When did you know you’re done?When did you know that you are sticking this out

[TheBestLife]

Hi all.

A few simple questions here... .

When did YOU know when you’re done?... .when did you come to the final straw and decision that you just don’t deserve to live like this anymore? What happened and how did you go about it?

And vice verse... .when did YOU know that you are sticking this out. That this relationship with the BP is worth it? That you are willing to fight for it despite what they put you through on a daily.

Advice is really needed. And I’m of course not asking for anyone to tell me to stay or leave my wife. I just want to know other peoples stories and boundaries. Cuz I’m struggling with mine.

Thanks.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[snowmonkey]

Hey,

I'm not sure if I'm answering the question you're asking, but my answer is;

I knew very early on. Perhaps after a month or two (instead of close to the 4 years that it took). I knew that I should walk away. I just refused to accept what I knew to be true. Can you imagine? Loosing 4 years of your life, not just any 4 years, but the youngest 4 years that I will ever experience again because of an attachment that I knew was unhealthy and couldn't last... .Well, of course, many of you do know and many of you have done it even tougher.

But perhaps the question you are asking is when did I accept what I knew to be true or when did I have the courage to act on my beliefs?

For me, it was an unbearable cocktail of her cheating and physically/mentally/emotionally/financially abusing me.

The final straw went something like this; I was clearly in a terrible state and had started seeing a therapist to help me with what was happening. She forced me to take her with me to my appointment one day, who was this time a psychiatrist that would be able to prescribe medications for me.

She wanted to tell the therapist what a terrible person I was. We arrived and went into the appointment together. Now, this is where everything hit the fan. She is a diagnosed BPD and she is mental health nurse, but she had been off work for about 5 years on an insurance payout as she had convinced her psychiatrist (an ex-colleague) to report her as suffering from PTSD from a work place incident. However, she was desperate to go back to work and retain what she saw as a professional image.

She wore her hospital lanyard to the appointment (to appear knowledgeable) and came in starting to tell the psychiatrist and another mental health nurse that was there about how terrible I was. Well, I just couldn't take it anymore. I named her psychiatrist that had privately informed me of her BPD diagnosis, I named everyone of the 6 different medications she was taking and addicted to, I informed them of the 3 months she had spent in a private mental health hospital, I named the doctor who had overseen her treatments of ECT (you know your really bad if you're prepared to undergo this), I named the male mental health nurse that she had been screwing behind my back, I informed them that her daughter was currently in admission in a private mental health hospital because of the hell that this BPD woman had caused. I told them, yes, I am in a very bad way, yes, I sometimes have suicidal thoughts, and yes, it is all because of this woman.

That was the end. She stormed out of the appointment. It was truly a horrible experience. She waited outside for me and I drove her to the hospital where her daughter was in admission. She got out of the car and screamed at me to never contact her again. And I didn't... .she of course contacted me some 6 months later, but that is a different story.

So back to your original question. It took a massive event to finally accept that it was all over and an understanding that this fight was too big to recover from.

[braveSun]

... .when did YOU know that you are sticking this out. That this relationship with the BP is worth it? That you are willing to fight for it despite what they put you through on a daily.

... .I just want to know other peoples stories and boundaries. Cuz I’m struggling with mine.

Hey TheBestLife    
 
You have a good question there. I guess it's been more of a process for me. I discovered BPD/NPD traits while having issues with a diagnosed pwBPD. Than later, after that relationship did not really work out, I returned to a partner I had been with for a long time before. We got married two years ago. That's when I moved in with her that I recognized some of her traits.

It's been a very confusing process for me. And I would say it took me a long time to let these concepts sink in. I've been wavering back and forth for months, maybe over a year in regards to my spouse. I'm just talking about the acceptance part of her traits. In my spouses' case, things were within an acceptable range while we were dating, or I didn't know what it was.  But the traits were there, just not that intense. When we got married we also got into situations where we were having to be a team of sorts. Things there have not been going too well.

So if I go back to your question, I'd say that the discovery of this has been gradual. I thought I knew my partner well and I ran into a big clash with my expectations. That's when I knew that something was not right. But I could not decide I wanted to leave. Not at discovering the condition of my spouse. I wanted to see if we could reverse that. Very much. Eventually, she doesn't think that there is any issues with her, she thinks it's me the problem, so I had to accept another part of that reality. That she was not going to change much but expect me to change to her wishes and wants.

It's been confusing because there has been some really good times for us in the past. Now I see that the difficult times are growing in comparison with the good times. I also see that she did bring in some changes. Not all of them are having good results. But she did have moments where she tried very hard to modulate her anger lately for instance. So there are some improvements. Because of that, of course I rather stick around for a while and see of this could get better. Also while making progress on my own new start in her country, now that we are married.

I see that for her, the more stressors around, the more difficult it is for her to regulate her emotions, the more drama in our relationship.

So I have decided to keep going, one day at a time, and to work on what I can control, to try to do the best I can.

Did I answer your question?


A good thing I want to add, is that I saw that by interacting with other people on the boards, and learning about their stories, I could develop a bit of a bird's view on all of this. Depersonalize it. Somehow. It helps a great deal.

Did you want to talk about something specific about boundary setting?


