# She will never admit to doing anything wrong



## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

This is part spleen vent, part cry for help, part justification. I don't know what else to do. 

My wife and I have been married for nearly 3 years, we got married on a whim, and most of that time we have spent apart. We both have problems with depression, and family history of alcoholism and suicide (although she never drank and I have quit). 

She says she has attention deficit disorder, and she certainly has problems focussing, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the condition. She has been to see a few psychiatrists, and she has told me that they have told her that she is okay, but they have still prescribed her with medication, first adderall, then wellbutrin. It's very difficult for me not to conclude that in this case, the cure is worse than the disease. She has self-harmed in the past, and has had other medical issues. 

I don't like saying this, because it is difficult/impossible for me to objectively state how much is and isn't my fault, but the fact is that she is becoming increasingly abusive, and when she is upset and angry, she is beyond unreasonable. She yells insults, she shoves me, throws things, punches and kicks, hits me with objects, and has left me with large bruises, and tells me that her self-harming was my fault (we were not living in the same timezone at the time). I very much doubt that she tells her doctors that she behaves this way towards me, although it is possible. 

Her justification is always things like "it was the straw that broke the camel's back", or that I am an appalling human being for whatever reason, and that I deserve to be hurt, and she will say "good" if I tell her that she has hurt me. What really upsets me, is that she won't take any responsibility for the way she behaves, _she will never acknowledge that what she does is wrong_, only that it is my fault, that I am the one who should apologise. I don't know if this is a symptom of her condition(s) that can be treated, or whether she would act this way regardless. If she does feel guilty about it, she never says so, the most she will ever acknowledge is that she wasn’t proud of her behaviour, or something like that. It happens regularly, and I'm tired of it. 

I want to be clear: she has not caused me significant physical injury. It’s not the physical pain that concerns me, what hurts me so much is that she acts as if this is something she is almost “entitled” to, that why shouldn’t she be insulting and violent if I have pissed her off. Some of her complaints against me are understandable, of course, but she also gets like this about the most minor of things, and I never know what is going to set her off. 

I am not an angel, far from it, but I do not hurt her, I don't yell, I don't cheat on her etc, her hurt is always of the emotional kind, that I have not paid enough attention, that I said something thoughtless, that I am not loving enough, and so on. She is always trying to convince me that it is me who should make amends, that I am responsible for her behaving this way, that she is the injured party, and she seems convinced of this, only occasionally does she even seem unsure, let alone repentant. When we're arguing I do tell her that she's crazy, insane, a psychopath, which I feel bad about afterwards, but it is very difficult for me not to when someone is throwing heavy objects at me. I don't know how much is my fault or whether she is right about me, but I will say this: I would have no problem with anybody (friends, family, doctors, strangers) seeing/hearing a record of our arguments and how I have behaved - I am certain that she could not say the same. 

Tbh I don't know how normal any of this is. I don't know how to help her for the best, or how much more I can take. I would like to stay with her, but really don't see how I can, when she behaves this way and is completely unwilling to acknowledge that she bears any responsibility. I do feel better for having said all this, thank you for reading.


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## katiecrna (Jan 29, 2016)

If she is unwilling to get help or admit to being wrong or even want to work on herself then she is leaving you no choice but to leave. Leaving would actually be best for her. You can't continue to enable her behavior by staying.


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## AussieRN (Mar 28, 2013)

If she is hitting you as well as verbally abusing you and then blaming you for "making" her do it, its time to leave.


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## aine (Feb 15, 2014)

vauxhall101 said:


> This is part spleen vent, part cry for help, part justification. I don't know what else to do.
> 
> My wife and I have been married for nearly 3 years, we got married on a whim, and most of that time we have spent apart. We both have problems with depression, and family history of alcoholism and suicide (although she never drank and I have quit).
> 
> ...


This is not normal at all, please tell her to get help, otherwise you will divorce her. Speak to her family, parents, friends, see is there any history there. You should not put up with this, it will destroy you.
I know this kind of abuse on a male can have some taboos, but do not let that stop you. Get out now, tell her seek help, or you walk.
Record your fights and replay it to her when things are calm, let her see he damage that is being done.
You ought to seek therapy for yourself also.


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## *Deidre* (Feb 7, 2016)

No excuse ever for violence in a relationship. None. If it were me, I'd be out. Sorry this is going on in your marriage. But, you said you got married ''on a whim,'' so maybe you can just accept that this wasn't a well thought out decision. Marriage shouldn't really be a whimsical decision. Hope things get better for you one way or the other, but no one should ever be emotionally and physically abused in a relationship.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

katiecrna said:


> If she is unwilling to get help or admit to being wrong or even want to work on herself then she is leaving you no choice but to leave. Leaving would actually be best for her. You can't continue to enable her behavior by staying.


She does kinda get "help", in fact, I think if anything she gets too much of it, I'm just not sure how helpful it actually is - she is constantly reading things online (eeeep), and buying books (which she doesn't read, but expects me to, and then lectures me about what they say), and going to see various different therapists and psychiatrists and things. She gets prescriptions for drugs that I don't think she needs (or rather, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages) and I get the impression the doctors are a little reluctant to prescribe them to her, but she is smart and charming and once she gets an idea in her head, she fixates on it. Sigh. I have no real idea how honest she is with these professionals, but I do know that when she is in a temper-tantrum, she has no compunction about trying to convince me that they agree that I'm in the wrong and a horrible person, too. 

The example of her self-harming. That is awful, of course. But she has said to me that she did it because of me, and she has never apologised for saying that, nor does she seem to think that she should, and when I confronted her with this, she did not withdraw the statement, just tried to dance around it. I encouraged her at the time to tell her psychiatrist that she says this to me, and to see how they respond, but I know that she won't. 

I would write more here but I don't want to bore everyone off this thread. Thank you very much for the responses, they were pretty much what I expected, but you do start to wonder whether you are in fact going crazy.


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## katiecrna (Jan 29, 2016)

vauxhall101 said:


> She does kinda get "help", in fact, I think if anything she gets too much of it, I'm just not sure how helpful it actually is - she is constantly reading things online (eeeep), and buying books (which she doesn't read, but expects me to, and then lectures me about what they say), and going to see various different therapists and psychiatrists and things. She gets prescriptions for drugs that I don't think she needs (or rather, the disadvantages outweigh the advantages) and I get the impression the doctors are a little reluctant to prescribe them to her, but she is smart and charming and once she gets an idea in her head, she fixates on it. Sigh. I have no real idea how honest she is with these professionals, but I do know that when she is in a temper-tantrum, she has no compunction about trying to convince me that they agree that I'm in the wrong and a horrible person, too.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




I get it. It sounds like she seeks "help" as a way to manipulate the situation not to actually work on herself. Some people do this.... it's like using what she is learning to justify her actions and to control how you treat her... well the therapist says this so u have to treat me this way or realize this is how I am or whatever. 

There is a fine line between having mental issues and accepting how you are and manipulating and controlling everyone around you to enable your behavior because it's "just how you are".


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

katiecrna said:


> I get it. It sounds like she seeks "help" as a way to manipulate the situation not to actually work on herself. Some people do this.... it's like using what she is learning to justify her actions and to control how you treat her... well the therapist says this so u have to treat me this way or realize this is how I am or whatever.
> 
> There is a fine line between having mental issues and accepting how you are and manipulating and controlling everyone around you to enable your behavior because it's "just how you are".


It is hurtful to me when, during an argument, she will spitefully repeat back to me something her therapist said about me, not least because nothing she has ever repeated back to me (about me) is actually that bad, but _that she wants me to think that a professional thinks I'm in the wrong and a terrible person_, that 'teacher is on her side', really hurts me, if that makes sense. Although, I suppose, I'm doing the same thing now by posting on this forum. Sorry for the splurge, but I have no-one to talk to. 

I suppose I should give an example of what has upset her that is my fault. 2 years ago, I told her about a woman at my work having a crush on me. She says this when she was saying how much she loved me. The reason I did this was not very noble, but I was trying to show her that we did not have the kind of marriage that she said we were going to have, and I was tired of her telling me about guys having a crush on her. To be absolutely clear, this woman was somebody I worked with, and that was all - I did not cheat, I barely even knew this woman. My wife still brings this up now, constantly, as justification for why she behaves violently towards me. 

I am not proud of what I did, but I really am sick of her telling me that it means she can be abusive towards me, and that I'm the bad guy. Because she says this issue (and others - all of which involve me being the wrong-doer) are not "resolved" - but tbh I don't think they will ever be "resolved" in her mind, because the more we discuss them (and she brings them up all the time) the more strident she gets and the more she seems to build the incident(s) up in her mind (she did not mention the above to me again until 3 months afterwards), it seems to encourage her in the belief that she can treat me as badly as she likes, and she's still the injured party.


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## katiecrna (Jan 29, 2016)

vauxhall101 said:


> It is hurtful to me when, during an argument, she will spitefully repeat back to me something her therapist said about me, not least because nothing she has ever repeated back to me (about me) is actually that bad, but _that she wants me to think that a professional thinks I'm in the wrong and a terrible person_, that 'teacher is on her side', really hurts me, if that makes sense. Although, I suppose, I'm doing the same thing now by posting on this forum. Sorry for the splurge, but I have no-one to talk to.
> 
> 
> 
> ...




She's manipulative and emotionally abusive. Spouses should make each other feel good about themselves and who they are. She is getting ammo and using it to make you feel bad about who you are and how you treat her. That's not nice. It seems she doesn't even like you... she is just using you to benefit herself. 
Whatever happens... if you decide to stay you need to break that unhealthy cycle. Set firm boundaries that she is not allowed to put you down. Home should be a positive, healthy environment. No negativity. Anyways... your best to just leave her. Goodluck!


