Together 17 years, Just now figuring this out

[Ayane Da Blu]

Hi,
We have 3 kids, aged 18, 16 and 12, and are raising them in a co-parenting group with their gay dads.   My wife always seemed somewhat depressed and had ups and downs, but in the last three years, things have gotten really intense. In early 2020, her father committed suicide, then Covid, she started drinking a lot, and in April '22, she survived a ruptured brain aneurysm. Luckily, the only lingering effect she has at this point is a headache.  What brought this into focus was the rage filled reaction she had to anyone and everyone while she was hospitalized. She blamed the doctors for doing nothing to control her pain (she was on tons of morphine and dilaudid), she raged at us, her family for not being there being there in the hospital with her, and then raged at us when we did stay with her. When we tried to ask her not to drink or smoke because it could be really detrimental, she raged about us trying to control her.  She said we were blaming her for getting an aneurysm.  Nobody had said that. What it made me realize was, in talking to and being around my in-laws, is this was her usual highly emotional, denial and blame personality on steroids. Since she has been home, she says she remembers nothing about her raging while in the hospital, even though she remembers plenty of other details. I started reading everything I could about mental health, and this is where I landed. I care very deeply about her, and I don't want to continue on making excuses. People can have hard, even horrible circumstances and not behave towards those who care like she has even before the last 3 years. I'm wanting to support her but I'm exhausted.

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[kells76]

Hello Ayane Da Blu, welcome to the site. You're very, very not alone in wanting SO hard to support your spouse and the family, yet you're exhausted and maybe at the end of your rope, low on resources and energy.

It's pretty clear from what you've shared about your spouse's situation and behaviors (stressful trigger events, substance abuse, rages, blame, distorted perceptions, reactive about "being controlled", intense and extremely variable emotions, denial, "amnesia", and low self control... for starters) that whatever a professional might "officially" label things or not, the total constellation of her behaviors and traits paints a picture of BPD. The nice thing ("nice", sigh) here is that it doesn't really matter whether the person in your life has an "official" diagnosis or not. The issue for us is the extremely difficult traits and how to cope.

(Side note before I forget: while a moderator might come along and move your thread to the "coparenting/conflicted" board or possibly the "bettering a relationship" board, so that you get more and more pertinent responses, I wanted to catch your post now, here, so that you knew it was seen. I might actually move it in a minute here, but I'll wait a bit and see if you reply first.)

This stood out to me in your post:

I care very deeply about her, and I don't want to continue on making excuses.

It's not an "either or" for you any more, it sounds like. Yes, you care for her, BUT that doesn't "give her a free pass" AND it doesn't mean that your role is to desperately, apologetically make excuses for her behavior to yourself and others. You want to do something different, something healthier for everyone involved.

I want to encourage you that while it may be challenging, and many of the tools and skills are non-intuitive and take some practice, it IS possible to make things "less worse" and to "not add fuel to the fires". In fact, that's a summary phrase we often discuss here: Before you can make things better [in the relationship], you have to stop making things worse. This isn't a statement of blame, of course. It's not that "you're the problem for setting her off" -- no way. It's more a reflection of the fact that you're here, you want to make things better, you're ready to learn, and some of the first steps for someone in your position is to manage the stuff under your control. Briefly, for starters, it can look like stopping Justifying, Attacking (sometimes listed as Arguing), Defending, and Explaining in conflicts with her. Here's a link that talks about that a little more:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=139972.0

Another key part of supporting her is, counterintuitively enough, focusing on your own self care and getting your own support system. It's hard to care for others when we have nothing left to give. It's not selfish to get ourselves in a better, healthier position first -- that gives us the strength to, as they say, stop making things worse and start making things better. With your kids in the mix, of course you want a healthier family.

I'll pause for now so you have a minute to respond! Let us know how things have been going, whenever works for you.

-kells76

[Notwendy]

One thing that stood out to me is that the raging started with the brain injury. People are known to have personality changes after brain injury. One function of the brain is to inhibit impulses. It's normal to feel angry. Everyone feels anger. What keeps us from acting out in inappropriate ways is our higher thinking that "knows better".

Stressors can increase BPD behavior. So Covid and the death of her father are certainly big stressors.

Drugs such as the ones she was on, can change behavior while taking them, but hopefully she's off them now.

Since she's had a brain injury, I'd report the behavioral changes to her medical team, whether she has BPD or not- there is a large change from before.