This last quote seems to be coming from your "best" side, but still one focused on your image of yourself.

I don't have NPD according to the DSM. I was diagnosed with PDNOS about 10 years ago and probably qualified for OCPD earlier in my life. I tended toward the goody-good side of my "split" motivational system. Sounds like you may have something similar, but it tends toward the selfish side?

There wasn't any therapist that I could find who could help me much. I have some control over my actions sometimes but not what pops up from the motivational systems as potential actions.

I hope that your wife can appreciate and understand you somewhat. My children deserved me to be better, too. But I was and am as I am. I have tried to accept that and move forward from now, from each moment. This is especially hard when I feel I have made a mistake that hurt somebody else or hurt me. But it is what it is and the past has been what it has been.

It's very hard for me to see that the best I could do has been pretty lousy in lots of ways, lots of times.. Others here, if not so much in the "real world", will understand if you are doing the best you can -- and it certainly sounds like it from your posts.

We can strive for the best and that helps us go beyond where we were, maybe, but we are all still limited in some very painful ways, sometimes. And that's everybody, not just people with CPTSD and PD's.