What to do?

[iamtired]

Hi,

First time poster here.

Currently I am sitting in the living room in the middle of her latest angry fit. Broken glasses, broken bottles, a knocked over chair, the table moved around, a bottle kicked towards me. She told me to leave the house, but it is night and where should I go?

I've been together with my undiagnosed partner with BPD for almost 10 years. I read the articles and I watched the videos. I went through the list of signs and I am confident she would qualify for Angry Externalizing BPD. At this point I could write a book about my experiences. This is just one day and by no means the worst day we have had.

Lately it has been more difficult for me to keep my temper and patience. I just cannot keep calm when I get accused of all kinds of things. I am really trying to remain calm, but she is excellent at increasing the tension by raising her voice or using foul language. In return I match her anger level and start shouting at her and calling her names. For me it comes out of pure frustration. She does not listen, she is not willing to talk normally, she just shouts, screams, throws an angry fit. She does this morning, day and night. No warning. And her level of anger is completely inappropriate for what happened.

She was on the warpath this morning before she left to work. Pure rage over not having breakfast for example. A breakfast that I had to make for her. I need to prepare her bag for work. I need to prepare her lunch. I need to find her keys which she always seems to misplace. Right before she went through the door she turned around and kissed me. Did she really think everything was ok again? Considering the state of our living room you probably guessed that her rage was only put on hold until she got home...

I am feeling tired. Very tired. Broken down really. I feel that when I stop getting angry at her behaviour I have given up. Just let her be, let her destroy our house, let her destroy our relationship. Eventually I will give up, pack my bags and leave. But I am not there yet. I still care about her. Taken hostage by my love for her.

[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.

[Cat Familiar]

Who cleans up the mess?

[thankful person]

Iamtired, there is so much to learn here that I hope will help you work through your pain and confusion and either help to improve your relationship or help you decide to end it. I am tired too and there are many experienced, supportive and kind people here, I cannot speak highly enough of them and they will be able to help. All I will say is that I liked your expression, “taken hostage by my love for her”. My wife “stole” me from my ex- boyfriend, it feels like it wasn’t even my decision, I never felt like I had a choice even though I loved him and didn’t even want to leave him. I wrote a song for her called “broken in love”. She doesn’t know about it. She doesn’t even want me to write nice songs for her because she’s jealous of my playing the piano. Anyway, I’m rambling.. welcome and I wish you all the best. The good news is that in my short time here the last few months I have managed to make major improvements to my relationship, all on my own so it doesn’t require your partner to make any such choices about changing their behaviour.

[mitten]

Wow, that sounds super frustrating and scary, with things being broken and thrown.  I'm fortunate that my uBPD spouse hasn't done this... yet. 

I wonder if you would be less frustrated if you accepted that she really won't be able to change much, due to BPD?  Someone once told me about the concept of "radical acceptance", and it stuck with me.  Knowing and realizing what the situation is definitely helped me.  Then it's up to you to decide what you will and won't tolerate (boundaries). 

[iamtired]

I clean up the mess most of the times I think. Usually under the threat that she will not stop. I know I should not clean up her mess, but sometimes I just have to give in to make it stop.

Though on occasion she cleans it up herself. I think she will only clean up when her anger has passed and she feels sorry.

[Woolspinner2000]

Hi Iamtired, 

I can tell by your post that you are emotionally exhausted. Anyone in a situation like yours would be. I'm glad you spent some time reading and learning about BPD because that will help you.

Can you tell me if you feel safe in your environment with her? It sounds like physically she is very aggressive. Has she hit you during her rages? I want you to know that we do care about making sure you stay safe. Looking forward to hearing how you're doing today.

 
Wools

[iamtired]

Hi, I don't feel very safe to be honest. I live under the constant threat of anger and violence. We had a couple more fights since my last post and it is really a pattern. She doesn't get what she wants and turns our house into a warzone.

I think I am really done with this and have to leave. I just don't see a way to continue this relationship. It is too difficult for me to live with a person that is this toxic and unreasonable.

[Cat Familiar]

What are the fights about?

[mitten]

Hi, I don't feel very safe to be honest. I live under the constant threat of anger and violence.

Sorry to hear this.  Has she threatened you with physical violence?  Do you have a safe place to go if that is happening?

[iamtired]

We mostly fight about money. We have a totally different opinion on how to handle money and I keep giving into her demands. We have an insane debt at this point that will take years to resolve.

I told my direct family about our finances and that seemed to have triggered an extreme response. She has been very hostile the last couple of days and destroyed multiple things in the house. She does not want to see my family anymore. She deleted all her pictures on my phone and destroyed all our photo frames.

She insisted that we cancel our rental apartment which we did and we cannot go back onto that decision. We have to move out. We are both searching for our own place to live.

Ten years I have been with her and it has been very difficult, but we have experienced many joyful moments together. It hurts me a lot that the person I love has become such a difficult person to live with. I do hope she finds what she is looking for.

I hope that I can stop surviving and start living again. It will take time for us to heal from all this.

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts with you.

[Destiny 37]

I can relate to this so much. My husband just has huge anger outbursts over what seems to be minor problems or when he thinks I’ve said something I haven’t. It’s draining. There is very little you can do to predict it I’m afraid.

One thing he did say to me recently though is when he loses it it’s like he blacks out. So we had an incident recently and he got very angry. Was physical and couldn’t understand why me and the children were so upset with him. He explained what he thought had happened and the worst part of what he did was missing from his version of events. I told him exactly what happened, explained the kids also had the same reaction as me so three people can’t really be wrong if we all witnessed it. He said he doesn’t remember the part I told him had happened. He said it’s almost like a film. Where someone wakes up with blood on their hands being told they killed someone but they have no memory. It was very surreal and I do believe him. I’m not sure if there is something in that but he’s quite aware of his BPD plus very intelligent.

It would also explain the fact he’s adamant that I have started physical altercations which I never have done. I’ve only ever defended myself. Perhaps similar could be happening? Doesn’t make it right though. When it gets as bad as you describe they need some sort of help ASAP.

[Cat Familiar]

This is the Bettering Board for people who want to repair their relationships. We can give you strategies such as don’t JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain), refrain from invalidation, have good boundaries, but it sounds at this point those concepts would be like putting a bandaid on a bullet wound.

The Conflicted Board is a place where you can examine your relationship and contemplate staying or leaving. It is certainly possible to lower the temperature and get to a point where the above strategies can make a very powerful difference. However it sounds like you are debating internally whether you want to continue as is. Whichever board you choose to post on, and you can try both, you will get different types of advice. Perhaps you might take a look at the Conflicted board and see if that fits you better, or continue to post here and we will try to help you manage to calm things down before they get to such extremes as you’ve been experiencing.