BPDFamily.com

I usually am on the leaving board.   I don't know what to do.  Have any of your partners taken DBT.   Mine did but he doesn't seem to be doing well.

His mother died.  I was there with him through the entire thing.  But it just doesn't seem to be enough.  He is going off the deep end.  He really is.  He has threatened suicide.   And he keeps sending me pictures of me and his mom.  It's a horrible picture of her in the hospital dying with this fear on her face.   I finaly agreed to meet with him for coffee this weekend but I even did that wrong because he wanted to meet and talk with me sooner I guess, which got him in this rant of how I am never there.   So I just said forget it.  I told him I just make him worse at this time and he needs to get back into therapy.   It is so hard for me to leave him but being around him is just awful.  He took DBT for a year.   If I am with himi I make him sick if I am not with him I make him sick.  So has anyone had their partner take DBT and has it been helpful.  Has your partners told you they were going to kill themselves.  How about using what they know in DBT to make you look like the idiot.   Sometimes I think he is too smart for therapy.  He needs to dumb himself down.   I am not strong enough for this.   I want to leave but he is so fragile and well manipulative with his problems.   I never met anyone who had one drama after another like this.   I feel sick.

drv I am responding because I feel it is important that someone at the very least responds when people are crying out, although I'm not sure if I'm the one to give any sound advice. I have often wondered about DBT being used against us non's and how that may be potentially backfiring even though it is apparently has a good success rate for those who stick with it.

I can only tell you that my partner is very intelligent as well and I can see this tug a war between his 'reasoning' and the DBT therapy. If you have that sick feeling in your gut maybe you need to listen to that and step away for a bit until you can clear your head a bit. I know for myself whenever I have had that sick feeling I needed to step aside and get some clarity. I have encouraged my BPD partner to go out on his own and be more independent so as to not be so integrated in me and me in him. I think sometimes that reclaiming a measure of your independence is healthy but I understand through this grief stricken time that perhaps this is when he needs you the most. However, if it means that it is at your expense that is neither a healthy alternative.

He needs to understand your limits and what your capacities are so perhaps you need to have that conversation with him because you are not made of steel. It will be hard for him to hear this at this point in time but still he needs to understand that the world doesn't and can't revolve around him. He needs to understand that like him, you are also a person with needs and limits.