# Need help with angry wife.



## muskr (Aug 26, 2012)

I don't even know where to begin...

My wife and I have been together for 4 years and we have a son who is about to turn 3. Our relationship has reached a point where I feel like the days are numbered. 

I'll touch on a few important points so that hopefully somebody might have some useful insight or be able to relate from similar experience...

My wife is 2 different people... she'll be happy and loving on the phone while I'm working and then by the time I get home she is hateful and cruel with no real reason for the mood change. I honestly believe that somehow the sight of me triggers something in her. She has no patience with our son, but is obsessive about how he is raised/taught. I have absolutely no say in how he is raised, and as I interact with him she is constantly over my shoulder criticizing things i am not saying or doing right with him, yet she will often get pushed to screaming at him. 
She hates my family... and I really do have a great family. They love her and our son and have an open door if we ever need any help whatsoever. But, they have said things that maybe have been insensitive or touched a nerve with her. Also, the times they have watched our son they have done things like... put the wrong diaper on him or fed him a cookie before dinner. But she is so fixated on these things that she insists that she can no longer see them or interact with them. Every time its brought up we fight. It has even gone so far that she is refusing to come to HER OWN SON's 3rd birthday party because they will be there. She says that she will have her own celebration with him later. This is a small sample of the constant irrational anger.

She says that i am "absent". I don't know how. I love my family and they are my primary focus from when I wake to when I sleep. I work and I come home and help however I can. I have had no social life (friends etc) for almost 3 years now and I dont drink or use drugs. I have really tried to look at myself and see how I am being absent.. but I truly believe that I am available and willing yet I get shut down.

We have tried counseling and after a dozen sessions, things began improving a bit.. but the sessions began revealing her anger as a real issue that needed to be resolved. Then fights would result in her using therapy as ammunition, and ultimately she refused to go and has shot me down every time I try to bring it up again by saying "you just forget everything we talk about and nothing changes". She sees a personal therapist, and has for most of her adult life. I honestly dont know what good it does.. she comes home from her therapy sessions angry or moody.

I try to spice things up with surprise dates, but she turns them down because she doesnt trust anybody to watch our son. Not even family. So I try things at home... i bring home flowers, tell her how beautiful she looks that day etc etc... everything seems to backfire.

I could go on and on.. but bottom line is my heart is breaking for my son, and all I want is our family to be happy. Where do I go from here?


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Muskr, welcome to the TAM forum. I'm sorry to hear that you and your W are having such serious issues. It seems unlikely that her issues arise from hormones, given that her angry outbursts are not tied to a monthly cycle -- and she's had 3 years to recover from the birth of your son. The two most likely remaining candidates are traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and traits of bipolar disorder. (Although a recent brain injury is a possible cause, it is very rare.) Whether her traits are so severe as to constitute having the full blown disorder is a determination only a professional can make. 

Please note that, if she has strong traits of one or the other of these disorders, the distinction between them is _extremely important_. Whereas bipolar usually can be treated very successfully by swallowing a pill, strong BPD traits are very resistant to treatment. Although excellent BPD treatment programs are available, it is rare for a BPDer to have the self awareness and ego strength to be willing to stay in the programs long enough (several years at least) to make a difference. 

I therefore recommend that you see a clinical psychologist -- for a visit or two _by yourself_ -- to obtain a candid professional opinion on what it is you are dealing with. Importantly, you cannot rely on your WIFE'S therapist to tell you what is wrong if she has strong BPD traits. If she is high functioning and has such strong traits, therapists generally will not tell the patient -- much less tell her H -- the name of that disorder. The information is usually withheld to protect her and also because insurance companies nearly always refuse to cover BPD treatments.

I suggest that, while you are waiting for an appointment, you read about the symptoms associated with BPD, bipolar disorder, and hormone issues. These symptoms are described on the websites of the Mayo Clinic, the National Institute of Mental Health, and hundreds of other health centers and hospitals. They provide this information to the lay public because they know people are far more likely to seek professional help -- and do so quickly -- when they are able to spot the red flags, i.e., the symptoms, for various disorders.

Based on what you've said, I suggest you start by reading about BPD. It is common for spouses living with a BPDer to feel like they are living with a person who is half-way to having a multiple personality disorder. I mention this because you say "My wife is 2 different people... she'll be happy and loving on the phone while I'm working and then by the time I get home she is hateful and cruel with no real reason for the mood change." BPDers (i.e., those with moderate to strong BPD traits) typically flip back and forth between loving and hating the spouse -- and the flip is usually triggered in ten seconds by some minor statement or event.

I caution that, unlike hormone-related issues, BPD traits are persistent year-to-year. They do not vanish for years at a time. Typically, the only time that they vanish is during the courtship period. I also caution that every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits all nine of the BPD traits, albeit at a low level if the person is emotionally healthy. These traits become a problem only when they are so strong as to distort the person's perception of other peoples' intentions, thereby undermining marriages and other close LTRs. 

