Possible BPD wife wants divorce and I dont know what to do

[scaredtodeath123]

 
Hi Fellow humans
A brief story about my marriage. My wife and I dated for 1.5 years (long distance relationship) and got married. We both were madly and deeply in love. I pride myself in being a doting husband (a fact and not a lie) who would do anything and everything for his wife (cooking meals for her, giving her massages, etc). After only a few months  of our marriage, she got diagnosed with depression and starting taking antidepressants. I later found out that she had problems with my mother and thought she interfered a lot in our marriage, even though my parents don’t even live with us but she still had issues relating to trivial things which happened 2-3 years back. I say that things were trivial as I had those things verified by multiple psychologists and all say that these are very very very trivial issues, if they were issues at all. She then broke off all contact with my parents and I thought we were on a road to recovery. However, she then started blaming me for all her issues. My smallest comment about my expectations from marriage would set her off and she would close off to me, keeping all her emotions bottled up inside. I was also getting sad/anxious to see her being sad and low on energy all the time. One day, she told me that she is not in love anymore and wants to leave. I begged/bargained/saw marital counselors for 3 months but she kept on saying she is very hurt and that I betrayed her. After 3 months, I left for some peace of mind & lived with my family for 2-3 weeks. When I came back, she told me that she loved me and wanted to get together again. She stopped taking her antidepressants. I was beyond happy and back to normal.

In the ensuing 1 year, everything was great. We were back to the honeymoon phase. Fast forward 1 year. She started getting low on energy again & told me that she felt like crying all the time (due to some issues relating to her office). For 2 months I gave her all the care in the world. I thought things were OK again. We then went to a trip with my family (a plan which we had finalized together few months back). She stayed aloof throughout the trip and would not even see my parents eye to eye. My parents were also hurt by all that she did earlier and did not talk to her even though they did everything for us on that trip (including planning travel, food etc). I asked her if she could atleast have a civil / informal conversation with them, say Hi/Hello. I think that was the trigger. She started talking about all the hurt she had endured 4 years back and also started blaming me for getting influenced by my parents. She now wants divorce again. When I told her that I am OK with this, she changed her tune and said that she will not let me go for a divorce (kinda threatening me with court proceedings) as she would not want to ruin some other girl's life. She wants me to break off all contact with my entire family in order for us to be together again. My psychologist says that these are BPD symptoms and will subside in some time and to just hang on tight. I have no idea what to do next. Need help.
FYI : she used to be in therapy earlier for 2-3 months (during the first divorce talks) but not after that.

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[Stillhopeful4]

First I would like to say Welcome!  ((Hugs)

Know you are not alone in this.  I have been in similar situations myself.  Now being one of the times she's in "divorce" mode again.

It's up to you to decide how you want to move forward.  It's either wait it out and use some of the tools here to help you deal with that to keep you healthy or the other option.

Deep breaths...

Have a great day!

[Dave89]

Hi, scaredtodeath123 

I just wanted to tell you that I have been there so many times and had been in helpless/despair mode.

I know you want to talk about your wife, and that's understandable and needed.
But may I ask you a few questions about yourself?

Do you have friends you can confide in about your situation in marriage without no side being judged? Do you have some hobbies on your own or things you like to do in order to take care of yourself?

You see, why I am asking this is because I have myself have been overloaded with my wife's' problems so much, that I completely lost myself. It is so easy. But what happens then is that we are no use to anyone, including our romantic partners. We are in emotional turmoil and we don't have a safe space to process those emotions, because we know, if we do it in home, it very likely would escalate BPD symptoms to become even worse, so we tend to shut up to not make things worse. The hardest thing to admit that there may come times, where nothing we do can help, everything can be turned against us when being in relationships with a person who distorts reality in order to fit it to their emotions, the only thing we can do is take care of ourselves, strengthen our inner core. It may even feel frustrating to do that, because many of us are so empathetic and caring persons to others, especially our significant other. That is a really good virtue, but it needs to be used in a way that truly can help others. In here you can find useful tools (Library: Tools and skills workshops) to make your communications better, that would have less stress. I know that maybe now (in a crisis situation) it's too much to process, but take one small step at the time. You have the responsibility of making yourself better and more stable first of all, whatever may be the things that you can do to make it happen.

Hope to hear from you.
Kind regards
Dave

[scaredtodeath123]

Hi Dave and StillHopeful4.
Thanks for your kind words.
My job recently required me to travel during the week. I am at home for the weekends. It is tough but manageable. My wife and I have no kids of our own and she is busy herself during the weekdays with her work.
My worklife is hectic. So that keeps me busy. I have also taken up Yoga and meditation, which helps. I have few close friends that I can confide in and they check-in regularly with me.
I feel sometimes that I lost myself in the years I have been married to her. I have never cried so much in my entire life than in the years with her. I spent so much time pleasing her, compromising on every issue, apologizing for issues which werent even my fault. It has been tough but I have tried to stay positive about my relationship with her. But I think that ship is slowly sailing.
I have been reading about BPD and it seems that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. She would want me to keep on compromising on things that make me who I am and what I like most about myself (respect for elders, ending fights quickly and not staying angry for long stretches of time, helping out, solving problems, being the fix-it guy etc.). Its difficult to understand why I am the only one fighting for the relationship whereas it is so easy for her to switch-off.
Right now, she hasnt been talking to me since past 10-15 days (after her ultimatum of leaving my family). I am travelling anyways so it has been a little bit easy on me to forget and take my mind off things. My Psychologist thinks that I should stay away for a while (10-15 days more) and then see what happens.
Would that be the right way? Will that trigger abandonment issues?

[Dave89]

Im happy that you have interests in life, I was much worse. Keep doing all that helps you to stay to your sanity.

I feel sometimes that I lost myself in the years I have been married to her. I have never cried so much in my entire life than in the years with her. I spent so much time pleasing her, compromising on every issue, apologizing for issues which werent even my fault. It has been tough but I have tried to stay positive about my relationship with her. But I think that ship is slowly sailing.

Same here. My first 6 years of marriage I always felt guilty even when I wasn’t or was just partially. Unfortunately my responding give her assurance that I really was. What a mistake I made, that made her to go to new lenghts accusing me. I validated her sick part instead of reinforcing the healthy one. I began to have less and less genuine feelings for her. She even took a case against me of violence (false) last year, that ended with nothing. It was my codependance, I was not able to set any healthy bondaries out of fear of loosing her and my low self-esteem. That is why I now finished listening to audiobook ‘Codependent no more’ to see what new ways I can find to lessen problems in my life. I don’t know if that something that you can relate of? It is known that BPD make a good “dance” partners with codependants and sometimes people with NPD. There is another book ‘The human magnet’ that talks about why those people get together in first place and how to change the bad dynamics that eventually (usually after intense and in many ways perfect start) these relationships tend to go.

I was writing in phone and I’m not native english speaker so excuse me of mistyping.