Can she get better? Yes, absolutely, she can make improvements especially now that the diagnosis and "cure" (therapy) have been put in place. Will she get better? I don't know, Mr. Panther, that is up to her right now. Does she seem motivated to change? Has she been making progress? Is she showing "stick-to-it-iveness" about embracing her diagnosis and therapy, or was there a flurry of commitment that passed like a summer rainstorm?

Can you get better? Yes, absolutely. You obviously have insight that there's a problem and motivation to study your options or you wouldn't be here. Will you get better, Mr. Panther? I don't know, I think it depends on your level of commitment, too. I realized after my wife's diagnosis that I had to have the resolve to leave and know that I could leave or I would forever feel stuck and dependent on her. If I didn't feel like leaving was an option, then I would continue to cower and cave to her demands. It wasn't until I resolved to leave if necessary that I found the bravery to start declining her unreasonable requests. It made a big difference, and when she began to see that my life would no longer be governed by the whims of her emotional upheavals, she took my concerns seriously. More seriously, anyway. It's been over three years, and we are still together (things are better, not great). I wouldn't have stayed had it not been for the children, and I don't think I would have stayed if she had had an affair.

Do you feel you could leave if you needed to or wanted to? Do you feel you need permission to leave?

This is something I went through with my spouse; her BPD behaviors were affecting the kids, and I was reaching the end of my rope. I didn't give a specific ultimatum, but, after talking it over with my parents and a religious leader, I let her know that if her behavior didn't change, I wouldn't stay. I don't think it would be helpful to connect it specifically to therapy attendance because that's not the root of the problem, it's actually the behavior that's preventing you from having a good relationship.

I agree. I absolutely know I'm not some perfect angel. I'm using this last relationship and all of its confusing parts to work on me. I've read
, closing in on 20 books now. I just want to be a better version of me now. Single, or with someone (which isn't even an idea at all in my brain). Yes, the focus is on "her", since this is the most challenging personal relationship I have ever had. I imagine i can grow a lot from it.

Your second paragraph makes sense. I know it isn't a fix it all tool. The tricky part for me is the "doesn't mean validating something that isn't valid" part.

I've experienced a lot of projections lately: work, friends, etc.

And I do add to it. Thankfully with my friends and family, most people just disengage. With my ex, nothing was ever over, unless it ended on her terms. I wish I were exaggerating as well. If she read all of this I guarantee she wouldn't disagree. We were in couples counseling for a months, and she never denied anything I said.

Pink elephant. Sure. There were a handful of situations where she literally made things up. Truly, nonsensical, situations that never happened. And we HAD to argue about it. I had to address it. I had to get in line and piece it all together without knowing what was even happening. Ask questions and then follow the trail to whatever perceived wrong I committed. And sure, I didn't have to entertain this. But if I didn't, you better be sure it'll come up weekly. And confusingly, it was after love, care, affection, praise, endless sex... Then, we need to talk about what you did.

My goal wasn't always to be right. Honestly, I'd be happier just letting things go. But that was impossible. I always tried to reassure her, tell her she has a right to be upset, but I couldn't ever agree in those moments where something was just so crazy or made up. If it didn't happen, I cant take fault.

I don't want to better for her, but for me. I imagine building skills based on an extreme situation can make easier ones more manageable.

I want to add (I'm the OP) that for years, he bullied his younger brother. Mercilessly. He was mean to him unless he wanted something from him. This other family did the same, and he went along with it. Extreme people pleasing. He would not stand up for him. Then when he needed his younger brother to work for him, he would be nice on the surface, or in front of me, but still used him and bullied him. He was mean. His younger bother defended him for years, as he loved him and wanted to believe in him, but my older son just hid it better. He would leave him out of things by lying about where he was going, and eventually sold his brother out for this family that he married into because his wife's sister is my younger son's former BEST friend (they grew up together) and he stabbed his brother in the back by siding with this other girl when she did some pretty horrible things to my younger son.
I'm ashamed of who my older son is. But yet he is just the most amazing person to this other family.
They don't know about the abuse, the stealing, the lying, the betrayal, the ignoring texts, the other things he has done. So IS he really two people? Which one is real? How did he spend $5000 on a vacation when he had just stolen money from his 60 year old father because he couldn't pay his car payment? His 60 year old father that helped him financially and physically to start the business he destroyed due to depression and not working, but lied about working?