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

Your wife is a violent abuser. Add to that the emotional abuse that she is dishing out on you. Why have you accepted your wife being verbally and physically abusive towards you?

Why are you putting up with this?

Are you ready to leave her over this? Do you realize that you should leave her because you are in a dangerous marriage.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

vauxhall101 said:


> It is hurtful to me when, during an argument, she will spitefully repeat back to me something her therapist said about me, not least because nothing she has ever repeated back to me (about me) is actually that bad, but _that she wants me to think that a professional thinks I'm in the wrong and a terrible person_, that 'teacher is on her side', really hurts me, if that makes sense. Although, I suppose, I'm doing the same thing now by posting on this forum. Sorry for the splurge, but I have no-one to talk to.


Don't you realize that she is either making up what she claims that the therapist said, or she is lying to the therapist to get the responses that she wants from him/her.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

EleGirl said:


> Don't you realize that she is either making up what she claims that the therapist said, or she is lying to the therapist to get the responses that she wants from him/her.


i don't think she's lying, in fact, I think if she was lying she would come up with something "better"! (ie would be condemning me more strongly).


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## katiecrna (Jan 29, 2016)

So where are you right now? Are you contemplating leaving her? Is she convincing you your the crazy one?


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

katiecrna said:


> So where are you right now? Are you contemplating leaving her? Is she convincing you your the crazy one?


Yeah, I'm pretty sure we're done, I'm very sorry to say. We've been here before quite a few times in the last 3 years, I actually wish I could publish some of our email conversations so I could "prove" to myself that I'm not the crazy abusive one, because yes, she is always trying to convince me that I am evil, and you do start to doubt yourself significantly. We have always resolved it, and most of the time, she is very sweet. But as soon as something (anything) I do upsets her, no matter how seemingly insignificant (for example, once recently it was that she suddenly remembered that a few weeks prior I had made an innocuous joke about her impersonating a particular accent), she will have a tantrum that can range from sleep-on-the-couch sulking, up to the violence I mentioned. 

But this time I think I'm done. Before it was her who was doing the breaking up, but now I can't see how I can come back from this and still live with her, and at the moment it doesn't seem like she wants me to.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

So when are you going to contact a lawyer and get the divorce started?


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## Marc878 (Aug 26, 2015)

Your life is what you make of it. Quit looking for justification to stay in this nightmare.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

*Warning Signs for BPD*

*SHORT RESPONSE*
Vaux, the behaviors you describe -- i.e., irrational jealousy, paranoia, temper tantrums, verbal abuse, physical abuse, controlling actions, feeling of entitlement, rapid flips between Jekyll (adoring you) and Hyde (hating you), and always being "The Victim" -- are classic warning signs for BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). Importantly, I'm not suggesting your W has full-blown BPD but, rather, that she may exhibit strong traits of it.

I caution that BPD is not something -- like chickenpox -- that one either "has" or "doesn't have." Instead, it is a spectrum disorder, which means every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits all BPD traits to some degree (albeit at a low level if the person is healthy). At issue, then, is not whether your W exhibits BPD traits. Of course she does. We all do. 

Rather, at issue is whether she exhibits them at a strong and persistent level (i.e., is on the upper third of the BPD spectrum). Not having met her, I cannot answer that question. I nonetheless believe you can spot any strong BPD warning signs that are present if you take a little time to learn which behaviors are on the list. They are easy to spot because there is nothing subtle about behaviors such as verbal and physical abuse, irrational jealousy, and always blaming you for every misfortune.
*
LONG RESPONSE* -- Vaux, I'm working on a longer response and will post it shortly. Meanwhile, I suggest you take a quick look at my list of _*18 BPD Warning Signs*_ to see if most sound very familiar.


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## Ghost Rider (Mar 6, 2017)

Read up on BPD, and see if it fits your wife:

http://talkaboutmarriage.com/genera...n/387050-can-we-have-official-bpd-thread.html

If you do a search on BPD in this forum you can find numerous other threads.

If she does have BPD, you will never, ever be able to "fix" her. you will never be able to make her happy and you will never be able to persuade her to trust you. Just saying.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

> She has self-harmed in the past, and... tells me that her self-harming was my fault.


Vaux, the APA's diagnostic manual (DSM-5) lists _"__Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting"_ for only one disorder: BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). That is, of the 157 disorders listed in DSM-5, only BPD has "cutting" listed as a defining trait. Moreover, many studies have shown that self harm like cutting is strongly associated with BPD. 

A 2004 hospital study, for example, found that "_Self-mutilating behavior is a symptom seen in both men and women with various psychiatric disorders, but *the majority of those who self-mutilate are women with borderline personality disorder*. This complex, maladaptive behavior is used by clients as a means of self-preservation and emotion regulation, and is often associated with childhood trauma._" See J Psychosoc Nurs Ment Health Serv. 2004.



> She yells insults, she shoves me, throws things, punches and kicks, hits me with objects, and has left me with large bruises.


The _physical_ abuse of a spouse or partner has been found to be strongly associated with BPD. One of the first studies showing that link is a 1993 hospital study of spousal batterers. It found that nearly all of them have a personality disorder and half of them have BPD. See Roger Melton's summary of that study at 50% of Batterers are BPDers. Similarly, a 2008 study and a 2012 study find a strong association between violence and BPD. 



> You do start to wonder whether you are in fact going crazy.


Vaux, if you really have been living with a BPDer for 3 years, "crazy" is exactly how you should be feeling. Because BPDers typically are convinced that the absurd allegations coming out of their mouths are absolutely true -- they generally have a greater "crazy-making" effect than can ever be achieved by narcissists or sociopaths. 

This is why that, of the 157 mental disorders listed in the APA's diagnostic manual, BPD is the _one most notorious _for making the abused partners feel like they may be losing their minds. And this is largely why therapists typically see far more of those abused partners -- coming in to find out if they are going insane -- than they ever see of the BPDers themselves.

Nothing will drive you crazier sooner than being repeatedly abused by a partner whom you know, to a certainty, must really love you. The reason is that you will be mistakenly convinced that, if only you can figure out what YOU are doing wrong, you can restore your partner to that wonderful human being you saw at the very beginning. 



> Most of the time she is very sweet.


So is my BPDer exW. Generally, BPDers behave wonderfully while splitting you white and atrociously while splitting you black. Moreover, they generally are not bad people. Their problem is not being bad but, rather, being unstable. Further, they usually are easy to fall in love with. Indeed, two of the world's most beloved women -- Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana -- both exhibited full-blown BPD if their biographers are correct.



> I did not cheat, I barely even knew this woman. My wife still brings this up now, constantly, as justification for why she behaves violently towards me.


If she is a BPDer (i.e., is on the upper third of the BPD spectrum), her greatest fear is abandonment. That fear is so great that she will perceive an "abandonment threat" in minor actions or comments that pose no threat whatsoever. This is why BPDers usually exhibit irrational jealousy.



> She says she has attention deficit disorder, and she certainly has problems focusing, but I'm afraid I don't know much about the condition.


Some members of the psychiatric community suspect that adult ADHD may be a subset of BPD, not a distinct disorder. See, e.g., 2006 Study and the article, 25% of BPDers Have ADHD. Similar studies are cited in BPD or ADHD? Most psychologists, however, view them as separate disorders even though they share several common symptoms (e.g., impulsivity and emotional dysregulation).



> She won't take any responsibility for the way she behaves, _she will never acknowledge that what she does is wrong_, only that it is my fault.


Whereas narcissists seek frequent validation of their grandiose false self image of being _the special one_, BPDers seek validation of being "_The Victim_," always "The Victim." During the courtship period, a BPDer will receive that validation from her view of you as the rescuer who has arrived to save her from unhappiness. Because you are "The Rescuer," the implication is that she must be "The Victim" you are so intent on rescuing. 

Following the courtship period -- when his infatuation no longer holds his two fears at bay -- a BPDer will start perceiving of you as "The Perpetrator," i.e., the cause of her every misfortune. Regardless of whether you are "The Rescuer" (her perception when splitting you white) or "The Perpetrator" (her perception when splitting you black), you are satisfying her deep need for validation of being "The Victim." This is why, whenever you would pull her from the raging seas, she would jump right back into the water as soon as you had turned your head.



> I never know what is going to set her off.


If your W has strong BPD traits, this is exactly how you would be feeling while living with her. That's why _Stop Walking on Eggshells_ is the name of the best-selling BPD book that is targeted to the abused spouses and other family members. 

If your W is a BPDer, she carries enormous anger inside from early childhood. You therefore don't have to do a thing to CREATE the anger. Rather, you only have to do or say some minor thing that triggers a release of the anger that is already there. This is why a BPDer can burst into a rage in less than a minute -- oftentimes in only ten seconds. Moreover, BPDers have very weak control over their emotions. Indeed, the key defining characteristic of BPD is the inability to regulate one's own emotions.



> I don't think she's lying, in fact, I think if she was lying she would come up with something "better"!


You likely are correct if she exhibits strong BPD symptoms. A BPDer is filled with so much self loathing and shame (carried from early childhood) that the last thing she wants to do is something bad like lying that will add to her guilt and shame. Moreover, a BPDer usually doesn't need to lie because her subconscious is working 24/7 to protect her fragile ego from seeing too much of reality. It accomplishes this by projecting nearly all bad thoughts and hurtful feelings onto YOU.

