Where do I begin?

[happymeal]

Hi!

I met my wife, briefly, in high school. I knew her sister, so there she was one day in the smoker's pit. We said, hi, and that was that. I remember thinking she was too good for me! Fast forward a decade or so, and there she was again at a friends house. We hit it off immediately. I have never had such an intense relationship with another. We had our first child about 4 years later, were married a couple years after that, and now have two more children. It's 15 years since I re-met my wife.

This past year has been tough on all of us. I finally had enough, so last September I made an appointment via video with a counsellor. I told my wife that I thought she had bipolar disorder, which I had come to believe. It was in the middle of a blow up, so wasn't taken very well

What followed was one of the best months I can remember having in a long, long time. She had come around by the time of the video chat with the counsellor - so it was a great chat! It felt like she had turned a corner. She actually apologized for everything. I was so proud of her. We were both realizing the effect that her parents had on her - she was beaten as a child. I remember more hugs than I've had in the past 10 years.

And then she threw it all out! About a month later. Said I was the _____ty one for making her believe that she was bipolar. I can't remember what the argument was about - probably because it was about nothing - but I know she flipped.

---------------

She woke up yesterday morning angry. She was hiding it, but I could tell (I'm terribly empathic) something was bothering her. She let it slip, later in the day, that her mom had messaged her - that's probably what set her off, this time. I was pretty careful throughout the day, so she was in a mostly good mood going into the evening. She was testy around bed time, yelling at both the kids and myself. I woke up at 3:30am and got up to get a drink. When I got back to bed it seemed like she was awake crying, so I tried cuddling up to her.

In the months since I first said she might be bipolar, we had both come to the conclusion that BPD is what it actually is. I've been reading/watching a lot about it! I know that one of her biggest fears is actually loosing me - so I try to reassure her that I am still here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not bad-husband

She didn't take it that way!

[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.

[happymeal]

Well she's upstairs now reading a bpd book...so I suppose that's something...right? 

[Gemsforeyes]

Hey happymeal-

Welcome to our community.  I think it’s actually a really GOOD thing that she’s reading about BPD.  It’s VERY good that she seems curious about finding out what’s going on with her moods and behaviors... if that’s her motivation.

Can you describe, in as much detail as you’re comfortable with, her behaviors that you find the most difficult and upsetting to deal with?  That will help members to lead you in the best direction.

In order for YOU to receive the best support possible, it would be best that she not visit this community.  Many posts here could be highly triggering and hurtful for her, as this site is designed for partners and family members of those with BPD or BPD traits and behaviors.  Many of our members have undiagnosed partners / family members.

There are a huge number of tools here that can help you more effectively communicate with your W.  I’m sorry I don’t know how to link, but if you go to the WORKSHOPS, TOOLS Section, and scroll down you’ll find numerous helpful areas.

I’d start with learning NOT to JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain).

The second thing I’d focus on is Validation, or learning to NOT be *INVALIDATING*.  My best understanding of this is that oftentimes you may NOT agree with what she’s raging over, but you may be able to touch upon the emotion behind her anger... and THAT’S what you’ll validate.  That’s what you’ll try to identify with, have compassion with. 

And in time you may also consider whether you need to look at the section on establishing and holding Boundaries.  Your boundaries represent your values.

You can decide if you want to tell her that you’re working on gaining some communication skills to build a stronger relationship.  Perhaps that way she’ll give you the time and space to spend on the boards here.

An area that can work for both of you is mindfulness.  You can print some material out and maybe share that with your W.

As for your wife, there ARE therapies that are effective in improving how she handles her emotions and how she processes her feelings and reactions to triggers in life.  DBT therapy is the best and CBT may also hold value.

The primary thing is that she, both of you, need to understand that she did NOT cause this, and neither did you.  She does not need to spend the rest of her life being victimized and suffering over what happened during her childhood.  There IS help for her.  Assure her of her strength and your desire to work with her through this healing process.

Baby steps, my friend.

I hope this gives you some hope, so that you can give hope to your wife and your family.

Finally, your self-care.  Regardless of the amount of attention she demands, you deserve time to breathe and recharge, in whatever form that takes.  Do you both work?  Inside / outside the home?  Are your kids in school / still remote learning?

I know I’ve thrown a lot at you.  Sorry...

This is a safe and supportive place for you.  Please stay with us and feel free to express whatever thoughts and feelings you have.  And continue to post as often as needed.  You’ll see a lot of shared experiences here.

Warmly,
Gemsforeyes

[happymeal]

She constantly says things to make me feel belittled, or at the very least uncomfortable. I have called her a bitch exactly once in the past 15 years...but she constantly calls me an asshole. Or her new favorite - Mr. Robot

She once said that I was basically responsible for my favorite aunt's death. She constantly threatens divorce, or at least to leave me. She hasn't done anything, because she always comes around in a few days and is hanging on to me saying I'm the only one.

