Wife left me and IÂ’m so confused

Hi, I am in major need of some support. I am so heart broken. My wife took off to her moms in a fight and has been gone for almost 3 months. I have just been trying to work things out with her. She has been completely ridiculous and getting worse over time. She basically has been raging on me for over 2 months. Blaming everything on me and my family. Basically everything about everything was an issue. She once loved everything, me, my parents, our house, our neighborhood, our life. She now claims to hate everything and believes she was miserable our whole marriage. It seems like it is some type of mental episode to be. Borderline personality disorder basically seems to explain a lot of what IÂ’m going through. She went to 3 counselors since the split and quit them all. We tried one marriage counseling and she quit that. She has now contacted a divorce lawyer and I believe may have filed today. I am so heart broken. We had a wonderful life, and such a great story. 3 beautiful, happy children. Our youngest not even 1 yet. I was suspecting she had post partum, since she started to change in the last trimester. It seemed like she was starting fights with me, and being very cold and detached from me in them. I felt like she didnÂ’t care about me anymore. It got worse and worse over the past year. It felt like she was baiting me into fights and escalating them to provoke me. She was saying weird things like you and your family will see when IÂ’m gone. I didnÂ’t quite know how to respond, because everyone loved her and would do anything for her. She has all these twisted thoughts in her head and is so against everyone. She has completely burned our marriage to the ground. She has said the meanest most hurtful things to me, blaming me for everything, also saying mean terrible things about my family and blaming them as well. It seems like a lot of projections to me. I have analyzed myself a ton in this, and I know I am not perfect, but I thought she felt I was a catch. Unfortunately she now believes I make her miserable. I have apologized and tried working out all of these issues, but it doesnÂ’t seem to get anywhere. She just comes up with another issue. She says I was controlling, manipulating, and isolating. When I ask her how, she doesnÂ’t give me any real examples. I know I can be a little controlling, as I feel anyone who deeply cares for someone can be at times. I donÂ’t believe it was anything over the top, or that we couldnÂ’t work out through communication. She claims I isolated her from her family, and just wanted our kids close to my parents. In reality our life practically revolved around her family, and my parents would watch our kids while we both worked, or when we sometimes needed a sitter for something. My parents would just babysit, her family would always try to steal the show. I would voice that I felt her family was overbearing and controlling. We were pressured to do everything with them nearly every weekend. The whole marriage my wife would claim they got on her nerves and didnÂ’t want to do all of these things. She has now completely turned on me. I am just so destroyed and confused. I feel like I am in a twilight zone, or some sort of twisted movie. I almost feel like her mom had been planting seeds in her head to cause these issues, and since she has left she has been encouraging and validating all of these thoughts against me and my family. I also feel she has been pressuring her to file, and come after me for money. My counselor seems pretty sure she has mental issues going on and has eluded to BPD. I am so confused as to how we had a stretch of so many good years and everything has just totally changed. She, at 34 seems to have completely changed personalities. She claims to have hated the old her and I wouldnÂ’t like the new her. Says that she has changed. Almost seems to be in a manic type state. Not much like the woman I have known all these years. I have caught glimpses of this when she had left me several times in the past, but this is the worst. So cruel and ruthless. I believe she may be getting joy from hurting me. I have seen smiles, smirks and laughter when she tortured/hurts me. It is so scary. I thought it was immaturity years ago when she would split on me, but after she came back the last time and we got married and had so many good years, I thought she just finally figured out what she wanted. If anyone has any advice or info on something like this I would greatly appreciate it. I am really hoping this is some sort of episode and she will snap out of it and realize what she is doing, but I donÂ’t see any sign of that happening at this point. Last time she was like this, though not as severe, but very mean and cruel nonetheless, she just sort of changed back to herself after like 3-4 months and wanted to work things out. I am in serious need of some help.

Hello Adventurer: Thank you for bringing your concern here to PC. I see this is your first post. Welcome to Psych Central

I'm sorry you find yourself in such a difficult situation. Unfortunately I don't think there is any insight I could offer into what may be going on with your wife. I suspect this is something that would have to be determined by a mental health professional who was working with your wife. And, from what you wrote, it doesn't sound as though she may be seeking professional mental health care for herself. Perhaps there will be other PC members who will have some thoughts they can share though.

Sometimes people who have a mental illness can be simply unaware of the fact. This condition is called: anosognosia. Here's a link to a healthline.com article on the subject:

Anosognosia: Definition, Causes, Symptoms, Treatment, and More

And then here are links to 4 articles, from Psych Central's archives, that (hopefully) may be of some help in dealing with the grief you are experiencing over this:

Shocked that Your Spouse Left? Here's the Secret to Recovery

10 Tips for Navigating Heartbreak

Love, Heartbreak & How to Recover

8 Tips for Healing Emotional Wounds

My best wishes to you. I hope you find PC to be of benefit.

It could be post pardom depression, some women get it bad. A major shift in hormones can severely affect a woman.

You mentioned she had an episode before, was that after giving birth to one of your other children as well?

Yes, it was very similar after the birth of our first child. We managed to work through things that time. Now she seems convinced her life is horrible and it’s my fault and wants a divorce. From my point of view, I don’t see it. We talked everyday, were on the same page, and had a good relationship. I’m just so devastated.