Who is my son? I know his heart. I really do. But what has happened to him, where did he go, why did he go, why is he doing this....I have so many questions and so much I wish I could say to him. I just want to understand at this point. I want to know if he still loves me but is falling apart with the stress of this conflict, the cult, the money, etc, or if he hates me. I want to know how he can go from so attached and loving to me to literally not speaking to me and acting like he doesn't even know me. Who can do that?

I made one post a while ago about my adult son. I suspect he either has a mild form of BPD, or else I am just a PLEASE READ mother.
For context, I have 4 children. 3 are biological. My other 3 are well adjusted but do suffer from differing levels of anxiety and/or depression. I am starting to believe that some of this is handed down biologically, but I could be wrong.
Could I have handed this BPD down to my adult son? The more I learn about it, the more I suspect my mother had it, and that I potentially do, also. I know that some of the ways that I behave when I'm stressed and/or fear abandonment were not healthy.
So did I do this to my son? He was certainly the most sensitive child I had, and certainly the one that was the most anxiously attached to me right from day one. I sometimes wonder if I was his favorite person for a long time, and that he kicked me to the curb when he fell in love with the woman he's married to now. The family he married into is also a religious cult, so that doesn't help with the complicated situation I am now in.
But my son, even as a late teen, would become very agitated if he didn't know where I was. He would get aggressive, abusive (verbally), and DARVO every situation.
He loved deeply.  Very deeply.
But then one day, when me speaking out against the cult he married into (because they were harassing my other children) came between us, he just checked out it seems. He would still try to keep up with the facade, but he clearly had to take sides with this family he is now married into and in this religious cult with.
As recently as January, he would contact me to see if I was angry at him. He would do it surreptitiously, but I knew what he wanted. But I believe that the pressure of this cult and his wife, against us, became too much. Now he doesn't speak to any of us in the house unless he needs to for something.
He did attend Mother's Day and father's day at our house. He acted normal, like his old self, but then "disappeared" again. It is very confusing. It is painful.  Very very painful.
I have let him know I love him. I have let him know I'm always here for him. I have paid his debts that he can't pay and that are ruining our credit...which is another story. He at least has a compulsive shopping addiction that has caused a lot of damage, and I hope he isn't gambling or anything, too.  Our credit was pretty wrecked for over a year due to him, and they just closed another one of our accounts because of his failed payments he promised he would make.
I have paid out over $15,000 in the past few years.
He used my debit card many times without my permission. He admitted to stealing the money. I suspect he also stole cash from his brother's stash in the house. He told me he hates himself because of all of this. He told me he is depressed.
But yet he won't talk to me anymore. He doesn't respond to texts unless it's a reminder to make his truck payment, or to tell him I had to sell his lawn mower because they threatened to repossess it.
I don't know what is happening. It's like he presents himself to his wife and new "family" as this fine upstanding, hard working christian man, but in reality he is this person that has abused, betrayed, and stolen from his own blood family that loves him unconditionally. I don't understand. Please someone help me understand. He is not cold, it is like he is just two people, or living a lie, or faking it, or something. I just don't understand.

Hi there,

The stories on this thread will resonate with many parents on this site.  When grandkids are involved, the relationship seems all the more rocky and intense, because precious young lives are now involved.

I have an adult BPD stepdaughter who has experienced several periods of estrangement from various family members she considers toxic.  I just wanted to comment a little about the periods of estrangement, because I've noticed that they seem to come in different flavors.

Misguided punishment:  She would cut people (typically parents) out of her life when she didn't get her way, hoping that her absence would feel like punishment.  It seemed she hoped that her parent would "beg" her to resume communication or otherwise relent to the request du jour, or to take the blame for some sort of perceived transgression.

Avoidance of stress:  In the face of stress, such as questioning about her academic or professional performance, she'd retreat in avoidance, typically by refusing to answer texts or make any visits.  She didn't want to talk about important things in her life because she was overly stressed by them.  Even if the conversations were superficial, she'd still feel stressed out by her situation.

