Wife feels BPD diagnosis is false and is retaliation on the part of the therpist

[Hoping for hope]

I'm new to this site and I'm not sure if I created my post correctly the first time.  Here it is again in case I messed up last time.  I apologize for the length.

My wife and I have been married for almost 19 years.  It has been a crazy roller coaster for most of that time. We are now on our 4th round of marriage therapy.  The first two times were really unhelpful.  I am a quiet analytical person and my wife always controlled the sessions (and complained afterward that I wouldn't say anything) so the therapist just focused on what my wife was saying the problem was without really focusing on me at all.  This fourth time has been much better.  Our therapist told us that he wanted to meet with each of us individually and as a couple.  This allowed me the opportunity to express myself without my wife talking over me and without the fear of her punishing me later for what I said during therapy (a common occurrence).  I feel like we were making some progress with this setup.  I remember one session where my wife was aggressively complaining that I don't say much when she is telling me how she feels and all the things I need to change so she can feel happy.  Our therapist told her "If you confronted me aggressively like you are right now I don't think I would want to talk to you either."  She didn't understand what he was getting at and started complaining again that you can't fix the problems if you aren't willing to talk about them.  It took almost half an hour of the therapist explaining that how you act, your tone of voice, and your body language will affect the response you get before she started to understand.  This was the first time that I understood that she honestly didn't understand the cause and affect of her actions.

The most recent round of problems that really has me worried happened in April of this year.  Her niece in Mexico ran away from home (after she and her boyfriend stole several TVs and cash from her own mother and grandmother).  This brought up memories of a time her Father had punished her with a belt and she ran away from home for a day (this is the one and only time that her Father ever physically punished her that I know of.  He was a loving and caring man and apologized profusely when she came back home, but she has never really forgiven him).  These memories caused her to have a panic attack and she asked if she could go to therapy instead of me that day (I just happened to have a session scheduled for that day).  She told me later that she was having a crisis and really didn't remember what she talked about, but she said that during the session she felt herself being attracted to the therapist and that he was getting turned on (later she changed that to just the therapist getting turned on and she was not attracted to him) and at one point licked his lips provocatively.  She said that she reached out to our therapist on the patient portal the next day and told him that she wanted to meet with him again soon to talk to him about something important.  She didn't spell it out in the message, but she told me she wanted to confront him about what had happened.  The scheduling assistant reached out to her, but he didn't respond directly via the patient portal.  There weren't any time slots sooner so she had to wait several day until her scheduled appointment.  During that session she confronted him about licking his lips in a provocative way and he denied that it happened.  He told her that he often licks his lips because they get dry.  He also told her that he cares about her a lot, but has no romantic feelings for her.  She was not happy with this response.

Our therapist works at a non-profit clinic and according to him there was an audit.  We had been seeing him as a couple or individually as many as three times a week.  He was told by the higher ups that he needed to free up more appointments for people on the waiting list so about half of our April appointments got cancelled without any explanation given at the time.  I asked him about it later, which is why I know what happened.  His wife was also 9 months pregnant and when he took paternity leave that cancelled the other half of our April appointments.  This just happened to occur right after my wife confronted him so she interpreted it as "I confronted my therapist and he knows he did something wrong so he cancelled all my appointments in retaliation."

On April 18th my wife experienced another crisis/panic attack.  From what she has told me (I was at work at the time) she was upset with how our therapist had licked his lips and then denied it and on top of that cancelled all of our appointments.  She called the clinic to try and talk to our therapist and was told that he didn't have any appointments available.  This basically pushed her over the edge and she tracked down his personal cell number on the internet and called him.  She confronted him again about licking his lips and him cancelling all her appointments in retaliation.  He again denied that he licked his lips provocatively and told her that he didn't cancel any appointments out of fear or in retaliation.  She told him that it was his fault that she was having a panic attack and that if she had a gun she would shoot herself right now because of him (she says that she never said anything about a gun, just that she had suicidal thoughts, although her exact words to him have changed each time she has told me what happened during that phone call.  He told me in an individual session that she told him that she had a gun and was going to "blow her brains out").  I came home that day to three police officers in front of my home.  They apparently had just knocked on the door and asked my children where their Mother was.

