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Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

This thread is a follow on (or starting over) from my previous thread Caring for a wife with borderline personality disorder – sequel to diary of wife's hospital stay, I wanted to start over and in order to leave all the trauma and negativity of last year behind me and start fresh.

Those of you who have been following our family journey will know that after a number of hospital admissions for my darling I was encouraged by my councillor to implement some boundaries (lovingly implemented guidelines, not rules to be enforced) as well as self-care for myself as what we were doing was clearly not working and my health was /still is being affected.

Well after a smoother than expected start the boundaries and self-care were forgotten with my darling having a complete melt down and further lengthy hospital admissions due to high risk of self harm and a genuine attempt to leave us. The last 6 months particularly have been quite difficult for us all. S2 particularly had a lot of issues at school during this time and is currently seeing a councillor.

The purpose of this new thread is to again document our journey of healing, working on implemented boundaries and commitment to self care. As with the previous thread this is so that I can have a visual plan for myself with some accountability to follow through with plans in place and in the hope that it may help others in similar situations to ours. And so that I can track our progress. This was especially helpful in the last thread leading up to Christmas when I was feeling down about our current position to review what I had written and see just how far we have come.

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In response to: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Can't help but wonder @Former-Member if Darlings current decent has something to do with me ramping up to go back to uni in a bit over a week.

She kept texting me during a (skype) meeting the other day because she was worried about water levels. (Both tanks are full). Always seems to be worse when I am focused on stuff that is important to me. There were numerous phone calls while I was working during the week.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Determined quite possible, then there is the grrrr question of how many med doses were missed too. So disheartening after initial good response.

Saw your news on declutter thread - is the viewed property fairly local to where you are?

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Former-Member fairly certain there were only 3 or 4 missed doses of meds. That's assuming she hasn't started binning them after I expressed my concern.

The property we viewed is about 8km from where we currently are. That is 8km closer to town. I worked out this afternoon that it will save us ~300 km per week in travel. It is in town so neighbors will be much closer that will take some getting used to but it is well screened by trees.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

I know even with meds things can still be bumpy @Determined.

Quite a bit of potential for reduced travel time and vehicle expenses there Bro.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Former-Member thinking there may be a hormonal element at the moment also with darlings mood.

Re the move- while the reduced travel will be a big plus the main reason for considering the move is to be closer to mum and dad as they get older. (Potentially keeping them out of aged care longer term). Even though they are only next door where we are now the place we are looking at they will under the same roof separated by the garage. Currently about 200m away.

Mum in law has been looking for something like this for a while. More important for dad at the moment with mums cancer diagnosis I think. Long term it would be great for S1 to enable some independence.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Sometimes I think the answers are obvious, sometimes not Bro and we just need to manage the best we can.

Wondered if MILs health was a reason for potential move. Does your darling have siblings @Determined?

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Former-Member Darling has 2 adopted brothers, both live in north Queensland. We are south QLD so not geographically close. Regular contact with mum and dad by phone but we don't see them often.

Currently sweating on property valuations, we will need to sell 2 (mum and dad and us) to buy 1.

Quietly confident but need to know for sure. Reduced travel costs will certinally offset the increased costs of living in town vs rural which will be significant. Mum is quite the practicle type, she has been looking for something like this even before she was ill just more so now that she is not able to keep on top of things the way she used to. Also Dad would struggle to adapt to being alone they have been married for 45+ years and mum saw her parents in care in their final years and wants to avoid that for as long as possible/ practicle.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

On a positive note, darling seems to have perked up today despite being anxious around uncertainty of the logistics around our current investigations. Something that can often make her dysfunctional. She even got up early this morning to iron me a shirt for church and joined us. I was expecting her to stay home. Always grateful for the good days when they arrive and enjoy them while they last.

She has even pointed out some maintenance items I need to address in a constructive manner. It always helps me with motivation when requests are delivered respectfully so grateful for that also and enjoying it while it lasts.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Had a big positive moment with my darling yesterday 😍😀 She actually thanked me for everything I do for her and said how she appreciated it. Can't explain how that softened my heart and lifted a weight off my shoulders.

We have made an offer on a property closer to town and were discussing everything that she was worried about and I was reassuring her that her mum and I had it under control.

For once she accepted that and seems to be putting a great deal of trust in me. Just hope I don't stuff it up.

While I don't really want to move to town it will be less work and stress (in theory) for my darling and closer to her parents. For 2 way support. They help a lot with children and we can support them as they get older. Darling seems to appreciate that I am doing this for her. It is also a slightly bigger house so the boys would have a room each which is something that darling stresses about.

Should know by the end of this week if our offer is accepted and we have to then try and sell our current house.

Making big inroads into cleaning up that I have commented on in the declutter thread over on LE side.

In response to: Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

Re: Supporting my wife who lives with Borderline Personality Disorder while maintaining self care.

@Determined will see if you have any fingernails left by the weekend.

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