Because this projection occurs entirely at the subconscious level, the BPDer is consciously convinced that those bad thoughts/feelings are originating from YOU. This is why BPDers usually believe the outrageous allegations coming out of their mouths. And, when they are claiming the exact opposite a week later, they likely will be absolutely convinced that this nonsense is true too.



> But this time I think I'm done. Before it was her who was doing the breaking up.... quite a few times in the last 3 years.


BPDer relationships are notorious for having multiple breakups. A BPDfamily survey of about 460 such relationships found that nearly a fourth of them (23%) went through 10 or more complete breakup/makeup cycles BEFORE finally ending for good. About 40% of the BPDer relationships experienced at least six breakup/makeup cycles before ending. And 73% had three or more breakup/makeup cycles before finally ending. See "Results" at BPDfamily Breakup/Makeup Poll. 



> When we're arguing I do tell her that she's crazy, insane, a psychopath, which I feel bad about afterwards.


I'm glad to hear you felt bad about it. Being "crazy" or "insane" means that a person's perception of _physical_ reality is distorted -- e.g., believing that the TV news anchor is speaking to her personally. In contrast, BPDers typically see physical reality just fine. What is distorted is a BPDer's perception of your intentions and motivations. As to her being a "psychopath," only 9% of female full-blown BPDers also suffer from Antisocial PD (aka, "psychopathy" and "sociopathy").



> She gets prescriptions for drugs that I don't think she needs.


If she really does suffer from BPD, medications won't make a dent in it. Yet, a BPDer almost certainly suffers from one or two co-occurring "clinical disorders" such as panic disorder, ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD. Hence, a psychiatrist likely will prescribe medication targeted to treating that co-occurring disorder.



> I don't know how to help her for the best.


If she has mild to moderate BPD symptoms, you can help by learning how to validate her feelings without actually agreeing that they accurately reflect reality. If she has strong BPD symptoms, however, my experience is that all the validation in the world won't make a substantial difference. The problem is not communication but, rather, the position of the BPDer's two great fears -- abandonment and engulfment -- at the opposite ends of the _very same_ spectrum. 

This means you are always in a lose/lose situation because, as you back away from one fear to avoid triggering it, you will start triggering the fear at the other end of that same spectrum. Hence, as you move close to a BPDer to comfort her and assure her of your love, you will start triggering her engulfment fear, making her feel like she's being suffocated and controlled by you. 

Yet, as you back away to give her breathing space, you will find that you've started triggering her abandonment fear. And, sadly, there is no midpoints solution (between "too close" and "too far away") where you can safely stand to avoid triggering the two fears. I know because I foolishly spent 15 years searching for that Goldilocks position, which simply does not exist.



> When she is upset and angry, she is beyond unreasonable.


That is generally true of all of us. The human condition is that, whenever we experience intense feelings, our judgement flies out the window. This is why, by the time we enter high school, most of us already know we cannot trust our own judgement when we're very angry. Even at that young age, healthy people try hard to keep their mouths shut and their fingers off the keys until they have time to cool down.

What sets BPDers apart, then, is that they carry so much anger and hurt inside (from early childhood) that you are only 10 seconds away from triggering a sudden release of that anger whenever you try to discuss ANY sensitive issue. And nearly all issues are "sensitive." Hence, trying to have a reasonable and rational discussion at a time when your W is already in a calm or happy mood does not work at all. Her current mood can disappear in seconds. This is why it usually is impossible to have a calm rational discussion about a sensitive matter with a BPDer -- no matter what mood she is in.

A large part of the problem is that, like young children, BPDers rely heavily on black-white thinking. They typically are great folks to be around while they are perceiving of you as "all good" (i.e., "with them"). And they can be terrible to be around while they are perceiving of you as "all bad" (i.e., "against them). 

BPDers categorize everyone close to them in this black-white manner because they are too emotionally immature to handle being in touch with two strong conflicting feelings at the same time. Likewise, they are extremely uncomfortable with ambiguities, uncertainties, and the other gray areas of interpersonal relationships. You will see this same all-or-nothing behavior in a four year old who adores Daddy while he's bringing out the toys but, in a few seconds, will flip to hating Daddy when he takes one toy away.



> She has been to see a few psychiatrists, and she has told me that they have told her that she is okay.


If your W really is a high functioning BPDer, a therapist treating her is unlikely to tell her about the disorder, much less tell you. As I discuss at Loath to Diagnose, there are several reasons why psychiatrists and other therapists generally are loath to tell a BPDer the name of her disorder. They withhold that information to protect their client. 

Consequently, when BPD is a strong possibility, relying on your W's therapist for candid advice during the marriage would be as foolish as relying on her attorney for candid advice during a divorce. Your best chance of obtaining a candid professional opinion is to see a psychologist who is ethically bound to protect only YOUR best interests, not hers. 

Hence, if you are not intending to leave her, I suggest you see a psychologist -- for a visit or two all by yourself -- to obtain a candid professional opinion on what it is you're dealing with. I also suggest that, while you're looking for a psychologist, you read about BPD warning signs to see if they seem to apply strongly. 

Of course, learning to spot these warning signs will not enable you to diagnose your W's issues. Although strong BPD symptoms are easy to spot, only a professional can determine whether they are so severe as to constitute full-blown BPD. Yet, like learning warning signs for a stroke or heart attack, learning those for BPD may help you avoid a painful situation, e.g., taking your W back or running into the arms of another woman just like her.

An easy place to start reading is the list of _18 BPD Warning Signs_ I cited above. If most of those signs sound very familiar, I would suggest you read my more detailed description of them at my posts in _Maybe's Thread_. If that description rings many bells and raises questions, I would be glad to join @GhostRider and the other respondents in discussing them with you. Take care, Vaux.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

EleGirl said:


> So when are you going to contact a lawyer and get the divorce started?


There's no need for lawyers. We have no joint assets. Last time she went this far, she just sent me divorce papers to sign, which I did, which she then did nothing with. It'll be the same now. We don't live in the US, and neither of us has anything worth fighting over.

I don't even care if we get divorced or not, I'm not going to get married again, I'm just tired of being treated this way, and then being told it's my fault. I guess I'll just move out, and that will be that.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

*Re: Warning Signs for BPD*



Uptown said:


> *SHORT RESPONSE*
> 
> Rather, at issue is whether she exhibits them at a strong and persistent level (i.e., is on the upper third of the BPD spectrum). Not having met her, I cannot answer that question. I nonetheless believe you can spot any strong BPD warning signs that are present if you take a little time to learn which behaviors are on the list. They are easy to spot because there is nothing subtle about behaviors such as verbal and physical abuse, irrational jealousy, and always blaming you for every misfortune.


Thank you very much for the detailed response, it is very, very, _very_ much appreciated. I will read through the information and then post back, thank you again, it occurs to me that posting on this forum is actually the first time I have voiced any of this to anyone except my wife, and it is such a relief to talk about it.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

vauxhall101 said:


> There's no need for lawyers. We have no joint assets. Last time she went this far, she just sent me divorce papers to sign, which I did, which she then did nothing with. It'll be the same now. We don't live in the US, and neither of us has anything worth fighting over.
> 
> I don't even care if we get divorced or not, I'm not going to get married again, I'm just tired of being treated this way, and then being told it's my fault. I guess I'll just move out, and that will be that.


Whether or not you need an attorney was not the point of my question. So I'll reword it.

When are you going to leave her so that she can no longer abuse you?


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

Uptown said:


> Vaux, the APA's diagnostic manual (DSM-5) lists _"__Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats or self-harming behavior, such as cutting"_ for only one disorder: BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). That is, of the 157 disorders listed in DSM-5, only BPD has "cutting" listed as a defining trait. Moreover, many studies have shown that self harm like cutting is strongly associated with BPD.


Firstly, thank you so much for the detailed reply. All responses have been more helpful to me than I can say. I went through the list of 18 for BPD, and my wife would be a ‘strong yes’ for 9 of them, a ‘very probable yes’ for 5, a ‘maybe’ for 3, and a ‘no’ for 1. Although, as you say, I think everybody could answer ‘yes’ to some of those questions, so whether my wife has BPD, I wouldn’t like to say. 

Her self-harming is…….very contentious, for me. I have tried to get her to tell her therapist(s), but she won’t. I am fairly certain that she has not self-harmed for 2 years. From my own perspective, what I find so (admittedly selfishly) hurtful, is that she will use it against me as a ‘weapon’, to say ‘look what you have done to me’, because she wants me to feel guilty about it, to feel that it is my fault – this has happened on two occasions, and the second time, the self-satisfied manner in which she flashed the scars at me and told me it was because of me, was frankly quite disturbing. When I told her I thought this to be unacceptable, she tried to obfuscate, without acknowledging that what I said was true, and also, when I told her she was attempting to emotionally blackmail me, she retorted that she was trying to get me to understand how awful things were for her, and that I am disgusting for accusing her of emotional blackmail because emotional blackmail is trying to get someone to ‘do something’, and she wasn’t (to which I countered that I think she was, she was trying to make me feel responsible). 




Uptown said:


> The _physical_ abuse of a spouse or partner has been found to be strongly associated with BPD. One of the first studies showing that link is a 1993 hospital study of spousal batterers. It found that nearly all of them have a personality disorder and half of them have BPD.


The physical violence is not such a big thing to me (at the moment) because I know that she is angry, furious in fact, and I should probably leave her alone – and she hasn’t caused me any great physical harm, just bruises. What I find so upsetting about it, as per the title of this thread, is that she refuses to take any responsibility for it – as far as she is concerned, my ‘horrible behaviour’ (such as ignoring her), means that her extreme reaction is justified. 




