It's been a while.
Spring is rolling through, enjoying time with my son in the nice weather.

Still out of work, although I expect that to change soon.

Dating hasn't really been a thing. I am somewhat content with my solitude, which is saying a lot for me as I usually aim to be with someone.

It has been a while since I missed anything about the relationship. I even think about the dogs a lot less these days. The anger is gone, as is the jealousy. I find myself thinking a lot about what a new relationship with a new person will be like. Not ways to fix ours if it were ever an option again. It isnt and thats my choice.
I wish I could say my mind has been free of it though. Despite not wanting anything back, and not even actively missing anything about it, I still get a lot of random memories, and thoughts.
I look forward to when I go weeks without even thinking about anything connected to her at all.

Its refreshing to not have gotten angry in so long.

Thank you all for your replies.

Chief Drizzit,

You are spot on in your instincts about her having been through sexual trauma. She was sexually abused by her stepfather when she was a teenager, and I recently learned that her cousin may have abused her when she was younger. Most of those memories are semi-repressed and only come back to her in flashes. It makes sex really weird for both of us. Now that I am aware of the abuse and her issues with sex, I have a rule about not having sex with her when she is dysregulated. I don't want to be a part of her replaying or trying to work through her abuse. I don't want to be associated with those people in her mind.

CravingPeace,

Thank you for validating that this is sexual abuse. I am still getting used to the idea that I have been regularly sexually abused by her for years. You are also absolutely correct in how obviously abusive this is if the script was flipped and after sex, I criticized her for how her body felt or responded.

Turkish,

I agree that she is delusional. Her BPD is severe enough that she has audiovisual hallucinations frequently in addition to persistent delusions of persecution and other paranoid ideologies. While she has been extremely dysregulated she has told the voices to shut up and has pointed out things to me that she sees that are clearly not there. These are all pretty common symptoms of BPD that are overlooked/dismissed by many even in the psychological community, but new research is showing that they may suffer from psychosis as frequently as schizophrenics.

She is also deeply insecure and really completely lacks a sense of self-worth. She really has no sense of self at all and completely defines herself by her relations to other people. She is a mom, a wife, a worker at this company, etc. but she doesn't know who she is outside of these roles. She is a shell of a person that is a hungry hole of hurt that constantly needs to be filled.

We have tried couples counseling multiple times. She has quit therapy every time except for the last therapist who quit us. He is an LMHC/PhD who specializes in cluster B personality disorders and was told ahead of time about my wife's BPD. After having had 4 or 5 sessions together he had seen her split on me twice. He told us that he could not work with us until both of us were in a place where we were open to listening to the other person. He said that he knew that I had been in individual therapy and had been working on myself and my own issues, and he suggested to my wife that she do the same. Once she had spent some time working through her issues with an individual therapist and was in a better place, he said that we could come back and work with him.

Cliff Notes version of what he was saying: Couples counseling is a waste of time until your wife addresses her BPD with an individual therapist. Unfortunately, she is still in denial of her condition and blames everyone else in the world for how miserable she is rather than seeing the one common denominator in her misery is her and her behavior.

Jaded,

Thank you for your expression of sympathy. I remember quite well the horrible abuse that you suffered through and I hope that my post was not triggering for you. You are correct though. Remove all of the discomfort and extra horror that is added to this by it being tied to sex and it is quite typical BPD behavior...it just hurts so much worse because of the nature of when it is happening and the context in which it is occurring.

I went over this incident with my therapist last week and I have come up with a plan on how to deal with this going forward. I will treat it as I would any other problematic BPD behavior. I will place boundaries for my own protection and I will not reward problematic behavior by giving her the desired reaction. In this case, the desired reaction was to see me hurt and to hear me defend myself (JADE.)  She wanted to push me away because I was getting too close and she felt the threat of engulfment, but she wanted to pull me back in the next night because the sex was soothing to her. Typical BPD push/pull behavior, only with sex.

Going forward, I will talk with her before we start to get intimate next time. It will go something like this: "I want to be intimate with you, but I want to make sure that we are going to be nice to each other throughout and afterward. I don't want either of us to say or do anything negative to spoil what should be an experience that brings us closer together." I will only move forward if she agrees to this. If she then goes back on this agreement and criticizes/accuses me, I will immediately get up from the bed and without a word go to the guest room (my safe room) and lock the door.

