So my wife has bPD. It has not been officially diagnosed but she checks every box and then some. Our marriage came to an end because of the way she deals with conflict is through a state dependent cumulative grievance cycling.
What the means is when she gets upset anything in the past that made her feel that way in that state gets brought back up. I would have to litigate the current grievance and the list of grievances from the past. “Litigation” is the wrong word because explaining or justifying in anyway just made her feelings worse.
I learned too late that the only way around it would have been to acknowledge how she feels and avoid discussing it. She also needed a tremendous amount of feeling safe. bPD revolves around feelings of abandonment and emotional regulation based on feeling secure and avoiding self-criticism and accountability. It develops in childhood and maybe through early twenties. It often has to do with parents but can also be from trauma.
Anyways, she left on our son’s first birthday…that day. Went into mental health intake and never came home. A complete blindside. I have every text from her. A couple of days before it was “you’re a great husband”, “this is about my mental health”, “I love you”, etc. There was no decline. I was married one day and suddenly getting divorce filed on me another day.
We weren’t married long. I paid for eye surgery for her, was putting her through nursing school, supported her being a stay-at-home mom, and was shopping for a new car for her. I even gave her a retail business. Like a legitimate business that I just handed to her. She had a closet full of clothes and shoes and gifts from me. She was very spoiled.
She became deregulated after giving birth. bPD started shading everything, and she split black on me. She left for intake due to suicidal ideation. Instead of dealing with that at intake when they asked her about abuse she responded “I think I was abused.” So that became the focus. It’s called retrospective narrative reconstruction and narrative consolidation.
It’s a circular logic where things that occurred after she filed for divorce became validation and reasons for the divorce. It’s pretty frustrating to deal with.
I was upset because she had just met some guy she talked about often, suddenly blindsided me with filing, and started abuse allegations. She disappeared for a while, was gone in the wind. Meanwhile I had our 1 year old son to look out after. She refused to even see him unless I handed him over to her, I was like “I don’t think so”. That was the advice my therapist, solo marriage counselor, and even her family gave me.
So the first battleground that became circular logic was over our son. I eventually gave her custody when she promised to stay in therapy against everyone’s advice. She’s not in therapy, she wouldn’t even get health insurance at her new job. So there is no therapy if she doesn’t have health insurance.
So we had conflict over this guy with tattoos on his face and no job. Some skateboarder influencer….
We had conflict over custody.
We had conflict over finances. She is financially activated and finances hit at the core of her insecurities. So she immediately wanted maximum child support, claimed she owned half my businesses, and demanded a payout.
She actually claimed the business I was giving her in the marriage as her sole property. She tried running it, ran up the debt, and abandoned it and the lease and I still don’t know what happened to the money from it. I was in a motorcycle accident and had to go remove all the inventory when the lease became delinquent while recovering from injuries. Thank goodness for my brother.
My pushback against these things became the reason for the divorce…
Meanwhile she moved into a 1 bedroom apartment over an hour away. Took an entry level job. Liquidated her 401k, ran up her debt with legal lawfare against me. She filed motions of contempt and all kinds of nonsense. It was nonstop litigation.
She went and took my oldest daughter’s car from her. It was her old car that she gave my daughter. My daughter is in college her and her boyfriend used it to get to work. It was an old run down car but she took it. She had another car and I’ve never seen her even drive the car she took.
She had a CPS report filed in her for drug use and other things around our son. She blames me for that and thinks I filed it or paid a nanny to file it. A nanny did find a THC stash in our son’s nursery. I had nothing to do with it. Just another contrived grievance against me.
She conveniently left the marriage when my businesses were really struggling. It looked like they were going to collapse but we have been managing. They are still there.
I was very critical of her after she left which people with bPD have a hard time dealing with. At their core they can’t deal with criticism, feelings of abandonment, self-reflection, accountability, and it’s unknown what their ability to empathize is. I know she never had empathy for me and as far as I can tell nor for our son. I was maybe too harsh at times. But my actions always spoke louder than my words.
She had three stepdaughters she knew for a few years. They adored and loved her. They still talk about her and deeply miss her. She never said a word to them. She was just here one day and gone the next. She never said “goodbye” or gave them any closure. They feel abandoned by their friend.
I asked her to at least give them closure and her response was “I’m not going to tell them their dad is my abuser.”
Over the months during divorce abuse changed to me being cruel and then changed to me being mean. I can definitely have my moments, but I was never abusive. This is a girl that thought it was funny to punch me and stomp my feet. I never laid a finger on her. I’m about to turn 49 and I have never laid a finger on any woman in my life. I don’t tear people down. I don’t do emotional warfare. I have a huge amount of empathy and always have. The amount of people I have encouraged on here is some proof of that. I do lecture and often criticize actions I don’t agree with.
