Med student, father of two little ones, wife with BPD

[BlueNavigator]

This is my first thread, my hope is that the wisdom and experience of those on this forum will guide me to a better life for me, my loved one, and my children. I am also hoping that by sharing my story I can receive some form of sympathetic support as the last several years I have felt quite alone and confused in my struggles.

The background: I started dating my current wife in 2013. It was my first and only romantic relationship and was a sweet courtship pockmarked with some odd behaviors (especially at first). She would occasionally ask me to skip classes to comfort her emotionally. Even though I was a pre-medical student trying to maintain a scholarship, I gave in too often. She would also have explosive outbursts at her mother over trivial issues. My family was divided over whether she was the best or worst thing to happen to me.

After every episode of rage or manipulation however, she would be sweet and apologetic with a ready explanation. "Depression", "anxiety", "premenstrual cramping", "trauma from my ex-boyfriend", they all seemed reasonable at the time and she would eventually bounce back to normal.

After a few months, I thought of breaking up, and she was actually the first one to bring up the idea. I said it would be okay and then she became angry and scolded me for agreeing with her. We did not break up but were physically apart for summer break and when we got back together she seemed like a different person and our romance really blossomed. She pushed for a quick marriage, I said I felt strongly we should date for longer. She replied she would end our relationship if I didn't plan to marry her before her college graduation. I caved and proposed a few months later.

As I'm sure you already know, things have been up and down since then. At first, we were able to deal with it well-I was very busy with work and school; she would hold a job for a few months and then quit when she had bad relationship issues with coworkers. It got more complicated in 2018 with the birth of my son and me starting medical school. She routinely refused to care for our child whenever I was at home, forcing me to be up at night with the baby despite getting home very late and needing to arise early the next morning for work and school. She would call and text almost daily encouraging me to come home as soon as possible to give her a break. If I said "I will try to be home at 5:00" I was telephoned at 5:00 on the dot. As soon as I came home I was besought to relieve her, she even once stood in the driveway with our son in a dirty diaper so she could hand him off immediately to me. At first, I was able to do well, I loved being a dad and was qualifying for honors. Each month though I was more and more drained.

By the end of my second year of medical school, things really came to a head. It was 2020 and COVID was in full swing. She had finally worn me down to accepting we should have another child, making promise after promise how this one would be different and she would shoulder almost all of the work, start counseling and medication, and guilt-tripping me by saying she had sacrificed so much for my career in medicine and all she wanted was to be a mom. When I was forced to study at home because of the pandemic, she all but stopped caring for our child and home. It was up to me to be our son's full-time caregiver, perform all the grocery shopping, as well as washing dishes, preparing meals, and folding the laundry on top of my coursework, and studying for medical boards. She was completely unconcerned with my challenges and informed me this was the nature of her pregnancies and I should have known. My performance at school began to slip under the workload, my grades fell from near the 90th percentile to 12th. My wife informed me I always did fine at school and was just overly worried, besides, I was still passing all my tests, I'm just a worrywart, etc...

Our daughter was born in 2021 and life has been even more challenging. Anger outbursts at my son have been routine. Usually yelling, but sometimes physically striking him. She has expressed suicidal ideation and during the summer threatened to "literally murder" me if I did not properly control his behavior. She reported thoughts of wanting to "maul" and kill our son and wrote about it in her journal. After realizing I had fully exhausted my options and not even wanting to be alive anymore, I signed myself up for counseling. My counselor was wonderful and encouraged me to contact my wife's counselor and physician to discuss her behavior, which I did. Her primary care provider referred her to psychiatry, who diagnosed her with MDD and OCD.

Ironically enough, I hope to be a psychiatrist myself and began rotating with psychiatric services for my last year of medical school. It was then that I learned more about Borderline Personality Disorder, and the lights started to come on. I administered the Zanirini BPD questionnaire to my wife and she scored 9/10. I attended the next appointment with her psychiatrist and he agreed with the diagnosis, saying he had had his suspicions from the first visit. Her therapist of one year, however, was in total disbelief. My counselor told me to read Stop Walking on Eggshells, which finally has given me the backbone to start "taking my life back". I now speak with my family and visit them whether my spouse approves or not and I do not let her manipulate or nag me into her way when it comes to making joint family decisions. I have communicated I am absolutely opposed to her abusing our son.

