BPDFamily.com

About 2-3 months into my marriage, I googled "wife is angry all the time".  BAM!  Got all these hits referencing BPD.  I was like "What the hell is Borderline Personality Disorder?"  I had never heard of it before and thought it was some new radical concept until I started reading about it. 

I tell my friends and family about it now.  They just can't seem to grasp it (BPD).  They just say, "Nah, she's just a crazy b!tch".  Lol! 

My ex was diagnosed bipolar before I met her. After spending 4 years with her, I knew that wasn't it. I did a little research because I wanted to figure out what was really wrong with her. She fits BPD perfectly.

I endured 18 years of crazy-making in my marriage without knowing what it was. I tried everything in the book to make her happy. One evening she went into the spare bedroom with her pistol. Scared as hell, I talked her out of it and took the gun away. She then spent the next hour raging about how I was not doing this, that, whatever. Then she started crying and made me feel like a bad, bad man. I said my apologies, yada yada, then she wanted sex. We did. Afterwards I felt awful. I felt sick how twisted it was, how within a few hours I was talking my wife out of killing herself, then getting yelled at, then calming her and feeling sorry for her, then having sex.  

The next day I joined a very popular women's site, which happened to have a message board. I started a thread with the subject being "What am I doing wrong?" or something like that. Quite a few responses, but "an angel" went right to the point and said it sounded like she had BPD. I had no clue what it was   She provided some links, and I read them and had my eyes opened. I was a veracious reader on the topic since then.

She same out an told me the whole story of her past and her BPD diagnosis by the third date

Year one into our r/s, I started getting the typical behaviors (in retrospect, from the first date!). I kept telling myself, "it shouldn't be this hard... . she has to have some kind of PD!" I started searching, came up with BPD as the most likely fit. It sounded too odd, though. I didn't read too much about it. I took on the FOG and that was it. This was my first LTR, so I let her "lead" even though her past r/s weren't stable. I should have "manned up" as my X always said, and lead. Very confusing for someone who is proud of her feminism, yet clings to the old gender roles. Disorienting.

At that point, we were having trouble, of course, I was "forced" to go into counseling, then a toxic recycle I let happen, and I forgot about it. I was fully into the Dance Of Death (up the irons!), then the first baby... . home. etc... . 5 years later, I found my way here.

even before the wedding there were issues. she seemed to want me to do lots for her that she could do herself, and she was professionally such a successful and competent person. once in the marriage the eating got more compulsive, the driving scared me, the slovenliness was epic, the 'forgetting' was bizarre. i wondered how much of it was the alcohol. in her 20s she had either mutilated herself or tried to or wanted to. she'd had a history of unsuccessful relationships, often ending in dishonesty. i'd never heard of borderline disorder but didn't need to know it to know there were problems. but i had issues too and if she could accept mine, i could accept hers.

last june she moved in with someone else after a campaign of deceit. (this other person is a woman so let's add "confusion of identity." utterly blasted, i started therapy. after 2 or 3 weeks my T spotted the BPD. she (the T) has worked with pwBPD so i'm not making the diagnosis.

it's said sometimes that the label doesn't matter, the behaviors matter. this is true. however, if there is a diagnosis then one can be confident of certain patterns and of a certain predictability. so we victims of pwBPD can dismiss the idea that if only we had said it right, if only we had done this or that, if only we had more patience, if only we had validated better, if only we had gone to therapy ourselves, the r/s could have worked. as my T keeps telling me, "this isn't about you. it's impossible to have an emotionally reciprocal relationship with a pwBPD."

Haha they are more than crazy they are real psychos! I actually cried a lot but I think I have to take it easy now but I'm so angry for taking my marriage so seriously!

After the third time she dumped me (blocked my number) and I could not rationalize with her at all, I googled "multiple breakups". I also Googled, "multiple lesbian breakups" since I hadn't been in a situation like this before.

Borderline Personality Disorder popped up along with "rollercoaster relationships". As I read the signs it was like reading a template or blueprint of my relationship.

I never said anything to her about what I read but when I got into therapy my therapist said, "Yeah she is BPD and you have BPD traits".

