Good morning - I am looking for someone who has a spouse who suffers with borderline personality disorder and can help me to learn how to deal with it. I am trying to be supportive of my spouse but he does not acknowledge that he has a problem. He does see a psychiatrist but thinks it is just depression and he does take medication which helps to a point but not enough for me to not walk on eggshells or expect an angry outburst here or there due to his feeling. We can be having a nice night and then in an instant of us just watching a movie he turns from being loving spouse who talking about the future to telling me he can't take it and is moving out. I am trying to understand but do not know how much longer I can deal with this. Someone please message me and help!!!
Hi and welcome to the BPD group. You may also want to join Friends and Family of BPD on this site. You are also welcome here. I have BPD and I am the moderator of the group and at times I get angry in a split second after being happy the minute before and this morning I felt like moving out and I've been married for 30 years, so you can imagine the kind of mood swings people with BPD go through. These intense feelings are usually a result of something someone says or a memory gets triggered by something I see or hear. This is something he probably needs to deal with in therapy. I was in therapy for about 4 years and I am still working on my own to lessen the intensity of my responses. For example, this morning I went and read a novel after getting really angry about something my husband said, I tried to apply some logic to my response instead of going all emotion and balllistic. But, as a spouse of someone with BPD, I don't know. :) What happens when you try to trace down the trigger with him? Is he open to talking at that point? Hugs!
He usually does come talk to me about his feelings once he calms down and he still does not really know what triggers his reactions. He does not sleep a lot and that usually makes him paranoid and his mind plays tricks on him at times. Being up at night when everyone else is sleeping I guess gives him time to think about how both of his parents basically abandoned him as a child and he lived with an abusive drug addict step dad for many years who exposed him to drugs and hookers. I am actually really amazes that he has done so well for himself when I look at his childhood. He does not take drugs other than the meds that are prescribed to him and he does not drink and we are really happy except for these incidents when he flys off the handle and they seem to be coming more frequent lately. We have been together for two years and he says he has not completely fallen in love with me and so the feelings are more intense and he knows I can hurt him now and I guess he just pictures me leaving him so he rather try to make me hate him and kick him out before I hurt him.