Uptown said:


> Vaux, if you really have been living with a BPDer for 3 years, "crazy" is exactly how you should be feeling. Because BPDers typically are convinced that the absurd allegations coming out of their mouths are absolutely true -- they generally have a greater "crazy-making" effect than can ever be achieved by narcissists or sociopaths.



I want to make note of a few coincidences, and one is that you discussed ‘gaslighting’ in another thread, and that is something that my wife and I have discussed. I think she does it to me, to an extent, but not deliberately – I have no doubt that she is sincere. Equally, I think that if she read this, she would say that it is me who is ‘gaslighting’ her, by trying to shift blame away from me and onto, say, her having BPD. 

I could give myriad examples, but I might as well start with the big one, which is what I mentioned before: back in 2015, when she was telling me how much she loved me, I told her that a female I worked with had a crush on me. At the time my W said nothing, until 3 months later (trying to dismiss her hurt as irrational and talk about it with her therapist, from her perspective, gathering ammo, from mine), and now she brings that up constantly, and I do mean probably at least once every couple of weeks, and she is never, ever, calm when she does so. She has occasionally even ‘warned’ me that she is about to have a ‘meltdown’ about it because, for eg, she has heard the woman’s name on tv. 

She claims that the problem is not that it happened, but that it hasn’t been ‘resolved’, that I refuse to discuss it. However, we have in fact discussed it once, calmly, something that she seems to have forgotten all about, and I have apologised on numerous occasions. I am reasonably sure that it will never be ‘resolved’ to her satisfaction. She seems to have become convinced that this was the most despicable act that it is possible for a human being to perform, and I am exasperated and dismissive of it for this reason, and because the more we talk about it, the more it encourages her that her feeling is entirely correct. This is the worst ‘crime’ of many, for which she regularly tantrums. 

I mean……that’s not me being a complete a-hole, right? I mean………..right? (really could do with some reassurance on this, and many other things). 




Uptown said:


> So is my BPDer exW. Generally, BPDers behave wonderfully while splitting you white and atrociously while splitting you black. Moreover, they generally are not bad people. Their problem is not being bad but, rather, being unstable. Further, they usually are easy to fall in love with. Indeed, two of the world's most beloved women -- Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana -- both exhibited full-blown BPD if their biographers are correct.


I would certainly not say that my wife is a bad person. She can be very kind, she is a vegan and is deeply affected by the plight of animals, for example. She is a school teacher, and her younger pupils flat-out adore her, and she is well liked by all her colleagues, and rightly so. 

The problem is with another odd coincidence – you wrote in a couple of different threads about BDP people ‘behaving like a 4 year old’, and that’s very strange, because I’m ashamed to say that is exactly what I accuse my wife of when she gets like this (and it’s always 4, never a 3 or a 5 year old) – she does act like a 4 year old, and not a well-behaved 4 year old at that. I find her tantrums sometimes to be extraordinary, and I can’t actually believe that a fully grown adult could even do such a thing. I compare arguing with her to coating yourself in butter then trying to climb a mountain made entirely of glass. There’s nothing to grip on to. 

Example: She has a lot of issues with concentration. I constantly have to cajole her to do things (brush your teeth now, brush your teeth now etc etc etc), and she is always being distracted, usually by something online. This is a constant battle. A few weeks ago, while I was waiting for her to do something (set up a movie, I think), she was messing around on youtube, so I picked up my laptop and started working. And she exploded at me. How dare I start doing something else while she is waiting for me, etc. 

I just didn’t know how to respond. When she had calmed down, she still maintained that I was in the wrong, because she has ADHD, trouble focussing etc, and I should know this, whereas I do not. And I said to her, that is NOT what I am objecting to. If you have trouble focussing etc, that’s okay, I’m not blaming you. What I object to in the strongest possible terms, is that she (or anyone) would forcefully _attack somebody else for doing something that they do to the other person routinely_, and not only that but _while they are in the middle of actually doing it too_. Sometimes I just want to cry, because I feel like if she would just TRY and restrain herself, everything would be fine. 

Also, another strange parallel to the other thread, is that I also do everything around the house like the other poster – I do all the cooking, cleaning, dishes, laundry etc. 



Uptown said:


> If she is a BPDer (i.e., is on the upper third of the BPD spectrum), her greatest fear is abandonment. That fear is so great that she will perceive an "abandonment threat" in minor actions or comments that pose no threat whatsoever. This is why BPDers usually exhibit irrational jealousy.


Yes, and in fact, she even says that to me a lot, she frequently tantrums because I have ‘abandoned’ her, by…….going to bed while she’s reading something online, or whatever it might be. (was going to give another example here, but this is too long already). 



Uptown said:


> Following the courtship period -- when his infatuation no longer holds his two fears at bay -- a BPDer will start perceiving of you as "The Perpetrator," i.e., the cause of her every misfortune. Regardless of whether you are "The Rescuer" (her perception when splitting you white) or "The Perpetrator" (her perception when splitting you black), you are satisfying her deep need for validation of being "The Victim." This is why, whenever you would pull her from the raging seas, she would jump right back into the water as soon as you had turned your head.


Yep. I often say that to her, when she ‘flips’ from saying I am the kindest, handsomest, most wonderful man alive, to being somewhere above Hitler and just below Satan on the evilness scale. Can I not be somewhere in between? 



Uptown said:


> If your W has strong BPD traits, this is exactly how you would be feeling while living with her. That's why Stop Walking on Eggshells is the name of the best-selling BPD book that is targeted to the abused spouses and other family members.


Another coincidence, because I say that to her all the time. I am tired of walking on eggshells, never knowing what bizarre minor thing is going to open the floodgates. 



Uptown said:


> If your W is a BPDer, she carries enormous anger inside from early childhood. You therefore don't have to do a thing to CREATE the anger. Rather, you only have to do or say some minor thing that triggers a release of the anger that is already there. This is why a BPDer can burst into a rage in less than a minute -- oftentimes in only ten seconds. Moreover, BPDers have very weak control over their emotions. Indeed, the key defining characteristic of BPD is the inability to regulate one's own emotions.


She has acknowledged before that she is impulsive (she could hardly deny it). 



Uptown said:


> You likely are correct if she exhibits strong BPD symptoms. A BPDer is filled with so much self loathing and shame (carried from early childhood) that the last thing she wants to do is something bad like lying that will add to her guilt and shame. Moreover, a BPDer usually doesn't need to lie because her subconscious is working 24/7 to protect her fragile ego from seeing too much of reality. It accomplishes this by projecting nearly all bad thoughts and hurtful feelings onto YOU.
> 
> Because this projection occurs entirely at the subconscious level, the BPDer is consciously convinced that those bad thoughts/feelings are originating from YOU. This is why BPDers usually believe the outrageous allegations coming out of their mouths. And, when they are claiming the exact opposite a week later, they likely will be absolutely convinced that this nonsense is true too.
> 
> BPDer relationships are notorious for having multiple breakups. A BPDfamily survey of about 460 such relationships found that nearly a fourth of them (23%) went through 10 or more complete breakup/makeup cycles BEFORE finally ending for good. About 40% of the BPDer relationships experienced at least six breakup/makeup cycles before ending. And 73% had three or more breakup/makeup cycles before finally ending.


This too, she lurches so violently between loving me and hating me, it has actually become somewhat of a ‘game’ for us, because she was breaking up with me so often and then accusing me of ‘abandoning’ her and ‘always talking about leaving’ and ‘forcing her to be the bad guy’, so that the next time we were arguing I pointed out that SHE always said it first (“I hate you, you’re a horrible person, when are you leaving, I want a divorce” etc), I specifically told her to make mental note of this, that it was always her who brought it up first. And now she goes to elaborate lengths to NOT say it first, she will say everything else (Me – “so you think we should just live in the same house and ignore each other forever”, Her – “I’m sure it won’t be forever”). 




Uptown said:


> I'm glad to hear you felt bad about it. Being "crazy" or "insane" means that a person's perception of _physical_ reality is distorted -- e.g., believing that the TV news anchor is speaking to her personally. In contrast, BPDers typically see physical reality just fine. What is distorted is a BPDer's perception of your intentions and motivations. As to her being a "psychopath," only 9% of female full-blown BPDers also suffer from Antisocial PD (aka, "psychopathy" and "sociopathy").


I do feel bad about it, and she’s not a psychopath, obviously, it’s just very difficult when someone is hurling these accusations (and jars, and hairbrushes) at you, to give vent to your feelings. Which, I suppose, is what she’d say that she is doing. 



Uptown said:


> If she really does suffer from BPD, medications won't make a dent in it. Yet, a BPDer almost certainly suffers from one or two co-occurring "clinical disorders" such as panic disorder, ADHD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, PTSD, or OCD. Hence, a psychiatrist likely will prescribe medication targeted to treating that co-occurring disorder.


I don’t want to go into too much detail about this, but I don’t think she needs some of the drugs she is prescribed, and I don’t think it’s exactly that she wants to…..feel the high or whatever, I think she wants to put a ‘name’ on what she is feeling, and say ‘ah ha, it’s ADHD, so I must take this’. But she does act surprisingly sheepish when, for example, one of the drugs she has been prescribed, is joked about as a ‘party drug’ on a comedy show we were watching. And she has told me that 2 psychiatrists were of the ‘see how it goes’ mentality when prescribing her drugs she requested, and if that’s what she told me it makes me imagine that they were probably more reluctant than she makes out. She did tell me that her current psych said I was a ‘good husband’ for basically insisting that she stop taking adderall. 