It was a wake up call to say the least.

At first thought his bizarre behavior was based in his unfortunate addiction relapse - narcotics.  I even secured an alanon sponser.  As he slipped deeper into his addiction the gas lighting started; accused me of all sorts of ridiculous, untrue behavior; fabrications, twisted incidents.  Then the flipping started.  One day accused me of being BPD     So, I started researching and YIKES.  Learned some new terms:  "projection", "gas lighting", etc.  :light:

Lil Miss,

   That was another sign for me. My ex used a lot of terms like: passive-agressive, projecting and gaslighting---to describe me.

Her ex before me was a psychologist.

:)

I have told mine now and then that I understand a lot of this from a psychological perspective. She, of course, threw this out and used it against me the other night during our argument. I knew she really didn't know what she was talking about when I admitted my co-dependency and she said, "yeah, the smoking!" I now believe what at least two of my friends who know her have said, that she isn't nearly as smart as she thinks she is.

And she's still watching the motivational videos on youtube... . good luck to her!

Googled "Crazy a$$ girlfriend"

I'm not that experienced in relationships, wondered if his behaviour was normal. Explained it to friend. She was all "noo way is that normal, have you researched BPD?". That and the no closure which was massively telling.

Scary and


Even scarier.

After 3 months of marriage and some serious crazy-making behaviour, I googled a few things like "angry wife" "mood swings" and "walking on eggshells". Several clicks later I found this amazing website. Now, here I am a year and half later, separated from my uBPDw, but feeling much better with myself.

Interestingly, before marrying her, I even told her that I sometimes felt I was "walking on eggshells" around her. She said previous b/f's had said exactly the same thing to her and she couldn't understand why! (at least that's what she said).

Ah the red flags we choose to ignore...

NO KIDDING! LOL  

My T (God Bless Her) told me on our third session based mostly on my gf's self burning. I thought it was interesting, but unfortunately did not take it as seriously as I should have. I wish now my T had thrown me up against the wall and slapped me a few times to get me understand the seriousness of this disorder.

I'm on session what number now? Oh yeah, next week will be number 95... .

I googled "professional victim" and couldn't believe what I saw. 

It was jaw-dropping, and surreal.

We were on our way to our third couples therapy session later that week, and I had printed out a list of red flag behavior that I was going to tell the therapist how I felt.

I didn't show her the list or tell her about it; but she may have had a clue bc she ended the therapy that week... .

There was a lot of talk about bipolarity about my wife, but being the person closest to her I knew she wasn't so keen on discussing the inter-personal problems she was having, which basically were a bigger problem than her depressions and mood swings. She was not mentioning that to her doctors at all.

I think it was a doctor at psych ER that asked me if me and my daughter got any time apart from my wife (she doctor asked this in my wife's presence). This question seemed odd at first, but then I realized that the doctor knew exactly what was going on with my wife. He had never met any of us, but the doctor understod that my wife couldn't be left alone and he knew how confrontational and conflict-seeking she was. How did the doctor know? I thought this was odd, but I went home and googled terms like "confrontational" and "conflict-seeking" and I read the criteria for borderline. I had very little doubt from then on.

It has not been much of a relief. My wife could live with the bipolar diagnosis, but not with the BPD "label". The bipolar diagnosis even seemed like a relief for a while. She thought it was "Good to finally know".

I became aware that the relationship was emotionally and financially abusive. Friends were hinting at this but finally I did some research and some quizzes on the internet.

I noticed that the abusers often have a PD and/or addiction. I saw BPD mentioned but kind of skipped over it.

I need to add that my ex is a Pagan Witch. Then one day I was googling abusive r/s's and I was curious if Witches tended to be abusive (the ex often said witches were often "irascible" (having or showing a tendency to be easily angered).

So I typed "Witch & Abuse" into the search engine. It returned and article about the 4 types of BPD : hermit, waif, queen and WITCH!

WOW the bells went off!

It was a huge moment of clarity! Suddenly things made sense! It was like getting a chemical analysis back on a mystery drug that I had become addicted to and that I knew was killing me.

