I Suspect My Wife Has BPD and it has destroyed our marriage & family.

[Ausmaniac]

G'Day all,

Although my partner hasn't been formally diagnosed, after many months of research, talking to others and recounting my many experiences I suspect that my wife has BPD.

As with most she was my dream come true and still is except with the occasional nightmare thrown in here and there. I was her knight in shining armour and she my damsel  in distress. She told me how she was taken advantage of by a friends father, suffered and survived cervical cancer, been the victim of a con man, had numerous major car accidents, none of which were her fault and was in constant pain.

I fixed up her taxes, sorted out her messes and tolerated a lot of crap because, I love her.  We underwent couples counselling with short term success and 4 years later we married and we now have 3 kids together plus my daughter from the marriage she lured me away from prior to ours.

Right now, I am in our empty home as she has yet again packed up our children and left me. No explanation, just a typed note saying "we're separated, it's final and I don't want to discuss it".

I'm a little numb at the moment, feeling abandoned and missing my kids and also my wife and I want them and her back!

I've watched this thing develop over the last 13 years, I just didn't know what it was until I Googled "compulsive lying" and stumbled onto a BPD diagnosis check list and other info.

As for me, I fell ill in October 2011 with a disease called Polymyositis that saw me ambulanced' to hospital with total paralysis due to extreme all body pain. This has left me physically weaker than I use to be and in some level of pain daily. In December that same year I diagnosed with depression and anxiety due to my physical condition and loss of self that I was feeling.  I know now that this did little to reduce my contribution to her situation.

Where it's at now. It's been a month since my wife took our children and left our rented home whilst I was away for a day as if she was and the children were victims of abuse at my hand and she is using that angle as her reason for leaving.

I know that you are only reading one side of a very complex story (much of which is not detailed here) but, I assure you I have never acted violently towards my wife or our children nor inflicted any form of emotional abuse that I am aware of.

I am afraid that I have lost her forever. She has created a situation in her mind that portrays me as an abusive husband that should not be left alone with his children for fear of their safety, insisting on only supervised visits in a public place. I'm staying as strong as possible through this despite not having seen our beautiful kids for any decent amount of time since Fathers day but I feel like I am running out of options and as if no one is hearing me.

Any advice will be good to hear!

[The_Real_David_Charles]

Dear Ausmaniac,

What a strange "user name" for someone that wants to picture themselves as blameless.  Plus, your own described illnesses of  "Polymyositis" and "depression and anxiety" that were all diagnosed as opposed to your partner who "hasn't been formally diagnosed..............I suspect that my wife has BPD (? Borderline Personality Disorder)".  Your depression is NOT Aus-maniac.  This has unsettled me from the beginning as the true situation seems masked.

Maybe, in your wife's belief structure she really needed to take the kids and leave.   She would have been helped.  The thing that seems strange to me (I'm 20 odd years Bipolar) is the way you justify things, i.e "I know you are only reading one side of a very complex story...but, I assure you, I have never acted violently towards my wife or our children nor inflicted any form of emotional abuse that I am aware of".  It's a bit of overkill.  First you "suspect" your wife and now you are blameless.

The other bit that strengthens my gut feeling that this is way too one sided is your statement that "we now have 3 kids together plus my daughter from my marriage SHE LURED ME AWAY FROM prior to ours".   This is depression talking.  Making things worse than they are. Exaggerating.   Marriage doesn't happen because ONE person wants it to.  Maybe you wanted to be lured away from your first marriage ?  Your previous daughter was keen to support it which is highly unusual.   Something doesn't feel right.  It doesn't add up.

In my opinion, the "feeling a little numb / abandoned" would have surfaced on numerous times if your wife's personality was tumbling out of control.   The predictable outcome (without counselling, meds or even a diagnosis) would be a break up.   You write "she has yet again packed up our children and left me".  Yet there is no detail about how many break ups, when, what steps were taken to reconcile, whether the kids felt safe re-entering the old home, etc.

I just don't know whether to believe this post.   Which is the first time it's happened to me in 2  yrs of responding.   To clarify:

(1)  Why was no diagnoses, counselling or meds suggested or tried during all the previous "nightmares" and "again packed up our children" behaviours ?

