Alia's first thread can be found here:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=329065.0;allThis is my second post... .I am starting a new one because since my first post the situation has gone from bad to worse.
I am slowly starting to seriously consider quiting my marriage. Not many people know the full picture of my experience. But the few people who I have shared it with seem to be in full agreement that I must get out and move on. That I will never be as happy as one can be in life in this marriage and that I should quit not only to protect myself and my son but also to take a chance on new happiness with someone else.
And when I listen to them, it make sense. Why spend my life with someone who I know will keep making me unhappy, even if in between happy spells, when I could save my energy for myself and my son, and might even meet someone more reasonable to spend my life with?
My therapist also asked me: what is it that makes you hold on? And I find it harder and harder to answer that question. Yes, in the past, I have quickly felt better, the second my husband gets out of his rage and into soft-spokenness and apologies and promises I just feel good to be with him. But as the fights are getting more frequent these moments of feeling good have become rare.
So what is it that makes me hold on?
- the hope that it will get better again. But isn't this hope unrealistic? Even if I learn all the tools, and even if we get past our current fight and find some period of peace again, something or the other will keep happening and every time it will throw me of balance.
- the beautiful person that he can be. But if he is not that person most of the time anymore... .why holding on to it?
- the idea that my child should have his father fulltime?
- the idea that he really is the person that he can be, that this is supposed to be the real him. And that he therefore does not deserve to be left for being the person his disorder makes him to be? The idea that he does not mean the nasty things he says? That it would be selfish to choose my own happiness?
- the fear that he might get worse if I finalise our current breakup? I read someone else say that his wife threatens suicide if he leaves her. But this is not a good reason... .right? My husband in any case threatens suicide just so that he can add to that threat that it will be my fault and he will make sure to leave a letter blaming me. So if he threatens that in the relationship, it is not a reason to stay. But apart from his threats, a genuine fear that he will get extremely depressed and desperate.
Regarding the last, some context: he is now staying with a friend and says he won't come back. Since about a week. I have suggested therapy and initially he said yes and he also said that he would like to do something with our son on Sunday. Sunday he started messaging passive aggressive defensive messages like 'i should not spend time with the son, because I am such a bad father right, thats what you think, right' etc. I kept repeating that I think he is a good father and his son misses him. (I have never suggested otherwise. He has called me a bad mother though).
Then today he started messaging that unless I accept certain things, mainly that my mother is evil and cruel with intend, he cannot trust me ever and I have always been cold hearted yet he is shocked that I refuse to understand him etc. I have tried to validate all the emotions etc but he is insistent that I accept specifically his thoughts on my mum which I can't. I told him I see no solution and future and that unless he will take therapy with me there is no point to our marriage. He kept sending message after message to the extent I had to block him on all messengers and requested him to e-mail if he had more to say. He did not.
Then he started saying that unless I accept his truth he cannot have any relationship with our son also, because that would require some form of interaction with me and he hates me too much. So he will abandon our son and I have to tell him that his bad father abandoned him. I told him again that our son misses him and no matter the state of our marriage he can have a relationship with our child. I told him that I would never say anything bad about him to our son (he has btw involved our son directly once by telling him to his face that his mother was driving him out of the house. My son is 2,5 and I cannot believe he is doing this, while he himself always says how much he suffered from his parents fighting... .)
So in short... .it seems that he thinks he can blackmail me by involving our son and threatening to leave our son without a present father - which of course will hurt my son but would also hurt himself because our son is amazing and he will miss him... .I have some fear that leaving him would drive him insane and might hurt my son more somehow than putting up with him... .But again this is not a reason to stay with someone. I think.
I am not asking for advice and whether to stay or go. I came to this forum initially to save my relationship. But I am wondering from others: what is it that makes you stay?
