BPD spouse demands a pros and cons list to stay married - common?

[campbembpd]

It's happened a few times to me. In the middle of being enraged always. But she'll make a demand that we sit down and make a pros and cons list of staying together (usually yelling, swearing or very hostile tone). Part of me is tempted but not seriously. Clearly that would be a very bad time to do that. Although I really don't know if that is a healthy thing to do (if she's in a calm, normal state of mind)

We're in the middle of one right now. She gets escalated and I'm trying to stand firm where I am not going to engage her when she's yelling, swearing. It's making her more enraged. Gotten to where she's telling me she hates me, we're doomed. Very split. It's happened more times then I can count sadly. And if I hang in there and we make it through another round of days hating me she'll snap back to "normal". The issue of making a list never comes up again of course. 

[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.

[yellowbutterfly]

Oh yes the dreaded list ... I got that from my xH uBPD more than once. And then it was a list of all the things I need to DO for him.

What do you do when you're confronted with a fight and she's yelling, etc? How do you disengage and set your boundaries? Are you safe?

[campbembpd]

Oh yes the dreaded list ... I got that from my xH uBPD more than once. And then it was a list of all the things I need to DO for him.

What do you do when you're confronted with a fight and she's yelling, etc? How do you disengage and set your boundaries? Are you safe?

Ugh I feel like a baby just learning. Until just recently I've had zero boundaries I'm sad to say. Up until now, for the past 20 years I would just beg for forgiveness usually. I wouldn't know what I did wrong but would say I was in the wrong. She would say I did or said something that I didn't remember saying and am quite certain in hindsight I didn't, I would just say I'm sorry or "if you remember that it must have happened". I would support her delusions and circle talk, listen for hours and hours, days and days at times to how awful I am or all the things I've done to her, how terribly I've treated her.

Very recently I started calmly saying I'm not going to argue/discuss while she's yelling or swearing. and walk away into the other room. I don't respond to the long string of texts. I do check in once in a while to say hi and ask how she's doing but I'm thinking that may even be a mistake. It seems like poking the bear often.

I'm physically safe but she's really in enraged. She left the house a while ago after drinking a bottle of wine to go to a restaurant/lounge. I'm certain to drink more but at least she did take a lyft. She's sent a bunch of texts saying how she's said she hates me, I don't own her, she told me to do whatever the F I want to do, leave her the F alone.

[HurtAndTired]

Our couples therapist actually had us make a list of pros and cons of staying together as homework following our first session. I ended up making a detailed list while my wife just spouted some things off the top of her head at the beginning of the next session... no surprise there. This makes me wonder if she heard about this technique in therapy. Has your wife been to an individual T or have you both been in couples counseling? I think it is a fairly common tool. However, I agree with you that a dysregulated person is not going to make a well-thought-out list. That is why the technique did not work well for my wife, although it did help me quite a bit...and if I'm being honest, I think that hearing my list may have been beneficial to my wife.

That being said, I can sympathize with all that you have been going through. Like you, I had weak to no boundaries for many years and then suddenly started placing and enforcing them last August after reading the "Stop Caretaking" book by Margalis Fjelsted (it was life-changing!) Since then, my wife has been going through an extinction burst, or more accurately, a series of extinction bursts. It sounds to me as though you are in a very similar situation. Since you have stopped your caretaking behavior, your wife has not known how to cope with her uncomfortable feelings, and the rage that you are experiencing is her trying to get you to "go back to normal." Hold fast and keep your course. It is the only way that you will come out of the extinction burst(s) in a better position than you started.

How long have you been holding the line in the sand on your boundaries? How long has this extinction burst been going on?

HurtAndTired

[campbembpd]

Our couples therapist actually had us make a list of pros and cons of staying together as homework following our first session. I ended up making a detailed list while my wife just spouted some things off the top of her head at the beginning of the next session... no surprise there. This makes me wonder if she heard about this technique in therapy. Has your wife been to an individual T or have you both been in couples counseling? I think it is a fairly common tool. However, I agree with you that a dysregulated person is not going to make a well-thought-out list. That is why the technique did not work well for my wife, although it did help me quite a bit...and if I'm being honest, I think that hearing my list may have been beneficial to my wife.

That being said, I can sympathize with all that you have been going through. Like you, I had weak to no boundaries for many years and then suddenly started placing and enforcing them last August after reading the "Stop Caretaking" book by Margalis Fjelsted (it was life-changing!) Since then, my wife has been going through an extinction burst, or more accurately, a series of extinction bursts. It sounds to me as though you are in a very similar situation. Since you have stopped your caretaking behavior, your wife has not known how to cope with her uncomfortable feelings, and the rage that you are experiencing is her trying to get you to "go back to normal." Hold fast and keep your course. It is the only way that you will come out of the extinction burst(s) in a better position than you started.

How long have you been holding the line in the sand on your boundaries? How long has this extinction burst been going on?

