Coping with partner with personality disorder traits

LegacyUser

Quick summary.
I'm 20yrs married, 2 teens.

It really only full dawned on me in recent years that my wife's behaviours are not the norm and much that I dislike to label, I believe she may have a number of traits which would indicate a personality disorder. It impacts our married life. There is a lot of passive aggressiveness from her and she appears to bear a grudge and feels that she is hard done by whereas for years I've been pulling my weight. In many ways it is like she distorts reality to project away her frustrations and tries to push the blame elsewhere.

It feels often like she goes into a mode where she is deflecting her own frustrations or anger onto her nearest and dearest. I could probably write an essay or a book. I did ask about marriage counselling and she managed to avoid going and then later tried to convince me that she had offered to go. I did go along on my own and now looking back on the sessions I can see that the counsellor noticed that I was editing my emotions and had got into that habit as a result of trying to cope with the various stresses of home life. The counsellor's main advice was to see if I could be straight with my wife about my feelings - because it is hard to argue with feelings.

Being honest I love my wife but I find it hard as time has gone on to stay in love.

I am just wondering if anyone else has had experience of dealing with someone with personality disorder traits and whether the relationship has survived.
Like I say I don't want to label her or even disclose that I see her behaviour as being part of a disorder, etc. I don't think , in any case that she would be likely to acknowledge that her behaviour needs to be addressed. I have come across some books (which I have not bought as yet) which deal with being a spouse of someone with a personality disorder. I'm just not sure yet if I need to resort to a manual or if I can really stay longterm in this relationship.

Thoughts and comments welcome..

Minera

Hi op I'm sorry you are living with this. You cannot diagnose your wife as having a personality disorder on the basis of her 'having a few traits' only a psychiatrist can diagnose mental health problems.
Congratulations on attending a councillor, but I would also advise you go to your gp and tell him of your home life and you need support.
You obviously love your wife but cannot live like this anymore, go away on a break alone and recharge your batteries 20 years is a long time to throw away over what I fear is a webmd diagnosis.

LegacyUser

Could you outline some examples or incidents? From what you have there, your wife falls a long way short of disordered and maybe the two of you just have a bad communication pattern.

BoredFan

My thoughts /comments-
What you say in your first paragraph could be just someone who is 'difficult' its not necessarily a person with a disorder. Who hasn't received passive aggressive behaviour from someone? And blame shifting. Everyone has the ability to project too. It is tempting to look for disorders when a relationship is breaking down, thats why you need a professional opinion. There are many good sources of information online and its free.

20 years is a long time. However I've had experience of disordered individuals in my life, I don't mind labelling the first one she was classic NPD and that relationship barely lasted more than 6 months (the second one probably was but I wasn't around long enough to find out). It may be impossible to diagnose yourself the disorder but the question you need to look at is , is the behaviour (in other words the abuse if there is any - there is no evidence of it in your post); so bad it is unhealthy for you and your children that you have to get out. People including myself get hung up on what disorder their wife/ husband or ex gf has. Sometimes they seem to overlap. A lot of married people only become convinced that something is 'wrong with the partner' when they try and leave them, thats when you really find out after the ultimate rejection what its like to face someone with a personality disorder.

LegacyUser

Apologies that I'm only getting back to reply now in the weekend.

I only scratched on the surface in my initial post and really it's not so much about labelling or diagnosing my wife.
A lot of her behaviour involves subtle put-downs of me or really most other people.
I can understand where this comes from.

Her father has very grandiose ideas and had worked in a job involving a fair bit of responsibility in his community and I see how making slight of people became normalised at their dinner table, etc as she grew up.
I'm not going to get into psychoanalysing her behaviour.
All I can witness is that she has an air of superiority in general and when I've donned confidence it throws her and she sees that as conflict.
It manifests in many areas of our life.
She avoided confronting our communication issues in counselling by just avoiding counselling all together. We have very little intimacy in the relationship.

I am always careful to not fall into trap of becoming too much WebMD on this but really I can say that our relationship was clearly a case of her idealising me for a short while and then devaluing me as soon as her supply of admiration ran out.
I think the last poster clearly saw this in their first relationship (NPD).
She hasn't made threats about self harm... it's more about ego and deflecting any small mishaps that really are of her own making on those nearest and dearest to her.
It's a head wreck, to be honest.

daisybelle2008

MaxwellScott wrote: »

I'm not going to get into psychoanalysing her behaviour.

But that's all you seem to be doing here. You need to take responsibility for your life.
Your counsellor told you to communicate how you feel to your wife. If you are unable to learn do that, that's on you. Decide if you want to be in a relationship where you don't do that. It's become easier to diagnose all her flaws passively aggressively than express yourself and take action if your needs aren't being met.

BoredFan

Hi Maxwell,

In my first relationship which I firmly believe was with an NPD I wasn't devalued. I ended it. Every situation is different I guess.
Similarly, I think its possible to be idealised and devalued by someone without NPD or BPD. You can read up on other peoples stories to make up your own mind if you are not going to get professional advice on it (therapist).

To answer your general question "I am just wondering if anyone else has had experience of dealing with someone with personality disorder traits and whether the relationship has survived".

Everybody has certain traits. One example of NPD traits is haughtiness. I know a few people who have this trait to a high degree and they don't have a disorder. Also, what someone's father does is pretty irrelevant. But I think I know what you are getting at. Relationships with NPDs can go on for decades. This is usually because the person on the receiving end isnt aware of it. If you are aware of these 'traits' and the person is really abusive and not just an a****le, then that tends to be the start of the end of the relationship (if its NPD)

I have learned I didnt get anywhere looking at traits in the person who discarded me, I actually wasted about a month thinking it was all their fault and not even looking at things that I could and maybe should have done. It stopped me moving on. You have to look at what you did to allow someone to speak down / passive aggressive / grudge stuff to you and if and why you may have attracted people like this in the past. You also have to look at your own parents behaviour when you were younger never mind your partners. People who abuse emotionally don't abuse everyone they pick their targets. Not everyone is a target for someone with a disorder.

The only way to regain control over your thoughts with this sort of situation is set boundaries as to what you will tolerate. Easier said than done, but by focusing on behaviour and how it makes you feel you will get away from worrying about diagnoses. Abuse is abuse.

Good luck.

LegacyUser

MaxwellScott wrote: »

I think the last poster clearly saw this in their first relationship (NPD).

Analysing the response from a particular poster like that really just says that you think you've found someone to back up your opinion, so you run with it. Really, they're just as wrong as you are.
Still no evidence in your posts of anything approaching a disorder. She might be slightly arrogant, but that's not pathological, or a crime, or something that is universally abhorred, it's just slightly off-putting to lots of people, but nobody is everybody's cup of tea. If you have a problem that needs to be addressed, it's your poor communication dynamic and the fact that your wife appears to have lost respect for you. That may be because of a combination of the circumstances in which she finds herself and the fact that you seem to place the blame on her to the point where you believe her to be disordered just for showing normal human behaviour.

Daisy78

So she has behaved like this for all of your married life? I don't mean to offend but how were you so short-sighted as not to spot this when you we were going out together? Of course she didn't agree to counseling, she is happy in the narcissistic bubble she has created for herself. Also people tend to become more judgemental and set in their ways as they get older so I wouldn't hold out hope of her mellowing any time soon. Her behavior has been unchecked for 20 years and now you are dealing with the consequences.

You need to start expressing your dissatisfaction with her behaviour. You need to start telling her that you don't agree with her dismissive behavior and that you feel it's a bad example to set for your children. You need to stop walking on eggshells. If you don't become more proactive in addressing this it will only escalate.