thank you!  I admit, I am not the most patient person & i am "boisterous" (as in, if you say, I need to go to the store, I say, "when", so...i am making a genuine effort to be patient & let her come around (?)

Big win for both of you. Being grateful and courteous are essential for healing.

Hi all,

Never thought I would end up posting on a message board like this. But after all the insight and comfort I got while reading, I felt the urge to share my story. To gain some clarity, insight or maybe just to get it of my chest. Or maybe because journaling for myself feels weird and mostly gets stuck in sad ramblings.

Got dumped after a 7 year relationship five weeks ago out of nowhere. Completely devastated. No idea what to do with myself. I get hardly any sleep, can barely eat and have no control over my thoughts. The unwanted train-of-happy-memories keeps raging through my head at insane speeds. I am in therapy and got Oxazepam prescribed but I am a bit scared to lean on meds as I have never needed any before. But a lot of days / nights it just get’s too much and I really need something to take the edge off.

So, here goes the full story. Might be a bit long and all over the place but I’ll do my best to keep make it as clear as possible. 

Ex-GF (33) was diagnosed with Borderline last year. She was struggling with bad moods (I didn’t think of it as depression back then) a lot but was very much able to hide this from me for the most part. Only a few months ago she confessed to self-mutilating from time to time. I had a hard time coping with this, since I had no idea.

She went into group therapy but skipped a lot of sessions and most she said about it was that’s it “annoying”.  In this phase I, in my ignorance, completely underestimated BPD.

I didn’t think much of it.

Just another medical label.

“Don’t get hung up on it” is what I actually said to her.

For the most part she was high-functioning. Gave up a office job to pursue painting as a career a few years ago. Got along well with family and friends. Our relationship had minor ups and downs but overall it was steady and for the first time in my life (I’m 37 now btw) I felt like I found the person I was gonna grow old with. We shared everything and we’re really good together. There was no aggression, no cheating and rarely ever any reckless behaviour (compared to some of the stories on here that I’ve read over the past few weeks).

Last year had been quite rough, with my dad dying and me getting panic attacks for the first time (before the break-up, so unrelated so far). But during all this time I felt we had a solid foundation of love and care for each other.

In the 2 months leading up to our break-up she had serious sleeping problems which resulted in mood swings and a dark cloud over her head. I tried helping out, but now release that coming up with solutions was not what she needed or would even accept.

So, 5 weeks ago she was sitting at our kitchen table, eating breakfast and I randomly asked “you okay?”. All of the sudden she exploded, confused but ice-cold.

“I don’t know what I want anymore, I don’t know who I am, I need my freedom, this relationship is holding me back in life, I want out.”

I was in a complete state of shock. I didn’t see ANY of this coming. In this moment she said that for those 2 sleepless months, all she had been thinking about was our relationship (which she later retracted, but I’ll get back to that).

During this conversation I only later noticed she started throwing stuff at me to get me angry. For example”

“I get worried thinking about a life in which I only ever have sex with you.”
(I didn’t get angry, this felt like a very reasonable feeling to have after a 7 year relationship.)

She went to her parents for a week “to take a break”, leaving me in our house. During this week, I decided to really reflect and look inward to what I had been doing in our relationship. In this week I wasn’t thinking about her BPD at all, it just felt like “real” feelings. I realised a lot of things that I did wrong, I can be very resolute and focused on fixing things practically. I wrote her a long letter, with insights in my faults. After this week of, what I thought was a break, she came back to talk. I didn’t recognise the person sitting across from me at all. Ice-cold, no emotions:

“A break? I thought I made it clear, we broke up. I need my freedom. You restrain my freedom. I wanna be free to go out with my friends, to have sex with people, to feel alive, I wanna live on my own.”

Once again, I was in shock. I read her my letter, owning up to my shortcomings and mistakes, in the hope of creating a new starting point to rebuild our relationship. Her letter was something completely different… It was as if she had build up a court case against me. I was the worst person ever. My sense of self took the worst beating it ever had to endure.

Let’s first get to the part that messed me up the most. When I asked why she hadn’t give me any signs of relationship-doubts, her response was: “I can’t talk with you, you always get angry right away”. I believed this for a while. I could get angry. I felt 100% guilty of taking away her voice.

Later on I realised this was a very mean-spirited way of laying the blame on me. I also realised that most of the times during our relationship that I did get angry, it was because she wasn’t capable of dealing with any criticism at all and I wouldn’t be heard if I asked her in a normal voice. Multiple times I had started crying after yelling, because I felt hopeless and left with no other choice.