HurtAndTired

I think our former couples T may have brought up the list at one point a long time ago. The few times she's brought it up is when she's really escalated and wants a fight.

Yes the stop caretaking book has been an eye opener, and provided life changing information. I have just started making small changes in the past maybe 6 weeks. It's hard for me to gauge how I'm doing. I would give myself a B. This last episode she got more and more enraged when I told her I wasn't going to engage while she was swearing at me or yelling. Her response was to say she's a fighter and needs to fight it out and I should know that so it will never get better if I walk away!

I did walk away and stayed in the other room but I was still in the house and made dinner where she was and she continued to throw insults, etc. I tried not to engage and did remain calm but responded to a few things. I don't know if I could have done something better like asked her to leave while I made dinner or just not talked to her at all (maybe put in headphones I thought?). My personal barometer is out of whack and it's hard to know what's normal, right, etc. I would calmly discuss things intermittently but would walk away and repeat that I wasn't discussing it when she was angry. She got more mad, moved my clothes to the spare room. Text after text after text saying she hates me, we're done, awful things then texted we're talking about divorce in the morning. I went to bed in the spare room and she came to get me at 3am, sad and didn't want to fight anymore. Next morning she was sending me loving texts, funny pics and split back.

Even though I wasn't engaging that much, I was some and she was texting and it was so incredibly  distressing for me for that 36 hours. I feel like it really is tearing me apart. I'm having issues detaching emotionally. I intellectually know she's mentally ill, I know that whatever she's doing will end at some point, but when she gets going it's like I'm being crushed emotionally.
 
I don't think I have good boundaries set. I think I'm still figuring it out but I feel like I'm being meek still. Like after that last situation I think what would have made it better for me or what would be appropriate. I think I could leave the house but honestly I would need to leave the house for 2 days when she gets into a rage. And I'm the one who takes care of the kids, meals, groceries, etc. And I'm leaving the kids potentially alone with her while she's enraged and I wouldn't be there if she turned it on them.

I would love to hear some examples of some boundaries others have set and their experiences! 

[HurtAndTired]

I can only tell you that it WILL get easier as time goes on if you hold the line on your boundaries. However, it is still very, very difficult for me...even after nearly 9 months of holding strong. After years and years of suffering every type of abuse imaginable, my brain gets easily emotionally flooded (adrenaline dump, fight or flight, elevated heart rate, survival brain, etc.) in response to my wife's emotional dysregulation. Let's face it, dysregulation like this IS scary, especially so when you've been physically attacked or dealt with suicide threats/attempts that follow the dysregulation. Extinction bursts are not for the weak of heart, which is why the "Stop Caretaking" book warns you not to attempt the boundaries if you are not prepared to follow through 100% of the time.

What has worked for me is that I have started to try to observe my wife's dysregulation like a psychologist. Having that clinical distance helps me analyze what is going on with her. I am naturally an analytical person and having learned so much about BPD here, through books, and with my individual therapist it helps me stay calm when I can list the symptoms that my wife is displaying in real time in my mind. Not only does this help keep me from getting emotionally flooded, but it gives me time to think about what (if any) response I should give to a particular behavior. It has also helped me to try to listen to the emotion behind her words. The emotions are valid even if what she is saying is completely delusional and factually inaccurate.

With all this being said, there are still times when her behavior is just too much and I have to excuse myself and either leave the house or go to another room (and possibly lock the door.) However, some of the time I am able to kind of step outside of myself and observe what she is doing and/or saying as if it were something on TV. "Oh, she is clearly upset about a bad day at work and is trying to project her negative feelings onto me" or "That angry remark she made about all men being evil must have been triggered by the scene in that movie we are watching were the man abducted the girl, which made her think about being abused by her stepfather" and other things like that.

Both of those are actual examples that have happened in the past few weeks. In both cases, I was able to respond to her tilting into dysregulation in a positive/neutral way rather than getting defensive or panicking as I would have in the past. In the case of the work situation where she was saying really awful things about me, although I had done nothing wrong, I figured out what was behind the emotion due to her having just come home from work. I was able to use the SET technique in that case. I said something along the lines of "It seems like something at work is really bothering you. I really hate having to hold it in all day when someone at my job is a jerk and I can't tell anyone how upset I am. I'm glad to let you tell me all about it and vent to me, but I am not the person who made your day suck. Can you tell me about what happened at work today and who it was that made you angry?"

In the case of her getting upset about the man abducting the girl in a movie, she started to come on to me a few minutes after going on her tirade about how evil men are. I was able to see that she was in a dark place due to the sexual abuse from her stepfather, that seeing a man abducting a girl triggered those memories, and I knew that she was trying to soothe those feelings in a very dysfunctional way with sex. I wanted no part of being used as a "thing" to soothe her and feed into her dysfunctional relationship with intimacy, so I politely but firmly turned down her advances. I knew that she would likely become fully dysregulated as a result, and when she did I merely got up, took my pillow to the guest room, locked the door, and spent the night there. By the next day when she had gone through a sleep cycle, she was no longer dysregulated and acted as if the whole thing had never happened.

