I can relate to your description of feeling detached or sometimes out-of-body. Sometimes it feels like I could just make one phone call and jump right back into the BPD relationship (probably because I could).

As for your question - I would suggest trying to embrace the "grey area". The grey area is the part pwBPD have a difficult time with. It's the middle part of life's bell curve. MOST of daily life is "normal" and boring. Sometimes we forget this because a BPD relationship is built on emotional extremes and black and white thinking.

When detaching, life can feel boring and pointless. This is because we've been conditioned to expect the dopamine hits of constant love and anger - both extremes.

Seek out small "boring" experiences - going for a walk or listening to birds chirping. You can actually give yourself a pat on the back for enjoying these little slices of life. PwBPD often can't enjoy these things. Give your brain time to recondition itself and to heal.

I know you've been doing this for some time already. Keep going. Try to recognize the small victories.

I prefer trying to "force" myself to participate in "normal" society, no matter how mundane and boring it may seem on some days... rather than trying to check myself out of society. And then giving myself credit for having done so.

Hang in there.

Speculative comment, but a possible way to make sense of it:

In addition to the points noted above re: crisis, survival, etc...  on an emotional level, perhaps she feels that this is how to "get even" (ie., make you feel what it's like to have primary responsibility for the kids, which... she didn't get enough appreciation for... and has deep resentment for...), or maybe it's as simple as she knows this will bother you...  or, maybe in her distorted world view, she's entitled to some time off and she plans to return (has she back pedaled or flipped on agreements in the past?  get ready), or maybe there's no making sense of it.

The key is not to try to figure her out.  Her life is her problem now.
The is to get super clear with the guy in the mirror.  You don't need to do anything other than be super dad to your kids.  That alone is a science project for most of us.  Get to know all your kids' health providers, teachers, counselors.  Whenever they want to talk, listen!  Just be there for them. 

The situation sucks, but it's also way better than any situation in which your kids are more directly exposed to instability, etc.

You got this.

Hey... so sorry you're going through this again. It sounds exhausting, for sure.

One quick thought (work is crazy right now, so it might be brief) on something that stood out to me here:


Boundaries aren't rules we put on other people -- they're rules we have for ourselves, that are 100% under our own control.

Just to be really clear -- you cannot control if she requests that you quit your hobby, and you cannot control if she threatens to end the relationship.

If I were digging in to do some work here, I might focus on rewriting those "boundaries" (which currently read as requests or preferences) into True Boundaries, which you control no matter what the other person is or isn't doing or saying.

I will say it's fine to have requests or preferences in a relationship -- we all do. But they aren't boundaries.

And, in a certain sense, if we have true boundaries, nobody else can break them... only we can break our own boundaries (our own rules for our lives), if they're genuine boundaries.

...

So, I wonder how those preferences might look, if you rewrote/restructured them to be rules that you control? Maybe something about "When I hear __________, I will do ___________". Or, "I choose to stay in relationships/interactions that are ___________________. If ___________ happens in a relationship/interaction, then I will ______________".

Will be interested to hear your take on this.

You're right.  I'm not doing anything until the judge signs.  Hopefully that doesn't take long.  I just don't get the mentality of a woman with this many kids that for the last 10 years was a stay at home mom everything to her kids while I worked can just not see her kids for 2 months then only 2 days every 2 weeks after.

Hi everyone,

Building on/updating my recent first post on these boards. My ex with BPD (29 yrs, male) recently ended our relationship on May 1st. We were together a year and a half. I cannot overstate... he's the love of my life.

Context: He's an addict but has been sober for almost 3 years, and diagnosed for almost 2 years. He's been in DBT therapy with a trained BPD therapist since before we dated. He's spiritual and went to AA. His therapist has told him that on the spectrum of BPD symptoms, he is a mild case. I learned a lot about BPD during our time together and handled it pretty well. We continually got better and better at navigating the relationship with each other.

In early/mid April, he began expressing to me that he felt cravings to use/drink again, and cravings to "blow up his life." He was about to turn 30, he was starting a new career over from scratch, and he felt deeply unhappy with who he was and where he was in his life. He was angry at the world. Even though our relationship at this time was in a healthy place - with good communication, few fights, and few episodes - he self destructed it anyway. He asked if I would consider taking a break, I crumbled and was intensely reactive, and shortly after we were broken up.

I'm 99.999% he's splitting -- not over me, because he doesn't view me in extremes right now. He has said wonderful things about me while also being able to point out behaviors of mine that contributed to issues in the relationship. About me, he's pretty measured. I think he's splitting over the idea of "how he has to live his life." Before, going to therapy/AA, having a healthy romanic relationship, and striving to achieve his career goals were all good, balanced things. Now, because he feels deep shame/like he's failing in life, he thinks he needs to sacrifice literally every other facet of his life in order to spend every waking second on his career.