Guess this could be called “gaslighting”?

The main take away of her letter was still “I need my freedom / you take my freedom away”. This also made me doubt myself in major ways, because if anything, freedom is one of my main life principles. Still no emotions whatsoever during this conversation, she was even looking at her phone and iPad every now and then, while I was shaking and crying uncontrollably. Then the crazy stuff started happening. When asked about some examples of me taking away her freedom, this came up:

“You always want the subtitles off while watching a movie and the sound real loud.” (Yes, this was actually the first argument, it would be funny if it wasn’t so confusing)
“If I watch a series in bed, you want me to turn the brightness of my iPad down.”
“I just need a man who can paints walls and help me with Ikea furniture.”
“I hate the way you talk to your mom.” (Extremely hurtful, since she knows I have a complicated relationship with my mom)
“We had a fight on day three on that mountain.” (When asked about our month long trip to Japan last year, which was absolutely magical. The only thing she remembered was that fight, of which I have no recollection at all.)
“My friends never liked you and say I should have dumped you years ago.”
“I just cant imagine you being a dad.” (At the start of the relationship she was very vocal about wanting a baby, I was holding back then but started coming around the last year. Very hurtful.)
“I can’t deal with your mental problems anymore.”
“We never really talk about anything.” (Absolute BS)
“You control me financially.” (Absolute BS, I only pay for her when we go to fancy restaurants, because that’s something I like and she doesn’t really. Sidenote: she still has a credit card from her dad, who pays a lot of her bills but if I pointed this out anytime in the last few years I was told to “mind my own business”. Guess the dad mirroring thing goes a long way.)

This list kept going on and on, going from tiny details about fights from years ago, to major stabs right in the middle of my weaknesses.

I was, once more, in absolute shock. And the worst part: I believed everything she said. I hated myself and felt like a monster. I obviously messed everything up and was the worst person ever.

When I left she still showed no emotion whatsoever. The last thing she said to me: “Why aren’t you getting mad?”. There was even a slight grin on her face while she asked this. It crept me out. All I could do was cry and shake.

Later on I realised she wanted an angry reaction out of me, to confirm her court case.

A few day after conversation #1 was the moment I started reading about “splitting”. And I couldn’t believe how this was exactly what was happening here. She made me the devil.

Another week went by of utter desperation, confusion and pain. She decided to stay in our house, leaving me with no place to go, hopping from friend couch to friend couch. After a few days, on a Friday, I asked if we could please talk once more. I needed some clarity in this madness. Her response?

“Sure, next week on Tuesday, I have a lot of work that I need to do first and I’m going to see some friends this weekend and blabla.”

Guess what? Shellshock once more. How could she throw away 7 years in one ice-cold conversation? How could she have other priorities while my life was slipping through my fingers?

I decided to write a letter to read to her again, mostly because I felt if we made it a normal talk she would get angry and run over me right away.

This time the letter was different. The take-away was still that I wanted our relationship to work, but I clearly pointed out how she devastated me with her remarks and jabs. I didn’t mention BPD or any specific terms like splitting, but I did word it in subtle ways that she was painting me black all the way.

So after a few excruciating days of waiting, conversation #2 came around.

She came in with the same ice-cold-no-emotion stare as the first time around. I started reading my letter and halfway through the up to this point unimaginable happened: she broke down and started crying. It felt like I pierced through her selfmade armour. She confessed to feeling utterly confused, not sure of who she was, what she wanted in life etc. I held her in my arms and tried comforting her. It pained me so much to see the person I love the most go through a complete existential crisis. After my reading of all the hurtful things she said to me, she (kind of) apologised. When asked if she really had been thinking about our relationship during all of her time laying awake the past 2 months she answered, kind of confused: “No? Did I say that?”.

The conversation ended in a way that I didn’t hope for: she still felt that the bottomline was that she needed freedom, that was the only feeling she could “trust”.

A day later she texted me: “I feel so confused after our talk yesterday. I don’t know what’s real anymore, I don’t know what I feel or want. Am I crazy? Is this BPD? Do I really want this? This is so complicated.”