I still get emotionally flooded. This does not work for me every time. It is still not easy for me, but it is getting easier. My skin is getting thicker. Her words no longer sting the same way they did. What helps me is having clear rules for how much I am willing to take and what my safety plan is when she becomes fully dysregulated and can no longer be reasoned with. My safety plan is, in a nutshell, this:

• Physical attacks, even pushing, result in a call to the police
• Name calling, screaming, swearing, is given a few minutes with a warning and then I leave the room - either go to my safe room (the guest room with a locking door, or I leave the house for a set period of time "I'm going to the store, I'll be back in an hour" If our S2 is around, I take him with me as he should not hear or see mom acting this way
• Circular arguments (bringing up past issues) get one warning "I'm not going to argue about this with you again" and then I leave on the first repetition of the circular argument
• Suicide threats result in a call to emergency mental health services
• Divorce threats result in me saying "If you want to file for divorce, hire an attorney and file. From that point on, you and I will only talk to each other through our attorneys. Until I receive the divorce papers, we are not talking about this. If you continue to bring this up I am leaving the room.
• No sex while she is dysregulated, drunk, or both. No sex if she has been awful to me leading up to her coming on to me. "I need to feel emotional intimacy if you want to have physical intimacy."
• If she is drinking, I am not. I will not engage in arguments with her if she has been drinking. I will ignore her and/or walk away. (I have stopped drinking altogether for now as I feel vulnerable and unable to calmly enforce my boundaries if I am disinhibited)
• Things I need for self-care, such as visits to my parents or friends, are not up for discussion. I will inform her and go as long as there is no legitimate issue (she is sick and cannot take care of S2, etc.)
• Long angry texts are ignored. Angry phone calls are terminated after a warning and I will not answer until I get a "nice" text or voicemail

This list is not perfect, and I'm sure that I am leaving a thing or two out, but the long and short of it is that I am no longer letting her splits dictate my life. Inside, I still feel sick to my stomach when this is happening and these things are rarely easy to do, but they have been getting easier with practice. If you are only 6 weeks in, you can expect that this could continue for months before it gets better. However, I can offer you the hope that my wife has been forced to start to look for alternative coping mechanisms to self-soothe. Some of them have been maladaptive and destructive (increased drinking), some have been weird (taking on her abusive mother's persona), but some have been positive (she has finally admitted that she has been abusive to me and wants to see a psychologist to deal with the uncomfortable feelings that I am no longer dealing with for her.)

Stay the course and things will get better. Things had gotten so bad with my wife that I finally came to the realization that she would either learn how to deal with her own sh!t or she would leave me once and for all. I made peace with both outcomes. I have been hoping for the best while preparing for the worst. The one thing that I knew, and continue to know, for certain is that I could not go on living as her caretaker for one more day. I cannot and will not go back to the way things were, and my wife is slowly (sometimes painfully slowly) adjusting to the new reality that I will never function as her emotional punching bag/caretaker again.

Give yourself some grace for making all of the progress you have. Know that you will make mistakes and that it will be hard, but know that you are doing the right thing. It's the right thing for you, and it's the right thing for her. It is past time that she learns how to self-soothe and deal with her own issues, and it is past time that you start taking care of yourself so that you can become a whole person again. You've got this!

HurtAndTired

[EyesUp]

"OK, why don't you go first and show me what you have in mind, so I can be sure I know what you're looking for?"

[campbembpd]

Thank you HurtAndTired!

Like so many others I feel like there are a lot of similarities in our situations.

I am trying to be more like a pathologist as well. I'm looking at situations, even going back through journals of past incidents and review them almost clinically. I try to match up what she's saying or how she's acting to the specific symptoms of BPD. But it's still scary as hell in these early stages.

The list of rules/boundaries is so helpful!!! I'm borrowing a lot of them and put them in my notepad. Now the other part is actually remembering what to do in those heated moments. You mentioned being easily emotionally flooded. I'm right there too. I go into freeze/flight mode so sometimes my mind goes blank, it's often hard to remember what to say.

What you said is where I am too. Well where I want to be... I know I can't let her splits dictate my life. I'm building in these boundaries so they won't. Funny what you said about how bad it got with your wife that you had to come to terms with her dealing with her own stuff or would leave. Because I'm there too. It got so bad the past 6-12 months that I made peace with whatever outcome. If she decides to leave that will be her choice. I really really want it to work but I won't be the punching bag anymore. It's encouraging to hear that things get easier over time.

The drinking... what you mentioned there. My wife and I are both heavy drinkers, I've cut down a lot and I'm not argumentative when I do. I'm taking a break for 6-8 weeks so I'm actually looking forward to it. My wife is a heavy daily drinker and I've thought about that sort of boundary. Drinking is often a contributing factor in her starting arguments, circular discussions, late night 'talks' for hours. I've thought about setting that boundary before that but she may never be able to talk to me because she starts drinking in the afternoon some days. But I know it's an important one that I should implement.

