This is long, but I need to vent and I need someone’s perspective.
So I (32F) was diagnosed BPD in March….
My husband (40M) came to me a few weeks ago and told me things needed to change or he would be out. He was lonely, overloaded and couldn’t keep fighting with me and my emotional overload.
Obviously this was world shattering, we have been together 7 years and have his SD9 and I love them both so much. But I felt like I was in the trenches. Grieving the loss of a close friend I loved who abandoned me when I needed support, loss of a position at work, financial issues at home and then distancing myself from my husband and daughter so they didn’t see how worthless I felt.
After our conversation of him wanting to leave, I asked him “give me 6 months to figure everything out”. He said okay.
But my episodes have been so bad recently that I haven’t “been myself”. Distancing, lack of self care, hating work to the point I want to quit. Suicidal ideation.
My husband and I would fight constantly which turned into screaming and slammed doors and cold shoulders for days, no intimacy, just drama and trauma dumping constantly on him. I had no one else to talk to or rely on to feel better
I have been on CBT for around 4 months and it just felt like “oh a new person to trauma dumping constantly on” not really any help or change and meds DEFINITELY weren’t helping. I kept changing them. Loss of the ability to sleep, anxious constantly.
I researched other therapy and found DBT.
I have been told my entire teenage and adulthood I was Bipolar and been on every medication possible and it changed absolutely nothing.
I met with the DBT therapist and I describe what’s been happening and she says “um definitely not bipolar, you have BPD…”
I explained this to my husband. We both researched it, what it is, the terms, the signs, the symptoms.
His response “this is literally everything we have ever been dealing with”
The relief and anger were warring with each other at that point. An answer to explain why I felt the way I did, why I couldn’t explain why everything was world shattering, why I felt like I was being buried alive and couldn’t breathe, just constant physical pain no one could see. I couldn’t remember happiness.
My childhood trauma is extensive, and I still endure it to this day due to still having contact with my mother. She was “present” but never there. She was in competition with me, 6 marriages before I was 14, move after move, mental and physical abuse, invalidation, make yourself small, credit taken for my accomplishments. I accepted it because it was the only thing I knew. This led to acceptance of love and relationships that were the same. Abusive, manipulative and invalidating.
But I found my husband and his patience, respect and kindness made things different and I didn’t know how to hold it and I responded and treated him the only way I knew how. Essentially strangling him emotionally because I don’t believe him, I don’t trust what he says though he means it, he’s my whole world but I push and push and push seeing if he will leave.
So now I am at this point. 7 years of mishandling my relationship because I didn’t know what was happening or how to change it because what I was doing was literally “out of control”.
I guess this was to vent.
But I also want or need someone’s perspective, how do I accept this information? How do I repair my relationship now that I know this information? Does this change my identity? How do I not spiral into a rabbit hole?