As you can imagine, this gave me the exact hope I was looking for. “OFFCOURSE IT’S YOUR BORDERLINE, YOU LOVE ME” is what I wanted to yell. But I didn’t. I decided to give her all the space and time and freedom she needed to clear her mind. So after a few days, in which I was constantly looking at my phone for the “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING!?” text from her, she told me she was going to visit her friend in New York (we live in the Netherlands) for a week. After her trip to NY she said she wanted to talk again. Sure, fine, take your time. I decided to go NC. Which was HARD. But, with all the talk about freedom and me taking it away, I felt that was the right thing to do. I was still in a very, very dark place all the time, but in the back of my mind I was also still convinced that she would see the light while away from me (imagine my panic when I came across the “out of sight, out of mind” posts on here).

After 10 days of NC I couldn’t take it anymore. I sent her a lighthearted and semi-I-miss-you message. After three days I got an ice cold response. When I asked when she would be back from New York, she told me she wouldn’t be back for another week. This was the moment my limit had been reached. She was staying 10 days longer then she initially told me. Leaving me completely hanging. The hope thing was driving me nuts. So yesterday I decided to call her and got the return of the ice-cold version of her.

“Hope?! How did I ever give you any hope? I broke up with you!”

She had no idea that her texting me all the things about her confusion, gave me hope. Which boggles my mind.

So. Yeah. I guess I needed the band-aid to be ripped off, but damn, it hurts so bad.

7 years of being together, thrown away in 2 hours of talking. No heads up, no small hints, no long talks about feelings, no possible solutions, no time to prepare. Just the most impulsive cutting it off at the core.

One detail that I keep coming back to is a thing someone in therapy had said to her: “You only speak when you’ve completely made up your mind”. That’s exactly how this feels: she made her case against me, I’m restraining all of her freedom, so goodbye.

I politely asked her to remove her stuff asap from our house (I already rented the house before our relationship, she came to live in with me, so I’m keeping the house). Seeing all her stuff is driving me insane. And a bit of anger came in when I realised she just left to go on a vacation for two weeks, without thinking about how she left me for even a minute.

And, yeah, being completely honest, I still hope that when she gets back and steps foot in our house once again, the epiphany moment will come at last. But I shouldn’t allow myself to count on it. She has been running away from the consequences of her actions for all of these 5 weeks (first in working day and night, then in running off to New York, all the while skipping therapy) and I can’t imagine there not being a moment where reality hits her like a brick in the face.

It feels weird and unfair to put all of this on her BPD. If she really wants complete freedom, then who am I to argue?

But thinking back on our relationship and taking in account all the things I read about BPD these past few weeks, I’m starting to see clear patterns. Friends would be the best person one day and completely neglected the next. There was always a sense of her not knowing who she is. What she wanted. There was a continuous quest for a self. The grass was ALWAYS greener on the other side. There was a lot of insecurity about being in social situations. There was no way to give her constructive criticism, because it never landed and was met with strong resistance. The relationship with her dad was extremely complicated and could not be talked about.

And now I’m left here, sleeping on friend’s couches because being in our house and looking at her stuff gives me the worst anxiety I ever had in my life. I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine living in that house again. I can’t imagine being all alone. The future feels like a big black hole of darkness and loneliness.

I read enough to (sort of) know better, but I really want her back.

Hi!  I am so sad to hear your scenario....my granddaughter's mother uses her children as "I refer to" as pawns...dangling them...she has cut off ties, with NO warning, more times than I can count...I have, FINALLY, come to the conclusion, she needs me...she will come around; though, that is no consolation...I have cried BUCKETS over not seeing my grandchildren, please know that your feelings are valid, you are not alone & there is always hope

well...it was only 3 words, however, my BPD daughter texted "I appreciate you" (because I mailed her very important mail) I will take the WIN (typically, i would have texted, i miss you, i love you, call me....however, i waited a couple of minutes & said "happy to help (I did add, I am proud of you, because I have heard from some friends she is very successful at her new job

Hi Dogwalk
You highlight a really important thing -the difference we feel when we relate to others with disorders compared to relating to someone in our own family. The difference can be huge understandably for many reasons.

We have known our child all their life and have supported, loved, nurtured and cared for them each and every day.

You don't give details or examples of the sort of things that are happening so it is difficult to say how I would respond in such a circumstance. Perhaps you would feel comfortable enough to give some examples?

The information here will be helpful in many ways. The most important way for me was reading others' experience and realising there were others dealing with the same thing. I also learnt - over a period I time - the following things that guide me through the mire that is BPD:

The boundaries I needed to put up were necessary for ME. When I felt overwhelmed I looked to find a way to have some time out no matter how small a period of time. i don't respond to verbal abuse. I told DD that I was not going to respond when she was like this because it made it worse. She needed time to de - escalate and if I responded I made it worse.

