First post need help

[Exile]

My wife and I have been married for 21 years. It hasn't been easy. She has wild swings of mood and sudden changes in emotional state. She can be loving and kind one minute and hateful and mean the next. She often goes to bed fine and wakes up angry. The good times are really good and they are what I hold on to. I miss her terribly when she's "gone". She told me once she can hear herself saying crazy things but can't stop it. It really feels like my loving wife is trapped behind a crazy person that hates me. Maybe that's wishful thinking. I don't know. Our issues got much worse in 2019. I'm not sure why. She has most or all of the indicators for BPD. Emotional dysregulation, eruptions of anger, splitting, feelings of emptiness, constant threats. Blame. I am literally personally responsible for the weather. Her childhood was pretty much tailor made to produce BPD. Physical and emotional abuse, abandonment, both parents with serious issues they dumped on their kids. Yet she is a good mother putting great effort into homeschooling our children and doing a great job of it. She can be empathetic,nurturing, caring. But when i stepped on a tack and fell down the stairs she didn't move a muscle to help. She turned to the kids and said "it's his own fault he needs to watch where he's going". This pattern of up down good bad love hate repeats over and over. It's difficult to even describe because I'll say she's a good mother and a minute later I'm talking about how she's turning our oldest daughter into a backup emotional dump when I'm not around. Both are true and I have trouble reconciling everything because there's no consistency across the board. She's very good at detecting when a counselor "figures it out" and she torpedoes the sessions. Our last counselor cornered her on a topic she had made very different statements about over a couple sessions. A minute later she accused me of wanting to have an affair with the (female) counselor. That was the end of that. The previous (male) councelor after a few sessions said that I seemed like the sensitive type and her less so. She refused to ever go back. I had a one on one with him later and he flat out told me she's delusional. Circumstances prevented me from talking to him again. There's much more and specific things I need help with. But for now I guess this is it. I need help. I can't manage this alone any more.

[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.

[Exile]

The biggest issue at the moment is that we have never been able to share a bed. When we were first married we did for a little while. She kept waking me up at 2am yelling and shoving me out of the bed. She said I made noise and flopped my arm across her chest all the time. So I started sleeping on the couch and it just became my place to sleep. I got very used to it over the years and I find regular beds extremely uncomfortable now.

 The couch also proved to be a cure for my lifelong issues with insomnia. Added to this mix is the fact thstbour youngest daughter sleeps with her mom in the bed. This is because my grown stepson moved back in and took our daughters room. Our daughter didn't really mind as she likes sleeping with mom. But it's a problem in that we can't even try sleeping together without putting daughter on the couch which she doesn't like. It's a no win situation.

  In the last few years my wife has made this a main issue and constantly comes back to it. She says all of our issues go back to not sleeping g together. We were trying to make it work by putting daughter on the couch a few times a week and sharing the bed but my wife makes it impossible. She has regular late night outbursts. They don't stop once started. She just rants on and on at 4am until I get up and leave which makes everything worse. I have to get up at 6am 5 days a week. I have an extremely difficult time sleeping in the bed in the first place and getting woken and yelled at means I get little to no sleep. My wife works with the kids at home so she can just sleep in or take it easy the next day. I can't. I very quickly become sleep deprived.

 The other issue is that my wife is a very light sleeper and will wake up if I make any noise or move at all. She takes any noise I make as evidence I don't want to be there and flips out. I've tried reassuring her but she just gets louder. I am not really at my best when exhausted sore and being yelled at. She has stated that the only option is sleeping together 7 days a week and I must accept any feelings she wants to express in any way while we are I'm bed.

 I've tried setting boundaries that I will only stay if she doesn't yell. She categorically refuses and if I leave the bed it just results in more yelling and days of misery. It's that way with any boundary I try to set. She escalates to the point i give up trying to set any because it all just makes the pain worse and longer. If I lay there like a statue and concentrate on making no noise all night she's usually happy in the morning I'm miserable.

 I'm willing to work on it and get used to the bed but I can't deal with 2 hours of poor sleep a night. I don't know what to do.

[kells76]

Hey Exile, welcome to the group 

You're in good company with other members who understand the emotional roller coaster: the good times are really good, and the bad times are really bad. Everything you're describing -- the wildly varying, harmfully intense emotions; the anger/rages; the threats; the dysregulations -- is pretty common to hear about, so you're not alone here.

You mention you have a daughter together with her, and she has a stepson. What other kids do you have? What are all their ages? Also, when did your grown stepson move back in?

Do you still have the contact info for the male counselor you'd seen? What happened to make it seem like you couldn't talk to him again?

...

I know you have a lot of questions; it sounds like you're willing to try to improve the dynamic between you two. While it can be uncomfortable, it is possible to impact the dynamic when we work on and change ourselves. Our workshops on Relationship Skills are a great place to start.

...

Would you say the bed/couch conflict is the biggest conflict between you two right now? Or something else?

[Exile]

Hi kells76, thank you.

We have 3 kids. My stepson is 26. He was 2 when we met and I'm the only father he's ever known. His biological father has been in prison his whole life. I consider him my son and only call him stepson for clarity. We have a good relationship.

He moved back  in 2021 when his grandparents moved away. Both my wife and her parents used him as a kind of therapy, which restricted his emotional development. He was permanently 5 years old to them. He's a good person and smart but hasn't really matured.

We have two daughters together.  They are 14 and 10. Both are maturing as they should as they have not been held back in the same way my son was. They are intelligent and kind young women.

I do have contact info for the councelor. I wanted to continue our sessions but at the time money was an issue as our insurance didn't cover therapy. My wife also demands to know what was said in one on one sessions so its really difficult. I can't tell her the truth because it will cause a blowup. And I can't lie because im bad at lying and I just don't want to.

The bed and couch thing is definitely the biggest issue. I feel like she wants me stuck in a box where she can dump on me as much as she wants and I'm not allowed to walk away. Withdrawing in general triggers her badly. She'll scream for 20 minutes and then act like I've done something horrible by walking into the next room because I can't take it. Her reactions to boundaries are always huge escalation and it doesn't end. She almost always responds to being woken with anger even if it's only a minute before her alarm. So even when I manage to knock myself out with benadryl and alcohol enough to get to sleep if I make any noise at all she flips out. I apparently groaned once while asleep. That was a really bad night. I just can't be an emotional manager when I'm exhausted and sore or actually unconscious.

While the bed thing is definitely the biggest issue she has a long history of saying various things are the most important thing in the world only to lose interest the second I manage to comply with them. I suspect that even if I managed to stay Iin bed with her she would just pivot to something else.

I just want to sleep.

[PhoenixKnight]

Hi. I just wanted to pass on that I really empathise with your sleeping situation. That was an issue I had with my ex which never managed to fix itself in the 3 years we were together. Whenever we shared a bed she would lay there anxious all night working herself up. The clock was too noisy, too bright, the curtains were too thin, the windows allowing in noise, too much traffic (we get maybe one car every 15 minutes on our street), I breathe too loud (she snores like a trooper when she does fall asleep), I move in my sleep, the mattress is too hard, she doesn’t like the pillows, she needs to be on the other side of the bed.

I  tried remedying all of this over the years but there was always another thing keeping her up. I ended up being as anxious as her at bedtime as I lay there for hours like a statue, terrified to breathe or move. I ended up in the spare room, which ultimately meant we lost a lot of intimacy. I really don’t know what to say to help because it became such an issue for us that resulted in us both feeling a huge disconnect. Like you, I was physically exhausted by the end.

My relationship is tiny compared to yours but I just wanted to say I empathise with you and hope you manage to find a solution. It’s tough mate.