My 1st Wife Had a Borderline Personality Disorder: A True Story Showing You How-to Break Free from an Unhealthy Marriage

By Kirk L. Blood

Lessons from a ten year marriage during the 1970s before much was known about personality disorders or the Borderline Personality Disorder in particular. This autobiographical story documents the entire relationship from falling in love to the final breakup and the aftermath. With virtually no help from therapists, the author had to find his way through the anger and maze of his wife's mental condition. He wanted to find a healthy way to leave his marriage but at the same time not damage him or his wife in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781329904217

Book preview

My 1st Wife Had a Borderline Personality Disorder: A True Story Showing You How-to Break Free from an Unhealthy Marriage

My 1st Wife Had a Borderline Personality Disorder:

A True Story

Showing You How-to

Break Free

from an Unhealthy Marriage

By Kirk L. Blood

Copyright © Kirk L. Blood 2016

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-329-90421-7

PREFACE

If the descriptions of high-conflict, Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic and Sociopathic women on Shrink4Men resonate with you, your love is more than likely nothing more than an incredibly damaged, self-obsessed, emotionally stunted, psychologically immature, entitled, manipulative, selfish, empathy challenged, blame shifting, unaccountable, abusive child or teen in an adult body who is incapable of love [ED: my emphasis].

Dr. Palmatier, Tara.  Obsessing Over an Abusive Ex: Thoughts on Being Stuck.

Shrink4Men. Web: www.shrink4men.com. 30 April  2013.

http://shrink4men.com/2013/04/30/obsessing-over-an-abusive-ex-thoughts-on-being-stuck/

The following is a real story about a real marriage and the work it took to free myself from a dysfunctional relationship, even though I deeply loved the person I was breaking up with.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I had to wing it as there was no information about this kind of mental condition. After I wrote this eBook, I researched and found a wide number of quotes which back up my intuitions at that time -- but the earliest quotes which you will find throughout this eBook were written many years after my own situation. This means that there was virtually no info about the Borderline Personality Disorder during the period I was forced to deal with my wife's state of mind. Even the counselors and therapists we went to see did not understand there was something serious going on as our problems were not just the garden variety of marriage disputes.

Their lack of understanding had dangerous consequences as their advice at one point almost cost me my life.

BPD as a recognized condition is relatively new, having only been defined in the 1980's.

Kreger, Randi. The Roller Coaster Ride of Loving Someone with BPD.

Psychology Today. Web: www.psychologytoday.com. 12 December 2013.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201312/the-roller-coaster-ride-loving-someone-bpd

It was not an official diagnosable disorder until 1980 when it was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Third Edition (DSM-III) for the first time.

The History Of BPD.  The Optimum Performance Institute.

http://www.optimumperformanceinstitute.com/bpd-program/the-history-of-bpd/

Leaving her was the hardest thing I have ever done. At the end while I had some clues, I did not understand what had happened to our marriage, I just knew I had to leave.

Now, 40 years later with a wealth of information on the Web, I have identified her condition as the Borderline Personality Disorder and have a pretty clear idea of the ways she operated and the dynamics of our relationship.

I write this in the hope that I can help other people in the same situation, that maybe I can show them how to feel less guilty or less shattered when they leave or perhaps I can assist them to see the signs sooner and leave before they get entangled in the Borderline's web.

You may contact me, the author, directly, if you would like to make any comments at this email address:

[e-mail]

INTRODUCTION

My 1st Wife Had A Borderline Personality Disorder

A True Story

You think you're so clever, but you're really a piece of shit. I see you for who you are...But, you know, of course, that I really do love you, you big lug.

My ex-wife really did say this. It was a far cry from what she said when we first met: I was fascinating, I was smart, I was her soulmate, I was her knight in shining armor, I was the one who would protect her and bring her back to life.

I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Here was a woman who loved the things I loved, supported the ambitions I had, thought I was wonderful and the sex we had was more than a confirmation, it was otherworldly. I knew she had problems, but as a young man I rose to the occasion. Together we would make our own world, we would heal what had been broken and she would blossom. I loved her completely, without reservation, without holding anything back so I let her know my deepest secrets and my heartfelt desires.

Ten years later I was sitting in my old Dodge Lancer which belched exhaust from a muffler that had just broken under the car and carbon monoxide smoke was drifting up and filling the interior through holes in the rusted floor board. I sat there in the driveway of our home letting the car idle and wondered what would happen, if I just closed the windows and went to sleep.

But for some reason I didn't. I turned off the ignition and walked into our house -- to resume the life that I had come to dread.

At the age of 22, I had married my first wife at age 21. We were married for ten years plus we dated for two years before we were married so I was with her from 1965 - 1977.