I suggest you take a look at the 4 types of BPD. Mine was definitly a Queen/Witch (the most dangerous kinds) but had periods of waif and hermit. It is an eye-opener.

Love is not enough

I didn't take it seriously neither but when I read a lot about it I realised that it must be serious I moved out since 7 weeks ago but I still shake every night when I think about how serious this is and how my mental health was at risk all these years!

Www./ cassanova.html

A close friend of mine, while still in friendship phase when she first abandoned me, hinted at Bipolar(this was in early 2012) as a possibility to the contradictory/awful behavior I had experienced. I didn't look into it. When round 1 of relationship started(same friend asked me, ("You do realize she disappeared on you before and you want to have a relationship with her?", I overlooked the words, thinking naively the opposite. Once I experienced the RAGING as she discarded me in round 1, I started to research Bipolar. My friends words echoed HEAVILY in my thoughts. Some things matched(her mood swings) but nothing further. Didn't really explain her odd behavior. Heavy digging into Bipolar and I came across a person's comment that described the push/pull behavior and suggested BPD. As soon as I typed in BPD, this forum popped up. All the lights started to turn on as I read account after account. My tears fell, as I read anonymous members on here recounting their own hellish tales and the accounts sounded EXACTLY like mine. I was never the same after that. 3 months of NC later, she reappeared(BPD style) for round 2, just like I had read about on here, and I watched as I saw her disorder play out before my eyes from beginning to horrific end(and the behavior was word for word exactly what I had read about on here). Shortly afterwards, i found the courage to finally post my nightmare.

Had been researching behaviors towards the end of round 1 of 2 of relationship. Was leaning towards depression issues for a long time which is one of the reasons I think I stayed so long. Thought it was something that could be cured or fixed.

When he finally discarded me out of nowhere as soon as I put in search all together: silent treatment, raging, abrupt discard BPD exploded off the screen and that is when I found this site and other info.  Everything fit to a T. I finally had my answer.

Too bad it didn't get quite through to me that it couldn't be fixed because I took him back for second round. I Think I got it now though!

Similar to you ironman. After months of me not knowing what the hell was wrong with the relationship and honestly believing her distortions and that it was all my fault, she let it slip to me one night during one of her good moods that her ex boyfriend had once speculated that she was bipolar. It was like a curtain fell down. Suddenly i knew that it wasnt me, that her ex who she constantly vilified had been through the exact same crap. At the same time, researching bipolar, it didnt exactly fit. Then when i finally went to see a therapist she mentioned BPD... . and that led me to this site... .

Funny how everyone knows or thinks they know bipolar disorder but no-one that ive spoken to has heard of BPD

After my ex dumped me I googled "cruel breakups" and BPD came up.  It was all right there.  We were together for 5 years, lived together for 4 and never had a conversation about breaking up.  He broke up with me and 4 days later was in another relationship.  Game over.

…I’d spent a crazy-making year wondering if I were going nuts …found myself walking the streets before dawn …had been dumped & recycled several times …had been raged at for no good reason/s … and during some time apart, while taking a personality and 'compatibility profile' test from a book on stress I’d been given, found that (from my observations) my crazy-making gf scored extremely high on ‘empathy,’ of all things.

Searching “extreme empathy,” lead to Borderline Personality Disorder.  We’d, at her insistence, been seeing a ‘couples counselor’ as a precursor to getting back together, but what I discovered about BPD, along with a multitude of crazy clues & hints was that she fit 7 of 8 criteria…  Everything fit, and unfortunately still does :'(  

Relieved that it ‘wasn’t me,’ and that things finally ‘made sense,’ when learning of the full extent of what we were up against …with the description of ‘incurable’ bantered about, I was heart sick…  Still am...  No one deserves that crap, and I couldn’t make it go away.  Though I’d have spent a lot, and was working with our former counselor to find her help, she’d not have any of it – “I refuse to be labeled!” she responded as I carefully described my concerns.  She’s seeing a therapist now, specializing in what, I don’t know … but we’ve been apart for 2 months, and after 7 recycles …I’m doing my best to finally keep it that way.  