Uptown said:


> This means you are always in a lose/lose situation because, as you back away from one fear to avoid triggering it, you will start triggering the fear at the other end of that same spectrum. Hence, as you move close to a BPDer to comfort her and assure her of your love, you will start triggering her engulfment fear, making her feel like she's being suffocated and controlled by you.


I have said this to her as well. There are certain things she will say, certain inflections of voice etc, where I will immediately be on red alert, and I will actually get chills down my back, because I know that there is no answer I can give that will satisfy her, and as I mentioned above, she seems to fixate on these ‘misdeeds’, and the more she brings them up, it seems to embolden her to go further each time. 




Uptown said:


> What sets BPDers apart, then, is that they carry so much anger and hurt inside (from early childhood) that you are only 10 seconds away from triggering a sudden release of that anger whenever you try to discuss ANY sensitive issue. And nearly all issues are "sensitive." Hence, trying to have a reasonable and rational discussion at a time when your W is already in a calm or happy mood does not work at all. Her current mood can disappear in seconds. This is why it usually is impossible to have a calm rational discussion about a sensitive matter with a BPDer -- no matter what mood she is in.
> 
> BPDers categorize everyone close to them in this black-white manner because they are too emotionally immature to handle being in touch with two strong conflicting feelings at the same time. Likewise, they are extremely uncomfortable with ambiguities, uncertainties, and the other gray areas of interpersonal relationships. You will see this same all-or-nothing behavior in a four year old who adores Daddy while he's bringing out the toys but, in a few seconds, will flip to hating Daddy when he takes one toy away.


Yep, the 4 year old thing. Sigh. This relates to another thing that upsets me, which is that she will talk endlessly about how relationships are about ‘wants and needs’ and ‘effective communication’, but what she means is HER wants and needs. She says I am a terrible communicator (true) and that I only ever bring things up that are bothering me when we’re arguing, but on the one occasion I did calmly communicate a need to her, she became enraged, called me selfish, and so on. It feels to me like she doesn’t care about my wants and needs at all. 

She will tell me endlessly about what husbands have to do for their wives, she will give me a list. But on the one occasion I asked her what she thought wives have to do for their husbands, she seemed quite taken aback, and the best she could muster was to mutter something about ‘kindness’. 

Sex being an example. I feel like sex for her is not about mutual pleasure, she views it as a means of reassuring her insecurities. Whether I experience pleasure or not isn’t something that seems to be a consideration for her, except insofar as, ya know, I’d better enjoy it because otherwise she will feel ‘insecure’ and have a tantrum. Sex with her is not fun and exciting like it should be, it feels like a test. (Although in her defence, she has made a bit of an effort in this department, and this might actually be my issue rather than her’s). 



Uptown said:


> If your W really is a high functioning BPDer, a therapist treating her is unlikely to tell her about the disorder, much less tell you. As I discuss at Loath to Diagnose, there are several reasons why psychiatrists and other therapists generally are loath to tell a BPDer the name of her disorder. They withhold that information to protect their client.


Like I say, she is very charming and sweet, I doubt they can glean much from 50 minutes with her, particularly as I doubt she tells them about the self-harm, things she says to me etc. 



Uptown said:


> Hence, if you are not intending to leave her, I suggest you see a psychologist -- for a visit or two all by yourself -- to obtain a candid professional opinion on what it is you're dealing with. I also suggest that, while you're looking for a psychologist, you read about BPD warning signs to see if they seem to apply strongly.


I really wish I could, but if my wife and I are breaking up, I think I can just about manage to avoid being homeless, but I can’t afford anything like that – and I wouldn’t know how to find one anyway. 




Uptown said:


> An easy place to start reading is the list of _18 BPD Warning Signs_ I cited above. If most of those signs sound very familiar, I would suggest you read my more detailed description of them at my posts in _Maybe's Thread. If that description rings many bells and raises questions, I would be glad to join @GhostRider and the other respondents in discussing them with you. Take care, Vaux._


_

Thank you a thousand times for the lengthy response, I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to have someone (even anonymous internet people) tell me that perhaps I am not insane or vicious, neglectful king of the a-holes. 

But, I don’t really know what to do now. I’m sure we will have to break up, but I love her and care for her very much, and I don’t know what will become of her. She struggles to cope. I don’t know if I should try and talk to her, or if I should just leave, which is what she seems to want right now. 

I hope you don’t mind me asking Uptown, but where is your wife now? Is she okay? Do you still communicate?_


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

> Whether my wife has BPD, I wouldn’t like to say.


Vaux, for the purposes of your deciding whether to remain married to her, it really doesn't matter whether her BPD symptoms are so severe that they satisfy 100% of the diagnostic criteria, i.e., constitute full-blown BPD. If most BPD symptoms are strong, she likely will be nearly as difficult to live with if her behavior satisfies only 80% or 90% of those criteria. 

The full-blown figure primarily is of value only to the courts (which don't like to institutionalize people) and the insurance companies (which don't don't to pay for treatment). This is why I use the term "BPDer" to refer to folks on the upper third of the spectrum -- i.e., folks exhibiting behavior you can spot -- regardless of whether their behavior rises to the diagnostic threshold level.



> She will use [self harming] against me as a ‘weapon’, to say ‘look what you have done to me.’


Once she has done the self harming, she likely wants to use it as evidence of you being The Perpetrator and her being The Victim. Also, she likely uses threats of future self harm as a way to emotionally blackmail you, as you suspect. I really doubt, however, that the act of cutting itself is motivated by those goals. Rather, there are two other benefits offered by the cutting. One is that, when a BPDer is suffering great emotional pain, it can be a great relief to externalize that pain -- bringing it to the surface and putting it on the outside of the body. 

The other reason is that, when BPDers are suffering great emotional pain, they do the same dissociation they used for survival in childhood. They are able to somewhat escape the pain by dissociating their consciousness from their own body -- to the point of feeling like they consciously are outside their bodies or are in some way disconnected from the body. That dissociation does dull the pain but it comes at a terrible cost: the BPDer starts to feel so numb that she feels like she is a robot having no emotions. She therefore has a great desire to experience a true feeling again so she knows she is still alive. This is most easily accomplished, of course, by simply cutting one's own arm -- an action that immediately gives her a strong feeling and brings her back into the land of the living.

After doing the cutting -- for those two reasons -- a BPDer is smart enough to capitalize on the done deed by using it to make you feel guilty -- and using threats of it to emotionally blackmail you. I seriously doubt, however, that she would cut herself for those guilt/blackmail reasons. There are a thousand ways to make a spouse feel guilty and fearful without resorting to cutting your own arm.



> The physical violence is not such a big thing to me.


It should be, Vaux. Granted, you've not yet lost an arm. Yet, as a warning sign for BPD -- i.e., as a warning sign that you may be married to a woman with the emotional development of a four year old -- it is a VERY BIG thing. This is particularly concerning because her physical outbursts have been reoccurring. It almost certainly will get worse.



> [Gaslighting] is something that my wife and I have discussed. I think she does it to me, to an extent, but not deliberately.


Strictly speaking, her trying to control you is not "gaslighting" unless it is deliberate. The term arises from the 1944 movie in which the H deliberately tries to drive his W crazy. The term thus is most applicable to the behavior of narcissists and sociopaths who are deliberately very manipulative. But many Nons regularly use the term more broadly to refer to all types of controlling behavior, including that which is neither deliberate or planned.



> I think that if she read this, she would say that it is me who is ‘gaslighting’ her, by trying to shift blame away from me and onto, say, her having BPD.


Yes, in the same way that she unconsciously projects all of her other bad thoughts/feelings onto you, she almost certainly will project that claim onto you too. The result will be that she is absolutely convinced YOU are the BPDer. This is why I usually advise the abused partners to NOT tell the BPDers about their suspicions.



> She seems to have become convinced that [my telling her about the coworker's crush on me] was the most despicable act that it is possible for a human being to perform.... I mean…that’s not me being a complete a-hole, right?


Right. Once someone has apologized for a minor mistake, a mature adult will forgive him and leave that incident in the past. But, if your W is a BPDer, NOTHING will be left in the past. Nothing is _"forgotten."_ Instead, she will keep a long list in her mind of every mistake and offense you ever committed against her (real or imagined). 

Moreover, she will not hesitate to pull out the ENTIRE list during the most minor of arguments with you. As noted earlier, BPDers do this because their self image is so fragile that they need frequent validation of their false self identity of being The Victim. My exW, for example, would mention mistakes/offenses I had done 12 or 15 years earlier -- things having absolutely nothing to do with the current argument over some minor thing.



> She is a school teacher, and her younger pupils flat-out adore her, and she is well liked by all her colleagues, and rightly so.


Similarly, my exW has a warmth and exuberance that immediately puts people at ease. Even complete strangers will feel like they've known her for a long time after speaking with her for only a half hour. As I discussed earlier, the vast majority of BPDers are high functioning people who interact well with casual friends, business colleagues, and total strangers -- because none of those people are able to trigger the BPDer's two great fears. The result is that it is common for a BPDer to be caring and thoughtful all day long with complete strangers and then go home at night to abuse the very people who love her.



> I find her tantrums sometimes to be extraordinary, and I can’t actually believe that a fully grown adult could even do such a thing.


Yes, Vaux, it is what you would expect to see when watching a young bully on the playground of an elementary school. Moreover, a BPDer will make such outrageous claims that you will simply marvel that any adult can say such nonsense while managing to keep a straight face.



> She frequently tantrums because I have ‘abandoned’ her, by going to bed while she’s reading something online.