Retreat in shame:  Similar to stress avoidance, she would enforce periods of estrangement because she couldn't bear to face judgement (real or imagined).  She might have been kicked out of a rooming situation, failed her courses, skipped her therapy sessions or lost her job.  No matter what happened, she'd think it was the end of the world, and she was too ashamed to admit to it, let alone talk about it.  Even an innocuous, polite question like How are you? would illicit unbearable feelings of judgment and inferiority, and rather than face that, she'd cut people out of her life.

Blame-shifting / responsibility avoidance:  She'd cut people out of her life in response to an event that would trigger ill feelings, and she would re-cast a recent, but unrelated, incident as the cause of her emotional turmoil.  Let's say she traveled to a city for a job interview, and her gracious aunt let her stay in her apartment for the night.  Days later, after learning that she didn't get the job she wanted, she became unhinged by the disappointment and proceeded to blame her aunt for perceived transgressions during her visit (being condescending, mean, treating her like a baby).  Not only that, she threatened violent retribution, when all the aunt did was offer free lodging, a restaurant meal and some tips about travel logistics.  The gist is that the disappointing job interview "triggered" her, and her emotional response was to perceive "abuse" from the aunt, basically because the aunt was the closest person to her in that moment.  Thus her brain blames her aunt for causing the ill feelings, not her poor performance in the interview, because admitting to herself that she didn't perform well in the interview would be too painful to her to bear.

Inability to communicate:  Sometimes, she'd cut people out for no apparent reason.  I think even she didn't know the reasons for her mixed-up (but still very real and very strongly negative) feelings.  Rather than try to find the words and process her feelings, it was easiest to retreat in isolation.  These periods would typically be preceded by shouts of, "I don't know, just leave me ALONE!"  Despite the shouting, her energy level would be low, I think she just couldn't stand anyone anymore, especially herself.

What all these flavors of estrangement seem to have in common is a flight response.  You see, your daughter likely feels abused/traumatized/judged/inferior/aggrieved/stressed all the time, and so she is primed for a trauma-like, fight or flight response.  Does she lash out with mean, distorted texts and then cut you out?  That sounds like a fight, then flight, response to me.  After several cycles of this behavior, I've come to view a period of estrangement as an "adult time out."  In essence, she needs time and space to cool off.  I'd say, give it to her, and don't interrupt it.  If she is dependent on you (for money, childcare, lodging, insurance, emotional support, etc.) my bet is that she will be back soon enough, because even if she RESENTS you for making her feel so dependent, it's easiest for her to continue to receive your support.  If she is NOT dependent on you, then congratulations, you've succeeded in raising an independent adult, and you can hope that she's happy going her own way and being in the driver's seat of her life.  Maybe when she's ready she'll find her way back to you.

All my best to you.

Thankfully, it didn't go the way it went with your step grandmother. The nurse coordinator called me to say BPD mother was sent to the hospital but I had no other information. After making several calls to the hospital I got the sense that this was serious and we needed to get there, so we went. We did thankfully get there in time.

Traumatic family experiences with an uBPD sibling are the gift that keep on giving, I guess. In my case, my family of origin has not acknowledged her likely struggles with BPD- they've rationalized and accepted her behavior as normal.

I've found that the more you heal in this kind of situation, the weaker your ties are to your family of origin. It's just a natural outcome from your healing. BUT, the more free you are to develop healthy relationships beyond your FOO. I've realized something about myself. I really struggle with women who present in their personal and professional relationships as needing to be taken care of and/or protected. People who are situated within their relationships as "princesses" whose every need should be considered above everyone else's as well as people whom others seem to instinctively defend/bolster/lift up, even when they don't deserve this consideration. It's a pattern I've noticed and I think I understand why I have always reacted this way to this kind of woman: my uBPD sister.

My whole childhood was about making sure my uBPD sister was okay. She was always to be protected, defended, supported, put on a pedestal, treated with kit gloves. Whether she was right or wrong, whether what she said or did made sense or not, I watched as she said things that were wholly inconsistent with reality, did things that were logically questionable, offered extreme and skewed When people outside the family would challenge her, which was inevitable, she was held up as a victim in need of defense. And I, in particular, was expected to defend her. And I did.  All of this was normal to me.