I have kept to that and it is easier that she knows why I am not responding. She will now tell me not to respond to a tirade - and of course I don't!

The 3 C's mantra has been a great help: I didn't cause this; I can't control it; I can't cure it.

Not JADE - ing is also a great tool: I try not to Judge, Argue. Defend myself or Explain

That might sound ridiculous but the BPD mind is not rational. We can only defend etc if there is a possibility the person is able to engage in rational discussion.

The not judging can be difficult, but I can honestly say I don't know how I would feel or think  or act as a BPD person.

Living with someone with BPD can have a big effect on our mental health. For many years I think I suffered from PTSD symptoms. When the phone rang I was on high alert - there could be a drama I was supposed to solve immediately, or DD was in some dangerous situation. Then the confusion around money - the impulsivity is one of the symptoms for some BPD people - and what do we do? Sometimes our choices are not clear at all and we feel trapped.

I hope there is some possibility of 'time out' for you - preferably some regular time - when you can step out of the relationship and focus on the gift of your own life, that no matter what is happening around you, your life is special and each of us walks their own journey through all the pain, sorrow and joy.

To be honest my life is very difficult at the moment particularly in that I can't plan from day to day or know what is happening. But I have one thing that takes me out of my narrow focused world. I sit on the back step and tell myself I am spinning through space at great pace, surrounded by other planets all that distance away but connected to me - this is my time here on earth, this is my journey.

Then I can go back inside to the narrow chaos. Sorry if that all sounds crazy - it is, but it keeps me sane!!

Hi SwanOrnament
Some days the impossibility of our situations is just overwhelming. Often these days are linked to a birthday/anniversary/Christmas etc. But not always - it can just creep up and cover us in a blanket of - I was going to say despair, thought again, then thought yes I have felt despair.

Anger of course. I admit that I have found myself at times - when dd is raging and I am trying to let it all go past me - saying to myself 'You ie my dd are turning into a monster'.

That's when the good old not JADE - ing comes in handy!

It is the time to care for yourself now - you have given so much and have carried the pain and sorrow for a long time.

You did the right thing sending the gift etc. How dd responds is out of your control - though it is probably predictable. Dealing with BPD one is damned if we do, damned if we don't. In the end it comes down to 'what is the right thing for me to do in my particular situation.

I think you also did the right thing not initiating SS inquiry. It is so unknowable how that will turn out. In the past I have done so and the situation has stayed the same after an inquiry - only difference was that I was the enemy.

I was very relieved to read your grandchild attends care a few days each week. I think this is a real lifeline. It is good also that they have mandatory reporting requirements if/when they think a child is neglected or in harm's way. So there is some oversight there.

Take care of yourself in any way that you are able. Protecting ourselves from the hurtful remarks, false accusations and 'crazy' demands takes a lot of effort - we can only get there a small step at a time I think.

Thank you for posting and sharing with us here. We all have a shared experience and we are not alone.

I too faced your situation.  In my situation I had thought having a child - wow, some two decades ago - would brighten my spouse's life watching our child discover the joys of life.  Sadly, she drew away, at first I thought she couldn't love both husband and child so chose our child.  But it worsened as our child approached the age she had been when her abuser stepfather entered her family's life.  I later concluded she couldn't trust me, despite over a dozen years married, since I as a father now reminded her of her stepfather, her dysfunctional FOO (family of origin).  I hadn't changed but her perception of me had.

I too tried joint counseling but my now ex-spouse flatly refused.  That in itself was a bad sign.  BPD is most impactful on the people in close relationships and that's precisely why the closest person (me) couldn't get her to listen to me, she could not or would not get past the perceived emotional baggage of the relationship to truly listen to me.  And if she wouldn't listen to therapists either, well...

It wasn't long, a few months later, before I had to face the fact that my marriage was imploding and there was nothing I could do but to protect myself and especially protect my parenting.

Do you have children?  That can greatly complicate a separation and divorce, both in the process and the expense.

Often - but not always - as we look back we can identify some triggers that help explain why it suddenly got worse when it did.  I suspect at this point there's little you can do if she is in such determined Denial and Blame Shifting.  Time will tell.

However we do have a Tools & Skills Workshops board with many communication, boundary, and other tips.  Here is a directory of the topics.  Notice the articles on boundaries.  Since pwBPD resist boundaries, the boundaries are for us to implement and determine how we can respond to poor behavior.  Also, it explains there why JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) doesn't work (logic can't impact such intense emotional perceptions) but SET, DEARMAN, BIFF might, well, at least for a while.

