Vicissitudes of life

[Pensive1]

I've been doing reasonably well and haven't posted here in a while. But I'm now again in some distress, so decided I'd post something.

I guess the basic topic is how feelings get stirred up when a serious health issue arises.

Just for background, my ex and I were together for 25 years. It was a tumultuous and difficult relationship (as is always true with BPD), but we had a lot of compatibilities also, and I loved her. Then a stressor occurred - her son (my stepson), who would also qualify for a diagnosis of BPD, became addicted to meth, suicidal, and homeless. That destabilized my ex.

Then, in the midst of all that, I had to leave town for a month, to take care of my dying uncle. When I left, another guy started pursuing my ex (even though he was married and in what his wife believes is a monogamous relationship). The guy fully qualifies for a diagnosis of NPD - readily meets the clinical criteria. He's totally full of himself, charismatic, manipulative, prone to explode in anger, etc. And I'll mention that over the course of her adult life, my ex predominantly dated highly narcissistic individuals, with a few exceptions (myself and a couple other guys). And I'm not stating this based simply on her descriptions - it's objectively true, and has caused her a lot of trauma. As a child, she was sexually abused by her malignant NPD stepfather, and that set her preferred "type". And she generally has chosen romantic partners in that same mold, who retraumatize her.

Especially given the stress of her son's situation, my ex recognized that she needed psychotherapy, but she was having trouble finding a therapist. The guy offered to be her therapist (even though he has zero background in this area). So they bought a book on trauma therapy, and proceeded with "therapy". People with BPD need structured therapy, and often will get worse with free-association "therapy". And that's doubly true when the person acting as "therapist" has absolutely no experience and their own agenda. And the guy was constantly love-bombing her, etc.

So they ended up in an affair (that he's hiding from his wife) and she dumped me to be his secret mistress. And the pseudotherapy and whole situation really messed with her head, so her BPD symptoms are far worse than they ever were in all our years together. She now has frequent severe dissociative episodes that interfere with her ability to function in life, etc.

After this, I did engage her into getting DBT therapy, which she continued for a year and a half, but she benefitted minimally, in large part because of her resistance to the therapy and unwillingness to do the necessary homework.

For two years after this all started, I basically remained with her, essentially as a platonic "husband", hoping she would leave that guy and come back to me. Seven months ago, I'd had enough, threw in the towel, and shifted to minimal contact. After some initial depression (missing her), I began to heal and feel better.

Periodically, since this all started, she would begin to make moves to break up with the guy, because she recognized the nature of their relationship was causing her pain (exacerbating her abandonment fears, etc.). The guy led her to initially believe they might one day be a couple, then later denied this, etc. And he's extremely controlling (like most narcissists), and people with BPD don't like being controlled. A couple months ago, it looked like she might be ending the affair - and she began to engage more with her son's situation (which was fundamentally a good/healthy thing).

I'll also note here that she has COPD. It started about 15 years ago. And COPD is a progressive illness, even though she no longer smokes. A couple weeks ago, she caught what would, for most people, be a minor cold. But it turned into a serious COPD exacerbation. She couldn't get enough oxygen and was afraid, and could hardly sleep at all for a week. Seeing this happening to her hit me hard. It made me so aware of her mortality and that she'd likely ultimately die from the COPD. I was flooded with feelings of how much I loved her - cared for her. I didn't say any of that to her, though I talked with my therapist about it. And while this was all happening, she told me that she'd dropped out of DBT therapy.

She's now largely recovered from that severe COPD episode. Then yesterday, she let me know that she'd be spending a couple weeks with her affair partner (where they'd be traveling to other cities, etc.). And that hit me hard (though I worked hard not to show it). I had hoped that she was ending that relationship.   

It's not even that I necessarily want us to be back together. It's that this guy is bad for her, and clearly messing with her head, with her BPD symptoms far worse than they'd ever been. I wish she was either alone, or with a decent partner, who actually could support and love her, encourage her into proper therapy, be there for her when she needs medical care, etc. And the thought of her dying from COPD in a number of years leaves me overwhelmingly sad - because I really love her.