Likewise, the smallest events would trigger my exW's abandonment fear. She would become enraged, e.g., if she saw me looking at another woman for a second instead of a half second. And she would get very upset when, on a narrow sidewalk, I walked a few paces ahead of her so as to give space to other pedestrians. In her distorted view, it meant that I was embarrassed to be seen in public with her and thus was a sign of impending abandonment.



> She has acknowledged before that she is *impulsive* (she could hardly deny it).


_"Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors"_ is another one of the 9 defining symptoms. See 9 BPD Symptoms at NIMH. So far, you've seen what _"impulsive"_ means. If you stay with a BPDer for very long, you will see what _"often dangerous behaviors"_ means. In my case, it meant that my exW had me arrested on a bogus charge of "brutalizing" her. When I got out of jail 3 days later, I found that she had obtained a R/O (which USA courts hand out like candy) barring me from returning to my own home for 18 months (the time it takes to finalize a divorce in this State).



> She lurches so violently between loving me and hating me, it has actually become somewhat of a ‘game’ for us, because she was breaking up with me so often and then accusing me of ‘abandoning’ her.


Vaux, this rapid flipping between adoration (Jekyll) and hatred (Hyde) is why the #2 best-selling BPD book is titled, _I Hate You, Don't Leave Me!_



> It’s just very difficult when someone is hurling these accusations (and jars, and hairbrushes) at you, to give vent to your feelings.


If you are living with a BPDer, you almost certainly will start exhibiting some of her bad behaviors occasionally. The Nons (non-BPD partners) call this process "picking up fleas." Of course, it's taken from Benjamine Franklin's saying, "If you lie down with dogs...." Franklin was advising us all to be careful when choosing the people we associate with.



> She will tell me endlessly about what husbands have to do for their wives.... I asked her what she thought wives have to do for their husbands, she seemed quite taken aback, and the best she could muster was to mutter something about ‘kindness’.


That's a pathetic response if you believe you are in a husband/wife relationship. Yet, once you realize you're in a parent/child relationship, that's exactly the type of response a four year old girl would give to her father.



> Where is your wife now? Is she okay? Do you still communicate?


She lives far away in another State. After we divorced, she kept calling me every two weeks, wanting to maintain a friendship. After 8 months, I asked her to stop calling. I explained that it was impossible for us to maintain a friendship because she was incapable of trusting me. Trust, I explained, is the foundation on which all long-term relationships must be built. I further explained that her vindictive efforts to destroy my 16-year relationships with my step children had ended our chance of having a friendship.



> I don’t know if I should try and talk to her, or if I should just leave, which is what she seems to want right now.


Walking away from a BPDer is extremely painful because it feels like you're abandoning a sick child. I therefore believe that, if you want to leave, you likely will have to do it whenever you get _angry enough_ to have a prayer's chance of leaving and staying away. Remember, if you are determine to leave, _anger is your friend_. It is a protective ego defense that you can use, like a crutch, to walk away to safety. Then, a year or two later when you are safely away, you can kick that crutch aside (so it doesn't start harming you). Because it is so painful to leave a BPDer, I offer several suggestions.

*First*, read _Splitting: Protecting Yourself while Divorcing a Borderline or Narcissist_. If your W is a BPDer, the divorce likely will get very nasty very quickly. If you have time, read that book and consult with a divorce attorney before telling your W that you are filing for divorce. That way you can get your ducks in a row. If you're already broken up, you can save yourself major grief by not taking her back and having to break up all over again. 

*Second*, read the articles Surviving a Breakup with Someone Suffering with BPD and Leaving a Partner with BPD. I also recommend Pain of Breaking Up and Divorcing a Narcissist.

*Third,* for tips on how to establish and enforce strong personal boundaries, I recommend an online blog by a psychiatric nurse. It provides 20 tips to nurses on how they can best deal with obstinate BPDer patients. It is located at BPD on the Behavioral Unit.

*Fourth*, read an explanation of how we excessive caregivers get to be this way during our childhood. If you've been married to a BPDer for 3 years, you almost certainly are an excessive caregiver like me. This means that our desire to be _needed _(for what we can do) far exceeds our desire to be _loved_ (for the men we already are). You therefore may find the book, _Codependent No More_, to be helpful.

*Fifth,* carry a VAR in your shirt pocket to start recording your W's rages so you have evidence if she tries to have you arrested on the false claim of brutalizing her. Because a BPDer is absolutely convinced that her outrageous allegations are true, she likely will be very convincing when the police arrive (at which point she will immediately transform into the sweetest, most rational person the policeman ever met).


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

Uptown said:


> Vaux, for the purposes of your deciding whether to remain married to her, it really doesn't matter whether her BPD symptoms are so severe that they satisfy 100% of the diagnostic criteria, i.e., constitute full-blown BPD. If most BPD symptoms are strong, she likely will be nearly as difficult to live with if her behavior satisfies only 80% or 90% of those criteria.


Should I tell her psychiatrist? I know that he is not ‘on my side’, but I do have his email address, and I am very concerned about her. She has only visited this guy once, but he did say that both she and I should keep a journal of her behaviour when she started taking her new meds (which I did do), but she’s……..the same. I did ask her, calmly, if I could email her psych and describe her behaviour, and let’s just say that the response was an extremely unequivocal ‘no’. 



> Once she has done the self harming, she likely wants to use it as evidence of you being The Perpetrator and her being The Victim.


Yeah, I don’t think she self-harmed to ‘get back at me’, I think she did it because of emotional torment. Although I do wish she’d tell her doctors. I think it is possible she is over this now though, I have kept a fairly close watch on her, and can’t see any evidence that she has hurt herself in the last 2 years. 



> It should be, Vaux. Granted, you've not yet lost an arm. Yet, as a warning sign for BPD -- i.e., as a warning sign that you may be married to a woman with the emotional development of a four year old -- it is a VERY BIG thing. This is particularly concerning because her physical outbursts have been reoccurring. It almost certainly will get worse.


This is a point that I have made to her – she keeps getting worse. It always ramps up. I have admitted to her quite frankly that I am terrified of her, not because I’m worried about being physically hurt, but because I never know when she will next ‘explode’, so I am nervous all the time, and reluctant to say anything to her, discuss things with her, etc. It started with yelling, then knocking off my glasses and shoving me (although in her defense, on one of these occasions I was ‘poking’ her to get her to talk to me – not in a violent way, but in an irritating child-like way), then kicking, then punching, and now we have moved on to all of those things, plus hitting me with objects (like hairbrushes), and throwing things (the largest bruise she has given me is when she threw a big pot of mosturiser at me). 

Example, she is interested in politics, and she spends a great deal, if not all, of her free time reading online articles, watching youtube videos etc, it’s actually very frustrating when we have things we need to do and she tells me I have to help her stay focussed, and then get’s mad at me when I do, but that’s a different issue – I really don’t mind what she does with her free time, she works hard, she should spend it how she wishes. 

However, what is a problem, is that she becomes enraged if she is fulminating against (whoever/whatever) and I do not ‘join in’ forcefully enough. This was actually the cause of our latest blowup. I have told her many times that her ranting about politics is ‘inflaming’ to me, not because of the content of what she is saying, but because if I am not fulsome enough in my condemnation of (whoever/whatever), she has been quite astonishingly rude to me in the past, in fact on two occasions last year she was ruder to me than anybody has ever been in my entire life, I really wish I had recorded it so I could play it back to her, because she has since tried to dismiss it, but I remember precisely how shocked I was that she could behave in such a way. So now I ‘ignore’ her (or say ‘uh-huh’, or something as non-commital as possible), and this also infuriates her – and is the reason we are not speaking now. She says I have to respond when she does this, and I say I am terrified of doing so, because I know that if I don’t give exactly the ‘right’ response, I will be attacked. 

As I said, I really am tired of walking on eggshells. 



> Yes, in the same way that she unconsciously projects all of her other bad thoughts/feelings onto you, she almost certainly will project that claim onto you too. The result will be that she is absolutely convinced YOU are the BPDer. This is why I usually advise the abused partners to NOT tell the BPDers about their suspicions.


She has done this before, tried to convince me that I am pig-headed (true) and crazy (not strictly true), and that every sane human being would know that my behavior (eg not wishing to endlessly apologise for telling her 2 years ago that a woman I work with had a small crush on me), was despicable, and I am manipulative for trying to argue otherwise. 

I think this is where her therapist(s) comes in, something obvious that she never seems to consider, or it is convenient for her not to, is that her therapist is somebody who is paid to sympathise with her. So she says something that is upsetting her to her therapist, her therapist sympathises, and she takes this is as absolute unassailable proof that the entire world would be ‘on her side’, and so I must be forced to bend to the will of the masses. I have tried to point out to her that her therapist is hardly likely to say “that’s ridiculous”, instead of course they’re going to say “Hmm. Tell me more”, or something similar, and that if I went to a therapist and told them the situation from my perspective, they would sympathise with me too. That’s what they’re paid for. 



> Right. Once someone has apologized for a minor mistake, a mature adult will forgive him and leave that incident in the past. But, if your W is a BPDer, NOTHING will be left in the past. Nothing is _"forgotten."_ Instead, she will keep a long list in her mind of every mistake and offense you ever committed against her (real or imagined).
> 
> Moreover, she will not hesitate to pull out the ENTIRE list during the most minor of arguments with you. As noted earlier, BPDers do this because their self image is so fragile that they need frequent validation of their false self identity of being The Victim. My exW, for example, would mention mistakes/offenses I had done 12 or 15 years earlier -- things having absolutely nothing to do with the current argument over some minor thing.