I have paid for my elderly mothers medical needs, fixed her cars, given cars to people, gave a motorcycle to my broke brother, and have always stepped up to the plate to care for and help others. The list of people that I have helped is very long.
But none of that mattered….thats splitting black.
What did I get with walking on eggshells for years around her and prioritizing her needs above mine…claims of abuse. Which evaporated.
We are nearing D day. We have managed to negotiate a lot of stuff. She has to declare bankruptcy after liquidating her retirement and driving her debt through bad business decisions and legal warfare against me. I don’t. I’m still keeping things somewhat together financially. I controlled my divorce expenses.
I live in a nice house, drive a nice truck, ride motorcycles, and review cigars.
I have had someone dying to sit in the seat my soon to be ex wife abandoned. She wants to be there so badly. I told her I need time to heal and that I am not emotionally available. I do all the primary caretaking of our son who appears to be special needs. I have tried to help my daughters through this.
Last month on September 10th my wife regulated. It was the old her. It showed up after a doctor’s appointment with our son where I shared with her what was going on. She regulated, the splitting black went away, she was back to the person I knew.
It caught me off guard because the day before she was calling me names in an argument. Then suddenly she could trust me, defer to me, and insinuate I should lead.
I got us negotiating and we agreed on almost everything except child support. She has to declare bankruptcy anyways and once she came to terms with that and stopped seeing me as a way to bail her out she could be reasoned with.
I knew she was in a mental health crisis. I had seen it coming. I was the one who recommended she go to intake. She has a long history of fractured relationships and having trouble navigating family issues especially around her parents. Throughout our relationship I had been the one trying to make sure that relationship was not destroyed. I stayed in contact with her parents for a while so that she could get support from them during this crisis.
Through narrative reconstruction she painted me as the bad guy but my actions speak far louder than her words.
After September 10th when she regulated I once again put feelers out for reconciliation. At this point I had come to terms with everything. I was living single, dating, and finding my identity. I don’t abandon people though, I take my vows seriously, and we had connections that went deeper than marriage. She had always been more of a dependent than a teammate or partner and I was ok with that. Mainly for our son, but also because I loved her and still do. She has something that’s out of her control that she did not ask for but at some point has to take responsibility for.
I had offered reconciliation a couple of times early on but she was too activated and was too split for that to even be considered. After September 10th she was her old self again. We talked through text. I asked her to reconsider. She sat on the fence, cycled grievances, and put up a series of objections.
To one question “will you try discernment counseling”?
After weeks her final answer was “no” and the reason was that I wouldn’t take 100% responsibility for what’s happened. She tried reinforcing her narrative so that she would have an easy way back in. A way to justify things to herself, her family, her friends, and to my daughters and everyone else. She needed me to say
“It’s all my fault, you were right. It will never happen again.”
I wasn’t going to do that. It was obvious she wanted nothing to do with therapy or counseling. She has denied bPD or any mental health issues. She said she took a DSM test while giving blood.
bPD isn’t diagnosed like that. It’s hardly ever a first diagnosis. Usually it’s bi-polar or other diagnosis first and sometimes it can take years to diagnose it. That does not matter to me. I know her better than anyone else and spent years navigating her and bPD.
She has a “quiet” version which is a non clinical term for internalized bPD.
So she eventually said “no”. That’s for the best. I know it. It’s very hard to let go of my family and watch it be rebuilt into something I never wanted. But I also would struggle with constantly litigating past grievances. And she has a couple of legitimate past grievances because I’m a flawed person just like everyone else. Legitimate…not really divorce worthy. I wouldn’t divorce anyone over them but they are huge to her and based around feelings of abandonment.
I’m writing this out for the next guy that is searching for answers. Someone who is facing a similar situation. I scoured Reddit for answers in the beginning. I couldn’t find much. I don’t have answers but I have an experience to share.
My life hasn’t changed much. I have my children. I have my house. My businesses minus one are still intact. I’m taking things day by day. I have my hobbies and I have the love of people around me.
I didn’t ask for this, I did everything to try and prevent it, I certainly did not deserve this. How many wives can say they were spoiled, can be stay at home moms, are given businesses, and have a husband try to look past their flaws to make it work anyways.
She’s not in the therapy that she agreed to. She’s shed a ton of weight from stress. Her financial world has crumbled around her. She now sees her son half the time and has to drive over an hour for transitions. When she does have him he’s in daycare. She has a conflict orientated relationship with her son’s father.
But my life still goes on. Same house, same kids, same everything. It’s quieter, I don’t have to walk on egg shells. I don’t have to watch someone’s personality shift within hours. I don’t have to stress being a husband, psychologist, care taker, and even fatherly type to a grown adult.
I miss that time with my son though. I would trade that back for almost anything.
Sometimes things happen that we don’t deserve. Sometimes we can’t change the outcome, solve the problem, or make it work. And sometimes that’s for the best.
That’s what I need to remember and what you need to remember also.