For the texts... I certainly get my fair share of long strings of angry texts. Do you initially just respond that you won't be responding or reading her texts until she calls and is able to talk nice? I'm curious what do you define as nice? My wife can be dysregulated for days. The words she say might look nice on paper but they're often passive aggressive.

One more question... when there are children around. I mean I wish I would have known and implemented these things so many years ago. I could have protected them so much better. My kids have seen way too much insanity. But they are now: almost 18 year old daughter and 20 year old son with intellectual disabilities. My son is rarely the target of her rages if ever. But my daughter can be. She can move around too. My wife might start angry at me then move it to my daughter or vice-versa. A lot of times it's just the things my wife says I don't want them to hear. The lies, the threats. It's damaging to me so I KNOW it's been and continues to be damaging to them.

I guess it's 2 questions. One is when you leave to set a boundary do you have the same boundary set for the kids. i.e. my kids are older - do I tell them we're all leaving? I guess I worry she'll say things about me when I'm gone. And if she's focused on me I would hate to have them become a target for not responding to mom. So if mom is mad at me, do I take the older kids away or how do you all who are experienced address it if the partner starts pulling the kids in (telling them we're getting a divorce, saying how I've done terrible things, lies, etc)

2nd question which I keep trying to get a clue on is how to help my daughter especially. I'm getting her into therapy which is great. But I feel the books and the resources here have here and the knowledge that my uBPDw has mental illness basically has been a paradigm shift for me. I've seen a therapist for a couple of years but it wasn't until we discovered what was actually going on (BP) that I was able to make progress, find the right resources including this place.

People have recommended to not tell daughter what's affecting mom but I do not want her to go through years of what I went through. That doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

[Notwendy]

I can't say for your son as he may need a legal guardian as an adult, but for your D, once she is 18, she will make her own choices. If she's been a target for your wife, and you mentioned she is afraid to come home sometimes, I doubt she would choose to live with her. College was my path to becoming independent from my parents so I could have my own place to live and not have to live in the chaos at home.

I wish someone had explained my mother's mental illness to me at age 18, rather than to pretend she didn't because then, I assumed she was treating me the way she was through either my fault or her choice. I already suspected she had a mental illness and was looking in psychology books for an explanation. BPD wasn't in them at the time. Now, with the internet, I'd have found BPD on my own. Your D is a bright, college bound student and I would bet she knows more than she lets on. I agree that if you tell her it could be triangulation, but I also think - if she wants the information- speaking with a therapist will lead her to it.

Will your wife say negative things about you? If she already is doing it- likely yes. You can't control what she says. As to boundaries- your D needs to be the one to have her own boundaries and being supportive of hers - knowing you love her no matter what would be helpful to her. It may be that her boundaries are different from yours.

[HurtAndTired]

I'm going to agree with NotWendy's advice about your daughter. With my S2 (nearly 3) being still so little, it is easy to just scoop him up and get him out of the room or house if Mom is dysregulated, but I know it will get more complicated when he is older.

My SS25 knows that something is wrong with his mom, but has bought into her "poor me" victim story 100% and has become her flying monkey against me. Being my SS and not my S made the situation with him much more complicated and there wasn't much power I had as a stepparent to protect him from the weirdness in the house. I definitely learned what I wanted to do and didn't want to do as a parent in a BPD household from raising him through his teen years though. Things will be very different with my S2 and I will talk to him about his mom's "being upset" in age-appropriate terms that I will go over with my therapist as he matures. I know I can't shield him from witnessing bizarre behavior, but I won't normalize it or allow him to be gaslighted about it.

To answer your question about my boundary with texts, I haven't been super specific about it. I have just told her that I will not have conversations with her where I am being yelled at. This includes face-to-face, phone calls, and texts (yes, I feel that you can yell at someone via text.) I have told her that if I feel like I am being yelled at I will walk away from the conversation. This means actually physically walking away if it is face-to-face, hanging up if it is on the phone, or not replying if it is via text. I will give her a verbal warning before I physically walk away or hang up, but I just leave the text unanswered and leave her to figure it out. If the text is long and nasty, I will even delete it without reading the whole thing. I have told her on many occasions that I will only resume talking to her once she has shown me that she can talk to me politely. She doesn't like these boundaries, but they are not for her, they are for me. I have also made it clear that she can have her own boundaries about what she will and won't tolerate from other people and what she won't and I will do my best to respect them.

The part about the drinking has me concerned though. My wife has always been a social drinker but has really been hitting the sauce since I put my boundaries in place. She claims that she is now using it to "relieve a little stress" at the "end of a tough day", but every day is now a stressful day to her. This is her rationalizing her drinking going from a social/weekend thing to a daily thing and trying to minimize the problem in her own mind. What she is really doing is self-medicating using the booze. Everything I have read about BPD says that adding alcohol to the mix is a really, really, really bad idea as it exacerbates symptoms significantly. This has also been my lived experience and I imagine it is yours as well.