(2)   Without any triggers or pointers to try and understand your situation why would you resort to making out your were "lured away" as if you had nothing to do with the relationship ?  Your wife can't legally say your vows for you ?   The fact you went to "couples counselling WITH SHORT TERM SUCCESS" seems to suggest that things were out of kilter from the onset.   Short success probably does lead to a break up later.   The connection was faulty from Day One.

(3)   When you write "Any advice will be good to hear" you include both good advice and bad advice.  My response might be bad to hear but still good advice.  I really can't get a handle on this thread.   

(4)  Does it really matter that you "were away for a day" when this happened ?   As far as your undiagnosed wife was concerned you were possibly as much "away" from the relationship as she was.  It's a bit of paradox that the departure happened suddenly, a month ago, and yet the initial romance has this element of gentle coaxing and luring.   Maybe, when wives leave with the children in such a dramatic fashion you have to look past the mental illness and work out what other factors were involved.  And, to be totally anal, take some responsibility yourself.

No one splits a marriage up so fast unless something is very, very wrong.  Why place all the blame on your wife & kids ?   Your own first daughter went too - that must tell you something.   There's just something not right with this thread.  Sorry.

Adios,David.

[Amanda123]

Found 2 URLs

Dear Ausmaniac:

It sounds like you may be dealing with a partner with BPD - a condition David Charles was unaware of until recently (he thought it was the same as Bipolar so some of what he said may have been misdirected). 

First of all - you are not crazy - this is happening - and secondly - think carefully about if you want back in the relationship.  You might yearn for the honeymoon period in your relationship to return. Those early days when she put you on a pedestal and split you good.   ;Sounds like you have now been split bad and the only options you have are to protect yourself getting sound boundaries in place or go back into another relationship cycle.  

Ahh but I forgot - you've been ill so how useful are you to her now?  That is the way the some people with BPD think - you may not get a very good reception from her...sorry to say it is likely that you have outlived your usefulness to her.

I have been through the wringer with a friend with BPD. In the early days of our friendship she idealised me so much that she copied everything I did.  But then after 7 years she started devaluing me.  Why didn't I see it?  I did - in hindsight I can see it all - all the times she devalued others and left in her wake a string of ruined businesses and wreaked marriages.  

My friend has deep feelings of insecurity and great difficulty coping with fear of abandonment. Her caregivers when she was young were negligent towards her.  She would continually seek reassurance from me, even for small things.  She started getting really angry towards me about how she was feeling. 

She would impulsively spend money even though her husband had no work for months on end and criticise me for not wasting money on new clothes and household items (I like buying these things as well but not when my husband and I are working part-time so we can have more time with the kids).  She re-mortgaged her house and ran up her debt by tens of thousands of dollars while dining out and going shopping when they had very little income.

I thought she really loved her partner - even though she treated him like a servant and wouldn't let him go out with his friends without her permission.  Then one night we were talking and she left me gobsmacked when she said that she, I quote, "could never marry X because someone else might come along who can rock her world".  I felt sick.

So I think it is fair to say she definitely experienced confused / contradictory feelings - she seems to frequently question her attitudes towards others. She does suffer from depression / is persistently sad. She sometimes suffers from moving and talking slowly and often has difficulty concentrating on simple tasks.  She definitely experiences excessive worry.  She definitely has some obsessive behaviour - she stalked everyone on social media - always looking at everything but never liking or commenting on it - she always knew what you had posted.
She has a huge fear of failure - so strong it stops her starting things.  Basically she exhibits the majority of BPD symptoms listed on Sane Australia.
The BPD symptom that bought our relationship to a head was her false belief that I was plotting against her. I have witnessed her false beliefs about others before - a friend who are surely a "swinger" because she and her husband liked to have dinner parties with their friends, and a school teacher who was an alcoholic because she waved at her when she was at the pub!  The rumour mongering drove the woman to leave her job! Then I was the focus of it - her "good" friend of more than 10 years was now trying to harm her...Everyone thought we were best friends but I always felt that she was just keeping me around until someone better came along. 
She has cut off all contact with me and I am glad because I see it as a chance to get my life back and learn how to avoid dysfunction by having healthier boundaries - I didn't have very good boundaries when this all started to go pear-shaped.  I really learnt a lot from the Cornell Uni resource on building healthy boundaries.

If you want to help yourself -I recommend you read as much as you can about BPD in particular why you were attracted to someone with it and then you can work on yourself so that you wont continue to attract people like that into your life.

Amanda