BPD and Rebuilding a Relationship
Hi, I’m new here and was recently diagnosed with BPD (quiet), Depression, Anxiety, and OCD.
I knew something wasn’t quite right with how my brain processed things and how quickly my moods shifted but I never really paid too much attention to it. Until recently when I had an incident with my husband and it really changed my entire stance on my mental health.
A little backstory, my husband and I have been together since September of 2023. We got engaged the following April and married in September of 2024. We never had any arguments or issues. We always worked things out but my husband has bipolar and can be short tempered. He also is kind of avoidant when it comes to trying to process and would feel safer retreating or shutting himself off.
This past December I was under a ton of stress at work when everyone on my team quit and I was working overtime during the busiest time of the year. I was feeling distance in my relationship and had emotionally cheated. Not intentionally by any means, I just hadn’t taken my mental health seriously and the attention was nice.
My husband found the conversation and we went through a couple weeks of “we need to think about divorce”. At the end of January we had a conversation and decided that my husband and I would stay living together until the end of the lease in December this year. While doing so we could work on the relationship and see where things go. However, we are technically not exclusive and essentially single. We both have the option to see others if we so choose.
I don’t want to lose my husband and I’ve been taking my growth very seriously. Since learning I have OCD and BPD, I’ve been seeing the patterns more clearly that lead to the situation. My husband also found that I have been using ChatGPT to process my chaotic thoughts and suggested I stop. He doesn’t trust AI, not that I do either but I don’t have a support system right now.
I guess I’m just wondering if anyone has had similar situations or maybe just insight or want to talk it out with me. I want to be able to show my husband that I’m serious about getting my life together and making him feel like the priority since I never wanted anyone else in the first place. I just had a moment of weakness during a really stressful time and handled it poorly.
I’m trying my hardest to not let it happen again and gain back his trust while also learning to cope with the new diagnosis and understand what that means for me and us long term.
@healingpup517
You've owned up to it and thats brave 🩷
You've taken accountability.
It's ultimately about honest communication and patience.
And knowing what works the best for both of you.
You've gone through a very difficult time.
And it's alot to process and learn re mental health but you are trying and that's why counts 🩷
@healingpup517
Hi, sounds like you're working really hard and really want to save the relationship and work on yourself, which is very admirable. 💜 I'm struggling with a few things about the situation:
1) I'm worried about a scenario where let's say you do the work and achieve a miraculous amount of personal growth and are feeling much better, but your husband still leaves because he wasn't involved in that process, he was already leaning into detachment/distance for his own emotional safety, and he doesn't really understand what you did or trust that anything has changed.
2) You're probably seeing a mental health professional if you were able to get those diagnoses recently. I wonder whether couples therapy is on the table as an option at all. I could understand the perspective from his side of "this is your problem and you need to work on yourself and fix it", but I imagine that a lot of the repair from emotional infidelity would involve the two of you working together to figure out boundaries, how to prevent it from happening again, things that would help re-establish trust, etc. and that tends to be a process that involves two people both committed to mending things.
3) Also find it a little worrisome that he's suggesting cutting off the AI resources if that's something that's currently helping fill a gap in social support and effectively performing the same psychological functions as journaling (i.e. being able to process thoughts/feelings in a safe way that doesn't carry the same relational risks as venting to another person).
Do you feel like your husband is willing to work with you on this?
Also, just sharing a link with some BPD-related resources in case if you haven't stumbled across it.
https://www.7cups.com/forum/personalitydisorders/BorderlinePersonalityDisorder_326/ResourcesforBPD_268269/