I am glad to hear that you are taking a break from drinking yourself. It's a tough thing to do when, like me, you like to unwind with some beers on the weekend. However, I have found that it is just too easy for my wife to pull me into her drama if I have been drinking. Like you, I have never had a problem with being argumentative/aggressive/nasty when drunk. I am an "I seriously love you guys" type of drunk, and I miss having beers with my buddies. "With my buddies" where that behavior is going to have to stay for the foreseeable future, however, as I just can't feel safe drinking around her. I need to be able to get in the car and drive away if she gets violent, and to protect my son from her if she has been drinking and starts acting irrationally.

I remember us coming home from the bar 12 years ago after a night of drinking and her insisting on going downstairs to her then 12-year-old son's room to tearfully tell him how much she loves him. This would repeat many times over the next few years and always to the same result...a very embarrassed and confused teenage boy. I could easily see her doing something like that with our S2 and scaring the hell out of him. I also have to be cognizant of the fact that I could have to call the police at any time if she gets violent and would prefer to be sober when they arrive.

There is nothing that you can do about her drinking, but if she sees you not drinking it might make her feel more stigmatized to be drinking alone. I know that my wife does and has started trying to hide her drinking. It is this need to self-medicate coupled with the knowledge that she is now drinking alone daily and is unable to hide it that I believe has pushed her to try to get psychiatric help.

Don't expect the fight or flight brain to go away. You will always probably have that reaction to her dysregulation on some level, as you should. It is dangerous behavior and your brain is reacting appropriately. However, just like a combat vet or a cop, you can learn how to stay calm in crazy situations and fall back on your training to take over. That is why it is so important to practice, practice, practice on how to handle these situations. Play them out with your therapist in therapy. Rehearse them in your mind. You know your wife. You know her triggers. You probably can even pretty accurately predict her response and what she is going to say when she goes off the rails. You are going through your training right now. It is a trial by fire. That is what I meant when I said it gets easier. You never completely get rid of that emotional flooding, but you can train yourself how to fall into an automatic response if you work at it long enough. That's where I am at now, and you will get to if you stick to your guns and keep up the good work. You got this man!

HurtAndTired

[Notwendy]

BPD mother self medicated with alcohol. If she was drinking, she was out of control.

Dad didn't drink often and if he did, it wasn't much. I grew up very wary of people who drank a lot. I can tell if someone has been drinking instantly. I might have an occasional glass of wine but that's the extent of it.

So, I was surprised when a counselor recommended I go to 12 step groups for co-dependency as alcohol isn't an current issue but after attending these groups, I can see the connection between the dynamics in a family where there is alcohol addiction and also families with someone with BPD. The dynamics are similar.

A common aspect is- one can not change another person but we can work on ourselves. You can not change your wife's drinking- but you can change yours. It's also interesting that there are several (now sober) alcoholics in CODA and ACA groups. AA helped them to stop drinking but it's ACA and CODA that is helping them work on the reasons/dynamics that became the reason for their drinking. One can be co-dependent and an alcoholic too.

It's also been interesting, as someone who has avoided alcohol and people who drink- to be sitting in meetings with alcoholics. It's given me a clearer perspective of the situation. The personal work some of these people have made is impressive- truly the stopping drinking isn't the whole of it- it's a big step but the personal growth gained is beyond that.

The patterns in families are also a consideration. We know there's a genetic/familiar component to alcohol addiction. Your D might benefit from seeing you work on your own drinking- to be a role model for how to overcome it.

[campbembpd]

Thanks for all your notes.

The texts are getting easier to not respond to or keep it short. I used to feel the need to constantly go back and forth, JADE'ing basically. As I go through situations (as I'm in right now). I see what she's saying and how mis-aligned with the truth it is and how her feelings are facts to her but they aren't actual facts makes it much easier to be calm. I am trying to be more saying things like making a statement of what happened: "It sounds like you were really upset and mad. I think I felt flustered/upset/stressed too. Things were heated for a moment and I'm sorry it made you really feel bad". I don't know, I'm up for critique .

Drinking is a big concern. She's a problem/heavy drinker and maybe a full alcoholic. You hit the nail on the head about her feeling more stigmatized for drinking alone. Whenever I've stopped drinking she starts getting elevated and will say things like 'I'm being so judged' or "you're really going to not drink when so and so comes over so I'll be drinking alone?" She gets very vocal and upset when she's the only one drinking. Then she also gets upset saying that all our activities revolve around alcohol - (and a lot do) happy hours, going to a local pub, etc. I always say I'm okay with not drinking we can still go - I'll get a virgin xyz or soda and lime. Then often times when I'm taking a break from alcohol it will get to where she starts to put me down or call me names: I'm no fun if I'm not drinking. I'm boring, I don't talk, I'm a drag, etc.

