Can you help me clear some FOG? Is any of this reasonable?

[WhatToDo47]

Hi,

Long story short, detailed in my other posts, my uBPD wife of 5 years (together 6) split me black and abandoned me back to our home state and to her also undiagnosed but certainly BPD/NPD mom about 4 months ago, secretly filing for divorce and calling the police on me when I wasn’t home (nothing came of that).

She is now starting to split me white again as things fall apart there and she realizes how much I did for her.

She is blaming me for the following things, with the subtext that she will come back if I work on them. I’m not sure if I want her to come back, or if it’s even safe. Here are some of the things, are these reasonable? If I work on these things do we have a chance? I never knew BPD existed or that she had it until after she left and said she wanted divorce. She was in therapy and was making progress  and return to therapy would be a requirement for me to take her back.

- She says I was always logical, didn’t listen or validate her emotions (true), I didn’t know any of the BPD communication tools and have tried using them in our recent conversations to great success

- She says I always put my family, job, dogs, hobbies ahead of her (I did spend some time doing all of these things, maybe too much at times)

- She says I tried to control her financially (we lived on a budget that we came up with together, so that we could pay off debt and save for a house). If she came back, I would keep my finances separate, she simply doesn’t have the proper financial impulse control, and she knows that.

- She says that I didn’t “court her,” take her out to dinner enough, buy her flowers enough, etc. I could easily do more of that.

[WhatToDo47]

She had apologized for leaving, being mean/cruel, losing her temper, etc. She has called a few times to “cheer me up,” saying that this wasn’t my fault, I’m a good person, she loves me, she doesn’t trust anyone except for me, she was trying to get me to be myself again, maybe we can start over, she doesn’t want to ever hurt me, she was just pushed too far and won’t let it get to that point again etc etc etc, but I don’t know if it’s sincere or lasting.

[mart555]

It's usually lots of gaslighting and projection.  She will say something at some point and it will all click in your head. 

In the meantime, I highly recommend this book: Stop Caretaking the Borderline Or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life

[chinchilla_dad]

Good to hear from you again.  Sounds like she is "charming"  I will never trust a Borderline with my health and wellbeing again.  It's just not safe.  I would consider letting mine back in my life (also split black out of nowhere and took off out of state in the middle of the night to move back in with NPD mother) but only at an arms length and only if she agreed to getting serious treatment.  If you are considering rekindling I would make it a long, multitiered process.  It is possible for you guys to make it work.  My best friend is starting to let her NPDex back into her life a bit after seeing him make quite a bit of progress.  Apparently he is doing therapy multi time a week and is really trying.  Honestly I am utterly SHOCKED to hear that.

Do some cost benefit analysis with your options and see what the risks and rewards are.

[15years]

It seems to me that you have understood that maybe she has a point and that you will (and already do) try to consider her needs more. Maybe that is enough? You're stuck wondering if you're to blame or not. Accept that you're not perfect and that her criticism is likely a bit harsh. It can make a difference not to take it too personally.

She could have communicated this in a less dramatic style and you might have listened, but she didn't, but now you know.

Remember your self worth!

I'm trying also but it's hard.

[WhatToDo47]

It's usually lots of gaslighting and projection.  She will say something at some point and it will all click in your head. 

In the meantime, I highly recommend this book: Stop Caretaking the Borderline Or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life

Thank you, I will get the audiobook and listen. I have a feeling it will really hit home.

I will also listen to what she accuses me of and look for gaslighting and projection. I'm already noticing some as she's blaming my family when her family was the one that egged her on to do this with promises that everything would be better if she did. It's not.

[WhatToDo47]

Good to hear from you again.  Sounds like she is "charming"  I will never trust a Borderline with my health and wellbeing again.  It's just not safe.  I would consider letting mine back in my life (also split black out of nowhere and took off out of state in the middle of the night to move back in with NPD mother) but only at an arms length and only if she agreed to getting serious treatment.  If you are considering rekindling I would make it a long, multitiered process.  It is possible for you guys to make it work.  My best friend is starting to let her NPDex back into her life a bit after seeing him make quite a bit of progress.  Apparently he is doing therapy multi time a week and is really trying.  Honestly I am utterly SHOCKED to hear that.

Do some cost benefit analysis with your options and see what the risks and rewards are.

