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Sounds like she feels a total loss of control and is struggling to control the one thing she knows how to. You knew she isn't well. She has BPD, and you left your son alone with her?
Get back on the plane, go get your son. Get her started on some meds ASAP. Load up a U-Haul with what you need for temporary living arrangements in your new home, have the rest of it put onto an ABF Upack container for storage. Give your wife a choice: go with you or stay. If you take the boy, she'll probably go. If you refuse to fund her, she'll probably go. When the house is empty, have it cleaned and put on the market.
This is going to cost lots of money. As soon as you get her to your new home, take her to a doctor. Find appropriate child care for your son. Don't worry about a divorce at this point. You don't need to be a bully to get her the help she needs. Just do the work yourself and give up on the fantasy that she is just suddenly going to snap out of this. Don't let her treat your son this way. He deserves better than this! I'm going to bet while you were having your 5 year struggle, you started to feel like her way is normal. It isn't.
If you don't think this will work, you can get a lawyer, go to court and get sole guardianship of your child. No need to divorce to find her incompetent to care for him.
She cannot do this on her own. Suit up!
Just to clarify. I did not know she could not cope. If I did, I would never have taken this job and moved away! She has never done anything this severe before. She can get irate and be unfair during arguments, but not off the rails. Or at least not more than a day or so. And she is loyal and dedicated to the sprout, and to me. And the BPD is not confirmed, though I think it matches with the volatility. This is new terrain for her and me. You are right, I am living in the fantasy that she will come to her senses. It seems disrespectful to assume otherwise, so I have been in shock. I need to make a plan. This thread has been SO helpful to shock me out of my punch drunk state. Someone needs to take action, and it's going to be me.
Last edited by Fiddlehead; 06-12-2014 at 08:13 PM..
Since you believe your wife has mental health problems you will have to pay, hire and delegate these tasks.
If you have the resources, send her to the best psych money can get because having exp with mental health, Borderline is the hardest to deal with next to Sociopath because neither respond well to meds.
If your family is priority number one then you will have to live close to a good support network for your family's mental health needs. Hopefully that is close to your job.
OP your situation seems much clearer now. Sounds like your wife has been having mental health problems and alcohol abuse for some time now, and the moving situation is making it worse. This whole move is bringing up all kinds of issues for her. I wouldn't start diagnosing if I were you. Trying to pin a label on someone in the middle of a very stressful situation isn't going to help much, IMO.
You have gotten some good advice. Take the bull by the horns and get it all done. You can't rely on her right now.
After you get everyone moved, you know what to do. Work with her to get good medical and psychiatric care, and therapy. If she refuses, you may have to divorce her. Your child cannot continue to be the victim of your dysfunctional relationship. You may need to get individual therapy for the wife and child, and marriage therapy for the two of you. It's hard work. But it will pay off if you both want to reach out.
OP, I'm really happy for you that you found a new job that will make you happy.
But, you are off enjoying your new job, and you left everything behind for your wife to deal with. She's dealing with your son alone, you are pressuring her to sell, which means getting the house clean, dealing with showings, with the humongous overwhelming project of packing and moving a house full of stuff.
You are off having your life dream, and left your wife to deal with everything! I'd be surprised if she didn't divorce YOU! And I'm not surprised that her anger is coming out sideways at the school.
Here's what I think you should do to save your wife's sanity and your marriage:
Find a place to rent. Find a 2 bedroom apartment or house (if a SFH is within your budget). Tell your wife there's no hurry, if she wants to take her time selling the place. That your wife and son can come out to see you and you can do some house hunting. And if she needs to wait for you to be able to take some time off to come back to help with the enormous task of listing, showing and packing, etc., etc., that you will do that.
Take the pressure off her. What's the hurry? Maybe she's afraid she won't like it there, or your son won't like it there.
You might even consider the option of renting out your old home, letting them move into a rental with you, and shopping for a house together from your rental. If you keep the first house as a rental, you/she/family can always move back to it. Plus, it would be a great tax write-off.