I asked the officers what was going on and they explained that my wife had called our therapist and expressed a desire to kill herself and he had reached out to them.  My children told them that my wife was working with her sister so I gave them the address and phone number of my sister-in-law's business.  They left to go find her.  I didn't go with them because just the previous night we had an argument with her telling me all the ways I'm a terrible husband, Father, brother, and son and to be honest I didn't know if seeing me would help or make it worse.  I did call her and she didn't answer.  Later she would tell me that I am a horrible husband because I didn't go running to her once I heard that she was having suicidal thoughts.  This isn't the first time she has told me that she was feeling suicidal.  It has happened quite frequently throughout our marriage and I know each time needs to be taken seriously, but it is taking an emotional toll on me and if I allow myself to get worked up every time it happens I don't know if I will be able to function emotionally.

The officers made contact with her and she told them that she was only having suicidal thoughts and that she had no intention of actually hurting herself.

About a week after the phone call I had an individual session and our therapist told me that because of what my wife had expressed in the phone call and other behaviors he had observed from her he had diagnosed her with BPD.  After doing research to learn what BPD is, I could see that some of the nine traits were definitely stronger than the others, but it wasn't a stretch to say that she exhibited at least 5 of the 9 traits.

She has had multiple individual sessions with him in the last few months and all of them centered around his denial and how "he caused her to call him."  During these sessions the therapist told me that he wanted to discuss BPD with her, but that she always came to therapy with an agenda and he couldn't talk about it with her.  I will fault the therapist a little here.  My wife is not easy to talk to about anything that will be disagreeable to her, but as a professional I think he should have been more forceful in his attempts to bring up the diagnosis.  At some point he entered the diagnosis into the clinic's computer system and the system sent out an auto-generated email informing my wife that she had been diagnosed with BPD as "discussed" with her therapist despite there having been no discussion (I can only assume that it was auto-generated because he says he didn't send the email).  She took this as another retaliatory attack by the therapist because in several of her sessions she had told him that she was going to file a complaint because he made a provocative gesture.  She has not filed a complaint and even said that she would never do that, but she goes back and forth on whether she will or won't file one.  I will fault the therapist again on this.  He should know how their system works and BPD is not a diagnosis one should receive via an email.

She is very upset with the diagnosis and sees it as retaliatory or a way for him to "cover his butt" in case she files a complaint.  The worst part is that the system apparently sends a new email after every session informing her of her diagnosis.  She just informed me that she doesn't want to go to therapy anymore because it is making her feel worse.  I am worried that if she doesn't get the mental health help she needs that she will continue to blame me and everyone else for her actions and never make any progress.  She has also told me that she is certain that she doesn't have BPD.

Sorry for the very long post.  I think I needed to get it off my chest outside of therapy and to talk to other people who are going through similar struggles and to get advice on how to get her to go back to therapy and to see that the diagnosis isn't retaliatory, but an actual valid diagnosis.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[PearlsBefore]

Wow, that's a lot to take in; sympathy to you - and respect for lasting so many years. It does seem odd  [and maybe you can convince them to stop?] to send her the email listing the diagnosis each time. Like you I went through years of suicidal threats from her, and ultimately when I finally called police...the stereotypical happened and she claimed I was basically a serial killer child molester wife abusing terrorist mafioso...be careful out there.

[Notwendy]

 I will fault the therapist a little here.  My wife is not easy to talk to about anything that will be disagreeable to her, but as a professional I think he should have been more forceful in his attempts to bring up the diagnosis. 