And yes, practice is what I'm doing. I'm looking at scenarios that have happened, playing them through and thinking about what I did well and what I could have done better, how would I handle that next time?

I have started attending a CODA group. I'm not following the 12 steps necessarily yet but it's been helpful to be in a place hearing other people with similar stories and experiences and how the co-dependency is very similar to the caretaking.

[kells76]

The texts are getting easier to not respond to or keep it short. I used to feel the need to constantly go back and forth, JADE'ing basically. As I go through situations (as I'm in right now). I see what she's saying and how mis-aligned with the truth it is and how her feelings are facts to her but they aren't actual facts makes it much easier to be calm. I am trying to be more saying things like making a statement of what happened: "It sounds like you were really upset and mad. I think I felt flustered/upset/stressed too. Things were heated for a moment and I'm sorry it made you really feel bad". I don't know, I'm up for critique .

Great to hear that the texting situation is getting easier! It's a good step to take, to learn to let her stuff be her stuff, and that you aren't required to participate in her stuff.

Listening for the feelings behind the words is a good skill to build. I bet your reply above is much different than how you used to reply 

Only thought I have is it's possible to shorten it a bit, to keep it focused on her feelings:

"It sounds like you were really upset and mad. I think I felt flustered/upset/stressed too. Things were heated for a moment and I'm sorry it made you really feel bad".

Sometimes pwBPD don't do well when in the middle of validation, someone else's feelings get brought up. Could be worth tweaking.

Another thought could be leaving off the apology if there isn't anything real to apologize for - kind of keeping apologies for the "real, big stuff" versus apologizing as a reflex or as an attempt to control her feelings (to calm or soothe her). So another example could be:

"It sounds like you were really upset and mad. I think I felt flustered/upset/stressed too. Things were heated for a moment and I'm sorry it made you really feel bad, you're right".

Anyway, just some concepts to keep in mind: sometimes shorter is better/more effective; we can inadvertently insert our own feelings when validating; apologize when you mean it, not when you don't; and "reviewing game tape" can be really helpful 

...

Drinking is a big concern. She's a problem/heavy drinker and maybe a full alcoholic. You hit the nail on the head about her feeling more stigmatized for drinking alone. Whenever I've stopped drinking she starts getting elevated and will say things like 'I'm being so judged' or "you're really going to not drink when so and so comes over so I'll be drinking alone?" She gets very vocal and upset when she's the only one drinking. Then she also gets upset saying that all our activities revolve around alcohol - (and a lot do) happy hours, going to a local pub, etc. I always say I'm okay with not drinking we can still go - I'll get a virgin xyz or soda and lime. Then often times when I'm taking a break from alcohol it will get to where she starts to put me down or call me names: I'm no fun if I'm not drinking. I'm boring, I don't talk, I'm a drag, etc.

Is that over text or in person? How long does it go on for?

[Notwendy]

It makes sense to get used to a group when first starting. It's a public group and so some members have more experience with recovery than others.

The work with a sponsor was very helpful to me. I hadn't experienced anything quite like it. It was not easy- she turned the mirror on me, which made me look at my own behavior. When someone is co-dependent- the tendency is to focus on the other person's behavior but we can only change our own and so it helps to shift that focus to our behavior.

How does one become co-dependent? If we grow up in a family with a disordered person and/or someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs, it's a learned behavior- it's a "normal" in that family. Walking on eggshells, enabling BPD mother was a normal.

I didn't even "see" these tendencies as they were the "normal" to me but working with a sponsor, I was able to see them and work on doing things differently. If you do find someone you would like to do this with - I think it could be helpful. It is possible to be both co-dependent and alcoholic/ or addict. I know of several people from the groups who stay to work on the co-dependent aspect even after being sober for a long time.

[Notwendy]

When you don't drink with her, she may feel shame and so wants to bring you into drinking with her to alleviate that. The critical comments are her way of projecting that shame.

The two of you doing social things together that involve drinking are her way of "normalizing" it. If you didn't do these things together and instead did things like go to the movies, or walk in the park, she'd have to find some way to drink and it would be more obvious.

You can't change her behavior though, only yours. I also wonder, if drinking is a problem- why are you going to pubs? It's like if she were on a slimming diet- and the two of you went to a pastry shop, you abstained from eating the goodies and she gave into temptation and then felt shame. If taking her to a pub is "normalizing" her drinking, it's a form of enabling. Taking her to a pub while you abstain could feel shaming to her. The boundary could be to do something else that doesn't involve alcohol.