I can’t tell you how much of a relief it is to have a person say this, to state that is was a “minor mistake”. My W has maintained such a sustained campaign (I almost wrote “of terror”) about this, that I have begun to seriously doubt myself. I really, really, really wish that I could have a mature, unbiased adult sit her down and calmly tell her this: it was a minor mistake, you don’t have the right to make his life a misery for the next 50 years because of it. I think if an ‘outsider’ said this to her, it would make all the difference. 

She also used to do it to me, all the time, she was constantly telling me about guys trying to get her number, flirting with her etc, this was partly the reason I said it, because I was tired of it. But she always has an excuse as to why it’s acceptable when she does it – “oh, that guy was 65” (so??), or “if you didn’t want me to tell you, you should have said” (I could say the same thing). 

The thing that gets me, what I am ALWAYS looking for from her, is some kind of acknowledgement that my point of view is valid, if she would just accept some responsility for the problems. But she won’t. As far as she is concerned, she is the trodden down martyr who only becomes enraged and violent now because she has long ago grown tired of always being the reasonable one and me being cruel and impossible. This is how she sees herself in our relationship. 

She certainly does this ‘entire list’ thing, one of her/our major issues is that as soon as a minor thing starts her up, she will move on to the 'list of charges' against me, I will give an exasperated reaction, and this will infuriate her further. She has even started ‘accusing’ me of things I told her about before we were even married, before we even knew each other. For example, she attacked me a little while ago for comforting a friend’s girlfriend when she was hysterical. This was BEFORE I had even met my wife. And all I did was try and calm this person down. 

Another example, and this is probably number 2 on my wife’s ‘list of reasons why I am evil’, and also an issue on which I have begun to seriously doubt myself:

When we got married, I gave my wife my mother’s engagement ring. My mother died young, and this is one of the few things that I have left of her. I had the ring fitted to my wife and so on. I told my wife that giving her the ring was no big deal, partly because it wasn’t (neither I nor my sisters are particularly sentimental), but mainly because I knew she would not accept it if I didn’t, she was already making a rather adorable fuss about it. 

My wife did not get me a wedding ring, and I did not wear one, although I would have liked to. She would bring this up, why don’t I get myself a wedding ring etc, and I would say to her, I’m not buying myself a cheap ring and wearing it just to assuage some strange female jealousy (I didn’t put it in those words, obviously), but that if she wanted to buy me a ring, or even choose one for me and I would pay for it, I would be very happy to wear it (true). I even sent her a link to a catalogue of rings and told her to pick one, which she didn’t. 

Then fast forward a year or so, and we had an argument on the phone. Next thing I hear from her, she sends me a message saying something like ‘I have sent back your mother’s rings. I will not contact you again. Goodbye’. I respond the same way I always do – ‘ok, still love you. Bye’. 

When we have made up again, she still argues that she is the righteous one, and I am the ass, because I “refused to wear a wedding ring, and would not discuss it”, and because I “made it seem like my mother’s ring was meaningless”. I did not “refuse”. I would have worn one, in fact I would have been very happy to do so. But if I just buy myself a cheap ring, that isn’t a ‘wedding ring’, it’s just me buying myself a cheap ring, and I would also be curious to know the actual reason WHY my wife would want me to wear a cheap ring that I have bought myself. And as for me not wanting to discuss it, I feel I made my position clear, and I DIDN’T want to discuss it, because ‘discussing it’ meant one of those roundtables that would usually end with me being criticised for whatever reason. And I just want to scream, because whose dead mother’s engagement ring means nothing to them, and even if it did, what gives you the right to criticise them because of it????

She still brings this up regularly as evidence of how awful I am, and I do feel a bit like I’m living in an alternative reality, because……I give someone my dead mother’s engagement ring, they send it back to me in a fit of pique, and……..I’M the bastard? Again, this is something that I really could do with someone (anyone) reassuring me that my perspective here is not completely whacky. 

I can’t tell you what a relief it is to have someone look at these situations and tell me that I’m not entirely in the wrong. I have spoken to nobody about these things, and this kind of thing has been going on for 2 years. I have said to my wife before, I sometimes feel like Will Ferrell in Zoolander, where he yells “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”. It does sometimes start to feel to me like I have stumbled into an alternate reality.

I’m sorry to say that I would like to go to marriage counseling for this reason too, just so the facts could be presented to an outside party, and I could say “I’m not crazy, right? I have a point?”




> Similarly, my exW has a warmth and exuberance that immediately puts people at ease. Even complete strangers will feel like they've known her for a long time after speaking with her for only a half hour.


That’s another odd coincidence, because my wife has said that people say that to her, that strangers will say they “feel like they’ve known her a long time.”



> Likewise, the smallest events would trigger my exW's abandonment fear. She would become enraged, e.g., if she saw me looking at another woman for a second instead of a half second. And she would get very upset when, on a narrow sidewalk, I walked a few paces ahead of her so as to give space to other pedestrians. In her distorted view, it meant that I was embarrassed to be seen in public with her and thus was a sign of impending abandonment.


I can give similar examples. A while ago, I was very sick for a day, vomiting, chills, the whole bit. My wife was very sweet, made me tea, fetched me medicine etc. That evening we watched a movie, it was nice. Then afterwards, my wife insisted on watching some tv show, that I really didn’t want to watch – no, I said, I really can’t bear those types of shows, and I am very tired and still feeling unwell, and it’s late. She continued to argue that we have to watch this show. You can watch it, I say, but I need to go to bed. Eventually I give up trying to convince her, and just go to bed. Result: she sleeps on the couch, and sulks all next day because I ‘abandoned’ her. 



> That's a pathetic response if you believe you are in a husband/wife relationship. Yet, once you realize you're in a parent/child relationship, that's exactly the type of response a four year old girl would give to her father.


I have said this to her in the past as well – she wants to have it both ways, when it suits her she acts as if she is a child and I am her parent, then when she is irritated, she acts as if she is the parent who has the right, perhaps even the duty, to chastise the child (me). 

It really does bother me when she does this specifically, she will read endless amounts about ‘what husbands have to do for their wives’, and she will list these things off – ‘you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to do the other’, and it never seems to occur to her that if you go online to forums about, ya know, unhappy wives criticising their husbands, you’re going to get lots of (slightly irritated) information about about how husbands should behave towards wives. But she genuinely seems to believe that wives have absolutely no responsibility to their husbands, beyond criticising them when they have done ‘wrong’. Hence her having no response when I asked her (something which I’m ashamed to say I do take a certain degree of pride in ‘winning’ that point). 




> She lives far away in another State. After we divorced, she kept calling me every two weeks, wanting to maintain a friendship. After 8 months, I asked her to stop calling. I explained that it was impossible for us to maintain a friendship because she was incapable of trusting me. Trust, I explained, is the foundation on which all long-term relationships must be built. I further explained that her vindictive efforts to destroy my 16-year relationships with my step children had ended our chance of having a friendship.


I’m very sorry to hear that. Thank you again for the information, just having someone respond and tell me I’m not completely crazy, has been such a relief. I will read as much of the information as I can, thank you so much again.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

:|

I would have left right away... she sounds like she's not happy with the relationship anyway - why not give her what she wants?


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

RandomDude said:


> :|
> 
> I would have left right away... she sounds like she's not happy with the relationship anyway - why not give her what she wants?


I have made the same point to her, but she will accuse me of 'abandoning' her, or of being unwilling to work on our relationship. 

I know it sounds strange, but when she hates me (like now), she will consider me to be pure evil personified. But when she loves me, she will tell me repeatedly how much she loves me, and how desperately she needs me - and she really does struggle to cope without me. We have been doing this dance ever since we got married, and she will 'flip' from one to the other on the scantiest (and strangest) of pretexts.


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## RandomDude (Dec 18, 2010)

Meh, who cares what she thinks? 

She can tell herself anything, that's not your problem.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

> Should I tell her psychiatrist?


Why would it matter, Vaux? If your W is a BPDer as you suspect, there is no medication he can prescribe for it. What she is lacking is a group of basic emotional skills she had no opportunity to learn in early childhood. She cannot acquire those skills by swallowing a pill. Rather, the only solution is for her to spend several years (at least) working hard in weekly therapy to learn the skills I mentioned earlier. 

If she is unwilling to do those years of work -- and very few BPDers are -- a team of psychiatrists and psychologists cannot make a difference. I know because I spent a small fortune sending my BPDer exW to weekly sessions for 15 years with six different psychologists (and 3 MCs). My guess is that perhaps as much as 1% of high functioning BPDers have both the self awareness and ego strength needed to be successful in therapy.



> I really, really, really wish that I could have a mature, unbiased adult sit her down and calmly tell her this: it was a minor mistake, you don’t have the right to make his life a misery for the next 50 years because of it. *I think if an ‘outsider’ said this to her, it would make all the difference.*


Vaux, please slap yourself and wake up from this fantasy. Let go of this false notion that telling a BPDer _ANYTHING_ will _"make all the difference."_ If she is a BPDer as you suspect, she likely is a good person who already is doing her best, given her lack of emotional skills. 

BPDers are emotionally unstable because they lack the skills needed to regulate their own emotions. It takes many years of very hard work to replace the emotional skills of a four year old with those of an adult. Because those primitive, childish skills enabled her to survive childhood, she is too afraid to let go and replace them with the more mature skills that the rest of us learned. Moreover, it is very unlikely she is aware that the mature skills are missing. It thus is extremely unlikely she will ever acquire them.