I will also not be intimate with her again until she apologizes for her behavior (takes ownership of it) and promises to stick to our agreement about no negativity during or after intimacy. This removes the rewards of having me JADE and of her being able to soothe herself with sex. If problematic behavior no longer produces desired results, the behavior will eventually stop. In the week or so since this incident has happened, she has not tried to initiate intimacy with me again and I do not plan to do so with her until she makes amends or tries to initiate herself. If she tries to initiate sex, I will only move forward once she agrees to the conditions of no negativity during or afterward.

I don't know how effective it will be, but it is the best idea that my therapist and I could come up with. It will also mean that I will have to approach sex as purely a physical act and drop any expectation of true intimacy. True intimacy is not possible as long as my wife's BPD is untreated, and it may never be even if she does receive treatment. Radical acceptance of this is sad, but it means that it makes it harder to hurt me if I am not emotionally exposing myself and am treating this as just sex rather than making love.

HurtAndTired

I read this and felt a chill. This is what my BPD mother does. She doesn't seek this for sexual purposes- which is why I didn't recognize it as grooming. Having people "do things for her" and being able to control them meets an emotional need for her.

She will send people on errands for her to do or get something she doesn't need. It's the act of "doing for her" that she wants. She's elderly and has people assist her as caregivers, but she sends them to the store to get her things. This didn't make sense. Why would you pay someone to come take care of you and then send them out to get a $10 box of bandaids at the pharmacy?

She will call me to ask me to make a phone call for her- and she is able to call me so why can't she call herself?

She has also tried this with my kids and other family members and tried to share "secrets" with them asking them to not tell me about it ( they tell me). I had boundaries with my kids so that she couldn't do this with them.

My kids are grown now. We don't live near her. We used to call her on the phone when they visit but they don't want to do that now because it makes them feel uncomfortable. She will ask them personal questions - it's the "friendship forming" behavior. I tried to make the calls on speaker phone as a protective measure and she got angry, saying she wants to talk to them one on one. So now, we don't do this at all.

I wasn't familiar with the term "grooming" until recently and I assumed it was for sexual exploitation so didn't read up on it. This isn't what my BPD mother is seeking. For her, I think it meets an emotional need somehow. She didn't need to do this in a romantic sense as my father took on the role of emotional caretaker for her.

I don't know how common it is with BPD but I did sense something was going on during her interactions with my children and felt I needed to intervene.

Yes, I think I have been sensitive to being around difficult people. I just learned to tolerate it from my BPD mother because of that relationship and my family dynamics.

If I only knew her from attending a work meeting- even if it didn't feel comfortable, the relationship would be different. I could act professionally and also stay at an emotional distance which would be normal in that situation.

What feels different is to act this way with my own mother but in a way, it works better if I do keep an emotional distance.

Responses to questions:

How does he communicate these things to you:

Quote from: CrazytownSA on May 18, 2024, 09:27:36 PM
How do you do that when they're literally telling you that you're a piece a PLEASE READ, a b****, a c***, arrogant, stupid, worthless. I totally get that they are really describing their own insecurities and projecting. I don't say insulting things back, but what are you supposed to say to that?

text? phone call? email? in person? other?
He texts them to me because when he starts saying them on the phone, I tell him that I won't tolerate being talked to that way and hang up when he won't stop.

The stance that I have been taking is that I will no longer allow him to take my peace. When he says insulting things, I have said they don't hurt me anymore and just reflect on his character.Most of the time I won't respond at all, and that really makes him mad. Damned if I do and damned if I don't.

Are you telling yourself that those things don't hurt you and just reflect on his character? Or are you telling him?
I text that back to him when he is texting horrible things to me.

How do you know that when you don't respond, he gets mad?
 I know that because he will call 5-20 times and then will text pages and pages of irate texts when I won't answer the phone.

So on May 19th I, and friends of mine, moved his stuff to storage. On Wednesday(22nd), I dropped off the key to the storage unit at his house when I knew that he would be gone to work. I sent him a text message with the info, and took the advice of Kashi and phrased my text that it was really difficult for me(truth), and framed in a way that I was trying to help both of us, that it would give him access to his things without having to coordinate with me whenever he wanted, and he could get things as he was ready etc etc. That actually worked. His response was "Thanks, I guess. I feel so disposed of".  I told him he will always hold a piece of my heart, that we just aren't healthy together and bring out the worst in each other. I apologized for causing him pain and told him I will always love and care and about him. I told him he's never disposed of, that just can't be together.
Thursday he text me that he was sorry and wished he could have dealt with things differently, that he cries every day, misses me, and that even with as hard as everything was, that it was the closest to happiness that he had ever been in his entire miserable life. This absolutely breaks my heart. It is so so hard. I know that bpd people are broken hurting souls, and I want so badly to be able to help him and heal the hurt, but I acknowledge that there is nothing that I can do that will accomplish that. We will always end up here, except with just more of me chipped away at. I pray for him every day. That is the only thing I know to do. I miss the sweet, loving, and affectionate side, but I just can't endure the angry, cruel, and heartless side anymore.  I pray for God to help me let go and move on. I am really struggling.

