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My wife, with bipolar and possibly borderline personality disorder, treats people horribly when she is feeling down. Lately that is most of the time.
I have to go out of town for work for 3 days. I have to travel for a few days every couple months. She's really been letting me have it. Last night, after a night of mostly silent treatment, she told me that I'm a "deadbeat dad". Even though I had helped clean up dinner, bathed the kids, and read to them after I got home from work.
My natural inclination was to react with some sharp barb back at her, but I just held my tongue. If I did respond it would be unproductive and she'd just go down further and probably threaten to kill herself.
Last week something else set her off and she slept in the basement. In the middle of the night she texted me "Hopefully I'll die in my sleep and then you'll be rid of me".
When I do go out of town it's almost like I have to arrange a babysitter for her and the kids. In most cases I arrange for her parents to come over.
Anyway, every time she does this kind of stuff it erodes any hope I have that she'll ever get better. We've been through all sorts of medications, counseling, hospitalizations. Right now we are going to a NAMI support group and I started going to my own counselor to decide how to handle all this. In any case, I know logically that she feels bad and is lashing out. I'm the closest person to her so I'm the target. But I'm not going to be her punching bag forever.
Yours is a sad and hard situation - for all of you. Depression and misery seem to create situations in which they can feed on themselves to make themselves worse. Very circular thing.
I can't advise you on what to do .. it sounds as though you are doing what you can to cope. I would worry though more about the children than yourself at this point. It sounds as though this has been going on for a long time and whether you realize it or not this will affect your kids for the rest of their lives. Unless you can be around all the time, perhaps you need to find a way to remove your kids from their mother for the times you are not there. I don't know your whole situation of course - and I am sure that would be very hard for you to describe here completely - but, perhaps you also need to consider moving yourself and your children out completely - at least until, if that ever happens, your wife is stabilized.
You can't fix her - you can only control your own world and reactions and you are responsible for the world of your children till they reach the age of majority and leave the home. This situation doesn't sound healthy at all - for any of you, including your wife.
My heart goes out to you. I hope this resolves soon, but, if not, I urge you to consider that this is not a place or a person your children should be around.
(p.s. IS she responsible for how she treats people if she is ill? I don't know - but I think if you would trust her at all for one minute around your kids, then you think she IS responsible and could do better despite being ill. If you didn't think this, perhaps you would remove them from this situation because if you cannot trust her around the kids, they should not be there. Just adding a babysitter into the mix is probably NOT a good solution and is likely to add more resentment, more focus on the issues at hand, and cause the kids more of a problem when your wife reacts to you doing that.)
Your question in the thread title is this, Does Mental Illness Absolve People of the Responsibility to Be Decent to Others?
The answer to that is no.
Do you think she can control her condition or not? Is an illness a choice or not? Can she choose to be or do better? If so, that's one thing. If not, what help can she get to improve her behavior, her contribution to the relationship?
Does your own attitude help or hinder her progress?
After you read this....type in BPD Family.com. They are ultra professional borderline experts from around the world at your fingertips for free. You can also talk with many many others in your predicament. I did all those general steps you did. The best thing I did for my life was leave her, I mean totally, because she would not improve. You can, and must be very strong, and leave her, for one day, you will be forced to absolve yourself, and be decent to yourself, for your own, and good of others.
Last edited by glenninindy; 10-11-2016 at 02:42 PM..
Yours is a sad and hard situation - for all of you. Depression and misery seem to create situations in which they can feed on themselves to make themselves worse. Very circular thing.
I can't advise you on what to do .. it sounds as though you are doing what you can to cope. I would worry though more about the children than yourself at this point. It sounds as though this has been going on for a long time and whether you realize it or not this will affect your kids for the rest of their lives. Unless you can be around all the time, perhaps you need to find a way to remove your kids from their mother for the times you are not there. I don't know your whole situation of course - and I am sure that would be very hard for you to describe here completely - but, perhaps you also need to consider moving yourself and your children out completely - at least until, if that ever happens, your wife is stabilized.
You can't fix her - you can only control your own world and reactions and you are responsible for the world of your children till they reach the age of majority and leave the home. This situation doesn't sound healthy at all - for any of you, including your wife.
My heart goes out to you. I hope this resolves soon, but, if not, I urge you to consider that this is not a place or a person your children should be around.
(p.s. IS she responsible for how she treats people if she is ill? I don't know - but I think if you would trust her at all for one minute around your kids, then you think she IS responsible and could do better despite being ill. If you didn't think this, perhaps you would remove them from this situation because if you cannot trust her around the kids, they should not be there. Just adding a babysitter into the mix is probably NOT a good solution and is likely to add more resentment, more focus on the issues at hand, and cause the kids more of a problem when your wife reacts to you doing that.)
Coolcats, I've said you should get out of the marriage with the kids and let her get well on her own. She has both parents in her life, and your kids need you more than she does. Your kids cannot protect themselves. The idea that you prioritize your spouse over everything is all very nice and biblical, but the truth is, she's an adult. She may be ill, but she needs to prioritize getting well above EVERYTHING else. Is she doing that? You've posted before about her taking against effective therapists for no discernible reason. I'm a big believer in getting along with your therapists, but I also know that manipulative people can develop aversions to therapists they think are going to "change" them, especially if they're borderline.