[kells76]

It's really painful to be in a situation where you feel "forced" to watch a loved one (or former loved one) hurt, and there's nothing you can do about it. Feeling powerless in the face of these things happening to your ex must be excruciating. These are hard feelings to sit with.

Feeling powerless, impotent, or unable to effect control in a situation hits some buttons for me that go way back to childhood -- especially when the powerlessness is somehow connected to being "trapped" in the situation. It's one thing for me to feel like "I can't do anything about X, but I could walk away"; it's another level when I feel like "I can't do anything about X, but I'm stuck here watching this go down".

I wonder if any of that is going on for you, too? Is this hitting some old wounds, or is that off base?

What do you wish you could do, in an ideal world?

[Pensive1]

Hi Kells,

I have stuff around feeling powerless that goes back to childhood as well. My mom had BPD, and there was a lot of insanity/abuse/powerlessness in my childhood. It's clear to me that's part of why I got together with my ex, though I didn't consciously recognize that she had BPD at the beginning.

I don't have a sense of feeling "trapped" at this point. Though I did before I walked away from the remains of the relationship 7 months ago.

There are elements of the situation that still require some degree of ongoing communication with her - the major one being our son (my stepson). I've basically been his primary support within the family since she started the affair - it's pretty clear that she jumped into the affair in part to numb her distress at his situation, and that left me as essentially his caregiver (everyone else in the extended family basically condemned him and broke contact). Also, I agreed to her request to go for a walk in a natural area with her every 2-3 months. It's clear that she wants much more contact, but I've maintained my "minimal contact" boundaries pretty readily, refusing all requests she's made to spend more time with me.

Anyway, at this point, for me, there isn't a sense of trappedness or resentment, of being stuck in the situation and being "forced" to watch it go down.

But there is extreme sadness as I watch it. Both in regards to her worsened mental health and, especially now, her physical health - the COPD.

A funny thing... over the 25 years we were together, how I felt about her went through different long phases. There was a long period, after the honeymoon ended and her problematic behaviors became clear, where I felt quite ambivalent about staying in the relationship. Then, in about the last 5-7 years of the relationship, that changed - I came to a place of accepting that this is the way she was, and of loving her deeply, despite that (with a sense of choosing to be in the relationship, despite all the difficulties it brought). Who knows what would have happened if it wasn't for the particular confluence of circumstances that ended it - but it felt like things were gradually improving before that happened.

[Pensive1]

P.S. I didn't answer "What do you wish you could do, in an ideal world?"

I guess in an ideal fantasy world, I would find her a good therapist practicing Schema Therapy, and she would go. And her BPD would gradually improve. As she gained clarity/sanity, she would dump the guy she's with. And she would take care of her physical health, including by starting pulmonary rehab. And I would find a happy and sane relationship with someone else. But my ex and I would remain friends, who cared for each other.

The odds of all that happening in the real world are approximately zero.

[Pensive1]

I’ve been reflecting some on events in my relationship with my BPD ex. Not sure if it's helpful or wise, but I decided I’d write about the last half of our relationship. Part of why the breakup felt so painful was because it came at a point of real hope.

Twelve years before the end of our relationship, we briefly broke up (she broke up with me). It was painful, but not nearly as painful as our final breakup.

Not long after that initial breakup, her brother (her only full sibling) committed suicide. He would also have qualified for a diagnosis of BPD. His death was devastating for my ex, and I was extremely supportive. She really appreciated that, and we got back together.