The last month has been a roller coaster. He's been in episodes every few days. In the beginning of the month, he said he needed space, but would reach out to me almost every day to tell me about some negative emotion he was experiencing. He blew up at me multiple times. After spending a day alone together in the middle of the month, he then spent the next week telling me how much he missed me. For that week, I saw the man I knew and loved under all his anger and frustration. Then he was back to seeming like he was absolutely fine without me. I finally asked for space, and reached back out to him after a week. We're slowly working towards talking more - which we've both said we want to do.

Last night I checked in with him, and he said he'd been thinking about me. He said he's only doing okay, and that this is hard for him. He said he's trying to 'focus and stay excited' about an upcoming career event instead of thinking about me - whereas before, he would've been blindly excited about the career stuff and not thinking about me. I told him I missed him like hell and that everything is less without him. He said he feels the same, and that everything is so confusing right now for him.

I definitely think he's splitting less now, and might be seeing more ways forward than the path he decided he MUST be on. I also think I have been devalued, but not discarded.

I want to get back together more than anything - but regardless of what happens between us, I also just want him to be okay and feel supported. How can I best help him during this time? Are there specific things that anyone would recommend to make him feel supported without feeling inundated/pressured by me to get back together? Is there anything I can do to encourage more measured thoughts/curb the splitting?

Hello forum,

So last post was about a blow up.  They've happened before.  So, so many times.  This time somehow felt different since I was the one the lit the fuse.

As also often happens, after the blow up we start talking and eventually want to be together again.  This is definitely different this time.  I am moving out.  This is something that I talked about before but now is going to happen.  My partner is already in her new apartment and I'm very close to being ready to move someplace.  I should be able to get something before the end of the week.

I told my therapist the day of the breakup.  She quite rightly reminded me how many times we've been through this.  She encouraged me to think about the past times and how when the break up occurred how convincing I was about why it was necessary and that it would stick, then days later why it would actually work.

We had tickets to a concert last night.  Even though we "broke up" I invited her to go on the condition that we don't talk about the relationship.  On the way to the concert she started holding my hand.  Light snuggling ensued throughout the concert.  During the show I said again that I was sorry that I yelled at her about how I was feeling.  We started talking about what happened.  She reminded me that she's been playing with her medication and that has definitely been impacting her emotions.  She's also going through a lot of stress.  Her ex just got diagnosed with colon cancer.  At this point we don't know how advanced it is.  Weeks earlier his partner was also diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer and is currently undergoing chemo.  My partner got into a big blow up with her 12yr old a couple of weekends ago.

What really got me was that she didn't accept my apology and kept saying that I had broken my promise to come straight home.  I had been fretting all day that she had threatened that I would need to move out.  All that together just lead to me exploding.

She's since offered to go to couples counseling, although I am not sure it was an honest offer.

I kind of feel like I'm just walking right back into the same situation.  At least I'll have my own place for a year.  My hope is that it will help give me some sticking power on holding my boundaries.

Boundaries:
1. Can not request I out and out quit my hobby
2. Can not take repeated threats to end the relationship whenever she feels threatened

I did feel awkward last night when she started touching my hand.  But at the same time I wanted it.  I feel like I've got a lot of mixed emotions.  I really hope she's honestly interested in therapy of some flavor but worried it'll just lead to more problems.  I made pretty clear what our cycle was recently.  I do something that triggers her (we call them land mines).  I see the incident from a different prospective and try to counter.  She gets scared and threatens to break up/ask me to leave.  We've been through this so many times.  She said that I have the power to end the cycle but I don't think that's fair.  I think I really need to see her try to do more about that urge to run.  I get that with BPD that's an incredible ask but this has been too much for me to handle lately.  We've been talking about this move for some time and all throughout the process she's been worried that we'll break up.

I feel like I can be empathetic and supportive when she doesn't threaten leaving.  That's too much for me to handle over and over again.

I'd love some advice from the board on getting back in the saddle.  Every time I do this I feel like I'm just setting myself up for another fall.  It really seems like this has been every three months or so.

In my experience, I think the trick is to look at your own behavior.  The pw BPD isn't going to change.  We have to.  You do a LOT for her despite how badly she treats you.  She has learned how to push your buttons and manipulate you to do things for her so that her needs are met. Also, chaos is "her normal".  She thrives in it.  You don't. 

Also, if she's a hoarder, she might even resent you cleaning her apartment.  So while you are trying to be helpful, and you probably clean so she can live in a healthy and safe environment, that might not be important to her.  A hoarder isn't likely to see it that way.  In a wierd kind of way, it might even feel threatening or controlling to her.

In my experience, the only thing to do is pull back from the enabling.  You can withdraw your services slowly over time, or all at once, depending on what works best for you and your needs for your own well-being.  Just DON'T declare what you are doing.  Just do it (use action not words).

In short, we have to give them the space to do it their way, and then let them solve their own problems (i.e. don't pay her debts for her).  She WILL find solutions.  Eg. she uses Uber.  If that solution then becomes a problem (an expense she can't afford), then the only way she will find a solution to that is if you stop paying her debts.