I'll add a bit of perspective as an adult child of an elderly mother with BPD. I am not a therapist but in the T's defense- how does it work to "talk" to your wife and get her to understand another person's point of view. Or this- how does it work to get your wife to be accountable for her behavior?

For my mother, talking doesn't work. In Karpman triangle dynamics- she takes victim perspective. Whatever the issue is, there's a reason- and that reason isn't her fault. Why would they do that? I think that shame is a very difficult feeling for someone with BPD and taking victim perspective- blaming someone else, or something else, absolves them and avoids this feeling.

For your T- it can be very damaging to be accused of romantic gestures towards a client. Sounds like licking his lips is a habit - a nervous habit or that his lips are dry. He isn't doing anything to indicate romantic gestures- your wife is probably reading this into something it isn't but false accusations can cause a T undeserved difficulty.

There isn't a specific medicine or cure for BPD. DBT is known to help but it helps with other challenges too. So the T may decide to work on "anxiety" or "depression" rather than BPD as it may be just as helpful. Being more forceful to make your wife accept that she has BPD isn't going to be more effective.

For therapy to be effective, a person has to be motivated to work with it. It sounds like your wife does accept help when she is feeling in crisis. How effective T is - only time will tell. If she doesn't accept the diagnosis- that is a part of BPD- denial and projection. The T may still be able to work with her indirectly- by focusing on her "anxiety" or "depression".

[Hoping for hope]

Thanks PearlsBefore and Notwendy for the replies!  I really start to feel hopeless at times.  Notwendy, your mother sounds like my wife.  It doesn't matter how much you explain your point of view she always plays the victim and it is always someone else's fault. 

To clarify a little.  The fault I was laying at the feet of the therapist wasn't that he didn't tell her about the diagnosis (because I know how hard it is to tell her something and have her listen without interrupting and taking over the conversation), it was that he didn't know the clinic's system well enough to know that an automatic email would be sent out after every session informing my wife of the diagnosis.  The emails never should have been sent.  This would have allowed him to hopefully continue to work with her on individual BPD traits.  As it is, she feels that it is retaliatory and she has told me that she "definitely doesn't have BPD." and she doesn't want to go back to therapy.

Does anyone have any tips for talking with someone with BPD.  My wife continually complains that I don't engage with her, but when I do it is just her telling me how I am not meeting her needs and how I need to change.  The moment I bring up my feelings she tells me that I should think about what I do to cause her actions, that she could be a nice, kind, loving, feminine wife if I would just support her and be her partner.  Or lately she just tells me that she never should have married me and threatens to leave.

As rough as this marriage has been, I don't want a divorce.  We have three children and I don't want to put them through that hell.  Trying to parent our children after divorce would be even worse than now because I know she will feel she has no reason to "hold back" and try to make things work.  The courts are still heavily skewed in favor of the Mother and so she would likely receive custody of the children and I wouldn't be there as a buffer between her and them.  She treats the kids better than she treats me, but there are still times when she will just lose it and start yelling at them (nothing physical yet, except for throwing things occasionally, but not at anybody).  My two oldest (12 and 14) have told her that she needs to stop "using Dad as a punching bag."  Instead of taking that as a wake up call she has told me that I need to talk to them and explain why she treats me the way she does.  Despite it all there are still good times where she and I or the whole family are able to spend time together and just enjoy being together.

I just don't know how to open up and be vulnerable and talk with her when I'm dodging attack after attack.  I withdraw to protect myself emotionally, but that exacerbates the problem and she attacks more to try and get some reaction out of me.  Any advice?

[kells76]

Hello Hoping for hope, just adding my voice to welcome you to the group 

Does anyone have any tips for talking with someone with BPD. My wife continually complains that I don't engage with her, but when I do it is just her telling me how I am not meeting her needs and how I need to change.  The moment I bring up my feelings she tells me that I should think about what I do to cause her actions, that she could be a nice, kind, loving, feminine wife if I would just support her and be her partner.  Or lately she just tells me that she never should have married me and threatens to leave.