I heard of it from my exBPDgf... . she said she had been diagnosed BPD in grad school... . and I wasn't familiar with the term borderline enough to understand what horrors it expressed.

My exBPDgf and I had dated when I was in college... . and she abruptly dumped me (we were talking marriage)... she showed up hanging all over one of my neighbors... and I was devastated... . moved away to avoid killing someone.

24 yrs later... she looked me up on FB, I was married... and indifferent to her... till she got me on the phone... her voice brought back 100% of everything... 5 months later I was divorced... and the real hell began.  But... in one of my long long talks with her she said she had panic attacks and saw a T in grad school and was told she was BPD. She said T was great (at first)... then a while later she was trying to get the state to pull his license. red-flag  Anyway, we recycled 6-7 times... . she was like demon from hell... horrific to deal with. Been seeing a T for PTSD since we split.

I thought borderline was like... "almost"... . and I assumed "almost a problem"... . not "almost 100% nuts/psychotic... . just shy an inch or so"... and didn't look any further in to it. She was syrup sweet/bit phony when nice... . tiny bit off when clingy, but totally 100% authentic when hating... . down right scary... have no doubt she would stab me 27 times, cut my throat and shoot me (just like Jodi Arias)... but she seemed to miss me a lot and tell me I was her "soul mate".

Really learning about BPD... got on this site and read the articles, began reading the leaving board and was obssessed with finding out "why?" all this happened and how I had fallen for such a load of BS.

a  common theme with a few of us here seems to be being " forced"  to go into counseling or therapy. extreme gaslighting at its best,  no? I  was even forced to go into sex counseling by nine.  after she abandoned me to it,  got validation from two been female doctors that my issues were completely healthy given an abusive partner. I  stopped going and never had a problem again.  yet four years later,  here I  am... .   now  about 30  appointments later in individual counseling... .

Broken…  I’ve read that ‘clinicians’ will often diagnose a patient as “Bi-polar” because it’s considered “treatable,” whereas BPD is not -- and that medical insurance policies will often refuse to pay for BPD treatment for that reason.  That has me wondering about those diagnosed as “Bi-polar”… as it seems a common ‘misdiagnosis’ around here… 

…maybe it’s this beer...   :) but that was my first belly laugh of this thread… and who can’t relate...

After 3 years and more breakups than I can count.  And after the only one I initiated I went and saw the T we had been seeing and she let it slip.  I believe her words were "Well that's what happens with a person with borderline personality distorter."  The word borderline though me off thinking that the T was saying she might have a personality distorter.  Then a few days later I looked it up and WOW! there it all was my last 3 years spelled out perfectly.  I did do a lot of reading for a few weeks and gave it another try but that only lasted 2 weeks.  Its now been 7 months NC and had I not learned about BPD I would have tried again and again like I had been.  One day I am going to make myself a T shirt that says  "Sometimes I do Dumb Things"

I spent years thinking how different my life would be if only I had her back... . (goes to show you - be careful what you ask for... . you may get it.)

Yes ~  my xBPDgf was on her best ‘transparent high-functioning’ behavior as we sat discussing ‘my problems.’  The only thing that tweaked our counselor's ear was her having taken ‘anger management’ classes... .   But what a waste of time those six sessions were (paid for by my employee assistance fund)… I’d actually discovered the BPD myself around session 4 but felt it was far too deep and dangerous a subject to bring up in that limited venue.  I can hardly believe the counselor’s last words: “Don’t forget to invite me to your wedding!”  

just over a year after my exgf moved out, her roomate (the girl she had moved in with) called me up and wanted to talk. we ended up talking on the phone for like 90 minutes and she described all kinds of terrible treatment she got from my ex (not to mention a few lies she had told about me). in our second discussion the roommate and i connected on the fact that my ex would project onto us things that she would do, or ways that she was. a year previous my ex told me that i was a narcissist and that i didn't care about anybody but myself; and this kind of messed me up for a week or so until i had some good conversations with friends of mine who laughed at the idea (i was too embarrassed to tell them why i asked).

anyways, after talking to the roomy about projection the accusation of being a narcissist popped in my head, and i thought "is my ex a narcissist since she accused me of being one?" i did a google search but it didn't really fit... . then i read a comment somebody left somewhere that mentioned BPD and it fit like oj's glove didn't  :)

About a month into the relationship, I said to myself, this woman has BPD.  Looked up the DSM IV symptoms.   Bingo!

