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CHAPTER ONE

Men Who Are Hard to Love

Paul and Meg met in a bar when they were both in their mid-twenties. Meg rarely visited bars, in fact, she rarely dated, but she had been persuaded by some friends to go celebrate one of their birthdays. Paul had also been there with friends, and the two groups somehow gravitated to one another, eventually pairing off in a casual sort of way. Paul did not come on strong to Meg (which would have immediately turned her off), but before he left he did ask if it would be okay if he called her some time. She was skeptical, but gave him her number, and was pleasantly surprised when he called three days later, asking if she’d care to meet for coffee. Again, this low-key approach is what appealed to Meg.

Meg had been raised in a suburban middle-class family and had a younger brother and two younger sisters. Her father had been a teacher and made enough money to enable Meg’s mother to work part-time at the local library while devoting the lion’s share of her time to parenting and keeping house. Theirs was, Meg said, “the all-American family, at least when you looked at us from the outside.”

Meg was bright and did well in school. She also enjoyed active play, and was more interested in building things and climbing trees than in traditional “girls’” pursuits like playing house or skipping rope. She was, unfortunately, also the victim of her father’s occasional fondling hands and his tendency to be a voyeur. “I remember being angry that my parents would not allow us kids to have locks on our bedroom doors,” Meg said. “That meant that I had to be constantly on guard for my father walking into my room, which I shared with my next youngest sister Joann. He was most likely to barge on in right after I took a shower, so I became very sure from an early age to always have some clothing on. The couple of times I complained he’d get all huffy and act like I was being ridiculous.”

Meg believed that her mother never suspected that her father was a voyeur, much less that he’d tried groping his daughter on several occasions. Meg coped with the groping in two ways: by keeping her distance and also by “dressing down.” “I had the largest collection of baggy jeans and sweatshirts you’ve ever seen!” she told me with a laugh, adding “It fit my tomboy personality.”

“But it could also serve as camouflage, don’t you think?” I suggested. Meg nodded.

Meg knew that Joann shared her experiences and concerns, though to a lesser degree, and they both believed that both their brother Tim and their youngest sister, Eliza, for whatever reason, had not drawn their father’s interest. “We didn’t talk about it much,” Meg explained, “It was as if we both just knew on some level that our father was sleazy and we worked around it. I think Joann ended up having more trouble with it, though, because she became an alcoholic and then married a man I thought was a real loser. They got divorced, and she’s in recovery now, but it seems to me she’s still attracted to men who just use her because she makes a good salary as a nurse.”

Meg, who was thirty-four at the time of our meeting, had gone to college part-time, but did not finish. Instead, six months after she met Paul she moved out of her house and in with him. It was the only impulsive thing she’d ever done, and she admitted that it had been totally out of character for the shy, cautious person she’d always been. But Paul appealed to her. He had a steady blue-collar job, was a hard worker, and shared her goals, which tended more toward raising a family than pursuing a career. Also, Meg could tell from occasional comments he would make that the idea of her being more educated than he was made Paul uncomfortable. So Meg dropped out of college and enrolled instead in a training program in a vocational school and became a machinist—one of the few females to work in that trade. And that had the added advantage, she said with a smile, of being a convenient way for her to continue “camouflaging” her body.

Meg and Paul married and had two children, a son and a daughter whom she described, with evident delight, as “my angels.” They were healthy, did well in school, and enjoyed sports and swimming in the town lake during the summer. Meg was concerned about a couple of things, however, beginning with Paul’s drinking.

Despite her low-key nature and the fact that she had not dated much before meeting Paul, Meg admitted that when she did go out with friends, she sometimes drank to excess. Then, after she and Paul got together they eventually fell into a pattern of having a couple of beers pretty much every night together—and sometimes more on the weekend. But she’d put those days behind her as soon as she got pregnant with her first child. Now she would have a beer or two on Saturday and/or Sunday, always with Paul. He, on the other hand, had continued to drink daily. He also smoked pot on the weekends. “He drinks either three or four beers, or else most of a bottle of wine, every night,” Meg explained, “and if he gets into one of his moods he drinks more than that. Sometimes I’m not sure if the drinking causes him to get into a mood, or if it’s the mood that makes him drink.”