For many years in our relationship, I felt ambivalence about being in the relationship. About every couple weeks, we’d end up in a severe fight, and she’d say she was ending our relationship. That left me anxious about it and interfered with my attachment – I was always kind of ready for it to end. And the difficulties of dealing with all her BPD symptoms also contributed to my ambivalence. But about 5-7 years before the end, I somehow decided to fully trust her, and to allow myself to fully attach to her, at depth. In part, I thought that we’d remained together so long, despite all her threats to end the relationship, and so I could trust that she wouldn’t actually leave me. And she has a lot of wonderful qualities. So I accepted how she was, and essentially came to a place of mature love, and chose that this is the relationship I would be in for the remainder of my life. Not as a default, but as something I actively chose. And my heart opened further to her.

A few years into the relationship, we had tried couples therapy. Then she dropped out, stating that the therapist was blaming her for everything. That wasn’t at all true, but like many people with BPD, she couldn’t tolerate anything that could be interpreted as criticism or rejection. Over the last decade of our relationship, I repeatedly begged her to come to couples therapy with me. There were huge problems in our relationship, and we clearly couldn’t rectify then just by ourselves. But she would always refuse.

And I also brought my own problems to the relationship. It’s not that the only issues were her BPD. I grew up with a lot of trauma in my childhood, and qualify for a diagnosis of complex PTSD. I dealt with pain using “flight” tactics – that included numbing out and dissociating to avoid pain, as well as using avoidant behaviors and detached self-soothing behaviors. One manifestation of all this was that I’d get obsessively involved in different projects. So much of my time was unavailable, and I was often emotionally unavailable. For much of the last decade of our relationship, I was obsessively involved in police reform, after an unarmed neighbor of ours was shot and killed by a police officer in a completely unjustified shooting. But early in the year that our relationship ended, I resigned from the police reform organization that I had helped cofound, and that allowed me much more time and emotional availability.

I also suffer from a physical syndrome that doctors couldn’t diagnose and that left me in a constant state of severe, painful fatigue (and brain fog). I had to drive myself through the fatigue to accomplish anything, and it made me much less fun to be around. My ex would complain that every time I saw her, the first thing I would say is how exhausted I felt (and that’s basically true). The problem had been ongoing for a decade, and kept gradually growing worse. And given the complex PTSD, I would often numb out to cope with the pain of the fatigue (but I did so at the cost of emotional availability). Doctors had tried to figure out what was causing it, running lots of tests, but to no avail. I’m a scientist with biomedical background, and I finally decided that I couldn’t live this way, so I set out to diagnose myself. And I succeeded in doing so – I had a mast cell disease. Subsequent medical tests confirmed that that was the correct diagnosis. And it could be treated with meds – reducing the symptoms by >90%. So I was no longer in constant, painful fatigue.

In addition, early in 2020, my ex and I began to take regular long weekly hikes in beautiful natural areas. We both loved doing this, and it began to restore our relationship, in almost a miraculous way. I began telling friends that this relationship, that I’d often been despondent about, had finally turned around.

My ex is a voracious reader, especially of novels. And we began reading to each other – something that we hadn’t done since the beginning of our relationship, 25 years ago.

We also had long been financially insecure. She didn’t handle financial stuff well, and I was often not working in a paid position (I was just patching together income here and there), so as to have time to carry out volunteer work. But by early 2021, I was in a well-paid job, with ample vacation time, and we finally had the time and financial means to go on vacations (which is something she really wanted, but that we hadn’t done in years).

So, in our relationship, there was such a sense of hope at that point, at least for me.

Then our son (my stepson) became addicted to meth. He rapidly became suicidal and homeless. There were recurrent life-threatening situations. The stress was overwhelming. I did everything I could to help. But given the stress and her BPD, my ex couldn’t cope. One of her responses was to split me black to a degree that she’d never done before. Even now, she doesn’t realize how irrational her thinking around this was. It was 100% undeserved. Then two days later, our beloved cat died. And within a month, my uncle was dying, and I flew to another state to take care of him, so he could die at home with hospice. Meanwhile, the NPD guy showed up and began pursuing and love-bombing my ex, and when she had difficulty finding a therapist, he offered to act as her therapist. And so ended our relationship.