At that time few people knew about personality disorders. The Borderline Personality Disorder is particularly insidious because it switches around, sometimes acting sympathetic and at other times quite callous. A cold calculating female was beyond anyone's comprehension -- so in addition to dealing with the marriage from hell, I also had to figure out most of the psychology on my own. When my wife and I did finally go to marriage counseling at my insistence, the shrinks assumed I was the problem and not my sweet, quiet, innocent wife.

Yet if I have some God given talent, it is that I have often been able to step back a bit and observe what is going on around me. I could do this at a very young age. In this case it saved my life, because I loved her deeply but was quite sure something was wrong. So in my mind I was able to stand outside the turmoil just a tad, to take notes, to look for patterns and then try to fit the contradictory pieces together.

As best as I could, I tried to be objective: How had this started? What was behind her anger? Was it my fault? Could I figure out a way that we could discuss this and work it out?

But it was subtle. She would ratchet up the anger, the sarcasm and the criticisms just a bit so that I became accustomed to them, then she would wait a while and ratchet them up some more. This process took years. So that after eight years or so, I woke up one day and wondered, What the hell happened?

Yet more and more, I got the feeling that there was an elephant in the room, but I was being told there was no elephant in the room and after a while I began to believe that there was no elephant in the room. And after years of suspecting that there really was an elephant because I could smell it and hear it, I began to think I was crazy.

This has been called 'gas-lighting' from the movie Gaslight with Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. In the film Boyer marries Bergman in a whirlwind romance and then drives her slowly mad by isolating her, by planting items on her such as his watch which she says she has not seen and by getting her to believe things that she doesn't think are true.

Gaslighting is a game of mind control and intimidation that is often used...as a way of controlling, confusing and debilitating someone.

The whole intention of gaslighting is to decrease someone’s self-esteem and self-confidence so they are unable to function in an independent manner. The person being gaslighted will eventually become so insecure that they will fail to trust their own judgment, their intuition and find themselves unable to make decisions.

Eventually the victim will become so unsure of what reality looks like that they become completely dependent on their abuser.

It is likely that the abuser will laugh at or sneer at their victim, but when questioned, convince their victim that they were imagining it. The abuser will also make light of anything that the victim feels is important to make the victim’s opinions, life-choices and thoughts seem juvenile or that they are inferior to their own.

Myles, Alex. Gaslighting: The Mind Game Everyone should Know About. 

Elephant Journal. Web: www.elephantjournal.com. 17 August 2015.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/08/gaslighting-the-mind-game-everyone-should-know-about/

Now this is where I may have a slightly different take on the Borderline PD from the standard psychological model. While I think those with this disorder can be cruel, cunning and calculating, I also think that they are often unaware of their motives and the warped web that they weave. This is not an excuse as I think not knowing might be worse than knowing, yet it is an important point to keep in mind when dealing with such a person. They may not be fully aware of their own devious designs.

To be clear, I am not a psychologist, but I did take a fair number of psychology courses in college and have read quite a few books on the subject. My observations and expertise comes from fighting in the trenches, so to speak. I fell in love with woman who had a Borderline PD, lived with a her for ten years, was almost destroyed by a her, and finally managed to free myself from her clutches.

Got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues And you know it don't come easy (George Harrison). I believe that through my life experience, I have paid my dues and can shed some light on the subject.

You are idealized sometimes as the greatest person alive, while at other times you are seen as the worst person. People with BPD often have skewed views of people, whether they be acquaintances or people that are an everyday part of their lives.

Berman, Carol W., M.D. 9 Tips on How to Recognize Someone With Borderline Personality Disorder.

The Huffington Post. Web: www.huffingtonpost.com. 28 June 2014.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-w-berman-md/9-tips-on-how-to-recogniz_b_5224432.html

Borderline Or Sociopath?

After doing much research I had decided that my wife must have been a sociopath. Most of the time she had no understanding of my emotions, often tried to deliberately hurt me and when she did was not concerned or troubled plus she might even be a bit annoyed that I would complain. But when I dug a little deeper, I realized she acted this way only part of the time.

At the beginning she was quite needy and terrified I would abandon her. As you will read, this was a constant during our marriage -- even as her actions became uglier and more hateful. In addition she had a poor sense of self -- taking on my personality at the beginning, and later the personality of others in a chameleon like manner. All four of these characteristics -- being needy, fear of abandonment, lack of sense of self, and a chameleon way of fitting in -- are more in tune with the Borderline PD rather than the Sociopath or the Antisocial Personality Disorder (ASPD) as it is known in psychiatry. The tricky part is that often a person with a