[IHaveNoIdea]

I'm not really sure where to begin. So I'll start from the very start.

my wife and i have been married for a little over 5 years...and in the last 2 years i'm not sure what has started happening...i can say that a year ago from april we had a miss-carriage. and gave birth to a health boy last may. I admit that i have made some big mistakes. Mostly with money.

But i'm starting to think she has never really trusted me at all.

esp here lately she is threating divorce...over the smallest of things...something that should only take a few minutes to resolve take days. with a high amount of anger from her...she accusses me of hiding things and lieing to her...when i find out that she would have moved important paper work to someplace out of the house. she goes from happy to either so upset that she makes her self sick or very angry. She has said she was getting a divorce so many times that i've become numb to the idea...and i'm half tempted to get on my self. there are times when she treats our oldest...who is 5 way too hard in MHO like one day after he ate a big lunch he was working on a muffin...she forced him to eat it all or throw it away...he wanted to save it for later. at one point she was even holding it to his mouth. She controls every aspect of my life...i no longer have any friends that i can talk to or see. she thinks that i dont stand up for her...and has threatend to pick a fight with my mother(who is also a interesting person) just so that she can see me stand up for her.

I really dont know what to do...this day night stuff is really starting to get to me. i love my wife...but i'm concerned on how much more of this i can take...or how much more our kids should be witnessed to.

 

[Uptown]

NoIdea, welcome to the TAM forum. Are you saying that you had four good years of marriage, followed by only one bad year? Did your W's bad behaviors start last May with the birth of your son? I ask because you seem to suggest there were red flags earlier in your marriage when you say you are "starting to think she has never really trusted me at all."

If the problem behavior surfaced only a year or two ago, one possibility is that she is suffering from postpartum depression, which sometimes lasts for two years. Has she been checked out for PPD or another hormone problem by a doctor? And, of course, the miscarriage two years ago may explain much of the behavior. An important issue, then, is whether her behavior was fine up to the miscarriage two years ago or up to the birth last May.

 

[IHaveNoIdea]

UpTown...
Thanks for your reply...before in the earlier years there wasn't anything too drastic. She was always a bit more jealious about other women...thats fine i can live with that...but i would have to say over that last year year and a half is when things did start to take a turn...I've tried asking her about PPD...but she takes it as i'm calling her crazy...finally not long ago she finally mentioned that she was going to get checked out...but as of this day she has yet to fallow threw with it. I honestly dont know much about PPD...I just wish she would get her self checked out...but i have no idea how i can get her to do it...if i bring it up it back fires on me..and with that being the case no one thats contected to me in anyway can really talk to her about it either. and just to take for instance of things over the past couple of days...she has woken me up in tears telling me to let her go...because i'm not working as hard on our relationship and she feels i should be...I have given everything up for her...and i have tried to do everything i can to show her how much i care about her...today we wrote out what was on our minds and what the other can do to make things better...some of the things she wants i can really understand...and i agree with...other things i dont under stand...it's stuff like "tell me how perfact I am" this statement was rewriten 4 or 5 times and maybe it's just me...but it struck me as odd....

 

[Uptown]

NoIdea, I strongly suggest that you see a psychologist for a visit or two -- by yourself -- to obtain a candid professional opinion on what it is you and your children are dealing with. One possibility is that your W has strong traits of a personality disorder like BPD (Borderline PD), which my exW has. That could explain your W's irrational jealousy, inability to trust, anger, temper tantrums, controlling behavior, trying to isolate you away from all friends and family, and the very rapid flips between loving you and devaluing you (i.e., what you apparently are referring to as the "night/day stuff"). Those behaviors are classic BPD traits.

I nonetheless am skeptical that you are describing a persistent pattern of strong BPD traits. Significantly, BPD is a "spectrum disorder." This means that every adult on the planet occasionally exhibits all nine of the BPD traits because we all have these traits to some degree. They become a problem only when they are so strong and persistent that they undermine our close, long-term relationships by distorting our perceptions of other peoples' intentions.

Moreover, even healthy people can get a temporary flare-up of their BPD traits due to the hormone changes associated with childbirth or the stress associated with a miscarriage. Further, a person having a persistent pattern of strong BPD traits typically cannot hide those traits for years at a time. That is, if she has a persistent pattern, the traits won't lie hidden and then suddenly appear 3 or 4 years into the marriage. Rather, they typically start showing themselves about 3 to 6 months into the courtship period -- or, at the latest, right after the marriage ceremony.

In addition, I note that you mention nothing about her being subject to abuse or abandonment (or an emotionally unavailable parent) during her early childhood. This omission is significant because 70% of the people suffering from strong and persistent BPD traits report that they experienced childhood abuse or trauma.

Hence, I suggest that -- in addition to your seeing a psychologist on your own -- you also encourage her to see a psychiatrist who can evaluate her, particularly with respect to the possibility of PPD or another type of hormone change. Failing that, perhaps you at least can persuade her to see an MD to be evaluated with respect to PPD. Although a psychiatrist would be better trained for that task, her seeing an MD would be far better than doing nothing at all.

Finally, although I am very skeptical that you are describing persistent BPD traits, I believe it may be worth 20 minutes of your time to read about them -- to see if most sound familiar. If you want to do that, you will find a brief overview of BPD traits in my post in Maybe's thread at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/general-relationship-discussion/33734-my-list-hell.html#post473522. If that description rings a bell, I would be glad to discuss it with you. Take care, NoIdea.