Hi, first post here. The first part is my question, the second part is the retelling of the marriage story that made me feel this way.
My (ex)wife of eight years has bpd, she left me to be with her affair partner three months ago after years of betrayal, verbal and emotional abuse, and constantly making me feel like I am the problem, because there is something fundamentally
PLEASE READed up with me, if I can not be good enough for her, despite trying my best and walking on eggshells all the time. I feel stuck and depressed because I am too angry with the world that (objectively) has no obligation to treat me well, despite my prior best attempts to help and rescue everyone (mostly her), and treat everyone with care, attunement and respect. I realize that it is counterproductive, and that it is like a silent tantrum that I am throwing at the world, but I can't help it. I am being responsible and nice when I talk to people, but my inner world is a complete mess. My inner child shouts angrily at the universe "well, if you don't like me, and don't want me, then
PLEASE READ off, it is your loss, because I am nice and kind and caring, I am better off without you" - and the universe (unsurprisingly) does not even bother to respond. I have people in my life (very few, but still) that I can talk to and get a generic "yeah, she is an idiot, you were an amazing husband, you are lucky to have escaped her without children, you have a whole life ahead of you", but I want someone to actually come and help me to carry these feelings - like I helped her carry her emotional load for years. I realize that it is unreasonable to expect this level of care from strangers, but the idea of starting to take care of someone (in hopes of them taking care of you) is both codependant as
PLEASE READ and terrifying - because it opens up the possibility of someone walking all over me again. But without going to great lengths to please someone -- nobody seems to care enough to help me (which is objectively fair and to be expected). So I spend all my free time either ruminating over how unfair and painful all of that was (or maybe she was right, and I just failed to communicate my wants or needs to her, because I am such a
PLEASE READ up, and she actually would have loved to take care of me instead of abusing or betraying me if only I knew how to communicate that to her?), or reading fiction to distract myself from that rumination if I can. But even books that mention sex or romantic relationships between people (or just seeing happy couples on the streets) makes me so angry at how unfair this all is - that these people and my wife's affair partner do not even have to try too hard and are loved and cherished just like the way they are, and I was really trying so hard for so many years, and I am still rejected, hurt, abandoned, and betrayed, and nobody really cares about that. If I reach out and talk to people, I either do not want to open up, or if I do, and they disappoint me with their (understandable and rational) lack of interest in my actual feelings or well-being, and I withdraw, because why would I invest time and energy into someone who does not really care about me? Maybe some of them are genuinely reaching out to help, I am not sure, but I do not see that and do not trust that. So I end up back in my apartment, reading fiction, or working, or ruminating over the past mistakes and betrayals. I tried reading books about inner child healing, and I know that in principle I should be "fine on my own" - I can (and do) get by on my own, I have always been very self-sufficient, but this kind of painfully lonely existence is not worth walking up in the morning. I think about not wanting to exist often.
Apart from a handful of coping strategies (fiction, gym, math), no matter what I do (handing out and talking to people causally, or sharing my feelings with others, or not talking to people and focusing on myself, etc.), it only makes things worse in terms of how I feel, and how much I want to shut off from the world that hurts and ignores me, and I do not see any way out, and it is not getting any better on its own - I think people in this forum might have had similar experiences, so I decided to reach out in case anyone has any recommendations. I do have a therapist, but it is not helping much either. I think I will get back on meds soon.
This marriage was both the worst (betrayal, abuse) and the best (what felt like actual attunement and care the first time in my life) thing that happened to me. I know that the "best part" was likely mirroring, and it is not a healthy real connection, but I cannot continue living or have any meaningful satisfying human connection without it. I just feel lonely all the time.
I understand that the whole "nobody cares about me the way I need them to" attitude is similar to what bpds say, and that is likely my codependency talking. And I need to learn to take care of myself. At least I do not hurt people because of that, I just get disappointed and withdraw from the world. I do not know how to survive in this vacuum before I learn how to take care of myself "the right way".
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A quick retelling of our marriage.
She has a long history of serious mental health issues in her family of origin, her own therapist says she does not have a bpd disgnosis, merely "some bpd traits" (tortuous rages, splitting, projecting her rage at her mother onto me, fear of abandonment paired with the feeling of being attacked/abused/betrayed by everyone all the time, unstable relationships, bad with money, etc.), my therapist who works with several bpd patients says that she is a textbook bpd, and after reading a lot about it, I tend to agree.