You can communicate you are unable to pay her debts from now on.  You don't have to explain why.  That gives her advance notice to change how she does things.  If she doesn't make the adjustments, that's on her. 

I just wouldn't tell her outright you won't be seeing her as much.  That will blow up.

This is not easy.  It's riddled with intense push back from them (abuse), guilt and obligation, and we have to learn to be ok with that. They in turn have to learn to be ok with living with the consequences of their own decisions.  Some people just have to learn the hard way.  IMHO, there is no other way.  It has taken me years to come to the grim conclusion that I just have to let my own mother fail.   It really hurts because as much as she has hurt me, I still care for her.  But it's an unhealthy kind of love.  I have lost years of my life trying to support her, and I have nothing for it but emotional pain and trauma. 

Look after your own well-being.  Let her look after hers. 

Healthy families can support each other and be there for each other.  With dysfunctional members in families, that just doesn't work the same.  That's my conclusion. 

 

Kells is much more knowledgeable than me, I think she has good information above....this is just my own attempting to understand it.

That is one of the hardest things to understand, how they say things that are so hurtful. Intentionally hurtful.

I can't wrap my head around it, and like many here the things she said to me echo in my head, I hear them all the time and try my best not to believe them. But it's hard.

Thing is, they know the things they say are hurtful. They intend them to be. But the why? From what I can gather they have intense internal pain, maybe shame and guilt, and can't bear it and thus must offload it onto us. Thus the horrible put downs and name calling, always accompanied by anger.

I think this is a projective defense mechanism? I know any time I tried to bring something up, question her on her behavior or on something she said- always true, but always said with love and care-she would explode at me and then comes the name calling and put downs. Even saying 'no' to something- trips I couldn't do, sex, her wanting to come over- caused this.

Hello lorbug and

15 years is a significant amount of time to be together. I wonder if you had a sense that things were "different" when you got together, or if it only became clear later in the relationship?

Regardless of when, I hear a lot of pain in your post. Nobody wants a relationship where the most special person in their life -- their partner -- is so wounding and hurtful. That's the one person who should be cherishing you above everyone else, and to hear deeply wounding statements... whatever the reasoning behind it, doesn't take away the hurt. I'm so sorry this is going on for you.


There's a lot to unpack here. One thing that has sunk in for me over the years here is that we need to remember that BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder -- emphasis on disorder. pwBPD (persons with BPD) really, really, really don't process or interpret or rationalize things like persons without BPD. I don't think that BPD is just "they're just like us, only with stronger emotions". It does seem like fundamental thinking and perception processes are different.

So when we say "they know that what they're saying is hurtful", I'm not sure that's the whole story.

Each of us is responsible for the words we say, so I'm not saying "pwBPD have different brain wiring, so they get a free pass to do whatever".

I think what I'm getting at is that we have a choice about the motivations we attribute to the pwBPD, and I'm suspecting that a more accurate interpretation of "why do they say such hurtful things" might be this:

if we imagine that we are in a life-or-death situation, we could imagine feeling like "any option is on the table to save my life". I might be a pacifist, but if my life is on the line, I could see myself fighting to the death, for example.

I think that may be a more accurate analogy for why pwBPD say what they say. For whatever reason, they may be "wired" to have a much lower threshold for what they perceive as emotionally threatening. Things like -- their partner sighed, or had a neutral facial expression, or walked differently, or was away on a weekend, or didn't get eggs at the store... can be perceived as 10/10 emotional threats... and if we believe that there is a 10/10 threat facing us, we feel justified in defending ourselves by any means necessary.

Her vast emotional needs and low sensitivity/threat threshold may be what's motivating her. If she feels threatened, then anything is on the table for self-defense. I'm not sure she's thinking rationally, like "Wow, I really want to hurt lorbug, even though I know it's wrong". I'm suspecting it's more lower brain, self-preservation at any cost, shame avoidance at any cost, thinking, versus willfully planning to hurt you.

None of that makes it okay, or makes it not hurt. It may provide some perspective on the dynamic -- it is likely that she really isn't thinking of you much at all, when she's in a place of overwhelming emotional needs. She may be 100% focused on her own intense inner experience and it isn't really about what you did or didn't do, or did or didn't say, etc.

...

We're on the "Bettering a relationship" board, so the big question is -- given that your W is who she is, and you're (currently) choosing to be in the relationship, what are some things under your control that you do have agency in, to make your own life more livable?

A helpful place to start could be our "Tools and skills" section on Relationship Skills. We also have a section of articles on When a partner, spouse or girlfriend has Borderline Personality Disorder that's worth looking at.

...

And no worries about feeling like your post was a pity party    These are some of the most challenging relationships, and having somewhere to come and process how you're feeling, with others in similar situations, can be so helpful. It's a great place to learn new tools, skills, and approaches, to take charge of your own life and make changes that are under your control.

Keep us posted on how things are going...

kells76