Have you had a chance to read through our "Bettering a relationship" board lessons yet? The one that I thought of for your question is Lesson 3 on Tools for communication, validation, and reinforcement of good behavior.

Just like in any relationship, there are lots of reasons we talk to each other. We may talk just to pass the time, to vent, to ask for advice... lots of reasons. In "generally normal" relationships, each partner has a bit of buffer zone for "missteps" where we misunderstand the other's reason for talking; in BPD relationships, there's much less wiggle room.

For example, maybe my husband (neither of us has BPD) is telling me about something that went wrong at work. I think he's asking for advice, but he thinks he's venting. If he says "I can't believe that I was the only one who caught the issue" and I say "well maybe you should tell your planning department what happened", then I have been invalidating, even if I didn't mean to be. He needed me to listen, empathize, and understand how he felt, but I barged ahead to telling him what to do.

He is usually able to say something like "Babe, I really just need to vent right now, I don't need advice" and usually we can recover from there.

A pwBPD will be much, much more sensitive to invalidation, and you may not be able to recover quickly after invalidating her. Learning more about invalidation, and avoiding being invalidating, can head off some of those conflicts before they start.

...

When she goes into "you don't meet my needs, you don't support me", how have you typically responded in the past?

Despite it all there are still good times where she and I or the whole family are able to spend time together and just enjoy being together.

People stay in BPD relationships for all kinds of reasons. There can be a lot of positives, and we get it.

During the good times, does she seem to be at more of an emotional baseline? Is she more receptive to listening to your feelings during those times?

I just don't know how to open up and be vulnerable and talk with her when I'm dodging attack after attack.  I withdraw to protect myself emotionally, but that exacerbates the problem and she attacks more to try and get some reaction out of me.  Any advice?

I'm not sure anyone here would recommend being vulnerable when she's attacking.

If BPD is involved in our relationship, then we need more than just the "basic relationship" toolbelt with a hammer. We need to develop a larger toolbelt with more skills and approaches for the challenges we face.

It's normal and healthy not to feel like being vulnerable in the face of an attack. It's kind of like saying "I just don't know how to use this hammer for my drywall taping project". It's normal to be confused if that's your only tool! That's a signal that it's time to dig in and learn more approaches, so that you have drywall tools too, not just the hammer.

What you might hear around here is that validation builds healthy connection, while boundaries are for your protection. Those are two big (but not the only) tools for navigating BPD relationships. Validation -- connection building -- isn't for when attacking is happening. Take a look at our thread on Boundaries and Values. This whole post in the thread is so solid that I'm pulling it out here:

Values, boundaries, and boundary defense are a commitment to myself, not an attempt to force change or control another person.

An important aspect of "boundaries" is that it sometimes takes some effort to grasp is the idea that values are a commitment to myself  - not an attempt to force change or control another person.

The struggles of defending (setting) boundaries is often an issue that overlaps greatly with co-dependent tendencies or not having healthy relationship practices.  Many people with codependent tendencies lean toward "knowing" well what other people need to do, but struggle greatly to re-focus their attention onto themselves.  When the focus goes back on the self, some people struggle to know who they are, what they want, or to take responsibility for how to get it.

So, the quandary can be - "I want this, and I want it from/with a certain person".  What we want may be attainable in a relationship with the desired person, or it may not.  Part of being responsible for our own well being is accepting this.

Values/boundaries, in practice, is a statement about one's self.  So, if we consider the codependent tendency, early in the process of going from an unhealthy pattern to a healthy pattern - early in the process, we might tend to focus on the behavior of others as the solution (e.g. If so-and-so would do this,THEN I would be OK).  So early boundary defense attempts can look like "I'm going to do xyz so that my SO/parent will do this".  This is not living a value or defending a boundary.  Instead, it is really an attempt to control the behavior of another person.  The way to check this is to consider your motivation.  Are we, in our attempt to defend a boundary, trying to change the behavior of another, or just stating what we are willing to do/not do?  If we are trying to change another what we are doing is really an attempt to control or get what we not and this is not healthy.