Hello, friend. Always great to hear from you, too. She is definitely in a charming phase, but (now that I know what to look for) I am seeing cracks in the facade. As soon as I don't offer her money/support, respond right away, take blame for things I didn't do, etc she starts to rage, catches herself, and quickly changes the subject. I would have just overlooked this before.

"I will never trust a Borderline with my health and wellbeing again. It's just not safe.  I would consider letting mine back in my life (also split black out of nowhere and took off out of state in the middle of the night to move back in with NPD mother) but only at an arms length and only if she agreed to getting serious treatment."

I think this is where I'm quickly arriving, thanks in large part to therapy and these boards/this website.

I am shocked by happy to hear about your friend's success. I think a multitiered approach will be essential for me. Ground 0 is therapy. No therapy, no serious reconciling. Period.

"Do some cost benefit analysis with your options and see what the risks and rewards are."

Doing this now, and thank you all for your help with it Any specific things you think go in the risk or rewards column that I might not think of?

[WhatToDo47]

It seems to me that you have understood that maybe she has a point and that you will (and already do) try to consider her needs more. Maybe that is enough? You're stuck wondering if you're to blame or not. Accept that you're not perfect and that her criticism is likely a bit harsh. It can make a difference not to take it too personally.

She could have communicated this in a less dramatic style and you might have listened, but she didn't, but now you know.

Remember your self worth!

I'm trying also but it's hard.

She definitely has a point and I will and do consider her needs more now. Some of her criticism is valid, but her reaction to it (leaving, filing for divorce, etc) is not. But I don't know if she's capable of understanding that.

What worries me is the shifting goalposts. If I listen more, I fear that she will replace that complaint with something else, and on and on and on, without telling me, and the next time I don't feed her new arbitrary standard which she won't be capable of articulating to me, she will leave again, as she will have learned it gets my attention. I'm scared of the precedent this is setting.

I'll work on remembering my self worth and hopefully you will, too. We are all much stronger together!

[15years]

I can relate to the shifting goalposts fair.

The last 10 days or so has been very calm and she seems to notice some changes in me which she thinks is great. Feels like she builds up a fantasy version of me every time we're having a calm period. At some point I will say or do something clumsy or passively aggressively set a boundary, or express my opinion which differs from hers or not be able to suppress my emotions or worst of all not succeeding in validating her hurt feelings or not returning her affection or something else which will make me feel like it's my fault, that I could have done better.

It will happen sooner or later I just hope it won't be my fault in any way.

[At Bay]

These thoughts came to mind after reading your post to me on the Bettering a Relationship board and your post above.

While I think it’s true she doesn’t have control over what someone else does, she does choose how to react. Could she be justifying her actions when she claimed that she was pushed too far. Not repeating that scenario would be whose responsibility?

If she’s blaming your family, normal contact with them in the way you might need and want could cause discord. They could be painted as bad people if she thinks they are responsible for her actions. My dh resents any attention given to anyone in my family. Even if it is a funeral and selling a parent’s house. Trips out of town for that were unimaginable misery. He felt so abandoned, that two weeks after the funeral, he told me that when he retired in two years, he was thinking of leaving or divorcing me.

She may get around to what my dh likes to say to me, and that is “you are not perfect and neither is your family.” My answer will always be that my family and i have normal problems.

A red flag about stress on you to work together on a budget can have long-lasting effects. My son eventually had to stop contributing to his 401k to pay the bills, and when they divorced, it took him 3 yrs to pay off charge accounts because he took on more dept responsibility than required by the state, due to his salary being much higher than hers when she had to find work following the divorce.

You are at a good point to visualize what a nice life would look like—what you described doing in your post above.

[fisher101]

Hi,

Long story short, detailed in my other posts, my uBPD wife of 5 years (together 6) split me black and abandoned me back to our home state and to her also undiagnosed but certainly BPD/NPD mom about 4 months ago, secretly filing for divorce and calling the police on me when I wasn’t home (nothing came of that).

She is now starting to split me white again as things fall apart there and she realizes how much I did for her.

She is blaming me for the following things, with the subtext that she will come back if I work on them. I’m not sure if I want her to come back, or if it’s even safe. Here are some of the things, are these reasonable? If I work on these things do we have a chance? I never knew BPD existed or that she had it until after she left and said she wanted divorce. She was in therapy and was making progress  and return to therapy would be a requirement for me to take her back.

