Valentine's Day Setback

[HurtAndTired]

Hi all,

For those of you who have been following my journey, I started using strong boundaries to protect myself and my S2 from my uBPDw (petulant sub-type) about 7 months ago. This is 12 years into our relationship and her abuse of me had slowly progressed over that time until it included verbal, emotional, spiritual, physical, and even sexual abuse. I didn't find the backbone to stand up for myself until I realized that our S2 was observing this all and that it would have devastating life-long effects on him if I didn't bring some sanity into our home.

Back in August, she crossed my boundary about physical abuse for the first time (after having announced my new boundary) and I called the police who came and diffused the situation. It led to a month-long split/silent treatment that was difficult to endure, but I made it through to the other side of this extinction burst more or less intact. She has not been physically abusive since then, and when I sense that she is becoming tempted to get physical I remind her of what will happen every single time she does so, which has helped her check herself. I have likewise made significant progress on ending all other abuse because I am using the tools I have found on this site, taking the advice of you good people, and using what I have learned from several books to try to defuse the situation when she begins to become dysregulated. When that does not work, I remove myself (and when necessary our S2) from the situation. I simply refuse to participate in the "dance of intimate hostility" with her anymore and have removed myself from the Karpman drama triangle.

While ending the physical abuse and suicide threats were "low-hanging fruit" (she is very afraid of going to jail or being sent to a 72-hour psychiatric hold and how that would expose her abnormal behavior to people outside of our nuclear family) the other types of abuse have been much harder to stamp out. The divorce threats have significantly lessened (they no longer have any power over me after I called her bluff), and she no longer tries to stop me from going to church or taking our S2 with me. The verbal abuse (screaming, swearing, name-calling, etc.) has reduced in frequency and, most importantly, now rarely takes place. within earshot of our S2 (she has said things that show me she is aware that his observing this behavior is damaging to him.) The silent treatments have lessened in frequency and duration (they usually last one or two sleep cycles now), but her dysfunctional relationship with sex and intimacy has not improved much at all, nor has her passive aggressiveness. If anything, the PA behaviors and general negativity have increased as the less subtle behaviors are no longer available to her.

All of this leads me to Valentine's Day, which is a holiday I think that most "non" partners of pwBPD dread. I teach at our town's high school and had to work all day yesterday. Furthermore, I am teaching night school to help make ends meet (her impulsive behaviors are related to irresponsible spending and my caving into her demands have driven us into debt) which means that I am not usually home until between 6:30 and 7 PM on school days. She began texting yesterday morning while I was at work (it was a day off for her) about what she was doing to get ready for a dinner she was cooking for us for V-day. She had asked me if I could leave night school a little early to make it home in time to have an earlier dinner, to which I immediately agreed. Her texts throughout the day, which included pictures, showed me that she had purchased chocolate-covered strawberries, flowers, and lobster tails for dinner. While I felt that this was another example of irresponsible spending, I didn't say anything because I chose my battles and this seemed like a petty place to make a stand. Besides, I was taking it as a positive sign that she wanted to do something nice for me.

Knowing that I had no time or money to get her an extravagant gift (trying to keep to a budget) I ran to Walmart on my lunch break to buy her a box of chocolates. She already had purchased flowers and I had no place to store a bouquet at school anyway. I finished work for the day and returned home for dinner. I greeted her and our S2 when I came through the door and handed her the box of chocolates saying "Happy Valentine's Day" and "Wow, this dinner looks and smells amazing! Thank you so much for putting in all the time and effort to make this awesome meal!" She responded to this by saying "Oh you got me chocolates? Great, I don't even like chocolate and like I need more of it." I shrugged this off as she does actually like chocolate a great deal and she was (in my mind) just expressing disappointment that my gift was not more extravagant and expensive.

As we ate dinner I kept expressing my sincere gratitude for the nice meal and the work that went into it. She seemed mostly fine during that time but was becoming increasingly agitated that our S2 was playing with his rice more than he was eating it. She asked me to "deal with your son" as she had been "dealing with him all day" and got up from the table. I was happy to do so and got him to eat some of it, but when it was clear that he was full I just took the rest of the food away and cleaned up the table. We had a bottle of champagne with dinner (she had had several cocktails before I got home) and after dinner was done, we went to the couch and planned to watch TV for about an hour until it was time to put our S2 to bed. We finished the champagne during this time while we watched TV and played with our son, but she started to make increasingly disparaging remarks about the chocolates that I got her.

She said, "You probably got these free at work (teachers sometimes get gifts from organizations as a thank you), or you got them from someone else and then gave them to me." I told her "No, I bought them for you." She then did what I like to call her "human lie detector" routine where she said something like "Whatever, you can't even look me in the eyes when you say that" when, in fact, I had been looking her directly at her when I said it. I then lost my temper a bit as I was getting fed up with the PA and didn't like being called a liar. I asked her "Are you calling me a liar?" I got no response. So I asked her again, pointedly, "Are you calling me a liar?" Again, no response. I raised my voice and said, "Look me in the eyes and call me a liar!" She couldn't or wouldn't meet my gaze. I replied, "That's what I thought. If you are going to call me a liar, be brave enough to say it to me directly, and don't just suggest that I am lying."

I then told her "I bought the chocolates for you over my lunch break at Walmart. They cost $11.98 and were on the bottom shelf of the candy aisle, three items down from the end." "I shouldn't have to give you the details or show you a receipt. It should be enough that I wanted to buy you something to show you that I care on Valentine's Day. This is what we can afford, and it's what I had time to pick up on my lunch break." She then started in on how much she spent and how much time she put into dinner and I told her that it shouldn't be a contest over who spent more. She clearly wanted to argue about it, but I have been down this road with her before and it would just lead into circular arguing and her expecting me to JADE. I told her that I was not going to argue about it but thanked her again for dinner. We put our S2 to bed on time and she wasn't outwardly angry with me, but when I went to bed she remained downstairs and continued drinking on her own. I woke up for work this morning and she was still on the couch in the living room sleeping (she did not have to work again today.)