My wife agrees with her diagnosis, she shares it freely with everyone she knows and posts about it regularly on social media now. She takes her medication most days and attends counseling once a week. She just had her first session of DBT yesterday. She confesses she hid her "true self" from me while we were dating and successfully bluffed her way through a fast courtship and engagement. Daily, she oscillates between normal functioning, anger outbursts, and/or being "too stressed out" and devoting her time and energy to her phone, leaving me to take care of the children and housework. She still regularly threatens to hurt our son and I sometimes have to physically restrain her from doing so. I continue to see my own counselor. We are in marriage counseling without any improvement.

I start residency (the most brutal and intense years of medical training) in less than five months. I have many serious concerns and hopes. A divorce right now seems impossible with my heavy educational commitments (weekends, evenings, ever-changing schedules) and extremely limited childcare options. Of course, we are also living on very limited financial means too. My family would like to help but live a great distance away. Her family is not close either and is almost entirely dysfunctional. Will DBT make her better and do I just need to be patient? Should we try to separate while she works things out? I am willing to forgive and change myself if it means we can have a "normal" relationship.

Thank you all, I know it's a lot.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[Notwendy]

I am willing to forgive and change myself if it means we can have a "normal" relationship.

Of all the information you have posted here, this one concerns me the most. You certainly have a lot on your plate and it's to your credit you have been able to keep up with studies and the responsibility of a family. You are a very capable person.

However, the idea of changing yourself to make your marriage happy is not a path to that. It won't make your wife happy. We can't change another person, and by negating who you are, to try to do this is not going to make you happy and it's not authentic.

Personal growth, often with the support of a therapist, aims to be more authentically who you are, not changing who you are. Awareness of how you may be contributing to dysfunctional relationship dynamics can lead to consciously changing how you react to your wife's behavior. This can reduce the dysfunctional drama, but it isn't changing who you are to mold to what your wife might want you to be.

That is an impossible task. Your wife's feelings of unease are hers.

Medicine is a challenging field and as you probably know, can strain a marriage. Things have changed somewhat with more women in medicine but the traditional marriage was the doctor husband working and the wife at home doing everything else, often by herself- expected to understand the long hours and strenuous educational path. I think the strain on medical providers is a bit different now and more husbands are helping out at home, but still, the demand of medicine is there.

This, however, is who you are. It looks like you have been a stellar student with a long term goal that you have been working towards. This is an integral part of who you are. While you can be mindful of supporting your wife through this, I would caution you to not compromise this core value of yours and continue to follow your career goals that mean so much to you.

A couple of positives about your wife. One is that she accepts her diagnosis, and is willing to pursue DBT. I don't know a lot about this ( and if you go into mental health you shortly will know a lot more) but from what I have read- change is possible if the person is self motivated and works at it. It's also not a quick process. So the instant " I am good now" that you have seen with your wife before is her being motivated in the moment. It's not fake, but her emotions and motivation can change. Real change looks more like two steps forward, one step backwards with an overall improvement over time. You can research the success rate of DBT for BPD.

Now for your part, as the only change we can make is with ourselves. But again, the focus is being authentic- not walking on eggshells, not diminishing who you are to try to keep the peace but to get better at managing your own emotions and less reactive to the drama, and less enabling, and let your wife do her self work. While you have learned about BPD and done an assessment- you are her husband, not her therapist. Let the DBT be her work with the therapist.

I understand that interns/residents don't earn much, but it's important to be realistic about your wife's ability to hold the fort down while you are at work, and you need the ability to be at work without constant interruptions. You can not walk away from a patient each time your wife calls and fear a crisis at home. Your wife is already overwhelmed as it is, and your children are in danger of abuse. It also seems your wife can not hold a job. Think of what you would do if you were a single father. You'd have to have child care, maybe help with cleaning the house, even if funds were limited. I suggest you find a way to get some of this support.

My own experience is that my mother is severely BPD. My father was not a physician but he did have a career that he was very invested in. It was an aspect of who he was, and he loved his career. Little was known about BPD in his era, and surely he must have been puzzled by her behaviors, especially because she could go from amazing to raging all in the same day. In their day "wives didn't work" and so the idea that perhaps she couldn't hold a job never came into question. However, she was very overwhelmed by household tasks, despite being very intelligent. The only way I think that my father could go to work and feel at ease was to have household help and child care.