- She says I was always logical, didn’t listen or validate her emotions (true), I didn’t know any of the BPD communication tools and have tried using them in our recent conversations to great success

- She says I always put my family, job, dogs, hobbies ahead of her (I did spend some time doing all of these things, maybe too much at times)

- She says I tried to control her financially (we lived on a budget that we came up with together, so that we could pay off debt and save for a house). If she came back, I would keep my finances separate, she simply doesn’t have the proper financial impulse control, and she knows that.

- She says that I didn’t “court her,” take her out to dinner enough, buy her flowers enough, etc. I could easily do more of that.

Unless you're leaving out the parts where she took accountability for her actions/behavior it just screams "me! me! me!" and "I was the victim" on her part, but that is just my opinion.

If you do end up letting her back in, I don't think I'd take it past the casual level.

[fisher101]

She definitely has a point and I will and do consider her needs more now. Some of her criticism is valid, but her reaction to it (leaving, filing for divorce, etc) is not. But I don't know if she's capable of understanding that.

What worries me is the shifting goalposts. If I listen more, I fear that she will replace that complaint with something else, and on and on and on, without telling me, and the next time I don't feed her new arbitrary standard which she won't be capable of articulating to me, she will leave again, as she will have learned it gets my attention. I'm scared of the precedent this is setting.

I'll work on remembering my self worth and hopefully you will, too. We are all much stronger together!

I think you made a very good point with the reaction part you mentioned. I always say my wife would have the same reaction to someone accidentally bumping into her as she would someone punching her in the face.

[WhatToDo47]

15years,

I can relate. It seems like the longer we are apart, the more she refreshes a fantasy version of me and then the moment I disagree with her, don’t valitdate her, or don’t pass some test that she had that she didn’t tell me, I’m suddenly the bad guy/abuser again. Or if someone else “wrongs” her, and I didn’t teleport there and protect her in exactly the perfect way at exactly the perfect time, then that’s my fault, too. I’ve noticed her doing this with everyone in her life, her family, friends, my family, bosses, etc.

Devalue, distance, idealize, honeymoon (getting shorter and shorter as she gets older), devalue, explosion, repeat cycle

I just never knew what it was or what BPD was until she left and I was so blindisided that I had to go looking for answers.



At Bay,

I have noticed the same trends with my family as you describe in your relationship. I didn’t realize it at the time, but anytime I gave attention to my family instead of her (even for minor and normal situations, like birthdays, holidays, health issues, etc), she would have some major acting out. She would have a breakdown, rage, health issue (real or imagined), etc. She would also do this if my family wasn’t giving attention to her. For example, if they were spending time with my brother and his wife instead of me and her.

I appreciate the finance warning as well. I hope your son can recover soon. When she was having her splitting episode but before leaving, she said she wanted to save faster for a house, so I told her we can stop contributing to my 401k until we had enough. Normally, that’s fine, but she got irate about it, saying why are we saving anything for retirement when I still haven’t bought her the jewelry, designer clothes, etc that she wants and that contributing to a 401k is hiding money from her. We had agreed to contribute to the 401k, and I gave her updates about the balance almost every week when I got paid. I can’t realistically see a good financial future for us, unless I really did start hiding money, which is against my morals.

I am going to visualize a nice life, and think critically about if she could realistically be a part of it.

Fisher101

Definitely a “me, me, me” and victim mentality from her. She took accountability, but it was in the form of “I never wanted to leave you, buy it was the only way to get your attention,” “you pushed me too far,” but then when I ask how I pushed her, etc, it’s all vague and impossible to rectify things. My worry is that she would come back and anytime I didn’t say, think, do exactly what she wanted she would say I pushed her again and leave.

Definitely casual level, if that, for now.

“I always say my wife would have the same reaction to someone accidentally bumping into her as she would someone punching her in the face.”

I can relate so much to this. My wife herself would joke about this. She is from a foreign culture, and she would always blame it on that, but now I think it’s just BPD.

[PeteWitsend]

Unless you're leaving out the parts where she took accountability for her actions/behavior it just screams "me! me! me!" and "I was the victim" on her part, but that is just my opinion.

If you do end up letting her back in, I don't think I'd take it past the casual level.