Today it is clear that she is still upset with me. I received an angry text this morning that said something to the effect of that she sacrifices everything for this relationship, that I am cheap, that I don't do enough to help with our son and take care of the house, and that her life is miserable because of me. I got everything I wanted out of life and she has only gotten screwed by life and that I should be taking care of her (expectation of re-parenting her.)

None of this is true. I work overtime (night school) to help pay the bills/debts. I have even started to DoorDash on weekends. I pay for all of our daycare expenses, do the majority of the grocery shopping and cooking, and do the majority of childcare. Furthermore, for years I bought her presents that I could not afford and took her on vacations that we could not afford because she expected me to do so. I let her irresponsible spending tendencies push me to make bad financial decisions and now I am the only one who is responsible enough to try to dig us out of debt. The financial worries make it hard for me to sleep at night. I have tried many times to express this to her in many different ways, but she just cannot or will not see that we cannot continue to live above our means. She is not offering to work overtime or pick up a second job, by the way.

She believes that if we were just rich and she did not have to work, her life would be perfect. However, because I don't make enough money she is miserable and it is all my fault. I know that even if I did win the lotto and we were rich overnight, it would still never be enough for her though. The "things" that she "needs" are never enough, never could be enough, to fill the hole inside of her. I know this and know that there is no way that I can change this fundamental thought distortion. I will go on being the responsible adult because someone has to.

I guess I just wanted to vent a bit. Last night really sucked. I had thought it was going to be a chance to have a nice time together and even had thought that it might be a chance to be intimate where I actually felt cared for rather than a human sex toy to be used robotically for her pleasure. I know I should not have lost my temper and been confrontational about the accusations of lying, but I am human and I have my limits. I needed to speak my Truth even though I skipped over the Support and Empathy part of SET.  At least I didn't allow myself to be drawn into an argument or start JADEing and remembered to be thankful and acknowledge my appreciation for her efforts.

I will continue to do the work on enforcing my boundaries (primary goal) and will validate when I can (secondary goal.) I am still in survival/safety/stability mode seven months in, so improving my marriage is and must remain secondary to keeping the house safe and sane for our son. At this point, I have to admit that I am ambivalent about whether or not I ever reconnect with my wife emotionally/romantically. I do still love her, but the amount of re-parenting that I am expected to do for her and my recognition of her as an emotional toddler does make for a weird dynamic in our relationship that is not a turn-on. I sometimes feel like I am parenting two children (S2 and uBPDw) as a single dad rather than co-parenting one toddler with my wife.

Thanks for letting me vent.

HurtAndTired

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[thankful person]

Hurt and tired,

I hate Valentine’s Day since I’ve been with her (thinking about it my ex was also demanding and hard to please so maybe I just hate it anyway).

I related to every word. We also had a terrible day yesterday and I really feel like there’s little we non pwbpd can do if the bpd want to decide they’re not happy. We’re also in the same financial situation. But ironically my wife doesn’t work at all as she’s taking care of our kids. But she thinks she would be happy if she had a job. Which is ridiculous. I don’t know what planet we’d be making more money because at the moment she’s spending more than I’m earning and if she was working she would only spend more. And have other work-related problems…

[rattled64]

Reading your experience resonated so much with me on multiple levels, so thank you for sharing it. I am new to this channel and JADE is one of the biggest revelations to me so far, so bravo to you that you are able to put it to work.

A few other things resonated. I too have experienced over time that I seem to do more and more and she seems to do less and less, and still she is constantly unhappy. It started with our finances, and now I do all the grocery shopping and cooking, at least half the taxi driving for our daughter, and so on. Now I am doing the dishes most of the time too. She is so irresponsible with money. She has spent $15,000 on therapy in a single year and my only ask of her was to submit claims every month so it does not impact our cash flow. I have asked so many times, and now I am giving up and I will have to do that too.

We are still in a prolonged downward spiral, the vortex I call it, that has lasted nearly two months. That is a lot longer than in the past where these episodes last a few days to a week. They are getting more extreme as we get older and at higher frequency. So just before our Valentine's day outing to a fancy restaurant, I had called her out on her anger and how she sabotages our relationship all the time by picking fights and getting angry at me, then attacking me as a terrible husband for not meeting her "needs" while she is making me the enemy for no apparent reason and undermining my ability to meet her needs. It is so circular and maddening.

Strangely after calling her out there was an eerie calm, and by her questions and assertions I could tell that she could not get her head around her own behavior, not even able to understand how awful and mean she is when she falls off the deep end into the vortex.  There is some weird dissonance between how rightous she thinks she is in attacking me for being a horrible, uncaring husband (due to what meaning she ascribes in her head to some minor transgression that is quickly and sincerely apologized for), and how she looses control of her vindictiveness and anger...it is stunning. When she feels slighted, no amount of apology keeps her from going to a place where it does not matter if I am sorry or not, and she resorts to escalating attacks on me to manipulate me into - what I do not know. Caring? When I already do. Nevertheless, she seems able to turn on a persona (fake?) at will when others are around. So we had an "enjoyable" dinner, meaning that we did not continue the meaningless fight, and I just had to wonder, which of my wife's persona's is real? Is it the nice one or the seething one? Is her niceness just fake and underneath is the real person?

Anyway, I admire your ability to avoid JADEing and I am going to work on that more.  And I am so glad Vaentine's day is past.