It wasn't until recently that her outbursts have started to fall on our children. I think it was the last straw for me to see my eldest son cut down. To see the hurt in his eyes was too much.

About a month ago she was ranting saying that we had to go. I suggested that she find somewhere else to stay, as the kids had school and friends here, and made the mistake of listing her sister or mother as somewhere she could go. She blew up - tossed her coffee all over the stairway and the mug into the bathroom hard enough for it to shatter into tiny pieces. She got her coat on, said "oh, we are doing this!" and walked out the door, without her phone keys or anything. I made sure the kids (10, 8, and 1) were all alright and tried to clean up the best I could. My two boys started making bets about if she would come back, but I told them she had just gone for a walk. I let them stay home from school. Honestly not knowing where she was was the hardest part. She finally called after lunch from a local hotel, to say she wouldn't be home until the next day.

Next day comes and she calls right at 9am to ask me to come get her. We all piled in the car to get her (didn't make the kids go to school - they were looking forward to seeing her so much) and when we got her the first thing she says to me is "you didn't send the kids to school?" all confused. We got home, and she was still really mad at me. I had got ahold of two of her closest friends the day before, looking for her, and she now knew that I had done so. She was mad at that, but seemed better when I explained I hadn't contacted anyone else - she is always VERY careful of who she lets know about her outbursts. This wasn't an exception, . Then she started threatening divorce again. This lasted until the early afternoon, when my Grandmother's funeral service was to take place - online, thanks covid. She finally cracked when I started crying. She hugged me, and for honestly the FIRST time in 15 years she sobbed on my shoulder. I'm a touchy feely kind of guy - and this was heaven. I stopped crying immediately. I don't know...just to have her in my arms feeling - for once - the same grief that I was feeling was truly an awe inspiring moment for me.

She apologized for everything, after. She was honestly taken aback by the news that her kids had been affected by it...she said that she had been going to pretend like it hadn't happened - exactly what she had always hated her own mother for doing to her. She is very good at seeing the episodes for what they are, afterwards, at least now that we have been able to give "it" a name.

I don't know where I was going with that!   

[Gemsforeyes]

Hey happymeal-

Thank you for providing so much detail.  I’m very sorry for the loss of your beloved grandmother, and the fact that you had to mourn from a distance.  That’s truly devastating.

So much of what you’re experiencing is heart wrenching stuff, even more so when you see the direct emotional hits in your children.

Your post is filled with areas I’d like to address in detail, but I’ve got family matters to deal with tonight, so I’ll dig into this tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’d suggest you perhaps focus on doing some reading on setting some boundaries... i.e. how people go about doing that.  As a reminder, your boundaries represent your values.

Please find some time to just breathe... for you.

We’ll speak tomorrow.

Warmly,
Gemsforeyes

[happymeal]

Wow, blast from the past! 

Where have we been these five years? All over. Back around again.

Back to where I made that post from.

My wife (ex?) has been much of the same, since. She started therapy...but it only lasted a couple of months before she flipped on that counsellor. "I don't need her..." was her only justification. Bull_____! You NEED her, or someone. I didn't say that, of course. Tried a couple other counsellors over the years - it was all her own decision, I felt better. But, one after another, they would fall to the flip after just a few months. She always came up with reasons, but they were just her reasons.

I have learned a lot in the past five years. I started by just not communicating with her, when she is like this. It works, at least for me. I don't get hurt. Everything she says just washes over me. It's not her, its her condition.

I actually called the police to do a wellness check, earlier this year. She had left, again, without saying where she was going. So I called the police. She came back on her own that day. The police showed up later - she was still very angry, so she left with them. It was quite the site, watching them put her in the back of a squad car. She called me about 45 minutes later, wanting to apologize. She had been at the psychosis center - they seem to be able to calm her down in no time (this was her 3rd time being there). She came home and cried in my arms.

The kids - now 16, 14, and 7 - are all pretty much aware of the fact that she has a condition. They don't ask why, when she is angry. They just quiet down and hold on. My youngest keeps coming up to give me a big hug and say "you are a good daddy" when my wife is feeling like this. Probably after my wife has said something about me. Even our kids see through the BS. They can see the truth of the situation, or at least a glimmer of it.

The past month has been horrible. For the past four weeks she has been like clockwork: every Sunday night/Monday morning she will be mad at me (for something, anything). She will be mad until Thursday/Friday, then she acts like nothing ever happened. Until Sunday night 

This week, she has been hitting things in the house. The kids were all scared, but I managed to calm them down. On Tuesday she was taking a bath while shouting at the top of her lungs. About 30 minutes of this went on. She shouted "we are getting separated!". She took off her wedding rings and left them on my night table. "So, this is how I find out?" I said, as I picked them up. She got up and said "keep them!".

Now I'm not speaking to her. I don't know what to do.

