other but what we can give to each other, what we can do for each other and what ultimately will make each other happy. Not to the detriment of each others happiness no, but for the mutual benefit of each other. Less can't and more will try. We have been together long enough for these things to be a reality. 10 years of a commitment is proof enough that we have ridden the waves, had the face of temptation waved in our face and the knowledge that working as a team is significantly more rewarding and efficient than trying to achieve goals on our own. I'm fully behind us working things out and moving on putting the past behind us, obviously not forgetting the mistakes we have made and the lessons learnt. I think we have many things to offer children, we both come from great families and will offer our own twists applying the lessons we've learnt along the way. We both have a lot of love to give as long as it's directed in the right way. The prospects of having children is exciting, daunting... .yes, terrifying maybe but nothing that if we work together we can't make a wonderful experience providing a little person with everything they need including two stable parents who love and care for each other and are looking out for the family as a whole.
It has taken me 9 hours to write this so if it is broken, disjointed or a bit raw in places please try and read it in the best possible light. I wrote this to be constructive not destructive. I am not bitter or twisted about any of the things I graphically described above and see them as a bad era of mistakes and learning. What is done is done and it is time to move on, secure our future together and take the lessons of the past and apply them to a new world. A world of mutual understanding and appreciation, giving and sharing, talking and learning.
I love you enormously and wish we can get to a place where we have the passion and enthusiasm for each other we had a few months ago.

[pearlsw]

Hi Enabler,

So this is a letter you wrote to your partner a few years ago? What is causing you want to review it at this time? What does it signify for you?

sincerely, pearl.

[ozmatoz]

Enabler, thank you for sharing something that is obviously very personal.
I intend to read again on Monday when I’m not under “supervision”.

I will say at the quick read I had time for today I can see MANY red flags, many that looking back I can more clearly see in my own relationshi from years ago. .

Reading it this many years later and now knowing about BPD, what do you think of your behavior and responses of your “former self”?

[Enabler]

Thanks for reading pearlsw and  ozmatoz,

It’s an email I found some time ago when I was searching for answers or in fact to be precise I was search to reestablish a firm historical narrative after my uBPDw decided she wanted to divorce. I found BPD which explained my perception of history but I needed to confirm for personal validation that this wasn’t my own personal delusion recalled from my own current emotions, but some evidence based consistent observation over time. I mapped out feelings and events to see if there were clear triggers and timings with regards to the cycle. This email was written in may 2007 when she had left me to live with her parents for 3m. After this email she returned, nothing was really discussed or resolved, she just came back and we moved on.

One of the hardest things I have found living with someone I suspect having a PD is their ability to twist reality and facts. Having a firm hold on what is and isn’t true requires personal confidence which is worn away over time by constant critisim and suggestions you are bad and wrong... .it’s not like they’re missing an arm which might suggest there is some for of disability, she looks and smells like any other person.

I had no real knowledge of what a PD was or really any firm understanding about mental illness until a year ago. I didn’t get it and I sure as hell couldnt spot it in my wife. I knew she struggled with her family... .as do I, but what impacts that would have on her thought process, her ability to control her emotions, no clue. I suppose this email reminded me that I could write so clearly about the behaviours, their extremities and there impacts on my life yet still thought it was kinda my fault and that if we just listened a bit more we would hear and understand each other. I thought I could rescue the situation with more love and further adaptation. When she came back after 3m this was just further validation that love could conquer all, it never occurred to me that I should dig deeper into her counselling and do my own training!

Hopefully others will read this, maybe people who are kicking themselves for not seeing this earlier... .maybe they will find small amounts of solace that they are not the only fools who thought they could rescue it.

FWIW I still think I can rescue my marriage, but more because the blindfold is off and I see in colour now.

[formflier]

One of the hardest things I have found living with someone I suspect having a PD is their ability to twist reality and facts.   

Amen to that. 

The follow on step is to accept (vice fight with) the alternate reality.  Even further nuance lies in letting them box themselves in and then don't rescue them from alternate realities colliding.

Don't explain it to them... .take ownership yourself with sort of a shrug and honest confusion (since you really don't know) and sort of a "what else could I do?"  usually when they are complaining about boundary enforcement.

Leave it with them... .or if they toss it at you, let it land on the floor and ignore it.

FF

[Enabler]

I need to work on my response to “but I told you to catch the hospital pass! It’s your fault.” Rather than my historic response of ____ off, you’re mental.” I’m getting there with everyone’s help!