There's way too much going on at the moment for you to decide the outcome of your marriage and you don't know how your wife will respond to DBT. On your part, knowing how much support she needs, consider looking at what you can possibly afford to provide this while you are doing your residency. This is an investment in your career so you can afford to provide these things once you finish.

[Cat Familiar]

It is possible that DBT could make things better, but it’s not a *quick fix* and she will need to be committed to it for a long time, not months, but perhaps years.

Even so, you will not have a *normal* relationship. You are married to an emotionally disabled person and though she may improve significantly, there will still be deficits.

What’s most concerning to me is that she potentially harms your children. Speaking as a child of a BPD mother, even under the best circumstances, there is collateral damage to children with a parent who has a personality disorder. You will need to be mindful to be an exceptionally good role model for your children and not demonstrate *overfunctioning behaviors* with your wife such as codependency or dysfunctional caretaking. It’s a small needle to thread, but with your focus on psychiatry, you’ll be better equipped than most.

[thankful person]

Hi Blue and welcome, I’m glad you found us. The people here are so supportive and helpful. I also have a wife with bpd diagnosis (no longer in treatment) and two small children. I’ve only been active on here a few months. I recognise many aspects of your story, my wife is jealous of my work and family and very controlling. It’s good to hear you are taking some of that control back. Me too. I’ve learnt so much the past few months on here and from the reading I’ve been doing, “stop caretaking the borderline or narcissist” and “raising resilient children with a borderline or narcissist” these books are excellent. I listen to the audiobooks in my car, they are very affirming and validating. I’m not ready to break my wife’s rule on “no therapy” and I can’t afford it anyway. But I love driving around listening to these books, it’s the closest I can get to therapy. And these kind people here who advise us. I’m sad to hear your wife gets so angry with your son. How are you tackling this? My wife is mostly ok with the children though she does shout very loudly at them sometimes and occasionally snatches them from me when she wants to upset me. I’m glad your children have you even though you are very busy. I wish you and your family all the best.

[BlueNavigator]

I understand that interns/residents don't earn much, but it's important to be realistic about your wife's ability to hold the fort down while you are at work... Think of what you would do if you were a single father. You'd have to have child care, maybe help with cleaning the house, even if funds were limited. I suggest you find a way to get some of this support.

There's way too much going on at the moment for you to decide the outcome of your marriage and you don't know how your wife will respond to DBT. On your part, knowing how much support she needs, consider looking at what you can possibly afford to provide this while you are doing your residency. This is an investment in your career so you can afford to provide these things once you finish.

I appreciate this very much and feel it is solid advice, thank you. I guess I just needed to hear from a second witness that this really is serious and we will need outside support.

Again, thank you.

[BlueNavigator]

It is possible that DBT could make things better, but it’s not a *quick fix* and she will need to be committed to it for a long time, not months, but perhaps years.

Even so, you will not have a *normal* relationship. You are married to an emotionally disabled person and though she may improve significantly, there will still be deficits.

Thank you, I needed to hear this too. I want a miracle to instantly evaporate the whole bad situation but that's obviously unrealistic.

[mitten]

Wow, when I read your story it lines up exactly with my relationship timeline down to the exact years... I started dating the my undiagnosed wife the same year you started dating, I wanted to take things slow while my wife was pressuring me to commit to marriage sooner, and I also have two kids (one in 2018 and one in 2021).  Oh, and she was my first real longtime relationship.  I had only dated previously.  I can relate to it all, except the physical abuse part.  Fortunately my wife hasn't threatened that to our children at this point. 

What I think you have the advantage and head start on is that your wife has been diagnosed and agreed to counseling.  That seems huge, if she'll stick to it.  My wife has ZERO awareness to having BPD. 

Either way, your relationship will never be normal as others have said.  What is normal anyway?  It's not what we see on Instagram that's for sure.  When I look around at other relationships I see a lot of struggles as well (fights, arguments, cheating, selfishness).  Even when I look at who my siblings have married I see tension and disagreements that seems unnecessary and toxic, and I don't thing their spouses have BPD. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'd never recommend marrying someone with BPD because of the lifelong challenges it brings, but like you, I'm in it now and fully committed, and I'm not sure leaving would be any better (especially since I have kids).  Some people here will disagree with me, and it also depends how severe the person's BPD is.  Anyway, glad you're here and hope we can help!

[Notwendy]

Yes, it is important to understand that having a PD is serious. In addition BPD is a spectrum disorder and so some people with BPD are higher functioning than others. It's important to understand your wife's individual functioning even though the patterns in these relationships have similarities.

