u/Alert_Brilliant_1726

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My husband and I are 32, we've been together for 12 years, married for 5.

After his most recent and longest hospitalization earlier this year, he's been committed to therapy and working on himself.

I always thought it was interesting that his BPD never seemed to leak or explode into our relationship. If anything he would turn his negative thoughts inwards.

Three weeks ago he knowingly crossed a non sexual boundary with a female coworker that he knows I'm uncomfortable with. This coworker has become his favorite person, and even though I've told him how I feel, he continues to see her outside of work.

It led to a huge blow up and long story short he told me that he thinks we only got married because it was "what we were supposed to do." Basically insinuating that our entire relationship may be a mistake.

It was a slap in the face and punch to the gut at the same time. I'm dumbfounded. He has never, not once, expressed resentment or doubt about our relationship.

We're in a stalemate until couples therapy later this month.

As I've been reading other people's stories and experiences it just dawned on me - he always displayed quiet BPD.

The only thing that's changed is after his hospitalization he started doing DBT with his therapist as EMDR caused the initial hospitalization.

Has anyone experienced this? Were you able to work through it?

I love my husband deeply. I don't want this marriage to end. But I'm so broken right now, I don't know how I'll ever trust him. How long has he been feeling this way but continuing to go through the motions to appease me and make me think everything is ok?

How do we get through this without ending up apart?

I don't even know why I'm writing this. I guess to scream it into the void. And maybe feel less alone.

My husband and I are 32 years old. We've been together since 2014 and married since 2021. He has Bipolar/BPD/CPTSD, I have depression and anxiety.

His friendship with a female coworker has blossomed into emotional affair territory. Despite me telling him how I feel he doubles down. I get called controlling and a nag. I get accused of not wanting him to have friends and if wanting him to be home alone with me all the time. He recently crossed a boundary (nonsexual) with her that I made very clear was a hard boundary for me.

We had already been talking about marriage counseling, and this was just the straw that broke the camels back.

Our first marriage counseling appointment is in 3 weeks.

He told me, for the first time in 12 years, that he changed who he was to "save" me and that he felt like we only got married because it was the right thing to do.

It hit me like a slap in the face. 12 years? How long has he thought heade a mistake? Why did he get married if he was only doing it because he felt some sort of pressure?

We live together and he told me that his therapist told him to "keep his distance from me" until we got into therapy. So we're polite and cordial, but essentially acting like strangers and roommates. It's killing me. I had a few good days this weekend where I felt at peace with waiting and was okay, and now it's all come crashing back. I cycle through anger, confusion, hurt, sad, annoyed, hopeful, etc. Thinking about or seeing pictures of memories we've shared feels like a kick in the chest. I'm not a crier by nature, and definitely not in public, but I've been crying and sobbing, to the point that I have to excuse myself from work to get myself together.

I've held him together, picked up the pieces, cleaned blood off of every surface in the bathroom after his attempt, each one more emotionally and physically traumatic than the last. And now that he's progressing in therapy he suddenly doesn't know if the last 12 years were real??? His last hospitalization in May sent me into the worst depression I've had in several years. And in a way it feels like all of this blew up or accelerated because I needed to be held together for a while.

I don't want our marriage to be over. It was never even a thought. Thinking of being without him makes me nauseous and physically sick. Is this just a BPD rollercoaster because he's working on things? Or is therapy making him realize that he truly is a different person, and that everything we have or had was a mistake?

I just feel so alone.