Death of the Dream

"Boy meets girl, it’s a delicate thing - so much time spent wondering if what you see is what you get..." - from a popular country western song.

Relationships with people who suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) are unsettling and upsetting in many ways. Perhaps the most unsettling experience of all, however, is when the "Non" (person in the relationship who does not suffer from BPD) begins to discover that the person they think they love bears little or no actual resemblance to the person they are actually living with!

For me, the realization occurred while I was reading a book titled " Too Good to Leave, Too Bad to Stay" by Mira Kirshenbaum. The book is a sort of informal workbook for hurting people who are trying to decide whether to stay in or to leave a troubled relationship. In addition to probing the bigger issues like domestic violence, it also asks questions like:

In spite of your problems, do you and your partner have at least one pleasurable activity or interest you currently share and look forward to sharing in the future?
Does your partner bombard you with difficulties when you try to get even the littlest thing you want? Is it your experience that almost any need you have gets obliterated and if you ever do get what you want, getting it is such an ordeal that it wasn’t worth the effort?
Do you have a basic, recurring, never-completely-going-away feeling of humiliation or invisibility in your relationship?

Well, you get the picture. There are 36 questions in all that deal with basic relationship issues. As I worked my way through the book, I discovered to my dismay that my marriage was in even worse condition than even I had thought. I’ve had very little experience to use as a guideline as to what constitutes ’normal’ or ’healthy’ in a relationship and this book really opened my eyes in that respect.

After reading this book, I finally realized that it was very doubtful whether my relationship with my BPD husband could, except in name only, even be termed a marriage at all! There was very, very little communication, no common purpose, no real cooperation, no mutual nurturing - just some common history, a lot of unhealthy neediness and a lot of pain. I had to face the fact that all that had kept me with my BPD spouse for so long was my sense of loyalty and commitment. However, what I was loyally committed to - the marriage I thought I had, the man I thought I fell in love with - were all nothing but images in my mind that bore little resemblance to the life I was actually living, or the man I was actually living with.

It was at this point that I experienced the ’death of the dream.’ I had to finally admit to myself that I had never really had a husband, and my children had never really had a father. My marriage was a sham, a deception. It was nothing more than a mirage I had clung to in order to keep from emotionally starving to death in a BPD world where only the needs of my BPD spouse were allowed to be met, where my needs were not welcome and where I was not personally loved nor perhaps even really liked in any kind of a healthy way.

At first, that was a very lonely and frightening admission for me to make. My hopes had been that my years and years of unconditional love for my BPD spouse would not have been in vain, that our relationship would be ’healed’ in some miraculous way and that finally I would be accepted and loved in return. But, once I saw this truth I realized that in order for healing to occur, there first had to be something TO heal. The sad truth was that there simply was nothing there and never really had been. I had been lying to myself all along.

During this time, in many respects I actually experienced, emotionally, the ’death’ of my spouse - and I literally went through all the ’stages of grief’ just as if he HAD died.

Denial: At first my heart refused to accept that my marriage and the man I thought I loved were just mirages I had used to maintain my sanity in a very unhappy situation. This stage took the longest time to work through. When you have lived for a long time with a BPD, you get to the point where you do not even trust your own perception of what is real. I had reached this point, so my heart and mind warred together on this battleground for a long, long time.
Anger: Who was I angry with? Well, I was angry with myself for letting my BPD spouse devalue me, and I was angry with him for his insensitivity and inappropriate behavior. I also spent some time being angry with God for allowing these hurtful things in my life. I didn’t understand why I had to go through this kind of pain, when all I was trying to do was what I believed He wanted me to do. I couldn’t understand why it seemed that my years of prayers for the situation to be changed were going unanswered.

Finally, I recognized that the anger I was feeling was a normal reaction to the painful situation I was in, and that God was big enough to handle me being honest with him about it. So, I poured out my heart to him daily, pleading for him to show me why he was allowing this to happen to me, and crying out to him for strength to just get through the day ahead. This emotional release helped me to finally ’own’ some of my anger, and then to channel my frustrations into some productive work to help me reach my goal of leaving my spouse.

Even with all this behind me now, I still can’t say that I know the reasons for all that I have gone through. I am content for now to lay the wondering aside, and just trust that there was a reason. Although I still have to deal with anger, since I have been able to take this step it has lessened quite a bit and dealing with it (by first admitting to myself that I am angry then channeling it into productive pursuits like talking to friends, engaging in physical activity, reading and writing!) anger no longer totally drains my energy like it once did.

Bargaining: I spent only a little time here as well, because I had, in effect, already spent 18 years bargaining and it had done me not one bit of good! But, ’old habits die hard,’ so yes - I did try it once again!
Acceptance: I spent several days away from my home, alone, and took stock of my situation. I spent many hours in prayer, many hours in quiet meditation and read a whole stack of books on co-dependence and verbally abusive relationships. I talked to my sister and to a couple of good friends, then finally my heart accepted at last that I was seeing things as they really were - and that things couldn’t go on any longer the way they had been. Now that I knew the truth, I knew that I couldn’t continue to live like this without destroying my own soul.
Moving On: I left my BPD spouse, and now my children and I reside in a new home where we are free to be human, free to laugh, to love, to learn and to live. I am still dealing with my anger, and recovering from the effects of having been in such an unhealthy relationship for so long, but I know that I am on a good path and that the healing I need will finally be mine in time. I have hope for my future, more energy in my present, and my zeal for living is coming back in force. I am even starting to like myself again, for the first time in a long, long time. I am finally free to move on to enjoy whatever good things the future has in store for me.

This is a short chronicle of my personal journey towards sanity - away from the pain of the past and on to hope for a better future. I hope that this will someday help someone else to recognize and survive their own ’death of the dream’ experience - then also to move on to find joy!

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Disclaimer: The information on this site (http://www.bpd411.org) is based on personal experiences of the authors and members of our e-mail mailing list. It is NOT meant to replace professional advice or take the place of counseling, therapy or additional personal research.