Values/boundaries are about knowing who we are and what we will choose to participate in.  So, a boundary looks more like, "I will choose to participate in abc ... .I will not participate in xwy".  There is no statement in this "values/boundary" about what someone else needs to do, only about the self.  Boundaries require a sense of personal responsibility.  My well being is my responsibility, not the result of someone else's behavior.

Boundaries can be tricky to defend, especially with someone we've been in a patterned relationship with. Seeking feedback about our boundaries can be a great way to get new ideas for implementing boundaries.

M.

Maybe learning more about true boundaries could be something to try? What do you think?

[Notwendy]

I believe my father stayed married to my mother for some of the same reasons you mentioned- especially in their era when custody always went to the mother. She could not have handled that and neither could we kids.

I think it's clear that the therapist is not going to be an option- but there are others. It may be a chance to find one she is willing to work with while this one is being split as all bad. Knowing there is automatic emails, hopefully this one is able to put down effective but alternate diagnoses. Since there isn't a therapy that is only applicable to BPD- they can have the same approach with "anxiety", or "depression", or whatever they feel is the best one.

Will therapy work? It's hard to know. It seems on your part- you would need to feel you tried.

[Hoping for hope]

 Hi kells76, thank you for your reply and your advice.  I'm still exploring the resources on this site and have not yet looked at the "Bettering a relationship" section.  I will definitely take a look at it.  You're completely right about wiggle room around misunderstanding and invalidation.  Even the smallest misstep can set her off.  Just the other day she was making pork chops and she asked me to get her some cream of mushroom soup from the pantry.  I have never made pork chop her way so I asked her how many cans she wanted.  I thought this was a good way to avoid upsetting her by bringing too many or too few cans.  Instead this upset her and she started loudly telling me that I should "just use my head" and "if I was going to make it so difficult she might as well do it herself etc."  This quickly became "I have to do everything in the house.  You don't help with anything.  It's like having another child."

I was in the middle of the above reply and something came up that I needed to take care and it has taken me almost a month to get back to this.  I'm fighting hard to believe that things can get better, but it feels like it is getting harder everyday to have a thick enough skin to absorb the verbal attacks and convince myself that it's not me, I'm not a terrible person, husband, or father.

I'm not perfect, I've made many mistakes, but it feels like there will never be any forgiveness for them on her part.  My wife complains that I have never supported her dreams.  When we were first married we were both still in college.  I continued my degree, but she did not.  We never talked about that, she made that decision on her own.  Her tuition was a lot more than mine and I don't think we could have paid for both tuitions without taking out students loans, which we could have done, but as I said we never talked about it.  She made the decision and I being dumb never brought it up.  Somewhere around 10 years later she told me that she wanted to go back to school.  At this point we had a mortgage, three young children, and probably a car payment if I remember right and I didn't feel like we could manage that financially not to mention the time commitment.  She chose to be a stay at home Mom (another decision she made on her own that we should have really discussed, but there is a whole telenovela with her sisters behind her decision to not work. I fully support her decision and never pushed her one way or the other) and our children were still young.  I had been in my new job around a year and was still feeling insecure after being laid off from my previous job and taking 8 month to find this new job.  We had savings, but I was worried about making sure we had our emergency fund again, because that was the only thing that saved us during those 8 months. So with that in my mind my response to her was "where are we going to get the money to pay tuition?"  I think at the time she understood that it wasn't the best time financially for us, not to mention the realities of traveling 1.5 hours one way to the university and trying to get homework done while I'm at work and she is caring for the kids.  That understanding has faded with time and she now believes that I just didn't support her and I have always been controlling her and the money.  We have always had joint finances and she has had full access to the joint bank accounts.  I grew up in a family with 9 children where there wasn't a lot of money for fun extras.  My parents had no problem paying for private music lessons, or end of year school trips, or TI-83 calculators that were ridiculously expensive even back then, but family vacations weren't really a thing, nor was eating out.  She grew up in a family where both parents worked and never joined their finances.  Her mother wasn't the most kind or loving and my wife has told me that when she sees me sitting down and helping our kids with their homework it makes her sad because her mother would never do that.  She did teach all the kids to read, but if they made mistakes she would yell at them or hit them on the head with her knuckles.  Her mother would, however, take them out to eat and buy them treats, which I think is why there is such a strong connection between love and how much someone spends on her because that is when she felt the most love from her Mother. With our two very different upbringings there were obviously different opinions on how money should be spent.  I have loosened up significantly and she has seen the wisdom in having an emergency fund and spending more prudently, but she has never forgiven me for her not finishing her degree and brings it up constantly even though for the last year I have been telling her to apply for re-admittance and she hasn't done it.