I meant that we are here to help and encourage YOU!

Dear Mom,


Wow, CC43 sure has given you such a clear path!

She’s 25 and working, so it sounds like now is the time for you to let her go and live her own life (and we all have to learn lessons) so you too can live your own life.

Trust in the foundation you built while raising her, and trust that God will care for His child.
Yes, there will be some rough spots for her, but DO NOT run to her rescue, she’ll be ok. She might also get involved in some unhealthy relationships as is the nature of BPD but those are her choices, DO NOT try to control her life. I think what she is showing is not that she can’t handle things on her own, but only the tendency of kids with BPD to be deeply concerned with feeling abandoned. But you have to be tough, as long as you guide her (just as you did in raising her), she should not feel abandoned, but DO NOT take care of everything for her.

CC43 has given you an excellent plan to relinquish control of her life to her, she has to make all her own choices, so do not give in to her or let her walk all over you.

Wishing you the best, OurWorld

We are here to help and encourage her,

I used to have a pretty good relationship with my stepdaughter (12). Every time my uBPDh begins his cycle, if my stepdaughter is at our house he screens at her that she is not to speak to me, etc and if she is not at our house she gets told the same I am assuming on the way to our house. I bought her some clothes…a hoodie, socks and bathing suit for Easter and got no thank you, nothing. I tried to make nothing of it as it was Easter and the little kids were all about the Easter Bunny so I pushed it off to that. I then gave her a pair of sandals. They literally got thrown on her floor and once again no thank you. Having 5 kids and believing that all of the kids deserve to get relatively equal things, I most recently bought her a t-shirt and shorts, once again nothing…but this time they were thrown in the laundry pile. Today we went to the pool and she had the sandals on. I said to her wow those look so good, I wasn’t sure if you had seen them since nothing was said to me. She said ya I got them and turned around and walked away. I am struggling big time with her. I understand that this is not her, but this behavior is not acceptable to me. Everything in me wants to either take the clothes and shoes back or say something but I’m not sure what to say. This is a direct line from her dad, my H as he goes shopping and only buys for himself and my stepdaughter and never asks if we need or want anything (mind you 2 of the kids he buys nothing for on a day to day or will put money aside for college for them are biologically his). I on the other hand, always ask if they need anything and always get what is needed and shop for the house, pay for it all with my own money and then tonight repeatedly got told I am leech?  What!  It makes no sense. Back to my stepdaughter, I am stuck!  Everything in me wants to say f you and treat her like she is treating me…ignore her when she talks to me, not include her in anything, not appreciate anything she does for me (I don’t even get thanked for making her dinner)…but the reality is that I do care and I want to treat her like all of my other kids but my uBPDh has made it impossible. I have always treated her the same as them and he has always told me that I exclude her…and he has now pushed her and pushed her to make his accusations a possible reality. He won’t let my parents talk to her or my sister talk to her or my nephew. It is horrible. He has backed out last minute on vacations leaving her to have to stay at home with him while all the rest of her siblings go on a fun vacation or see family, he has refused for her to spend holidays with my family so she sits at home while all of the other kids are running around having fun. It is so sad!  I can see her true feelings in her, but there is nothing I can do. I don’t think she tells her mom anything and if she does I’m not sure why she allows this to be done to her. So my question is what do I do?  I am so over the disrespect,like beyond over it!  Any suggestions?  

There is quite a bit known about how to treat it (i.e., "there's nothing definitive on how to treat it" is not correct). But you're basically correct on the second part - how well a treatment will work for any given individual is a crapshoot.