I am trying to put myself in her shoes, and I would feel under enormous pressure from you. I think you should think about how much help you were when you went back home. Did you keep mentioning that you guys really need to get on the ball? Instead of relieving her stress, did you add to it, by adding pressure?
Take the pressure off. Slow down. No need to sell and buy houses right away, is there?
And does she like her job? She is also having to quit her job for your dream. I think you owe her a little more compassion, instead of calling her a selfish crazy woman. I wouldn't be surprised if she isn't taking a look at how SHE feels about YOU and questioning the marriage. Maybe she's thinking she ought to just keep her job and the house, and let you go.
This is new terrain for her and me. You are right, I am living in the fantasy that she will come to her senses. It seems disrespectful to assume otherwise, so I have been in shock. I need to make a plan. This thread has been SO helpful to shock me out of my punch drunk state. Someone needs to take action, and it's going to be me.
I told you folks he is an intelligent man and is taking it all in. He will save his wife, his youngster and his family - you'll see. His wife and his son are precious to him.
And you're welcome Fiddlehead. I read between the lines in your original post that you are a good man who was genuinely seeking to save the day and I believed in you. Bless you!
Does your wife work as well? I agree with others, what she is dealing with is way more than an average person could cope with successfully and insurmountable for someone who has mental and substance issues. Assuming she doesn't work, she's parenting a special needs child with his own deep emotional struggles, dealing with issues at school, dealing with separation from her support network (you), insecurities about moving, and the ordeal of moving in general. I know you've done most of the big stuff for the move, but there's still a lot of phone calls, paperwork, cleaning, and inconvenient showings to disrupt an already disrupted routine.
You said you went back for 10 days - how much separation before that? How long ago? Are you not returning on weekends? For most of my childhood, my dad would spend 6 months out of the year on consulting projects far away - the closest was over a 2 hour flight. He came home EVERY. SINGLE. WEEKEND. The only exception was when that project was in Germany - then he came home every 2 weeks. He flew back from Calgary, Topeka, and Houston to Atlanta and never missed a weekend recital or sports event. My mom was a stay-at-home mom for most of those years with two healthy, "easy" kids and she would have left my dad in a hot second if he didn't return regularly to be a parent and spouse. 1000 miles is an easy enough flight that you should be there every weekend.
Do you have parents, family, or close friends in either location? Who is supporting her at home now?
It's a tough situation, and one perhaps that you could not have planned for. Others have given good advice about some possible next steps. I urge you to seek counseling yourself to help you process and move through this transition.
Well, I read through the whole thread on the lunch break. Thanks again to everyone!
A Clarification: Before this move I spent fully two months working our home and making arrangements. I painted it inside and out, arranged for and supervised all the repairs and updates, organized and packed many of our things, did days of cleaning and purging, landscaping, etc. I knew this was my move, and I fully expected to do 75% of the moving prep. I ended up doing 99%. She stayed in her room watching TV and drinking. So, she has maybe 2-3 days of work to do, tops. She chose to fight the school instead of doing much of anything.
Update: My wife has still yet to pick up the phone to speak to me in over a week, except to send a few nasty texts. I did talk to a counselor earlier this week which helped me to see that this could well be a mental health problem. That helped me to move from angry to compassionate as a whole. I called a family member who is a well known peacemaker to try to call her and let her vent. I also paid for a counselor in our town, and told her she could call the person for free. I am waiting for her to calm down. I may well do as poster 2 suggested and just take charge and make the move happen. I will give her until the weekend, then I think it is time for action (and no, I don't mean calling a divorce lawyer!).
I have also done some research. I think my wife suffers from borderline personality disorder. By the way this is also the problem my son has (if the diagnosis is correct), he is in special ed for emotional disturbance (meltdowns and threatening the staff; he is not much trouble at home-he's terrified of pizzing off his mother!). Which is characterized by emotional extremes and harsh attacks against others during times of frustration, self-image instability, and interpersonal conflict, etc. Not a straight up psychosis like bipolar, and one that seems rather flaky (it comes and goes and can be episodic) but with many similarities. During extreme events a BPD person can seem psychotic, or even act like it, but tends to return to reality. It is also well-associated with alcoholics. Emotionally volatile people are likely to self medicate with alcohol or narcotics, but the former just brings out more rage and craziness. I don't know what she has been doing since I left, but if past is prologue, I expect a whole lot of drinking. Also, she is 50, so perimenopause issues are also very possible.