What Meg meant by Paul’s “moods” was his tendency to sink into a severe state of depression, or else flare up with intense anger, with seemingly little provocation. He was, she said, extremely thin-skinned, and could take offense at things that others might consider trivial. For example, if he came home and felt “ignored” by her, when she was actually just busy taking care of the children, he might storm off in a huff. Drinking always made that situation worse. “If he’s had more than three beers and gets into a mood, then we can’t communicate at all. He just sulks or gets mean,” Meg explained. “We both work full-time as well as raising two kids. It’s like Paul is almost competing with them for my attention. I do try to pay attention to him, but there are times when I’m distracted or tired. He doesn’t seem to understand that.”

Here are a few examples of other issues that Meg was concerned about. From her perspective these issues clouded their relationship and, over time, were creating what she called a “distance” between her and Paul.

• Paul occasionally would complain that after Meg got pregnant he “lost his drinking buddy.” Indeed, after they began to live together and up until Meg got pregnant she did drink almost as much as Paul did, and she also sometimes smoked pot with him on weekends. When Paul complained about losing his “drinking buddy,” he would get sullen, and nothing Meg could say would lift him out of that sullen funk.

• On a few occasions when Meg tried to talk to Paul about his drinking—because she was concerned about how it was affecting his health and what it was modeling for the children—he would fly into a rage. At these times he would accuse Meg of thinking she was “too good for him.” Then he’d mutter something about how she was probably looking for someone to replace him.

• Over time Paul had turned sour on virtually every friendship he had. From his perspective, Meg explained, people were always letting Paul down. “And he holds a grudge like you wouldn’t believe!” she added. As a result, their circle of friends was extremely small, and their social life extremely limited.

• Paul’s attitude toward friends extended to his work relationships, where he regarded most of his coworkers as lazy and his bosses as incompetent. He was not only extremely critical of them, but of people in general. He was inclined, for example, to blow up when frustrated about how someone in the car ahead of him was driving.

• Paul was very concerned that Meg dressed in ways that he would call “provocative.” They had a limited social life, but even if they were going to a family function he would accuse her of “dressing sexy” so as to attract attention. He would also accuse her of flirting with his friends. According to Meg, however, “I don’t own a single ‘sexy’ outfit! Just ask my friends.”

• Whenever he was in one of his “funks,” Paul would make disparaging comments about himself. “If he’s trying to do some little repair job around the house I can hear him muttering words like ‘stupid’ to himself. And again, he often says that he thinks I will eventually ‘dump’ him for someone else.”

Once, after they returned home from a gathering with friends, Paul again accused Meg of flirting with a man who at the time was Paul’s best friend. Meg said she’d had a few drinks that night, admitted that it was only at times like those that she could allow her “feminine” side to show “even a little bit.” But she denied that she’d been intentionally flirtatious. As she’d told me, she learned from an early age to keep that part of herself under wraps. I was inclined to believe that she was sincere about this.

Despite the fact that Paul was aware of Meg’s history with her father, including the fact that she disliked flirtatiousness in other women and had never done anything that could make Paul distrust her, a fight nevertheless ensued between her and Paul, which she could not de-escalate. Then Paul pushed Meg. She stumbled backwards and fell to the floor. The racket woke the children, who emerged from their bedrooms in tears. Paul then proceeded to stomp around the house, upending a chair and further frightening the kids. Then he stormed out of the house, hopped into his truck, and sped off. At that point, fearing for what might happen if Paul returned in the same mood, Meg called her best friend, Jill, hastily dressed the children, and took them to spend the night with her friend.

Paul figured out where Meg and the children had gone as soon as he returned home to find his house empty. He called Jill’s house and asked to speak to Meg. When she got on the phone he apologized profusely. He also agreed, albeit reluctantly, to see a counselor with her.

Paul suffers from Male Borderline Personality Disorder or MBPD for short. Like the vast majority of men with this disorder, he has not been diagnosed as such. Instead, the counselor he met with (only twice) gave him a “diagnosis” of alcohol abuse and also said that Paul needed to work on anger management. And though this may be objectively true—Paul did have a drinking problem and his behavior at times was aggressive—this would not be of much help in understanding Paul’s behavior or changing it. And changing it would definitely be in Paul’s interest as well as Meg’s and their children’s.