[campbembpd]

This thread is getting too long . We’re back in the middle of an episode, a different one from when this started. This time she got super angry about our daughter getting injured at a practice for dance. I don’t understand this part but for the last 6 years at least she gets infuriated when our daughter gets hurt/injured. She’s flown into big rages about it. For example My daughter started fainting 4-5 years ago and would randomly faint. We took her to a neurologist and several medical professionals, and ultimately, there was nothing physiologically wrong, they said it was due to stress and being overwhelmed. Thankfully, she stopped doing that after about 18 months. However, the point is my wife would often get mad when my daughter fainted. It got to the point where my daughter would beg me not to tell mom that she fainted…

Not that the details matter much, it’s the same kind of scenario. She got angry, and got into the car and was swearing about having to take her to the.F-ing hospital and enough is enough! She has to stop getting hurt! my response was to offer going myself and she didn’t have to go. When her anger continued, I asked if she was going to be able to handle this situation and ever since then it’s just escalated..

Last 2 days were bad. She went from being angry to being sad last night and this morning. Through this episode, I did the same thing as before, where I told her when she started yelling I was gonna leave the room. When she started name-calling, or putting me down, I would leave. And that’s triggered another level because she essentially said that is not gonna work for her. if I walk away, then we’re pretty much done, she needs me to stay there while she’s going through her emotions. She’s talking very seriously about a separation. Even telling her mom and my mom and wants to do a pros and cons list again. I’m trying to delay  And tell her I don’t want to do this today, let’s do it tomorrow. But I really think she may be serious this time, but she could snap out in the morning I really don’t know.

I’m starting to doubt myself. Maybe I put too many boundaries in place at once? It’s obviously too much for her… I don’t know if I give in and placate her for now and in the meantime, contact an attorney? Of course, she keeps blaming me for making her do the things she does, for making her feel the way she does, and if I didn’t do xyz and treat her so terribly then she wouldn’t get to the point she gets to. She says she doesn’t want this to happen again. As we all know that’s not possible, as much as I and I’m sure many of you have tried over the years no matter what we do or how we think we’re being, there’s always gonna be the next trigger.

She’s blaming my new behaviors on therapy and working on my codependency. Making passive aggressive comments about how good I’m doing and I’ve really ‘ mastered’ it.

There’s a piece of me that knows if we just wait long enough, she will split back to ‘normal’.

In the meantime, if she doesn’t, I honestly don’t know what a separation would do exactly would it help? Has anyone experienced a separation that resulted in anything better afterwards with a bpd partner?. She says she will not go back to therapy, the blame is all on me. The only thing I could think it might do is if we were separated, things would be very difficult for her. I help with her business, I do 100% of the cooking in the grocery shopping and pretty much running around the kids as they need it. I support all the technology in the house and take care of any little issues so maybe if we were separated, she would see very quickly , how hard things would be without me. Not to mention, I’m not even sure how that would financially work. We can’t afford another place, I can’t even pay all our bills myself with the one house.

I don’t know, I am very conflicted. I can’t imagine my life without her. She’s really wonderful, smart, beautiful, is the source of pretty much our whole social life. but also, I can’t live the rest of my life like this. She says she can’t live like this either, I can’t keep doing this to her. The thing is and I tried to explain to her kindly that we both have things to work through and that I’m not the only one she has these interactions with. So we can separate but that doesn’t mean, these feelings are going to go away from her.

[Notwendy]

I don’t understand this part but for the last 6 years at least she gets infuriated when our daughter gets hurt/injured. She’s flown into big rages about it.

However, the point is my wife would often get mad when my daughter fainted. It got to the point where my daughter would beg me not to tell mom that she fainted…

My best explanation for this ( and it's my own opinion) is Karpman triangle dynamics. My BPD mother sees herself in Victim position. Other people are either in Rescuer position to her and if they aren't - they are in Persecutor position- she believes they are either attacking her, hurting her, or neglecting her- and she then is angry at them. They can not be in Victim position- only she is.

If someone is hurt or sick- they need attention and so become intruders into the Victim position. Other family members are focused on them at the moment. This doesn't fit their assumed roles and is seen as having done something to the pwBPD at the moment- and so they react as such.

[HurtAndTired]

This is a tough situation you are in and I know that you are panicking because I have been exactly where you are on many occasions. My wife absolutely hates my boundaries and she has acted out against them, sometimes viciously, in a prolonged desperate attempt to bully me into "going back to normal." Are you familiar with the concept of an extinction burst? https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=85479.0

So far during her extinction bursts (rather than one long one, it has been a series of bursts pushing back against my boundaries) my wife has:

• Threatened divorce multiple times, to the point of saying she was calling an attorney
• Told me to move out of the house
• Told me she was moving out of the house
• Said she was going to fly across the country with our S2 to stay with her family for "a while"
• Kicked me out of the marital bedroom and into the guestroom for weeks, and once over a month
• Threatened to tell my boss a list of untrue things about me that would ruin my career
• Told my SS25, falsely, that I had "verbally assaulted" her while I was "drunk" (I told her that she was at the emotional level of a toddler and that I was tired of her tantrums after having a few beers...after losing patience with having her scream obscenities at me for about 5 minutes over our dog having a seizure) which resulted in this 25 yo bodybuilder who is on steroids threatening to "beat my a$$ if I ever touched a beer again" in my own house
• Telling me that she never wanted to have our S2 and that my "forcing" her to do so means that I "raped" her
• After successfully triangulating my SS25 against me, she tried to do the same with my parents and priest. Her goal was to eliminate my support system