Like a young child, a BPDer's best chance of acquiring those skills will occur only if you allow her to suffer the logical consequences of her bad choices and bad behavior. Otherwise, she has no incentive to change. This means that, as long as you continue being an "enabler" -- by walking on eggshells and allowing her to behave like a spoiled brat and GET AWAY WITH IT -- you are harming your W. You are destroying all incentives she might have to confront her issues and learn how to manage them.



> What I am ALWAYS looking for from her is some kind of acknowledgement that my point of view is valid.


Again, why would it matter? If she is a BPDer, any acknowledgement or showing of appreciation given to you today likely will perceived very differently a week from now. As noted earlier, this change in perceptions is called a "rewriting of history." BPDers are notorious for this. My exW, for example, would agree to do something and then, several days later, would be absolutely convinced that we had agreed on something very different. 

This BPDer behavior is not due to a memory problem but, instead, to being unable to regulate one's own emotions. The result is that BPDers frequently experience feelings so intense that they are convinced the feeling MUST be true. Due to their emotional immaturity, BPDers are unable to intellectually challenge those intense feelings. Instead, they accept them as self-evident "facts."

My exW, for example, had a normal memory. That did not stop her, however, from rewriting history in her mind nearly every week. She had a false self image of being "The Victim." That feeling of being "the Victim" was so strong that she was absolutely convinced that any unhappiness or misfortune was MY fault, i.e., it was something I had done to her. Although this happened hundreds of times, I will give you two examples. 

The first is the $4,000 piano I bought her. I purchased it because she kept telling me how much she loved to play the piano because it was such a comfort to her -- and it helped to calm her down. So, of course, I purchased one and had it delivered as a surprise gift. She was absolutely thrilled. Yet, in the subsequent three years, she played that piano a total of only 5 hours. Yes, that's right -- 5 hours in 3 years. So when I decided to sell it 3 years later, she told me she never really wanted a piano. She claimed I had made a mistake in buying it for her.

The second example is the $11,000 she spent on 3 sewing machines and fabric. She had this mistaken notion that she somehow was "a seamstress" but, in 15 years, she managed to make only one dress, one vest, and a cat collar. And because she had made all of those purchases on her own -- without consulting with me -- you might think she would have only herself to blame for throwing away $11,000. 

Yet, when I asked her why she would not use the machines she had purchased, she explained that none of them would work properly because they lacked important functions. Of course, I then asked why she had chosen to buy 3 machines, all of which were unsuitable for her sewing needs. She explained that she had purchased inadequate machines because, each time, she greatly feared my response if she had spent more to acquire a more expensive machine offering all the necessary sewing features. In her mind, then, she had ended up with 3 useless machines because I had prevented her from buying what she needed -- never mind that she had never even asked me. 

To a BPDer, her perception of reality is whatever intense feeling she is experiencing AT THIS VERY MOMENT. Hence, even if she is blessed with an excellent memory -- or is presented with irrefutable evidence like the 3 perfectly good sewing machines setting in front of my exW -- she trusts that intense feeling. Whenever her feeling is intense, she accepts it as "reality" and will not trust her own memory or her intellectual understanding of the situation. This behavior is one of the primitive ego defenses we all use in childhood. 



> My W has maintained such a sustained campaign (I almost wrote “of terror”) about this, that I have begun to seriously doubt myself.


Yep, that's how it feels to live with a BPDer. As I observed earlier, of the 157 mental disorders listed in the American diagnostic manual, BPD is the one most notorious for making abused partners feel like they may be going crazy. To a lesser extent, NPD (narcissism) and ASPD (sociopathy) have that crazy-making effect too.



> I give someone my dead mother’s engagement ring, they send it back to me in a fit of pique, and……..I’M the bastard? Again, this is something that I really could do with someone (anyone) reassuring me that my perspective here is not completely whacky.


These severely distorted perceptions of your intentions will keep occurring over and over again if you're married to a BPDer. They will occur no matter what you do. Indeed, they will occur even when you do absolutely nothing at all. Even when you are saying nothing and are not moving a muscle, your being in the same room with a BPDer will result in your being blamed for whatever painful thought or feeling she is experiencing.

As noted earlier, her subconscious mind will protect her fragile ego by using you as a trashcan in which to dispose of all uncomfortable feelings. It accomplishes that by projecting the bad feelings onto you, with the result that -- at a conscious level -- she truly believes they originate from you. Hence, if your W is a BPDer, get used to being abused in this manner. It is going to happen over and over again. And it will get worse. As the years go by, she will become increasingly fearful of abandonment as she sees her body aging. And she will become increasingly resentful of your failure to make her happy (an impossible task).



> I sometimes feel like Will Ferrell in Zoolander, where he yells “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!”. It does sometimes start to feel to me like I have stumbled into an alternate reality.


Yes, living with a BPDer is so disorienting that you'll feel like a tornado has delivered you to the Land of Oz. This is why one BPD website (targeted to the abused partners) is called Welcome to Oz.


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## 3Xnocharm (Jun 22, 2012)

vauxhall101 said:


> I have made the same point to her, but she will accuse me of 'abandoning' her, or of being unwilling to work on our relationship.
> 
> I know it sounds strange, but when she hates me (like now), she will consider me to be pure evil personified. But when she loves me, she will tell me repeatedly how much she loves me, and how desperately she needs me - and she really does struggle to cope without me. We have been doing this dance ever since we got married, and she will 'flip' from one to the other on the scantiest (and strangest) of pretexts.


Doesnt matter what she thinks, or how she will deal. She is an adult and is responsible for herself. NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL, and it is irrelevant if she is this way due to a disorder or just her personality, you need to GET THE HELL OUT.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

3Xnocharm said:


> Doesnt matter what she thinks, or how she will deal. She is an adult and is responsible for herself. NONE OF THIS IS NORMAL, and it is irrelevant if she is this way due to a disorder or just her personality, you need to GET THE HELL OUT.


In the interests of fair-play, when I'm reading responses on here, and writing, I ask myself: what would my wife say if she read any of this? I was struck by you writing, in caps, that 'none of this is normal'. Because to me, it has become normal. And I think if my wife _were_ to read this, she would..........perhaps not dispute what I'm saying, but add that I am leaving out the important things that mitigate her behaviour, ie, how much I have hurt her. I don't know if she would think that if she presented things from her perspective, all you anonymous internet people would realise your mistake, and support her and condemn me in the strongest possible terms as a man of staggering evil. 

But I am writing the truth. All these things have happened. Really, what I wanted was some confirmation that I'm not actually evil, or crazy. It has been a gigantic, liberating relief for me to have someone, anyone, even anonymous, tell me that perhaps I'm not the king of the bastards.


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## vauxhall101 (Jul 23, 2017)

Uptown said:


> Why would it matter, Vaux? If your W is a BPDer as you suspect, there is no medication he can prescribe for it. What she is lacking is a group of basic emotional skills she had no opportunity to learn in early childhood. She cannot acquire those skills by swallowing a pill. Rather, the only solution is for her to spend several years (at least) working hard in weekly therapy to learn the skills I mentioned earlier.


It might help her, maybe, if I told her psychiatrist. I feel like she 'hoodwinks' her psychiatrists to an extent (not entirely deliberately), by not telling them everything, and by being so damn adorable, but this is just a suspicion - she might tell them everything. 



> Vaux, please slap yourself and wake up from this fantasy. Let go of this false notion that telling a BPDer _ANYTHING_ will _"make all the difference."_ If she is a BPDer as you suspect, she likely is a good person who already is doing her best, given her lack of emotional skills.


Sigh. Yeah, I know. But it is more for me than her. I am like every human being, and I rail against injustice done to me. So it's for me, I would like for an independent third-party to calmly say to her "You are not right about this. It is not the big deal you have been insisting it is for 2 years. You do not have the right to make your husband's life a misery over this." Even if my wife didn't believe it, or whatever. It would help me, help me feel like I'm not a crazy, evil, heartless bastard. Pathetic, I know. 



> Like a young child, a BPDer's best chance of acquiring those skills will occur only if you allow her to suffer the logical consequences of her bad choices and bad behavior. Otherwise, she has no incentive to change. This means that, as long as you continue being an "enabler" -- by walking on eggshells and allowing her to behave like a spoiled brat and GET AWAY WITH IT -- you are harming your W. You are destroying all incentives she might have to confront her issues and learn how to manage them.


Again, I'm afraid I think you are right about this too. It makes me very sad. I do love her. 




> To a BPDer, her perception of reality is whatever intense feeling she is experiencing AT THIS VERY MOMENT. Hence, even if she is blessed with an excellent memory -- or is presented with irrefutable evidence like the 3 perfectly good sewing machines setting in front of my exW -- she trusts that intense feeling. Whenever her feeling is intense, she accepts it as "reality" and will not trust her own memory or her intellectual understanding of the situation. This behavior is one of the primitive ego defenses we all use in childhood.


Yes, my wife has even said something like this to me once, in the 'calm after a storm' when I was asking her what she was thinking in those moments, and she said something like "It feels true to me at the time. You've upset me and I have to fight back. I can't explain it." 



> These severely distorted perceptions of your intentions will keep occurring over and over again if you're married to a BPDer. They will occur no matter what you do. Indeed, they will occur even when you do absolutely nothing at all. Even when you are saying nothing and are not moving a muscle, your being in the same room with a BPDer will result in your being blamed for whatever painful thought or feeling she is experiencing.


This has happened too. She has got mad at me for things that are outright bizarre, and I don't just mean irritated, I mean a full-on ten minute rant about how appalling I am because I said "Uh-huh" when she told me about a video she had just watched. 

Thank you very much for all your help Uptown. I guess I'll go and be sad for a while on my own. Thanks again.


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