uBPD wife strange episode(?1?) while I am having COVID...

[olafinski]

Hi,
in our relationship, my uBPD wife is the practical, OCD, organised and "know-all-about-everyday-stuff". Especially medicine since she comes for a medical background family and is really talented in diagnosing and treating most of common ailments.
Also she is a special education teacher working a lot with kids so she also know a lot about medicine from first hand experience.

I have diabetes type 1 and have managed to avoid getting covid till now. To my luck, I am twice vaccinated. I got it from our 11yo son who had minimal problems.

I am now Day 5 and until yesterday it has been mostly just being really really tired, nose running, and generally feeling awful. I am not used to this as I have quite a good immunity and mostly I walk through all colds etc. In fact I can remember having high fevers and being tied to bed for longer than 1 or 2 days.

I am the one that handles everything in our house since I am a creative and work from home with a loose schedule. I walk our dogs, cook, learn with our little one and take him around. Also, I am the prime earner but I get payed when I finish stuff so no regular paychecks.

I expected this to last for a couple of days (like with our little one) since I am vaccinated and I have tones of work to do to get payed. I can not work at all, I am trying and doing only some really top priority stuff but generally I am stuck.

So yesterday when my temperature started rising in the evening, and when I started to feel the urge to caugh, I became really afraid. Not that I will die but that I will end up in hospital totally unable to do any work and basically f.ck it all up.

As she is really into all that she normally always gives us medical advices on what to do, what to take, how to behave etc (I normally also contacted my MD about this!).

But yesterday and today when I started expressing my fears she started yelling at me! Saying that she can not stand it when I am weak and not acting like an adult.

I understand her condition very well and I know that she is not in control of what she is saying, but I felt really really bad about this. I told her "OK I understand what you are saying, and you are right that I should take it more maturely, but I don't understand why you are yelling at me when I am sick"... She told me nicely to leave the room... all in front of our son who was quite shocked with all this.

Not sure whether to just leave it be, probably she won't remember it tomorrow, or to express my feelings about this... I somehow feel that it will do no good.

Our son knows that our mother has "short fuse" and "a bit different brain" so I will straighten it out with him, but it's all in all a really really strange situation, quite different than anything before, because it really felt totally unfair.

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[ThanksForPlaying]

You probably know this from experience, but you are very unlikely to get any emotional support from pwBPD.

Part of it is mirroring - they mirror your own stress (and sometimes amplify it) back to you. Often when I mention that I've had a stressful day, the response is "but I've had a MORE stressful day".  And away we go.

Similarly, when pwBPD says "I'm very stressed by this" and I reply "yes, I'm stressed by the same thing", this often leads to a freak out because "we can't BOTH be stressed - I need you to be strong".

So I'm not allowed to be stressed by my own things because pwBPD has bigger things to be stressed about. And I'm not allowed to be stressed by pwBPDs things because I'm supposed to be strong and supportive. See where this is going?

There's also often very little experience in their past with caretaking or consoling others. They often have no idea how to self-soothe OR soothe others.

Hang in there.