somethingblue,
I'm glad you found us
So many things you wrote could have been written by many others, so understand you're in a place where we "get" it. I find venting is good, writing things out helps so much in organizing my thoughts, helping me see patterns, and simply getting it all out can keep my own emotions on more of a stable plane.
I guess I'm lost as to what to do, to somehow guide her into seeing that I'm not the problem, but I am so okay with working together to get to the solution and that she's not alone.
I want to caution about the idea that only the pwBPD is "the problem". Often those of us who find, fall for, and stay with a pwBPD have enough of our own baggage to address that contributes to the situation there is plenty for us to work on within ourselves. I myself have a huge amount of codependency. The knee-jerk reactions I thought were positive, helpful, even things I thought were polite and nice, all actually fed the drama, made arguments explode even more, and allowed my husband to think I WAS the one responsible for managing both of our emotions.
You can't change her, or force her to seek change in herself... .she can choose to do this which would be great, but the only person anyone can really change is themselves. BPD will make any journey she takes to re-train her emotional responses to stress and other stimuli to be quite difficult and long. It can be done, it does happen, but all your hopes for improvement cannot hinge on her working on her. We all come here to work on US, and how we respond to their BPD-fueled reactions to life, how we tend to enable and enmesh ourselves into feeling it's up to us to fix them, fix their lives, prevent all bad emotions, and how we CAN lose ourselves in the process.
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=114232.0Look at the lessons, look for the oens about how our roles in the relationship can contribute to conflict, and how we have the power to change ourselves and how that can reduce some of the emotional stress in our lives.
11 years ago about, I was ready to leave H, we were not even married yet, nor engaged, and I was just tired. Life just hurt. I found this site to manage my feelings about my BPD parents, and this part of the message boards helped me so much with realigning my own actions, to where things improved drastically. H is a much more supportive partner, his self-awareness, for the most part, is far higher than when he was 30, and as a couple, we are far more of a team than before. BPD will always be there, my codependency will always be there, but as a work in progress, I think it's going pretty well most days.
BUt get this - I have NEVER told him I think he has BPD. Many pwBPD can't hear that, and he's one of them. And we still managed to improve even with him never going to DBT, never acknowledging BPD. It starts with us.