It can be confusing as there may be a mismatch between intelligence and ability to use that intelligence in daily functions. Pw BPD have difficulty regulating emotions and with interpersonal relationships- this can affect employment, child rearing and other tasks that one would expect someone of their mental capacity could handle.

It's also important to not enable their inability to do things and so do everything for them.

My own BPD mother is hard to figure out. He public persona is great- she's charming, intelligent, competent in social situation. At home, she has great difficulty with carrying out many tasks. Her emotional outbursts and rages are severe. As a result, she has most things done for her to avoid them. We all walked on eggshells around her and did things around the house for her. She can be very demanding and manipulative- behind this is an inability and an insecurity so she avoids doing things she's unsure about and wants people to do them for her. As a result though, she also didn't get the sense of accomplishment for doing them. Overall though, even though she's intellectually capable, her emotional issues are disabling for her. Unlike your wife though, she denies any problems and so isn't motivated to do individual therapy and so has not done this.

The bottom line here though is the children. This is serious. They are in danger of being abused if your wife gets overwhelmed. They need to be protected in any way possible.

[mitten]

The bottom line here though is the children. This is serious. They are in danger of being abused if your wife gets overwhelmed. They need to be protected in any way possible.

Yeah, I'd focus on this.  "Raising Resilient Children with a BPD Spouse" is a great book (I have the audio version).  One thing I learned from it was that you should try not to have the BPD parent be the parent that is around the kids an excessive amount of time.  Many BPD parents will try to talk their spouses into letting them be stay at home parents.  This is not a great idea for a couple reasons...First of all, having healthy social interactions with other kids and adults in a childcare setting is beneficial.  Secondly, the more time spend with the BPD parents, the more the children will be exposed to dysfunctional, and potentially abusive parenting. 

My wife talked me into her going part time when we had our first child.  She sold it as a way to spend time when they were young and that it was hard for her to be separated from them when they were at childcare.  This past summer I had her go back to work full time, but my wife has been working from home.  She talked me into hiring a nanny so they weren't exposed to COVID at daycare...  This turned out to be not great, because she was around them almost constantly.  And the kids didn't get interaction with other kids because they were basically at home all the time. 

I realize you can only do childcare if you can afford it, but if there is someway you can find an affordable option I highly recommend it.  As the kids get older it's super beneficial in preparing them for healthy development (and school). 

[BlueNavigator]

I realize you can only do childcare if you can afford it, but if there is someway you can find an affordable option I highly recommend it.  As the kids get older it's super beneficial in preparing them for healthy development (and school). 

Thank you for this. I've been pushing my wife hard to agree to put him into an all-day preschool and we now plan on doing this once I move to the new state for residency. He is in a Headstart program right now which is 3 hours a day 4 days a week... not enough in my opinion. We are meeting with a local child advocacy center in a few weeks to sign up for "family mentoring" and they may be able to watch him one afternoon out of the week.

All of the daycare programs I can find are completely full. I think it would be awesome to have a nanny who could take him out of the house a few afternoons a week. Any advice mitten on how to find a good nanny, how much it costs, and anything else I should know?

[Notwendy]

It's great that your child is in Head Start and the family mentoring so there's some playtime and interaction with other kids ( and adults) and your wife gets a break. One idea is rather than look for full time, look for ways to supplement this.

Colleges- many college students want some part time work- colleges have career centers and some keep a job log for students- be sure to interview them to see if they have experience with children- some have babysat before. Having a student come on the "off time" for a bit might help.

Your community- a neighborhood teen might come over sometime after school.

When you find out where you will be doing your residency- some hospitals have associated day care centers for their staff. Ask about this- and if they have one-get your child's name on the waiting list/start list as soon as you know where you are going.

Developmental day cares- if you are in the US, the school system offers programs for children. These are often located inside of schools. Look into these once you know where you will be moving to. For now though, it makes sense to keep your child where they are used to and supplement with a sitter some of the time.

Rates for sitters vary depending on location. Probably best to ask friends who have sitters and even the sitter can tell you what they usually get paid. You can also probably Google rates in your area.

[GaGrl]

Another thought...many universities have an on-site daycare facility not only to support employees but also to provide education and experience for students in the Child Development programs -- usually associated with the College of Education.

Additionally, the students in that program might be available for part-time work.