Trying to save marriage from the brink of divorce (if possible)

[RestlessWanderer]

Last week my uBPDw and I were headed for divorce. We were literally one block away from the county offices to file when I told her we didn’t have to do this right now. I told her we needed to try marriage counseling. She agreed, saying she wasn’t ready to end things. We turned the rest of that day into a good day. The next couple of days were pretty good too. But now things are back to “normal“. We’re back into the pattern of her being highly stressed out and feeling the need to take on responsibility for everything, blaming me for not helping at all and making sweeping generalizations about me.
She’s taking three classes and it’s midterms right now, so that’s a lot of stress. She’s been dealing with closing up things related to the estate of her late brother. She also received news that another brother was hospitalized. And on top of all that we’re still dealing with all the issues surrounding the accident that severely injured her and killed our son a year ago this month.
So I try to be empathetic knowing that she has all this going on. And I don’t know how to react or what to say when she is upset about the things she wants my help with. For example, on Saturday we had been planning to take our son to go shopping for some toys. But she also had a lot of homework to do. And she felt the need to do a deep cleaning of the house. So, she told me to take our son to town well she stayed at home. When we got back she was upset that I left her to do all the cleaning. She had hoped that I would be the bad guy and tell our son that we can’t go to town today because we have to do things at home. But I did what she asked instead of doing what she wanted. And because I left and she chose to do cleaning she didn’t get any homework done. That feeling rolled over into yesterday and today. She continues to be upset with me claiming that I don’t have any empathy, no emotions, and I am selfish meanwhile she feels she is taking on the responsibility of all these other things with no help from me.
Yet again I feel like I’m the behind the eight ball. I don’t know how to talk to her and support her when she is feeling like this. Once she’s decided to take on these things she will no longer accept help. “You had your chance“ or “you only want to help now that I’m mad.”
Many of the things that she is upset about me not helping are affected by her. She wants me to hang something in the bathroom, but spends most of the day in the bedroom with the door locked, so unless I’m ready to spring into action the minute she opens the door, I’m probably going to forget to do it. She has been saying she wants to go to the bank to get a small loan, but since I haven’t told her “let’s go” we haven’t gone. I’m willing to help clean the house but I haven’t vacuumed because she’s usually sleeping half the morning, I’m doing things with our son, doing my work, or we are watching something together.
Over and over again I feel like I can’t do the things she wants me to do because of many other things going on, and much of the time it’s dependent on what she is doing at the time or what she has me doing for her. But when she complains that I haven’t done these things it only makes things worse if I try to remind her her role in the reasons I haven’t done them.
If only we can get out of this cycle we would be good. But I don’t know what to do to help us

[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.

[RestlessWanderer]

My uBPDw continues to ride the wave of anger. I try to time my interactions and phrase them as carefully as possible, but it seems like anything I say or do is triggering right now. Last night she was talking about going alone to file for divorce, no action taken yet today.
Any advice?

[Scared2Lose]

I'm not sure how helpful I can be since I'm going through something similar, but one thing I have learned the hard way is you can't point out their contributions to a problem. Not because they'll get angry, but because they simply can't accept them. This is not to be mean, it is a form of self-preservation. They are constantly on the brink of collapse and they fear if they let in even the tiniest indiscretion the world they've built up to protect that tiny little bit of self that they can hold onto will collapse.

My advice to you is to give your partner, for the time being, some space. Even if they do file for divorce it takes time to get to the end of the process. Validate their feeling of needing the divorce by saying things like, "I can totally understand, given the way you feel, that doing this is necessary. I don't feel that way, so I'm not inclined to help you in this. That said, I won't stand in your way if it's what you want." Then stick to those guns. See if what happens then. At the very least you'll get a sense of how serious they are about it.