Hi all,
I've been married to my wBPD for a short time. It’s both our second marriages. I have teenage daughters who sometimes lived with me and my wBPD has grown up kids who have moved out. When we were dating, she told me she was a diagnosed BPD and told me a lot about the DBT program she completed. I knew her job was in a really demanding managerial role and customer facing as well. I didn't think too much about the other warning signs, so after a courtship of 11 months, we got married.
Then she experienced a really bad bullying and harassment from her boss in a startup-role helping launch a new business. The boss was also a highly respected community figure. The role itself was very rewarding for my wBPD, and a dream job that used all parts of her skills and faith. It had been going on for a bit beforehand, but it came crashing down just after her dad, and the boss being a total a**hole contacting wBPD during the weekend of the funeral, and having a performance meeting with her the Monday after the funeral. There's more before and after, but that was the main things that pushed her over the edge.
Her response to that bullying was four(4) attempted suicides(overdose) in 3 months + one more 4 months after, eight(8) hospitalisations at the local public hospital. She’s since been out of work for a year and a half.
After six months, she’s since been diagnosed with C-PTSD, has horrible anxiety and depression and has spent next last year in and out of in-patient therapy at a reputable rehab private hospital. No more suicide attempts, but many thoughts about it.
The impact on my kids has been pretty bad and has restricted my time with them. My wBPD has thrown water at my eldest, and called her a f**king b**ch. She’s exploded at fairly typical and measured teenage responses. After blowing up at my daughter, my daughter wanted to leave and my wBPD wanted to go to her sisters. I was wailing at the car thinking I’m going to lose either my daughter or my wife. Every weekend they’re visiting she always complains “You’re not the same when they’re here”. She thought my kids hated her, regardless of what I told her.
I hated trying to rationalise that it wasn’t her fault for all this, that it was her boss’ fault. Or the meds. Or trying to keep things calm so she wouldn’t attempt again. But every time I tried to defend my kids, she would go ballistic and I just didn’t know what the f**k was happening. The stress of my brain and heart wanting to explode had gotten unbearable.
It all came to a head last year in one big fight in front of my eldest where we were both at fault. After that, my eldest daughter won’t talk to me or see me. I’ve only just started talking and meeting up with my youngest earlier this year. We meet almost every weekend, but rarely comes over. We talk about a lot of things, but I’m hearing from her that her mother, my ex-wife, is swamped at work/school and unable to do things with Peta. I could do more to be with her, but I’m too far away and my wBPD doesn’t want to move.
My youngest has told me they think she drinks too much and my eldest said she doesn't so much hate my wBPD, but just very scared of mBPD reactions. It’s been unsettling for them and me. She has left the house before due to the fights.
Thank God my manager at work is very understanding, and my position is solid.
Since I’ve been counting in Nov last year, my wPBD has averaged 1/2 -3/4 bottle of red wine per day, almost every day. My gut feel she’s an alcoholic, but the trauma-induced kind. Not the physiological kind. She doesn’t drink and is okay when in rehab, but gets right back on the booze when she gets home. I don’t drink for health reaons, so she’s drinking alone even when I’m around. Now that I think about it, she’s always had a drink every day. Sometimes, a bit too much.
Over the last 6 months, I’ve told her many times, I don’t want to raise my kids with someone who uses alcohol to self-medicate.
She’s tried to defend the drinking by saying her psychiatrist says he understands why she needs to drink. Better drinking alcohol than trying to take your life. It blunts the emotional pain. But he sets fairly low limits on what she should be drinking, which she drinks well above all the time. And she’s on 3 kinds of psychological medication.
My psychologist, who I unload myself to, is aghast at how much she drinks.
My wBPD told me ages ago that in DEARMAN in DBT, alcohol is a listed and allowed distraction. Is it? That much? Can someone tell me this is true or not?
However...I’m going to a support group to deal with the alcohol and mental illness, her craziness and not being able to see my kids. It’s actually an Al-Anon group, because they understand what it’s like to close to someone who drinks all the time and who’s out of control and powerless over alcohol and a life that’s unmanageable. If I add “mental illness” to “alcohol”, then I understand I’m powerless of both, and my life is unmanageable.
In the last few months everything has been blown away because I found out my wBPD tried to take her life in her previous marriage, a couple of times. And that’s the reason her first husband left, not because of an affair, which is what she told me while dating. I was lied to prior getting married.
I feel like the bottom of my love bucket has been blasted out with a shot gun. Nothing she pours in stays. She’s trying, but I’m not responding.
Then I found out very recently, they’re considering her for a one year DBT program. On the one hand, it’s good for her. She needs the refresher. On the other, I don’t know whether I want to be around. It’s a confronting program already, and the marriage is on shaky ground as it is. I want to move out and focus on my girls. I’d rather not be around when she’s doing DBT.
Also, wBPD's drinking, although taken for “medicinal purposes” is very likely masking some other emotional issue. And she’s always used alcohol, and she tells me her goal is to get to just “social drinking”. Dinner parties and restaurants with friends only. But my wBPD has never been a social drinker. She’s scared to stop drinking for even for a week. I know enough about alcohol addiction that there’s very likely some emotional thing or things that have been masked for years and years by her drinking. I don’t know what it is. It could be small or big or nothing or huge. But like I said, I don’t want to be in blast radius when she tries to get some lengthy sobriety in and the lid gets taken off.
She once told me my eldest daughter reminds her of her older sister, whom she does not get along with. I’ve asked her to explain several times, but she can’t.
If that wasn’t enough, while being interviewed for the DBT program, she told her interviewer that she’d once drank extra wine just to spite me because she knows I can’t have any. On the one hand, I’m not jealous because I don’t drink a lot, so the health restriction is no big deal.
But…drinking with intent, so she can try to hurt me. That is so immature.
I want to leave. Run, actually. And yet, then there’s these vows I said. And my kids on the other side. And a wBPD whose still not able to work and depressed.