An easy place to start reading, with respect to BPD traits, is my description of them in Maybe's thread at My list of hell!. Moreover, I describe the difference between bipolar and BPD traits in Nuram's thread at Please help me decide!!!. Take care, Muskr.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Muskr, here are a few additional thoughts and observations.


> My wife is 2 different people... she'll be happy and loving on the phone while I'm working and then by the time I get home she is hateful and cruel with no real reason for the mood change.


This behavior is called "black-white thinking." It will be most evident in the way your W categorizes everyone as "all good" ("with me") or "all bad" ("against me"). Moreover, if she has strong BPD traits, she will recategorize someone from polar extreme to the other -- usually in just ten seconds -- based solely on a minor thing that is said or done. As I discuss in Maybe's thread, the reason for this all-or-nothing view of other people is the BPDer's intolerance of ambiguities, uncertainty, mixed feelings, and grey areas. This may help explain, then, why your W has no long-term close friends and has split all your family members black.


> I honestly believe that somehow the sight of me triggers something in her.


If she is a BPDer, you don't have to do a thing to CREATE her anger. It has been there, inside her, since early childhood. Instead, you only have to say or do some trivial thing that TRIGGERS the anger that is always there. This would explain, then, why her temper tantrums are able to erupt full-blown in only seconds. And it would explain why the apparent reasons for the arguments are so minor that it is difficult to recall what they were a few days later.


> She has no patience with our son, but is obsessive about how he is raised/taught.


Such obsessiveness is not a trait of BPD. It nonetheless is common for a person suffering strong traits of a PD to also exhibit moderate to strong traits of two or three other disorders. Moreover, this strange behavior may not arise out of obsessiveness at all. It could arise simply from the need to control every aspect of your life and your son's life. If she is a BPDer, she has such a powerful fear of abandonment that she will be very controlling. Indeed, the abandonment fear can grow so strong that the BPDer will preemptively abandon her spouse to avoid the pain of being abandoned herself.


> She hates my family... and I really do have a great family.


My BPDer exW hated my family members too. Of course, she had an irrational excuse for hating each of them. The real reason, however, was that she wanted to isolate me from all friends and family members so as to make it easier to control me -- thereby protecting herself from her abandonment fear.


> she is refusing to come to HER OWN SON's 3rd birthday party because they will be there. ...This is a small sample of the constant irrational anger.


If she has strong BPD traits, she likely has the emotional development of a four year old. She therefore never learned how to intellectually challenge her intense feelings -- a skill the rest of us learned in childhood. Hence, when she experiences an intense feeling, she is convinced it MUST be true or she would not feel it so strongly. 

Trying to reason or argue with such a person is pointless because she is always just 10 seconds away from a temper tantrum. Hence, no matter how calm a mood she is in when you approach her, you will find yourself trying to reason with a four year old in 10 seconds.


> She says that i am "absent". I don't know how.


If she is a BPDer, she is convinced she is "The Victim," always "The Victim." This means there are only two roles she will allow you to play. One is being "The Savior," which you were full time during the courtship -- and will occasionally be so again during those moments she is splitting you white. 

Most of the time, however, you are "The Perpetrator," i.e., the cause of every misfortune and shortcoming. If you stop playing those two roles -- i.e., stop walking on eggshells all the time -- she likely will divorce you. A BPDer has such a fragile, unstable sense of who she is that she will seek out a man who is willing to validate her false self image (as "The Victim") by being a doormat, i.e. allowing her to continue behaving like an angry, spoiled child and GET AWAY WITH IT.


> We have tried counseling and after a dozen sessions, things began improving a bit..


If she is a BPDer, MC will be useless because her issues go far beyond a lack of communication skills. What is needed is years of IC but that, too, will be useless if she doesn't want it badly for herself. With my exW, I tried both. I took her to several MCs and six different psychologists -- weekly visits for 15 years at a cost of over $200,000 -- all to no avail.


> She sees a personal therapist, and has for most of her adult life. I honestly dont know what good it does..


If she is a high functioning BPDer, it likely does little or no good. Although many excellent treatment programs are available, it is rare for a high functioning BPDer to have the self awareness and ego strength to take advantage of these programs. If they will go at all, they tend to sit there and play mind games with the therapists.


> She doesnt trust anybody to watch our son. Not even family.


If she has strong BPD traits, she is incapable of trusting anyone for an extended period of time. Until she learns how to trust and love herself, she will be unable to trust others.


> Where do I go from here?


As I said earlier, I don't know whether your W has strong BPD traits. I've never met the woman. I nonetheless am confident that you can get good guidance from a psychologist if you see him by yourself. I also am confident that you can easily learn to spot all the red flags for BPD by reading about it. Again, I suggest you start at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/general-relationship-discussion/33734-my-list-hell.html#post473522. If that description of BPD traits rings a bell and most traits sound familiar, I will be glad to discuss them with you and point you to excellent online resources.


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