Re: Re: Help for my husband

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I wish I could talk to my father in law about it, especiallyBecause he s a

really easy person to open up to, but he s 75 now and the last few years have

really taken a toll on him. I don t think he could take part in a conversation

like that anymore, he drifts in and out tAlking about the weather these days. I

m in the middle of reading walkin on eggshells now, and I m hoping some of the

tools will help when I talk to her. Our marriage counselor is leaning on my

husband to try to get her to come to therapy, but she s so convincingly normal

at times that I don t even know if there s a point. Isn t it impossible to make

someone with BPD get help if they don t want it? Even if you can get hem to go

to therapy? As far as the other point you made goes, I notice that his BPD-like

behavior only really comes out under MAJOR stress or when he s spending a LOT of

time around her (eg. Now, because she just started helping him run his

business). I read in walking on

eggshells that some non BPs pick up BPD behavior without realizing it when they

re exposed to it a lot. Do you know if that s really common?

>jess,

>Is it possible that your husband could also have BPD? Can you talk to your

Father-in-Law about that? I'm so sorry you are going thru this. To have been

so supportive and then rejected must feel like a real slap in the face.

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>> Please help! Any advice will be appreciated! I know this forum is for

children of BP's, but there isn't a " Daughter-in-Law of BP's " page, and this was

the closest thing I could find. The person in real need of help IS a child of a

BP, though, so I hope I can find some useful information here to help my

husband, who is hurting so much and whom I love and want so badly to help feel

like himself again.

>>

>> My husband is in so much pain and I don't know how to help him anymore. I

believe his mother is a BP, and I don't know how to help him see that he can

feel like a worthwhile person who is capable of loving and being loved. My

father in law has been a therapist for the last 43 years, and he admitted to my

husband more than once that he is convinced my mother in law has a personality

disorder (he was not specific about which one, but I have done a LOT of reading

and I think BPD fits her really well). My husband's childhood was destructive

and damaging, and he seems incapable of feeling any emotion directly. Sometimes

I see him on the brink of feeling a strong emotion, and then I can actually

watch his eyes harden and his face go blank as he pockets the feeling -- and

usually he turns on me and accuses me of being selfish, of trying to tear his

family apart, of being completely needy and draining, of not appreciating

anything he does, and of not

supporting him. You'll have to take my word for it that, although I'm not by

any means a perfect person, I have done my best since I've known him to be

NOTHING but supportive, especially when his mother snaps and starts berating

him. I spent the first two or so years that we were together helping him to

pick up the pieces whenever his mother went off, telling him he wasn't good

enough, and that he should have been a doctor if he wanted her to be proud of

him, and that she didn't know what she did wrong but he didn't turn out the way

he should have, that he is incapable of making a single decision without ruining

his own life and destroying her respect for him (and believe me, my husband is a

man ANY woman would be proud to call her husband) but now for some reason he has

decided that it's ME who's telling him he's not good enough, and that it's ME

who's been doing all these destructive things, even though he used to turn to me

as the one person he

could trust to confide all those things in.

>>

>> When my husband was a little boy his mother used to make him lie to his

father, usually about money after she went on a spending spree (sometimes

thousands of dollars at a time on things like shoes; and he's a social worker,

not exactly a rich guy). She would tell him that they were pals, so he had to

lie for her. She used to leave his father every few months and stay in a fancy

hotel, and she would ask my husband (aged 6 through 9) whether she should go

back to his father, and do whatever he said; when he was very young my husband

would say no, because what 6 year old would choose to go home when he could stay

a few more days in a suite at the Ritz Carlton? Whatever he said, yes or no, my

mother in law would later tell him that she had only stayed with his father

because HE said she should -- HE WAS SIX YEARS OLD!!! She drank like a fish

when he was younger, and although she drinks less now, her drinking is no less

destructive to her personality

and mood than it was then. She also used to take him to his friends' homes

when he was a little boy and then make out with his friends' fathers, whether

they were married or single. There is so much more, but I already feel a little

like I'm betraying him, so I'm going to leave it at that, as I think those

things are the ones that best describe what his childhood was like.

>>

>> Since I have known her, I've been totally torn. Firstly, I should say that I

LOVE my mother in law, when she's actually being the person I THINK of as my

mother in law. She's funny and pretty smart, and she's very caring and

thoughtful of others. She took a great interest in me right from the start and

was always TOTALLY supportive of my husband's decision to marry me. We used to

be very close (or so I thought, anyway) and she used to just RAVE about me to

every one of her friends. I feel so stupid because every one of my friends and

even my sister and my parents used to warn me that they thought she would turn

on me some day, but I didn't see what they were talking about and I used to just

DEFEND her to them. I would say how LUCKY I was because not only did I LIKE my

mother in law, I LOVED her! I feel like an idiot now, because I could kill her

for what she's been doing to my marriage lately, but at the same time I want

back the person I got

close to three years ago. I lost my mother 3 weeks after my wedding to cancer,

and I feel like I've been betrayed and lost another mother all over again since

she's turned on me.

>>

>> I don't know why she's doing it; if it's that she's embarrassed at the

accumulation of all the times she's gotten drunk and snapped at everyone and

accused them of hating her and calling us terrible hurtful things, or if she's

just incapable of keeping up the facade forever. All I know is, my husband has

some SERIOUS problems because of their relationship, and our marriage is very,

very shaky right now because of his emotional flip-flopping. The big thing now

is that he opens up and tells me something scary, and then when I tell him I'm

listening and I'm not going anywhere and that I love him, he tells me he wants a

divorce and he doesn't love me. Two days later and a visit to the therapist and

he says he wants to 'try to work it out,' but honestly I can't do this forever.

I was blown away the other day because in the middle of what started out as a

good talk he said to me: " I'm saying things about you I don't like, why are you

so calm? " and I

said " Because you're actually talking to me, telling me how you feel, I can

work at those things now that I know what they are. " Then he said he wanted a

divorce and proceeded to start screaming at me, put his fist through a piece of

vinyl siding and demanded that I move out right then and go stay with my father

until we can settle a divorce agreement. I walk around constantly feeling like

I'm doing something wrong, and now his mother has COMPLETELY turned on me and

decided that we should get divorced. Every time she has a chance she tells him

he should leave me, and she wouldn't even frame our wedding photo and put it on

the piano with her other photos -- she's got a photo of his best friend's

wedding there, and she doesn't even really like him, for christ's sake!

>>

>> Please help me! I feel like I'm losing two people, one who's almost gone and

another who's drifting slowly away! And I KNOW that if our marriage ends it

will kill something in my husband forever! I can't bear the thought that he

will be unsaveable! PLEASE help me to help him, I miss him so much!

>>

>> Thank you

>> J

>>

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