She was very emotionally labile from the day we met (shifting from "I can not stand this, pack your stuff and leave" to pulling me into bed in a span of ~5 minutes) - but it became a real problem when she moved in with me in a different country around seven years ago, and started being both extremely clingy and dependent on me in all aspects of life (beyond what you'd expect from a full adult), and at the same time constantly verbally abusing me for failing to be the kind of person who would be enough for her and take care of her the way she needed (because according to her my hobbies were boring, and I no real friends, and I had dumb sense of humor, and I was awkward, and cowardly, and always forgot things etc.), while being financially irresponsible like a child (burning through my savings and pushing us to a small amount of debt), and angrily refusing to talk about any of it (I had anxiety over money ever since), and threatening to leave me, if I do not get better (I really tried!), which made me really depressed from all that stress. I also felt really violated with how she initiated physical intimacy between us, and how she refused to talk about it. I might have pushed her away by rejecting her intimacy during that time, I am still so confused and
PLEASE READed up about whether that might have caused our marriage to eventually fail. But long story short is that she eventually developed strong aversion to physical intimacy between us, but (according to her memories, which I can not trust, anymore) she kept silently torturing herself with painful sex with me for a very long time despite my attempts at talking to her about it (she refuses to remember that I was checking on her -- in her memory I was intentionally painfully abusing her, of course). She got so angry at me for hurting her like that and failing to "read her body language" that she had a several months-long affair with a coworker four years ago. Two years ago I got into a really stressful situation -- a job loss with a potential of being deported into my home country that just got into a war and was sending troops if I do not get a new jobs in time -- and so having to do urgent job interviews on top of all that. I pushed through, got several job offers in time, and she asked me to pick a "safe boring job" over a "dream job" because "after all of her sacrifices (leaving her home town), if I am not ready to sacrifice this job for our family, our marriage is over", later admiring to have started an affair with that coworker again because "I was not there to support her when the war started, always just talking about my job stress", while he was there for her when she needed him. Also she was angry at me for "making her think poorly of her coworker, who actually loved and waited for her to come back to her all these years". Later she refused to remember that she ever asked me to reject the dream job offer. She also refused to talk about how any of that made me feel because "maybe the reason why she was seeing him was because he did not make her listen to his hour-long whining about his hurt feelings that she could not bear any longer". So I withdrew emotionally in hopes of her eventually realizing what she did and reaching back to me. Whenever I got even a little angry or irritated, she'd either go and cheat or would get scared assure me that she would never do that again, and started going to therapy. Soon after, she started being angry with me for not doing enough to be attractive enough to her before she started cheating and threatening to leave. She said that if we don't fix our dead bedroom in one year, she would leave. But any of my attempts to do anything good for our relationships somehow never worked, all my attempts at gifts or trips or fun together would always find a way to turn into complete
PLEASE READ (like canceling countless plans to go to concerts of her favorite musicians at the last moment). While I was trying to step over my feelings of betrayal to take care of her nightly panic attacks (re job) and organize some fun for us (she had no time, had to focus on her deadlines), she kept secretly meeting and talking with her affair partner. Eventually she asked for us to separate and leave separately so she could "come back to me on her own terms". We kept arguing over whether I'd be okay with her seeing her affair partner (her saying that she needs complete freedom to want to come back), and eventually I said that I cannot make her do anything, but if she does get into any kind of relationship with her affair partner, it will hurt me so much, that I might loose any love for her. Later she was saying that she somehow "forgot" about me ever saying anything like that. So she just started physically cheating with her coworker again and I slept with someone too out of spite, which "hurt her so much", that it made her cheat with even less regard to my feelings. She kept saying that this is just "casual" and that "she does that to stop being angry at me so we could fix our marriage", but after a couple of months of seeing him she eventually "fell in love with him" - just as I said she inevitably would. I said that I cannot do that anymore, but she kept insisting that if I ever really loved her, I should be okay with continuing to love her and take care of her despite her having a relationship (and possibly starting a family) with another person, and that it is me who is throwing our great love out of the window. So she eventually said that she refuses to stop seeing him, and was really upset that I refused to talk to her from that moment on, but never backed on that decision. This was three months ago and I went to complete NC from that point on. I still have dreams about her almost every day, and ruminate over what I might have done or communicated wrong, because at times she was the most caring and attentive person I have ever met (mirroring), and I felt so excruciatingly alone all my life before I met her. I picked up the rest of my stuff a few weeks ago, and she texted me that she missed me and wanted to meet, but I just replied "No" - I know that I never want to see this sick bitch ever again. But I do not want to see anyone else ever again either, because if I find courage to open up to anyone, I can feel that their complete indifference to my actual well-being because they don't actually know me or care about me -- and I feel how I continue to withdraw from the rest world and that might be a problem.
