Living With a Husband with Borderline Personality Disorder

Individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) suffer from unstable emotions and relationships. In my last post, I discussed the effects of having a wife suffering from BPD. Men also get BPD and it affects their spouses. The men may experience the disorder in ways similar to women, but they deal with it differently. This post will focus on some of those differences and help their wives live with them more lovingly and more comfortably.

I wish you could understand how I feel

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Is your husband either great or awful depending on the hour? Does he go from idolizing you and putting you on a pedestal to berating and humiliating you? Does he escalate to anger very quickly if he hears what you say in a negative light? Does he punish you when this happens? Does he refuse to accept your explanations to him that your behavior was not meant to hurt him? If so, you may be married to a man who is suffering from symptoms of BPD.

Possessiveness/Controlling

Females with BPD seek to control the relationship with their intimate partners and close family members and friends. They like to have regular contact with this "inner circle" and get anxious and angry when they don’t get it. As long as they get regular reinforcement from their inner circle, they generally don’t care very much what others are doing when they are not paying attention to them.

Males with BPD seek to control the people they are intimate with and are very concerned with their behaviors and choices all the time. Consider the following interaction between Jerry and his wife Robin as she prepares to go out.

Jerry: Where are you going?

Robin: I am going to play Mahjong with my friends like I do every Wednesday afternoon.

Jerry: Dressed like that?

Robin: What is wrong with my clothing?

Jerry: You look like you are going to pick up men.

Robin: All of my Mahjong friends are women.

Jerry: You never know who you might run into.

Robin: I am not dressed up. I just threw this dress on.

Jerry: Go ahead. Do what you want. I will just stay home and pay your bills. That’s all you care about anyway.

The above conversation illustrates the male BPD sufferer’s efforts to be controlling associated with feeling threatened by his wife being attractive to other men. But male BPD sufferers also tend to be controlling in other areas, such as spending money, contact with other family members, and contact with friends. Here is another example.

Robin: Jerry, I spoke to the children today.

Jerry: When were you going to tell me?

Robin: I just did tell you.

Jerry: What are you discussing with our children that I should not be a part of?

Robin: Nothing, we just happened to speak.

Jerry: OK. I get it. I will talk to them separately too. I don’t need you there either.

In the above conversation, Jerry feels excluded by his family and blames his wife. He needs to be connected to his inner circle and is threatened by interactions he does not participate in. He expresses this to his wife as an angry accusation and she feels more distant from him, even though he craves closeness. He meant to say I am threatened by your talking to the children without me and without my knowledge and I need reassurance.

Individuals who are suffering from BPD symptoms are loathe to express that they feel threatened and so they just express anger. Unfortunately, this does not have the desired effect, and instead has the opposite effect: to push away his wife when he actually wants to pull her closer. This is a feature of BPD and is responsible for a significant amount of instability in their relationships.

Personality Essential Reads

Why Do Antagonistic People Think They’re So Perfect?

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Isolation

Women with BPD tend to enjoy intimate gatherings with those they are close to—the more the merrier. They like to be the center of attention as long as nobody is competing with them for attention. Men with BPD tend to see everyone as potential competition for their partner's attention. Including their own children.

Jerry: How about you and I get some dinner and have a quiet romantic night?

Robin: What about the children?

Jerry: Let them get some take-out pizza.

Robin: I don’t like them to have to eat alone on Friday night. Why don’t we go out with the children?

Jerry: Oh yeah, that will be romantic. Forget it. It’s always about the children. I am just there to pay the bill. We might as well just eat home. That way if I get ignored again by you, I can play with the dog. He’s always happy to see me.

These conversations illustrate some of the difficulties in relationships that are typical of marriages where the husband has symptoms of BPD. The husband is trying to express I am insecure in our relationship. I worry that you care more for our children than me and I worry that you only keep me around so that I can pay bills. Instead of expressing these feelings directly, which might have gotten him reassurance, he was accusatory and irritating. Instead of getting reassurance from her, as he might have liked, he pushed her away.

Jerry could take it upon himself to learn how to understand his feelings better and be able to articulate them more clearly. DBT is helpful for this purpose. He would benefit by having better outcomes. Robin can reassure him better if he is not pushing her away with hurtful accusations.

Robin can improve her ability to hear Jerry’s emotional expressions even when they are not expressed clearly. She can do this by deepening her empathic ability. This will be facilitated by an understanding of what Jerry experiences and what his vulnerabilities are. In this situation, she might say I love you for who you are, not because you support the family.

Optimal results will be achieved if both Jerry and Robin are working on their parts at the same time. Stay tuned to My Side of the Couch for more tools and strategies to facilitate better living with BPD.