If I may add a suggestion when you call the police... What usually happens is what happened to me.  It was a weekend.  She worked herself into a rage - we were in a private scenario, at home - and threatened to kill me so I called the emergency line.  Two officers responded.  By then she calmed herself down though she was clearly angry with me.  They spoke to her, she must have claimed to be a victim and me an abuser because one of the officers told me to hand my quietly sobbing preschooler over to her and "step away".  I tried to comply but he shrieked and clung tighter to me in my arms.  What kid won't go to the mother?  The officer looked at me for a moment, said "work it out" and they departed.

I had three voice recorders but that one I was using that afternoon didn't have a speaker that worked.  So I had the recording but no way to document to them who the aggressive person was.  Later when I finally got a divorce lawyer ( I had failed to prepare by finding a lawyer in advice) he remarked he had been an officer in a prior career and their goal when arriving at the scene of a domestic dispute was to separate the people and defuse the dispute.  He was almost stunned why I wasn't carted off.

So ponder how you would be able to document to the arriving officers that you weren't the one in an aggressive rage, well aware that your partner would almost surely claim to be the victim (the system generally assumes women are by default the victims) and you the aggressor.  If you both claim to be the victim and no witnesses, police will likely side with the "poor helpless" woman.

I had quietly recorded and it did help slightly in my separation and divorce process, but it also was a form of insurance that I wasn't the aggressive or threatening one, insurance that helped me sleep at night.

While we hope you two figure out whether you have a future together, you would be wise to (very quietly) implement some strategies to protect yourself in advance of further conflict - legally by locating an experienced family law attorney as well as financially and emotionally.

Diagnosing BPD in individuals under age 18 used to be controversial, but that's changed. Diagnosis in adolescents was codified in DSM-V.

In case you might find Dr. Marsha Linehan's story of interest, here's a NYTimes article discussing it. https://archive.ph/EbeNI

Traditional psychoanalysis can actually be detrimental with BPD patients.
Short excerpts from a couple articles:

"The patients that Dr. Stern was seeing appeared neurotic – with intact reality testing – on their first interview, but when they were put on the couch they got worse. Their lives unraveled and they became self-destructive as they were unable to grapple with the intense emotions that psychoanalysis brought up."

"So the prescription was classical psychoanalysis, calling for the patient to free associate while lying on the couch. "At first, she was friendly and cooperative, always on time and eager to talk about herself," Oldham recalled. "She engaged in the treatment and seemed to be benefitting from it."
A couple of months into treatment, however, the patient made an announcement. "She said to me, ‘Here I am doing just what I've always done. I blithely rush into a relationship without even thinking about it, and I don't know you at all. How do I know I can trust you?’"
She began to demand of Oldham information about himself and about his training and blamed him for what she perceived as a treatment that wasn't working. "She became convinced I was keeping secrets from her and told me the problem was that I had been trained in a ‘fly-by-night’ school," he said. "In time, she would become absolutely enraged at me, regardless of what I said. And when I didn't give her an answer she wanted, it became proof that once again she had landed in the clutches of someone who was another disappointment and who might actually harm her."
The treatment and what had appeared to be a promising therapeutic relationship ended abruptly when the patient relocated to another part of the country. For Oldham the case remains an object lesson in how not to treat a patient with BPD.
"Under no circumstances would I treat her today with psychoanalysis," Oldham said."

That's part of what I think happened with my ex. The NPD guy she's now seeing initially offered to act as her therapist (though he has absolutely no training as a therapist). They proceeded with free-association psychoanalysis, and she deteriorated. Then they began their affair. Her BPD symptoms are now far worse than in the years we were together. She believes that her "therapy" with this guy uncovered repressed material that had always been there and needed to be worked on, but the reality is that the pseudotherapy really f*cked her up. And she often does recognize that she's pretty psychologically messed up now. I did subsequently manage to engage her into proper DBT therapy (at a center that works predominantly with pwBPD), but she resisted the DBT therapy and wouldn't do the homework, and then dropped out.

It has often been stated that in our intractable dysfunctional cases - which others not in the direct line of fire (so to speak) don't realize - we generally don't get "closure" from our ex-relationships.

Closure typically is something we have to Gift ourselves... Let Go and Move On.

And if we share children, then we can't let everything go.  While we can end the adult relationship, we will never end our parenting!