I'm sure there are some other things that I am forgetting to list here, but you get the point. It's been a very, very rough ride for the past 9 months since I placed my boundaries and held strong.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I called her bluff on the divorce threats which ended them. However, I had gotten to the point where I was ready to accept her following through with her threat if it came to it. Even though I was 99.9 percent sure she was bluffing, I was stressing out so much about the constant threats that I couldn't take it anymore. I figured it was better to either take that manipulation tool away from her or chance the road to divorce, but that at least the threat would no longer be hanging over my head.

Like you, I was (and still am) worried about finances and custody. To that end, I have extensive documentation of my wife's suicide threats, her domestic violence against me, and her threats to lie to get me fired (extortion - a felony). This tilts the scales heavily in my favor with custody. I am also working to get my financial house in order so that I can buy out her half of the house if it comes to it.  My therapist has told me that part of me will always be afraid of her until I can get out from under her power. This does not mean that I intend separation or divorce, but that I am getting my ducks in a row so that I will not have to worry about finances or custody if she chooses that route.

You specifically asked if anyone has ever gone through a separation. We have. About five years ago we got into an argument about kids. Before marriage, we had agreed that having one child was a priority for both of us. Unfortunately, when we tried about a year into our marriage she suffered a miscarriage. It was emotionally devastating for both of us. I waited almost two years to bring up the subject again because I was trying to be sensitive to her needs, but I was approaching 45 and she was approaching 41 and we were running out of time biologically.

She immediately said no, and I responded "Ok, I understand why you wouldn't want to risk another miscarriage. Let's start working on adoption." She agreed, but the next day reversed herself and said "I have already raised a kid. I am done being a parent. It's time for me to be selfish and live for me." This was a complete deal-breaker for me. For the next nine months, I pleaded with her to change her mind, but to no avail. She would mock me for wanting a child and was incredibly cruel to me. She would scream at me to just divorce her so I could go find someone else who wanted a kid. There was a low point at Christmas when I was weeping because my brother has no children, my grandparents have all passed and my parents aren't getting any younger. I was looking at my future and saw nothing but my family of origin disappearing and having no one to pass any of their accumulated wisdom, traditions, and love on to. She once again mocked me for crying saying that I was "less than a man" and that this is what I got for having a failed first marriage to an alcoholic who was unfit for motherhood.

In March of that year, I moved out and into my parents' home for six weeks. It was just as the Covid lockdown was starting and my parents were at their winter home in Florida. I was isolated in that empty house for a month and a half. Finally, after weeks of no contact, my wife reached out to me and wanted to talk. We reconciled and she said she was willing to try again for a child. I want to be very clear that this was not a manipulation tactic on my part. I was ready to file for divorce as soon as the lockdown allowed. However, I agreed to reconcile, and just over a year later our wonderful son was born.

After the birth of our son, things were good for a little over a year until she started splitting on me again. So to answer your question, yes a relationship can survive a separation and sometimes they are even necessary. Had we not separated, I would have filed for divorce and she would have never understood that I DO have boundaries (me not backing down on the "deal-breakers" that we agreed to before marriage was the first boundary that I actually stuck to in our relationship.) Financially, it didn't affect us because I was staying at my parent's house for free and was still paying my part of the mortgage and the bills for our house one town away.

The takeaway is that my wife has ruled me with fear for most of our relationship. I am trying to get out from under that fear right now, and have largely succeeded. The boundaries are an important part of ending the fear and a part of taking back control of my life. My separation was the first time that I refused to let her control me with fear and she ended up being the one who blinked first. Ask yourself if you are letting fear control you right now. Given what you have said before, it is likely that your wife is bluffing and/or living through a divorce fantasy like my wife has (she never stopped to consider the financial devastation that a divorce would cause HER until I pointed it out.) Do you feel like she is manipulating you with these threats? If so, are you willing to let her continue to do so?

Remember that an extinction burst is basically the pwBPD trying to bully you back into "your role" in the Karpman drama triangle. They will try anything (see my bullet point list above) to bludgeon you back into compliance. This is when you have to stay strong and NOT back down. If you do, it will give them intermittent reinforcement which is the strongest kind of reinforcement that you can give (it's what keeps people pulling the handle on the "one-armed bandits" in a casino.) My heart goes out to you and I will keep you and your kids in my prayers. Just know that no matter what happens, you will be ok.

Please keep us updated on how you are. I know that we are just anonymous posters on a website, but this place has come to feel like a refuge to me and the people on here have come to feel like close friends. Friends that I worry about. I know I am not the only one on here who feels that way. Please let us know that you are ok.

HurtAndTired