I’m engaged/married. My fiance and I got married in december for tax reasons but our wedding is this summer. I know it was stupid, but we got married having never actually lived in the same state. We’d met about a year before we married and dated long distance that whole time, I would go to visit her across the country for about a week or so a month and stay with her. She’s an amazing girl in so many ways, and she is a really good person, but I think she’s got a mood disorder or something. She’ll go into rages/moods where she just won’t compromise or let things go and it will often lead to divorce threats.

We moved to her childhood area together after our wedding, and things have been tough. We fight all the time. We used to fight like a once a month, now it’s several times a week. It’s typically been about the same stuff, she’s super suspicious I’m talking to other girls, in love with an ex, stuff like that.

But my offenses are all stuff like:
1. She asks a question about my exes (ex: did you ever consider marrying any former girlfriends)
2. I respond (ex: yeah a couple, glad I didn’t)
3. She gets angry at me a little later for talking about exes/other girls.

Or
1. One time I was playing a song
2. She asks what the song is called
3. Weeks later gets angry at me, threatens to break up, says I was trying to communicate through the song that I was thinking about other girls. I guess the song was about that? Idk, I just like the way it sounds.

Or
1. I go through order line at a restaurant
2. Apparently the servers were too friendly to me, my fiance accused me of flirting with them and not taking ownership of her because the cashier asked if I was paying alone and didn’t hear me tell her I was paying with my fiancé so I just went with going dutch. I said nothing to any of the workers except what food I wanted, and they didn’t really say anything weird to me.

Anyways, she told her family and now they think I flirted with other girls in front of her. She tells them a lot of crappy stuff about me, almost all of it is untrue. Which makes the weekly family gatherings awkward for me to attend.

Recently there’s even been a twist where she waits a few minutes after asking a question and then gets angry at me for talking about the subject and claims she never asked the question to begin. I try to ignore any questions she has that I think aren’t going to lead anywhere good, but sometimes they can be pretty subtle.

She also does a lot of stuff like looking through my phone and go through looking for chats or pictures with people from before we were dating and get angry, I’ve deleted them as they’ve come up. Though we’ve agreed it’s not productive or healthy to do that, she still has the urge sometimes. Nothing sketchy on my phone, but it still stresses me out because she’s tried to divorce me over finding evidence of past relationships on my phone.

In her defense, when she’s not in a mood/rage she is great. She’s fun and smart and awesome to hang out with and very beautiful- everything I want really. But it takes a lot of the fun out of it that I’m constantly worried I’ll trigger her, or that if I type too much on my phone or send texts to family or friends without pointing my phone in a direction she can see- she’ll get suspicious. She’s even suspicious if I go to the bathroom at the gym.

It’s also gotten better over time. She’s finally agreed I don’t seem to be talking to any other girls, she seems less paranoid about that now. Not all gone, but better. She also has trouble shaking the feeling I have feelings for one of my exes, the one I dated the longest. I guess I talked about her too much at the beginning of our relationship, but we both talked a lot about our exes (she still does), and I was still friends with that ex (she’s married). But I don’t get it, I never glamorized that ex outside of being a good friend- and haven’t had feelings for that ex in years, and she wouldn’tbe close to the top of any list of exes I would date again. Anyways, she seems to be over that as well- she kept bringing that ex up and creating arguments over her and tying her into random stuff for about a year after I stopped ever bringing her up. Recently we made a rule that she couldn’t bring up my exes either (already was a year standing rule I wouldn’t bring them up), that seems to be working. She also seems to have accepted I don’t and haven’t had any feeling for that ex in a long time, but it’s still a very sore subject and idk if she’ll ever let it go completely.

TLDR
If you’re still reading you’re a saint- sorry this is so long. My fiance gets super angry at me and even tries to divorce me over stuff that doesn’t exist. I haven’t talked to any girls during our relationship, and I haven’t had any feelings for anyone but her. On the contrary, she told me the other day that she cared about me for a little for the first time in 2022 while I was crying after she threatened to divorce me for the umpteenth time. First time she cared about me all year apparently… kinda fucked up.

I love her, but at the same time this is the most stressed I’ve been in years. We’re already married and I’m in love with her, but she makes my life hell sometimes- kind of frequently actually. We’re working to improve things, and she’s even open to couples therapy and maybe even individual therapy, I think we’ve made progress. But I feel like she still holds me accountable for all the pain these fights have caused, when I haven’t done shit. I guess I still also hold her accountable a bit, not that I hold a grudge, I just feel like I need her to understand nd appreciate what she’s put me through and then genuinely apologize- and I don’t think she ever will. She says sorry for everything when she’s on her good side, but sometimes the same day will be back to clawing at me. And it also really sucks that she’s bad mouthed me and lied about me to her friends and family, I don’t think she appreciates how damaging that is. Her whole family is kinda like her though, I like most of them, but they’re pretty neurotic and have lots of drama.

Anyways, the things that I really find important are that I’m kind of stressed and on edge when I’m with her, she apparantly doesn’t care about me most the time and has a lot of negative sentiments towards me, she lies about me and basically thinks a lot of horrible things about me that have 0 evidence, and I’m beginning to wonder if we’d both be happier on our own. I want it to work, but I’m worried she’s always going to be like this. That she’s always going to get triggered and go at my throat on a weekly basis. I don’t want any kids we’d have to be around fights like that. I hate fighting, I hate negative emotions. Typically I don’t have to deal with them very much, I’ve cried more in the past month in front of her than in the previous 5 years. I’m not sure what to do.

On one hand I love her and want to spend my life with her and we’re married, on the other hand… everything I’ve discussed above. What should I do?

3 comments
  1. Clearly she has trust issues. Either her parents really messed up or she had some issues previously in life.

    She needs therapy for her anxiety. You need to do your best to work through this with her during the rough times. It sucks that the lens is focused on you but you married into this… you be the husband throughout (as long as she’s working on it).

  2. The biggest question is if she’s willing to change. I’m not saying she has borderline personality disorder, but she definitely has certain traits of it based on how you described her. BPD is extremely difficult to overcome and very hard on marriages. People with BOD can be very magnetic, loving, fun, charismatic, etc. when things are good, but as you’ve experienced, when things are bad, they’re really bad. Manipulation, gaslighting, fits of anger, etc.

    Personality disorders are difficult to treat with medication. There is medication available but its effect is minute. It takes therapy and a personal decision to overcome and change. And any mental health issue, and many physical health issues, require the person to actually want to change. I don’t see that here yet.

    You can look into literature on how to live with someone with BPD and do some research on it. I’d definitely recommend talking to a therapist yourself about it. I would not approach her with any suggestions until you’ve talked with a therapist because the approach is extremely important. For someone with BPD, if they’re primed to fight something, they’ll fight it forever, so you need to go about it in exactly the right way or you’ll do more damage than good.

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