Paul

Though you could say that Meg’s childhood was not exactly a bed of roses, Paul had it just as bad if not worse. His father had abandoned him and his mother when Paul was three and Paul never saw the man again. His mother, who was an alcoholic, subsequently married and divorced two alcoholics, both of whom were hostile and abusive to Paul. She’d had another son by Paul’s first stepfather, and this boy was the recipient of whatever limited ability to provide love and nurturance that man had been capable of.

Paul’s mother, meanwhile, seemed to have decidedly divided loyalties. Sometimes, Paul said, she would defend him when she thought he was being treated unfairly; at other times she would stand back and do nothing. Similarly, she could be affectionate with Paul at times, but usually only when they were alone together.

After Paul’s second stepfather passed away, and after Meg quickly cut way back on her drinking, Paul turned to his mother, and she became what Meg described as “his new drinking buddy.” Paul would visit his mother once or twice a week on his way home from work. Sometimes he would bring take-out food and they would sit around, eat, and drink beer. Paul would have had several drinks in him by the time he got home.

Meg felt that Paul had “mixed feelings” about his mother, given his upbringing, but that in some respects she was the only person he’d ever been close to. “And that includes me,” she added with a sigh. Paul’s mother died—of cirrhosis—when Paul’s first child—his son Ethan—was a year old.

So, you might ask, given his personality and temperament, why would Meg be interested in Paul to begin with, and why would she stay with him? Indeed, men like Paul are not easy to love. But despite their obvious flaws, men like Paul are not one-dimensional. When asked to talk about what attracted her to Paul, and why she stayed, here is what Meg had to say:

• “First off, I liked Paul from the first time we met because I could tell that he was not just out to get me into bed. He seemed very respectful—never tried to grope me. Even when I’d had a few drinks he did not push himself on me. That was very important to me. It made me feel safe with him.”

• “Paul is actually a very sensitive man. I know he can be very critical, but he’s as critical of himself as he is of anyone else. He can be very good with the kids when he isn’t drinking, and he enjoys playing with them or just watching TV with them.”

• “I know that Paul is very jealous of me—thinks I’m smarter than him and that I’ll eventually dump him. But he’s also got skills. I don’t know whether he just doesn’t realize it, or he just doesn’t value the skills he has. He built a play house for the kids. It took him two months, and it’s a work of art—or should I say a labor of love? He’s also a great cook when he’s motivated to do it.”

Is Paul hard to love? Yes, definitely. Is Paul unlovable? Not according to Meg. Sure, they had their problems—maybe serious ones. But as Meg pointed out to me, she didn’t know anyone who had a perfect marriage. She didn’t have any friends, she said, who she’d readily trade places with. She and Paul had two lovely children, and Paul was a steady worker who rarely missed a day of work. Though he occasionally spent money in ways she didn’t think they could afford, such as an above-ground pool for the kids, he was not personally extravagant. She could typically expect Paul to get into one of his “moods” once or twice a week, but at other times there was relative peace in their house. Did she feel like she had to walk on eggshells around Paul? Yes, to an extent, but she felt that she was more or less aware of what could send him into a tailspin of depression or an explosion of anger. A little extra attention from her made daily activities go more smoothly between them.

Meg felt that staying together was her best alternative. So why did she come to see me? Because, although she had decided to stick with her marriage, on another level Meg knew that it could be better. Also, she knew that the one incident in which Paul had pushed her could not be repeated, both for her own self-respect and to spare her children from believing that such behavior in a marriage was acceptable.

It’s safe to say that there are many men like Paul out there, and an equal number of women, like Meg, who want to make a relationship with a man like him work. These are the men and women for whom this book is written.

What will you learn here? You will learn, first, why men with MBPD are typically misdiagnosed and misunderstood. This is important because, as in Paul’s case, it most often leads to a dead end. For example, simply telling Paul that he should do something about his drinking, or attributing his explosive outbursts or bouts of depression solely to his drinking, falls short of understanding the personality and temperament that contribute to both. Of course Paul may need to address his drinking, his temper, and his episodes of depression, but that is best done in the context of helping him (and Meg) to understand the context in which these occur (which is his MBPD) and what he can do to manage it.

Based on an understanding of MBPD, we can move on, in Part Two, to looking at a number of solutions these men (and those who love them) can pursue in order to “tame the beast” that troubles them on a deeper level. Facing those inner demons then sets the stage for men like Paul to lead more satisfying, less frustrating lives, and for those who love them to be able to share in those lives.