Every time we talk and she starts bringing up everything that I don't do to make her happy she tells me that I have been controlling her with money.  She has been working with her sister probably around 10 years now and for about 8 of those she has been keeping everything she earns in a separate account.  It's part time work so it's not a huge amount, maybe 500 or 600 a month, but it adds up.  About three years ago she told me she wanted to finish the basement so we could rent it out because "I want an income."  At the time I was working from home in the basement because it was cool and quiet and the kids didn't bother me down there.  The only other place I could work was our guest room upstairs, which means we really couldn't use it as a guest room after that.  We also had a lot of stuff in the basement and nowhere to put it upstairs.  I explained all the reasons I didn't feel it was a good idea, but she kept insisting on it for a year and I finally gave in.  We used all our savings (She recently had been reading Dave Ramsey and believed it was horrible to take out a loan and pay interest if we have the money in the bank) and $13k from her money (she didn't even tell me that she used her money until after).  After the basement was done our front room upstairs was piled with boxes from floor to ceiling and there was no room in the garage for our cars (and she complains constantly now that we don't have any space and she can't park in the garage), but we finally had the income that she wanted and in around 4 or 5 years we will hopefully recoup all the money we spent.  She then started asking me when we were going to pay her back for her money that she spent on the basement.  This wasn't a conversation I was prepared to have and I would tell her I don't know.  She would frequently tell me that she has access to the joint accounts so she would just take it and that is basically what she did, she started taking the rent and putting it directly in her account.  The renters paid in cash and she would get mad at me if I collected the rent and put it in our joint account.  We should have had a conversation about it before she started taking the rent, but I honestly didn't know how to have that conversation with someone that is completely controlled by emotions and doesn't care about facts and I was in disbelief that she could ask that and be completely serious.  I apologize for the long post, but this is where I need some help.

From my point of view I have paid for everything since I graduated, got a job, and she decided to be a stay at home Mom.  I'm also sending money to her parents and siblings in Mexico (Her father died of covid, but before that, we were constantly sending him money).  Just last week I sent $1000 to her Mother who is a retired school teacher and has a good pension and would be just fine financially if she managed her money better.  So I'm paying for everything and it was her idea to finish the basement and she chose to use her money for the last payment without even asking me and then she tells me that I need to pay her back?  How does that make sense?  I'm trying hard to see her point of view.  How can she tell herself I'm supposed to pay for everything because I'm the man of the house (she has told me this, usually followed with "making money isn't enough" followed by the list of all the things I don't do) and she can keep her money to use for whatever she wants and she even complains that she shouldn't have to spend her money when the kids want something even though I have never asked her to.  And on top of that just take the rent and get mad at me if I deposit it in our joint bank account.  She also comes to me and asks if we can send money to her family in Mexico when she has her own money that she could use to support her family.  I honestly feel used.  What am I not seeing?