Look, I grew up with (and still am close to) a mother who is a few cards short of deck. She's a narcissist. And so is my dad. Mental illness often resembles narcissism, and it is HARD on a kid. I am a very happy and successful adult, BUT... Because of my mother and her penchant for drama and gaslighting and rewriting reality to suit her, I question my reality all the time, even at the age of 40.
I have never had a functional romantic relationship after watching my parent's bizarre and unhappy marriage and its dissolution play out. And while my dad was a very supportive parent (partly because of his narcissism, oddly enough), I just don't trust men, even though I count some men among my closest confidantes, because I saw how manipulative and deceitful he could be. I love both of my parents dearly, but they did a number on me in a lot of ways. As an adult I have never really desired marriage or children and I'm really happy with what I've built for myself, but I wonder what it would have been like sometimes if I didn't think marriage and kids were such a trap. It's an illogical thought, especially since my married friends are almost uniformly in wonderful marriages.
Your kids are lucky to have one mentally stable parent, but given that your wife seems to have the lion's share of the childcare no matter how much you and her parents support her, I don't know how much they're shielded from her behaviors. If she's lashing out at people, they have that in their lives, and it will make them always feel unstable, even with the people they should feel the safest with. Hell, my two best friends in high school had to TEACH me how to behave in a civil manner in some ways because I had so many dysfunctional behaviors when it came to close personal relationships. They are still my closest friends today, and I don't know what I would have done without them or even how I would have survived.
Your kids sound like they're really young. They need to feel like they are in a safe and stable situation. If they have a predisposition towards mental illness themselves, then they need as much support and good modeling as you can provide. I was once close to a young boy who was raised for the first several years of his life by a very unstable woman. The years with her seriously damaged him.
Your wife isn't a child. She's seriously ill, and if she doesn't take THAT seriously, then you need to protect your actual children above all things. They need their own effective therapist, and you need to let that person help guide you in how you manage this situation.
I should also mention that my mother manipulated me quite a bit when I was a young child, and my father never knew or didn't want to know. I'm just dealing with some of those memories now.
So as an update, she's been a monster. The night before I left on my trip she was sobbing uncontrollably. She has done things like that before to manipulate me into staying.
I got back and she has been a grade A b-word to everyone. Last night out of the blue she told my daughter to quit smiling and acting happy. Apparently if my daughter acts happy it's because she is relishing my wife's misery. I lost it a bit because to me that is mind twisting abuse. I told her that was unacceptabe and she needed to apologize right then, or go to her parents or the hospital. She did apologize, but then asked for a gun to kill herself. I said I would call the police. She backed off but we are going to her doc in two hours, with bags packed, to check her in to the hospital.
In the meantime she called her dad over. They had a private talk,after which he told me that it will all go away if I quit being selfish and commit to giving her everything she wants and needs. He says he has learned to do that with his wife. My mother in law herself is a big piece of work and treats him like garbage a lot.
I then had a talk with my wife where I said if I over reacted to her treatment of my daughter it was because I'm erring on the side of preventing abuse. She won't take any personal responsibility for what she does. She outright said her illness means she should be held to a different standard.
So anyway if she's admitted to the hospital I still have to figure out a bunch. I don't want her back if she's going to act like this, but it's a huge, sudden transition with four kids.
Has your wife ever worked with a therapist who specializes in BPD patients, or attended a Dialectical Behavior Therapy group program?
I'd focus on your kids and keeping them safe. What your wife said to your daughter is unacceptable. Letting your kids be raised by a woman with untreated rampant BPD can ruin their lives before you realize it. A parent is a role model, a child with a BPD parent can develop BPD themselves. It's a horrible environment for a child to grow up in.
That said, there are treatments and programs that can help, if you actually want to get better there are ways, but you need the right environment and you need someone who wants to change.
She has gone to a therapist in the past, but not one who specializes in DBT. She quit going to any counselor several months ago. Even when she was going, she didn't really follow through with what she learned. That's a frustration. I think she lacks the energy and will-power to have meaningful change.
That said, after her appointment with her doctor today, she left in an optimistic mood. Now she has been saying how grateful she is that I have a good job. The problem is, I know it's a ticking bomb and the other her will come back at any time.
On the advice of this forum I've been going to my own counselor. I have an appointment tomorrow and there is a lot to cover.
I strongly encourage you to look into DBT. It was created for BPD patients and it has good results. The therapists who are trained in it know how to work with a BPD client.
It's incredibly difficult to create a therapeutic relationship with a BPD client and therapist with little experience in the disorder. BPD treatment is more of a specialty. The therapists know how to work with a client who can love them at the start of the appointment hate them 5 minutes in love them at 15 minutes and tell them to go to hell at the end of the session. How to deal with the threats and the manipulation. It's not talk therapy, it's skills based, you learn coping techniques, how to process emotions, how to more effectively communicate and most therapists will work with the family as well. Obviously it doesn't work for everyone but it's worth trying.
Marsha Linehan the woman who created DBT suffered from BPD herself, “I was in hell,” she said. “And I made a vow: when I get out, I’m going to come back and get others out of here.”
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