So Goldy, NPD and BPD go together like oil and water, huh?

I am glad that you have escaped. Good luck on your SHINY HAPPY NEW life!   *)

After the 2nd break up freshly discarded, I Googled 'multiple relationship break ups'.

Within 5 or ten minutes of 'skim reading' I hit the jack pot!

After the first or second breakup out of the blue and her EXTREME passive aggressiveness I googled what I had experienced and boom.  Then I read about the illness.  When I got a chance to talk to her again we went down the road about therapy because at the time I thought I needed it because I thought I was losing my mind.  I asked if she had ever been and she said yes but she quit because she wasn't getting what she needed out of it and would rather deal on her own... . So many darn red flags I ignored.  the more posts I reply to the more red flags I see.

ohhhhhhhhh maaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I knew when she told me she had been diagnosed.  red-flag  Obv. sometimes I look back and think two things: A) It was always going to end badly, madly and sadly B) Why didn't I just get away when she said those words: ":)iagnosed as Borderline."? Because this was years before she ... . engineered a break up (she claimed it was me ) and then was with someone else ten days later. I made the classic choices - I don't use the word mistake - of holding on, trying to fight what is ultimately with my hands tied behind my back. BUT this big colossal tragedy of BPD may have been too big for the rel. but it won't beat me, can't see that, it's over now time to be shiny-happy. Small doses.

Some would have just left as a result of the behavior anyway. Wow, we're the introspective ones on this board who care about the disease and the implications and the making sense,  because knowing about BPD, it is the only way of rationalizing; it is the only sense-maker. We're fogged up, yet there's sunlight bleeding through - they were mentally ill, 'simple,' we loved them yet they could never return such gifts. Our expectation that we should give and receive; invest and then be rewarded, wasn't the issue.

To find out and interact with BPD (via experiences on the board) is a blessing.

The #1 reason my wife wasn't diagnosed earlier was that so much of the BPD symtoms have to do with inter-personal relations. And when you bring those problems up, both the patient and the doctor/therapist tends to put that aside as external problems, communication problems, family issues etc, better dealt with through couples counceling or "talks" late night at home.

There's a school that says relational problems don't belong in psychiatry, and therefore such things will have to be "mended", and if there are issues left after that, then those are the "real" ones.

My wife has had depression, GAD, ADHD and bipolar type 2. For a while, a therapist even seemed to suggest that she was the victim of a controlling husband (me!).

Had I gone to the psychiatrist at that time (I problaby should!) then the diagnosis would propably have been "depressed man bullied by undiagnosed borderline wife".

How many of us here have at some point been the problem?

For my wife, accepting the BPD diagnosis also means accepting that years of ___ she threw at me, her parents, her brother (and propably a bunch of other people) when the "itch" began was nothing to do with anything we had ever done or said. It was all to do with her and her disorder. It's been a total mind___!

There's been times when we've just barely been able to put up with her because she's such a dark cloud hovering over our lives, and then she comes home from a therapy session having discussed with the T how to put up boundaries against all us - the people she threats, manipulates and uses as doormats.

 

I knew there had to be a name for whatever mental illness my wife had. She could act so bizarre and intense, and be abusive in such a sneaky way I would often not realize it until much later on - if at all. I walked on eggshells and had withdrawn myself from just about everything to keep the peace. I knew she had some major problem. I searched for months and came up empty handed.

Then one day when she was blocking me from walking away during one of her rages, she looked at me with eyes that could kill and said in a creepy voice "I WON'T be ignored, Shikai."