Agree with this 100%.  

She made the decision to leave, and now that it turned out to be the wrong decision for her, she's had time to sit and think about how to make this all your fault so she doesn't have to bear the consequences of that decision.  

And to answer the question in the thread title, no, it's not reasonable.

You have here someone who called the police on you (presumably without cause, since you were not home at the time!), an action which in the United States could easily turn out to be a death sentence for you if some trigger-happy cop showed up to a heated situation, or mistook you for being a burglar in your own him.  She also filed for divorce without talking it over with her husband (you) or even giving you the courtesy of a heads up, and then voluntarily left, doing you a huge favor, and you're considering taking her back?

[PeteWitsend]

You should also talk to an attorney.  Having a divorce complaint hanging out there unresolved can't be a good thing.

And (assuming you want to end this relationship before it recycles back into a destructive pattern), you may be better off forcing her to serve you and respond to the complaint now, rather than allowing her to dismiss the complaint and refile at some time more advantageous to her. 

[ForeverDad]

You should also talk to an attorney.  Having a divorce complaint hanging out there unresolved can't be a good thing...  respond to the complaint now, rather than allowing her to dismiss the complaint and refile at some time more advantageous to her.

Right now she moved out, lives in another state and filed for divorce.  If you decide to follow that lead, then you're looking at your "least bad" scenario.

If you let her back into your life, the chaos in your life would return.  It would be more expensive to end the relationship.  You might have to evict her and that could be a long process.  Or she could call the police (again) and the next time she might make her allegation less unbelievable.  You could be the one carted off and living elsewhere trying to clear your name and keep your job.  Or she could - oops! - have a baby and then you'd have her in your life one way or another for decades.

Maybe none of that happens.  Who knows?  But the risks are there if you decide to let her back into your life.

[BigOof]

If this was me, I would be looking to get it dismissed and then resubmitting as the plaintiff.

[zaqsert]

If this was me, I would be looking to get it dismissed and then resubmitting as the plaintiff.

In no-fault divorce states, I thought it doesn't really matter who files. Is that the case or are there benefits to filing first?

I ask as someone who is starting to get his divorce ducks in a row, gradually. I don't know if no-fault divorce applies to WhatToDo47.

[ForeverDad]

I'll list one Pro and one Con.

Being the Plaintiff does feel better than being the Defendant.  After we had been separated for 4 months I faced the reality our mutual TPOs (temporary protection orders) would be expiring.  Unknown too me, she filed for child support the day before I filed for divorce.  Her petition was merged into mine.  However, court never, not even once, gave me any better treatment for being the Plaintiff.

I'm assuming she filed from her new residence in another state.  Your lawyer can tell you whether her new state gives her any advantage over filing in you county and state.  If your lawyer informs you there's virtually no difference between the states laws, rules and policies then the only major disadvantage is the distance you'd have to travel for any in-person appearances.

If you two had children together then she couldn't have done this, at least not this soon.  Federal law in the USA states that for the purposes of custody and parenting the spouse who moved away has to have established residence in the new state six months before filing for divorce.  Without children, that doesn't apply in your case.

[GaGrl]

A disadvantage to taking her back into your life is that she now has the benefit of a lawyer giving her a realistic perspective of the divorce decisions she has made. If this happened again in the future, she probably would be much more canny in her decisions.

You are in an advantageous position right now.

[WhatToDo47]

PeteWitsend,
Thank you for reassuring me that it’s not reasonable and her own fault that she has to live with the consequences of her actions. She definitely called the police without cause, and I even have text messages proving I wasn’t there. I know it’s crazy to consider taking her back, and that’s one reason this website and all of your reality checks help so much. I’ve been swimming in fog for years, just now starting to surface.
ForeverDad,
Thank you as well for the reality check. All of those are risks I’m worried about. It doesn’t seem like she would be capable of that, but I didn’t think she would be capable of any of this either. She’s played her hand and it’s hard to unsee her for who she is, but I guess that’s a good thing.
BigOof and zaqsert,
I do live in a no fault divorce state. What the lawyer told me is that it doesn’t matter who files first technically, but of course whoever initiates the process will set the standard for what to argue against, if that makes sense.
I am going into every interaction with her remembering that I can’t trust her. It sucks, but it’s reality.