For those that accused me of lacking empathy, fair enough, I do admit to getting angered by clearly mean-spirited and destructive behavior. I am human. It is only after one thinks of the big picture that one does not resent flaky and belligerent behavior. My wife's behavior has been absolutely horrible, and abusive, but I agree it is undoubtedly driven by angst and perhaps other issues. The hardest part, and the part that worries me the most about our continued marriage is the absolute blindness she shows to other peoples' feeling when she gets angry. She is completely disrespectful, and hurls insults like a nut in a bell tower for days (in this case weeks), then claims all those mean people are persecuting her. This is not new. It is an enduring pattern and absolutely hypocritical. Such BPD people would never tolerate the treatment they dish out daily, and being in a partnership with someone like that can be abusive and immensely frustrating. Every bad emotion they feel is someone else's fault and justification for a tirade of insults, whereas when another person is feeling bad they can just shut the #### up!!!!! Also, such a person is very quick to take offense, very slow to forgive, and disinclined to mend fences. That tends to make people angry and to drive them away. Cause and effect. However, this obsession with a single issue and the inability to get her mind off it is different. It is some sort of mental/emotional break, and I need to help however I can. I do love my wife, and I very much believe in "better and worse," but being with a lazy, alcoholic, abusive, and delusional person is very hard, and gets harder over time.
As a parting shot, I have often reflected on my marriage that if my wife were a man, she would be considered a cad and abuser, and if I were the wife the advice would be that I should get the hell out of this situation. But as a women, her behavior seems to get a pass, and I should forgive her, show compassion for all she is enduring, etc. I do forgive her, but such behavior can and does make me angry-it goes against everything a marriage should be. Especially when the person will not admit to it or apologize. I just share this to point out that abusive traits go both ways across gender lines, and that sometime a person enduring such unrelenting drama will tend to feel like they want to fight back or to walk away. Marriage is damn hard at times.
Just a note in support of all you are trying to accomplish and to back up your thoughts about her having BPD. I have dealt with this diagnosis (family member) and as I was reading, that is what came to mind . . . and interestingly, the HUGE melt down surfaced with a move (and it was just a 12 mile move, lol).
Now that you have described your sons issues, it seems likely there is a genetic component to all this. So I think you are on the right track. Getting a proper diagnosis will be the key FOR THE FUTURE.
For now, taking charge is the only option.
Do what you have to do to get your family moved. I am so sorry you are dealing with this situation. Just know others have been there and survived. My very best wishes to you.
I told you folks he is an intelligent man and is taking it all in. He will save his wife, his youngster and his family - you'll see. His wife and his son are precious to him.
And you're welcome Fiddlehead. I read between the lines in your original post that you are a good man who was genuinely seeking to save the day and I believed in you. Bless you!
Kindest Regards
303Guy
My thoughts, too. The OP is truly trying to do what is right to hold his family together.
As the wife of a former research scientist, I can't help but say WOW...I would be mortified if my husband posted this. It all sounds pretty unsupportive and ugly, IMHO. There are two sides to every story.
She sounds like she does not want to leave, or is very uneasy and unsure about it. She does not seem confident about it at all. Have you ever been away from her for an extended time? Has she ever had to deal with everything at home all by herself? It sounds like she's a bit scared and defensive as a result. She sounds very depressed.
That's what you need to clear up with her.
In my eyes, family comes first. NOT A JOB.
The man was out of work for FIVE YEARS....you obviously have no idea the toll that can take on a family. So yes, family does come first, but if you can't financially support that family, what are you supposed to do? Turn the backyard into a subsistence farm and say 'well, at least we are all together!"???
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