Posted 3/26/2012 6:00 PM (GMT 0)
Hello, this is my first post (ever, anywhere) and I want you all to know that I appreciate you taking the time to read and/or hopefully reply. I have an extensive family history of psychological disorder and have suffered from symptoms myself for as long as I can remember. I have a long history of sporadic psychological/medical care although I never received long-term treatment. I have been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies and chronic depression. I have always thought that I have bipolar disorder but medical professionals disagree. I strongly believe that I have borderline personality disorder (BPD). I am certain that I suffer from this malady and I am embroiled in crisis after crisis after crisis. The experience is wearing me down physically and emotionally and is affecting my marriage, my relationships with my children, and my will to live.
I have no medical insurance, I have degenerative disk disease and am in chronic pain (and very likely, BPD). I have filed for SS and Medicaid yet I have been struggling with the system since 2007 still without medical. I am extremely introverted, socially isolated, grew up in foster care from kindergarten until I aged out at eighteen, so I have no family. I am extremely confused about my marriage. My husband says that he is miserable because when I get upset it escalates until I am either yelling for hours then crying or just crying for hours then thinking of suicide. I often threaten divorce and separation because I am truly ambivalent about whether I should stay or go. My confusion stems from ambivalence regarding my BPD symptoms (how I manage my emotions, rather not manage), and whether my marriage is truly not working aside from my BPD.
Here are my issues with my husband; he has a gambling addiction that renders us completely broke every third month (which he denies and defends). I pay for the first two months (rent and bills) and he is supposed to pay for the third. We are both students and live off our student loans. Which brings me to another issue; my husband does not want to work and refuses to do so even though I clearly need medical insurance and he keeps gambling all of his refund away. Furthermore, he totaled my car years ago so I am not mobile. He sometimes does not come home. The longest he has stayed away is a couple of weeks and as all BPD sufferers know, perceived abandonment causes a myriad of maladaptive behaviors including suicide ideation. He lies about money and where he goes. I have landed in the hospital from broken bones while he disappeared and left me to pay his month of rent, which I had to borrow last minute. I do all of the housework other than him doing a sink of dishes maybe twice a week. He is emotionally distant and facile. He refuses to compromise in reality yet he says that he is willing (nothing changes). He spends money like water even when he is broke and has to borrowed money. I am torn between feelings of guilt for my BPD symptoms and whether or not my husband is exasperating my symptoms, if I am causing him to act the way he is, or if he is just not someone I should be married to. I do not know if I should stay or go and if I go, am I in the wrong. What do you think?