[Anonymous22]

Sorry that you are back again, pretty much in the same space as 5 years ago.  I completely understand what you are going through.  My uBPDh has the same pattern as your wife's current pattern, "something/anything" triggers them on Sunday night or Monday morning.  They stay "angry" all week until Thursday/Friday and then all of a sudden they are happy and its like nothing has happened, except we feel whiplashed and confused!  I have come to realize, in my situation, that this is about me leaving for work, and thus, abandoning him.  My uBPDh used to throw a temper tantrum a couple of hours before I had to leave for work, and I would call out sick, as I didn't think it was safe to leave the kids with him.  So he learned, that if I throw a temper tantrum, she will stay home from work.  Unfortunately, clearly, this is not a way to make a good impression at work, so I started finding other places for my kids to go on these days, which he fought against big time and forced me to leave the kids with him, but luckily, now the kids are all in full day school, so are out of the house for the majority of the time that I am at work.  He has other issues now, but I have learned that he will always have some issue and its best to ignore it the best I can (way easier said than done!) and keep my head up, moving forward.  As for the "we are done" comment by your wife...I will say that I have heard this numerous times over the years.  That comment seems to punch you in the gut each time it is said, and I think that is why it is said!  I think its probably the words that go with the over the top emotional state that they are in and really just want to hurt us...and they know how to do so!  I ignore that comment, as I do every other comment made during his temper tantrums, I try to look at it like a "pink elephant" comment.  Though, I will admit, that I do use these temper tantrum moments to up my documentation on their true behavior, in case I need it down the road...or to just prove to myself, that I am NOT crazy! 

[ForeverDad]

My wife (ex?) has been much of the same, since. She started therapy...but it only lasted a couple of months before she flipped on that counsellor. "I don't need her..." was her only justification. Bull_____! You NEED her, or someone. I didn't say that, of course. Tried a couple other counsellors over the years - it was all her own decision, I felt better. But, one after another, they would fall to the flip after just a few months. She always came up with reasons, but they were just her reasons.

Good to know therapy has been tried, multiple times.  That is often among our first comments in our replies.

This week, she has been hitting things in the house. The kids were all scared, but I managed to calm them down. On Tuesday she was taking a bath while shouting at the top of her lungs. About 30 minutes of this went on. She shouted "we are getting separated!". She took off her wedding rings and left them on my night table. "So, this is how I find out?" I said, as I picked them up. She got up and said "keep them!"

She is escalating.  Unfortunately that is a common pattern we see here.  It's almost like she is pushing boundaries, as in extinction bursts, or perhaps seeking more ways to vent herself.  Either way, it is not something to ignore.

Does she have gainful employment, even part time?  The kids are all school age so she doesn't have an excuse she has to stay home and parent all day.  Even if her contributing to the family's income is not urgent, it ought to help her feel better to be keeping busy.  And if she is working, should there be a divorce, then she would have documented an ability to have her own income.

My ex too, in our final years together, would make repeated threats to either disappear with our toddler or to divorce.  I don't believe she truly planned to do so but she sure vented it.  Our son's first sentence, at breakfast after mommy stormed off to another room, was "Mommy bad."  I've always assumed he meant "Mommy feels bad" but I took it to heart that it truly impacted our son.

Your children are surely impacted too.  We don't tell our members what to do, that decision is yours alone.  We share our collective wisdom, what general approaches work and which don't, and what we've found to be helpful skills and insightful strategies.  With that in mind, here's a post I've made in years past.

All throughout our lives every comment seems to pressure us to believe that remaining together is better and a better example for our children than separating.  However - and this is a huge however - that is when the two adults are reasonably normal adults.  Throw in acting-out (harming others more than acting inward onto self) disorders and that usual advice may need examination.

There is no single fix that resolves all the concerns.  However, there are partial solutions that can improve circumstances.

Living in a calm and stable home, even if only for part of their lives, will give the children a better example of normalcy for their own future relationships.  Staying together could mean that's the only example of home life they would have known — discord, conflict, invalidation, alienation attempts, overall craziness, etc... As the saying goes, "I'd rather come from a broken home than live in one."*  Ponder that.  Taking action will enable your lives, or at least a part of your lives going forward, to be spent be in a calm, stable environment — your home, wherever that is — away from the blaming, emotional distortions, pressuring demands and manipulations, unpredictable ever-looming rages and outright chaos.  And some of the flying monkeys too.
* Solomon's Children - Exploding the Myths of Divorce, page 195

[ForeverDad]

Another thought... Although your spouse has tried therapy a few times - for a while until she got triggered - the concept is worthwhile for you and the children too.

My divorce attorney spoke to me about family courts:  "Courts love counseling!"  So don't think you or the children wouldn't find benefits.  At the least, the children have school counselors who are good resources available for the children.

[happymeal]

She has not had much of a job, since 2019. She did find a part time job earlier this year, but that only lasted a month or so.

About therapy...I am all for it, obviously. At this point, im going to start looking for a relationship counsellor and say (to my wife) that we have to see them.

Honestly, I think I am at an end point. It has been 20 years since we started dating. 20 years of putting up with this bs.