I identify so much with what you have written here. My sister has NPD with strong BPD traits. My sister is a golden child of both the FOO and large extended family. I am one of many generations of scapegoats. Like you, the more I have distanced myself from my sister and the flying monkeys who enable her, the more estranged I have become from the family, and the more able I am to have healthier relationships with others.

Traumatic family experiences with an uBPD sibling are the gift that keep on giving, I guess. In my case, my family of origin has not acknowledged her likely struggles with BPD- they've rationalized and accepted her behavior as normal.

I've found that the more you heal in this kind of situation, the weaker your ties are to your family of origin. It's just a natural outcome from your healing. BUT, the more free you are to develop healthy relationships beyond your FOO. I've realized something about myself. I really struggle with women who present in their personal and professional relationships as needing to be taken care of and/or protected. People who are situated within their relationships as "princesses" whose every need should be considered above everyone else's as well as people whom others seem to instinctively defend/bolster/lift up, even when they don't deserve this consideration. It's a pattern I've noticed and I think I understand why I have always reacted this way to this kind of woman: my uBPD sister.

My whole childhood was about making sure my uBPD sister was okay. She was always to be protected, defended, supported, put on a pedestal, treated with kit gloves. Whether she was right or wrong, whether what she said or did made sense or not, I watched as she said things that were wholly inconsistent with reality, did things that were logically questionable, offered extreme and skewed interpretations of events, developed arch enemies in every work context she had - resulting in flitting between jobs and careers, made grandiose and unbelievable claims about her own importance, destroyed many of her own relationships, attempted to pit others' against their own friends and loved ones - and their loved ones against them, showed a complete inability to understand or express emotion. I grew up watching those closest to us rationalize, justify, excuse, and ultimately, support and even elevate her perspective without question even as it absolutely needed to be questioned for her own good and for the good of those in her life. When people outside the family would challenge her, which was inevitable, she was held up as a victim in need of defense. And I, in particular, was expected to defend her. And I did.  All of this was normal to me.

Looking back, my friends all knew it was weird. I was fiercely supportive of her no matter her situation and/or her fault in her situation - even letting her move in with me and two of my closest friends when she couldn't get along with her roommate, despite their objections. And I got angry with them for not just understanding and accepting that this is what I had to do. I couldn't imagine not supporting her. I was raised to do it. No matter what. I don't honestly know how/why they were able to overlook that and maintain such close friendships with me. They saw her for who she was, and now, talking with them retroactively, I can see how their view was accurate. They now share with me how they watched me defend and support her despite the risk to myself and my own friendships and how hard that was for them. They stuck with me through it, though, always wary and clear with me about what they thought, but still supportive of me - and that is a major credit to them. I was lucky to have them.

But now that I see her for what/who she is more clearly and I've watched our "relationship", such that it was, crumble under the weight of my healing, I am recognizing in myself a lack of tolerance for anyone who seems to thrive in relationships where they are treated as if they can do no wrong and/or as if they require others to defend them. I simply don't trust it. And honestly, that's not fair. These people are good people who aren't anything like my sister. It's not surprising that I am repelled by these kinds of folks, but I recognize the need to separate them from my experiences with my sister. It's all part of my healing - realizing how these early family experiences shape how I relate to people now, and trying to adapt in ways that keep my trauma response in check to continue building healthy relationships moving forward.

Anyway, just some thoughts on my experiences as I reflect on healing from these experiences I've only acknowledged as traumatic in the last couple of years. Thankful to this group - your willingness to share your experiences have really helped me make sense of my own - an important part of my healing journey!

That's exactly right -- financials aside, it was -- once again -- Stepmother's actions to distance my grandfather from his daughter. She was excessively jealous of their father-daughter bond. Once, my parents were visiting  and -- I have no idea what had happened -- but theyh heard my grandfather say to her, "When are you going to let go of your green-eyed monster?!"

In the end, she was left with the consequences of estrangement. She never legally adopted my mother, and her final stay in the hospital extended to six weeks, at the end on life support -- no one could then give permission to take her off that support. Mom was contacted and clearly communicated that was not her legal parent and so she had no standing on decisions. The closest relative was a first cousin who was very prominent in state politics and wanted nothing to do with her shenanigans over the years -- he refused to get involved at the end. It was bad, not the way anyone e would choose to die.