MAJOR EPIPHANY. MAJOR PANIC. It was the same line, said in the same way, as the Glen Close character in "Fatal Attraction." Everything I had experienced came rushing back into my mind. She was so much like that character! I googled "fatal attraction character mental illness" and there it was. BPD. I watched the movie again (hadn't seen it in 20+ years) and I was beside myself. I was certain it was the same thing.

After researching BPD, I carefully planned how to bring it up with her in a gentle way and encourage her to consider DBT therapy. It actually went well and she was receptive at first. She told me her previous girlfriend, a psychotherapist, diagnosed her years ago but she wouldn't believe it.

I researched dbt therapists in our area and gave her several names I thought could be effective for her. Four months later she still hasn't gone to therapy. She says that's my fault. Well, of course! Who else's fault could it be? There are only two people here and one of them is perfect.

To her credit, she did read some books, attend a NAMI group a couple of times, and wrote an essay about it. But her behavior is still appalling and I'm planning my exit. Any time I second guess myself I should watch a clip from Fatal Attraction. Just thinking about it brings back that sick feeling I had during my epiphany. Maybe I can use that to strengthen my resolve when I'm feeling weak.

I have to get out of here before she boils my dog.

(Do you sense some bitterness? LOL)

During our relationship, i googled "girlfriend doesn't want me to have friends" - "jeaoulous girlfriend" and other similar terms... . info I found slightly scratched the surface... . but I never found the answer I was looking for.

After we broke up the final time and she jumped straight into a new relationship, I began digging deeper and found the waif article on ... .

It was if it was the manuscript of the past 3 years of my life punched me in the face... . that's when I found the answer and began learning more and more about it... .

After about 2 wks of research I scheduled an appointment with a therapist who confirmed BPD in her, because I was still questioning my sanity.

Spent the next 2 months or so learning more about it, etc. It helped me get over the feeling of being weak minded... .

2 weeks ago exBPD got hitched just 6 months after our breakup... . it brought up old wounds and really stressed me out... . fortunately it only lasted a week, though... .

And quite honestly, I rarely even dream about her except when I spend excessive amts of time reading through this board... .

But, regardless, I keep coming back to keep my sanity in check ha ha...

I called my ex a 'psycho' once and the look on her face told me she'd been called that before, so I Googled 'psychotic', didn't really know what it meant, turns our she's not psychotic, but more internet digging from there led me to BPD, and tada!  Fits like a glove.

Google, making amateur shrinks of us all... .

I learned about BPD from living with a diagnosed borderline. So when she told me about her disorder I didn't really believe her. I thought she was just using it as an excuse to be a goofy bit€h. The meds. She was on antidepressants. She smoked meth. She took other pills. I dismissed most of her goofy behavior to the drugs. I forgot about her telling me her diagnosis. She told me so much about how disordered she was. She rattled off a number of disorders she said she was diagnosed with Borderline, OCD, the thing with the hands... . I forget... . where you get obsessed with touch sensations. She called it a string fetish. So like I said earlier, I dismissed the mental illness as drug addiction. I didn't google. Maybe I should have. Any way I didn't even want a relationship with her. I was only going to have a fling with her because I was fresh out of another relationship that ended with me leaving and on good terms. I sat down with her predecessor and explained why I was leaving and then packed my stuff and left. No overlap. No cheating. No big bhitfight. The next almost eight years was my education in borderline.

I'm adopted. I started searching for my mother a year before I met uBPDex. She biological mother works in a hospital for kids with mental illness / disabilities. She deals with borderline mothers.

My mother didn't mention anything during the r/s and marriage but during the last year or so when my spouse was really acting out, she would hint at certain things "she's impulsive, things move fast for both of you, there's a lot of drama"

About a month after the ex fled, I told my mom there is something really wrong with her. There's no sympathy, emapthy, closure and the way that she just vanished after an 8 year r/s and threw herself at the new object, she then said "yes, uBPD ex is a Borderline Personality Disorder".

My mom did not mention this during the r/s in fear of losing me. I was 31 when I met my mom and uBPDex. She let the r/s run it's course and told me after. I'm glad that she pointed me in the right direction because it would have been much harder to deal with the attachment without knowing my involvelment in the enmeshment in the first place.