What would be the best action to not ruin the relationship but to also preserve my own health. I don't want to be the punshing bag and just accept every punishement like before.
Hi Prep...super tough situation.
I went through this as well- my wife was raped by an ex before we were married. We talked it out and I wanted to take action, but she begged me not to. And I'm not talking about police action here because they were dating when it happened and there was no evidence. It would have been he said/she said and a long, painful process that ultimately would not have led to justice. So I wanted to handle it a different way.
Fast forward 25 years and we're separated, hadn't talked for about two months. My wife says she wanted to meet me at Olive Garden, for the sole reason that she didn't think she'd lose her cool in public. She lost her cool anyway and screamed at me in the restaurant over me saying that I still thought about her daily. It was a bizarre series of events but she didn't storm off; instead she asked me to take her to Target a few miles away.
So we went to Target, then back to Olive Garden to get her car. She didn't get out of my vehicle though and sat there very quietly for several minutes. Then she began telling her story.
When we first started dating, she was highly sexually aggressive. She came over at least twice a week to "wake me up" before college, and if my parents were home then she'd climb a tree, jump over to my 2nd store balcony, and enter that way. Then, well....you can fill in the blanks. Great sex.
As we're sitting in the car and my wife's recalling these memories (which were what I thought of as great memories), my wife's visibly shaking and crying. She tells me that she did that so I couldn't rape her, that she had decided after the rape that she'd choose to have sex often so I would never have the opportunity to rape her. So 3-5 times per week, there she was, being super seductive whenever we were alone, all to avoid dealing with the trauma she suffered.
I'll mention again....this was 26 years later. We had been married for 24 years and dated two more at the start of the relationship.
I knew that day that there was absolutely, positively no way to reclaim my marriage because the scars were far too deep. And it was nothing I did personally, yet I unknowingly played a part with someone hiding trauma. And because of that, she now viewed 24+ years of sex during marriage as dirty and degrading to prevent me from raping her.
I shared her story to say that what you're looking at as a simple issue could be extremely complicated with a wide range of emotions fueling it. Many of us had doubted my wife's rape story because she stayed with the guy and had consensual sex with him after that, often bragging how great it was. Nothing added up until that afternoon in the Olive Garden parking lot...now I get it from a mental health standpoint of what actually happened, and how her actions were far outside of what they should have been.
To me, it feels like your mistake here is assuming she has one opinion over the situation and that's what it will always be. Trauma reveals itself in layers though and once you throw in BPD, you get a whole lot of instability and a wide range of emotions. In a nutshell, it's trying to cope with something that can't be coped with. So her responses may be all over the map.
What can you do?
First, realize that this isn't about you at all. She needs support and she has to deal with what happened, but she also gets to do it at her own pace, in her own time. You have zero say in this.
Second, you can't change what happened and you can't fix it. You can be loving and supportive though, regardless whether you reconcile or not.
Third, keep in mind that this is infinitely more complicated than you can imagine...and that's okay. Apologize and ask what you can do to help, to support her....not in what she's blaming you for, but in an empathic way understanding how complicated her feelings must be.
Fourth, spend this time apart to focus on yourself and your mental health. She's currently weak, so you must be strong. And you can't plunge into arguments that invalidate her. it's not about fault at all here, it's about healing for both of you.
I hope that helps!