The treatments that are known to work include (this is not a completely exhaustive list): Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mentalization-Based Treatment, Transference-Focused Psychotherapy, Schema Therapy, DBT-PTSD, Good Psychiatric Management for Borderline Personality Disorder, and Systems Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving. They are very different approaches and all have different pros and cons. These treatments produce improvements in the average patient, and all work better than "treatment as usual" (i.e., typical psychotherapy), but a lot of patients don't improve. Complete recovery appears uncommon, but does occasionally occur. An interesting case is the woman who developed DBT - she qualified for a diagnosis of BPD as an adolescent, and it was extremely severe, but she found her way out of the disorder and is now a very accomplished and celebrated therapist. Based on current data, Schema Therapy appears one of the best treatment modalities, with apparently twice the level of improvement of most other common treatments (though more research is needed to confirm this). From what I've read and heard anecdotally, a determination to improve results in better outcomes.

Hi - I'm new here and badly in need of support.

Just over a year ago, my husband made a serious suicide attempt. He was hospitalized for two months and then had six weeks of IOP. We got lucky because he was treated at one of the top DBT clinics in the US. His initial diagnosis was BPD but his final diagnosis was 'unspecified personality disorder'. I'm guessing this is because he also has NPD traits. Neither of us had any idea that he had a mental health disorder before then.

Since then, he has been doing really well. We had both become very isolated after he retired, but he now volunteers for three different organizations and is starting to build new friendships. He is also having weekly therapy sessions and we both attended a 12-week online DBT Family Skills training course which was very helpful. He has also tapered off all his medication and has been discharged by his psychiatrist. All this is great news.

Meanwhile, my life is a wreck. Three months after his suicide attempt, I was arrested and charged with coercing him into committing suicide (I didn't). I wish I could go into details but my attorneys have said that I mustn't say anything to anyone while the court case is still pending. The court also imposed a Protective Order, forbidding me to have any contact with my husband apart from virtual contact. I moved out of the family home into a friend's basement because I was undergoing chemotherapy at the time, for breast cancer. I subsequently had a double mastectomy. Once I had recovered from the surgery, I moved into an apartment about half an hour away. This was in March this year. Oh, and my children (2 boys, aged 34 and 33) are no longer talking to me, and I can no longer see my grandchildren as a result. It's a total mess.

As part of the court proceedings, I have had two in-depth psychiatric analyses, both of which show that I have no sociopathic or psychopathic tendencies, and no evidence of selfishness or manipulative behavior. The reports state that my husband's behavior around the time of his attempted suicide consisted of 'manipulation on a daily basis that meets the criteria for verbal and emotional abuse'. My husband's own therapist has said that my husband put me in an impossible position during the period leading up to his suicide attempt.

The reason for this post is that last week the court modified the conditions of the Protective Order to a 'residential stayaway'. This means that my husband and I can start to have normal contact, apart from the fact that I am not allowed to go back to the family home. At the same time, my attorney informed me that I will almost certainly come out of this with a felony conviction. The only good news is that I should get a suspended sentence so hopefully I won't have to go to jail. But the conviction will follow me for the rest of my life.

I have a choice now about whether to try to rebuild this relationship or not. I'm really scared of going back to how I felt before my husband's suicide attempt - by which I mean all the things that Randi Kreger describes as 'non-BP responses to borderline behaviour': bewilderment, loss of self-esteem, feeling trapped and helpless, withdrawal, guilt and shame, isolation, hyper-vigilance and physical illness, adopting BPD-like thoughts and feelings, and co-dependence.

I have been trying to use the time apart to look deeply at how I got myself to this place. I have been having weekly therapy and I have read everything I can find online about co-dependency and BPD. I have also read "Walking on Eggshells" and Marsha Linehan's autobiography. I can see how, over the years, I have enabled my husband's dysfunctional behavior - unknowingly, and with the best of intentions, as I'm sure is true of most partners of people with undiagnosed BPD.

I'm hoping that my year's worth of therapy and introspection will help me to avoid going back to how we were before. I'm also hoping to reconnect with all the things that I love about my husband, and to rediscover the reasons why I fell in love with him in the first place. When he is not triggered, he is passionate, intelligent, enthusiastic, and great fun to be around. But even if I can succeed in all that, how am I going to avoid feeling resentful when I am bearing the consequences of his actions in such a major way - by having a felony conviction for the rest of my life? Apart from speeding tickets, I have never broken the law and this is devastating to me. I'm finding it very hard to see how I can let this go. And if I can't let it go,  I don't see how we can make the relationship work.

I feel that I have shielded him from the consequences of his behavior for too long now, and a felony conviction, for *his* suicide attempt, feels like one time too many.

To whoever reads this - thank you for listening. I'm not asking for answers, but it has helped to write it down.