Keep posting!

Brave

[pearlsw]

Hey TheBestLife, 

Great question! Thanks for starting this thread - I hope many others join us here.

There were moments through all of last year where I was utterly determined to make it work. Some days I felt good about this and other days it felt more like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. But for awhile, with Radical Acceptance, and just sheer determination to improve things I kept myself pretty solidly rooted in the notion of making this work. It was an extreme time, and at some point it all just went too far. My SO is medicated now, so I am also still with him because I want to see what difference this makes, and honor his effort if I at all possibly can. This is also not easy, but is what I truly want to do. It seems the fair and right thing to do, but I struggle with a flatness in my feelings after all the shocks of the past months and years.

I think I would more likely than not stay if there was just one element from all of this that I could remove, well, perhaps a few things would have to change, but I am sure I will not stay if I continue to get breakup threats. They are just too dysfunctional and fill me with too much insecurity and a deep unhappiness about the relationship - they are absolutely untenable.

What is making you lean one way or another?

wishing you peace, pearl.

[k54]

Thanks for the question. I am interested in the responses too as I am new to this community and have gained some new found hope for my relationship since learning about BPD. It has helped me to understand and better cope with some of my wife's behavior.

We have been together twelve years. The first six months were a dream, but it was shortly after we moved in together that I caught a glimpse of her rage and thought, "uh oh, what was that?" I come from an argumentative family, and my father had Huntington's disease, my mother was an addict, thinking now she may have had Narcissistic tendencies, so disfunction has been a pretty normal part of my life. I pretty much shrugged it off, but now things are coming in to focus. I have struggled with sex addiction myself, and I put a lot of our problems on that. I never cheated on her, but I used pornography a lot, was open about it, but for her it was a constant source of conflict.

We went to counseling a few times, but she always seemed to back off when the going got rough. I would get goaded into fighting with her, have my own rage issues, but it was always a struggle for her to own up to her side of things.

The thing about it is. We have six year old twin boys that are amazing people. They are smart, funny, hardworking, kind, beautiful boys that I love with all my heart. I know I will do whatever I can to keep us together until I don't think it would benefit them anymore.

As I write this we are "separated" in our own home. She has repeatedly brought up mediation. Told me again and again how she doesn't want to hash out old problems ie: pornography, failed counseling, her physical abuse of me (which she won't own up to, and is what caused our current separation - in her view it was my fault).  Just today at our kid's soccer practice she was obviously irritated and I asked her what was wrong. She started by complaining about work, but quickly started complaining about me. How I cant seem to get the message that she doesn't want a reconciliation. I have told her many times she is welcome to go, I can't make her stay, but she doesn't seem to get that message. She says I am delusional.  Keeps wanting me to make an appointment for a mediator. I told her I don't have to facilitate her departure.

Today I got her to agree to go back to counseling when I suggested some effort there might make me more willing to move toward mediation. So I'm still trying, despite the efforts of my family to get me to quit. She is pretty high functioning. A very beautiful woman and a perfectionist. For a long time I was so confused about why she was so mean to me. Understanding she has a disorder makes me capable of much more forgiveness. When my father was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, it allowed me to forgive him for a lot. Although I'm not gonna lie, its hard when she tells me frequently what a nightmare the last ten years have been.

In the past I have suggested that she might have some issues, and when she sought counseling once, and was given an antidepressant, things were pretty good. Now of course she resents that period, saying I was to blame. It was my depression that she was having to deal with. She is tired of dealing with my problems, which is why she wants to split up. Never mind the fact that I haven't so much as looked at her sideways in six months, while she loses it pretty much weekly. This time I'm going to be very careful when selecting a counselor. I'm going to tell them up front what I suspect, and see if they are willing, or have any experience with BPD.

Probably a little TMI for the thread topic. But oh well. Anyway, I'm gonna hang in as long as I think it'll be ok for my kids.

[WileyCoyote]

Hi TheBestofLife!

I have been with my wife for 10 years.  Married for 3 of those with a 2 year old son.

So why am I still here?  I have been having some serious conversations with myself about this same question recently.

For me, my wife's BPD behavior was sparse at the beginning. Slowly creeping in.  It was uncommon enough (once be every 2-3 months) that I could chalk it up to stress over some life events.  But since we have married it has gone to a whole new level.  

In the beginning it was for my son.  But I think there is a point where staying is not benefitial so that is not why anymore. I have had several adult  children of divorce talk to me of the relief they felt when divorce happened and the fighting stopped.
So as I have come to realize the true nature of what is happening in the past year, I made a personal decision to try to get back to the me I was when I met my wife.  The guy she fell in love with, and maybe an even better version.  
I do this because I believe she deserves a chance to have happiness. And a chance to succeed and not be abandoned. I feel that it is only fair that I put in a genuine effort now that I understand her better, and understand that I needed to change too.
I do this With the unspoken terms for myself that I reevaluate the situation on a yearly basis for positive change.  Or I guess just a gut feeling for the trajectory of the marriage. And right now I see positive changes.  

So my decision to stay is not permanent.  But it is not fleeting either.  

Of course there is always a line that can be crossed that will negate all this.  I don't know what that is yet. But it is there.