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For those of you who have ended a relationship with a BPD partner or spouse, did your exBPDw pin all the blame for the failure of the relationship on you and not take any responsibility for his or her part?

I ask because I am divorcing my stb-exBPDw and she is unfairly (and cruelly, IMHO) pinning "100%" of the blame for the divorce on me.  I'll spare you the details, but the long story short is that over the last 1.5 years (and, really, going back much further but to a lesser degree) my wife treated me like total garbage, leading me to pull the plug on the relationship.  Over the course of the past 1.5 years, she's made it pretty darn clear she has no respect for me, saying things like "I never should have married you" and "When you go visit your parents out of town, don't come back because I don't want you around" and even suggesting we date other people.  There are lots more things like that that she's said, but I think you get the picture.

Anyway, now that we are divorcing she has said that this is "100%" my fault, that she "didn't want this," and that I was "the cause" of the divorce.  When we told our young kids about the divorce, she even told them that this was ":)addy's choice."

What gives?  Anyone have similar experiences?  Is she saying this stuff because she still wants a relationship or is this just a BPD turning into cruel blame mode?

Feelings = facts

Her feelings are that she can do no wrong- you are to blame.  You make her feel this way, you make her do this thing, you made the marriage unbearable, and you are choosing to leave.

Daddy is an evil man.  You are an evil man.

In her mind, the mind of the pwBPD, her feelings are so intense, there can be no other explanation for external events in her life except those feelings.

I don't think you are evil.  I think you are doing the right thing.  There is no way to change her, and because of this, it is impossible to change the marriage into something that is more agreeable to your values.

Do not buy into her explanations for the failed marriage.  The reasons are much more complicated than the simplistic and overly hostile black and white thinking your wife is using.

Know your values, and own them.  You cannot trust her reasons unless you believe them yourself.

Yes, my wife is currently trying to explain the whole failure of the marriage on me.  She cannot accept that her mental disorder has anything to do with it- it would be too painful for her to accept.

She blames me for the reasons we only had sex once a year for the past 3 or 4 years.  I pulled away from her.  I have intimacy issues.  I do not show her any kind of love, affection or tenderness.  I refuse to have sex with her.

I can hardly hold my temper when I hear her spouting off this made-up drivel. 

I refuse to accept her feelings = facts line of reasoning any more.  I just walk away from such discussions.

Perhaps you can too?

Surg_Bear

I think the person with BPD always blames somebody else.  My ex BPDh didn't blame me and actually said I had done nothing wrong.  But he wouldn't admit that he had either!

He totally blamed my son.  OK my son wasn't the best behaved kid in the world, but he was not the reason for the end of our marriage.  To listen to my ex you would think my son's only aim in life was to ruin my ex's life and destroy our marriage.  All my ex had to do was either be a bit nicer to my son or ignore him altogether.  Instead he was very controlling and violent to him.  But he still would not take any blame.  In his view, the one and only reason for us splitting up was my son!

The blame game is such an essential part of the illness. It was this awful dynamic that made my life hell for years;

My wife losing her temper or having a mood swing she ruins what was supposed to be a good time together. Refusing to take responsibility, she pretends like nothing happened. Out of frustration I blame myself, thinking of what I could have done to avoid that situation.

If she really f*cked up, she would negotiate, offering a 50/50 blame "deal".

Sometimes she would even take blame 100%, but that was in affect. Most often that would mean she would take in back later or restrict that blame to a period of limitation.

Mine has had enough therapy to learn how things are 'supposed' to work and what people will believe... .so in the short version she says that the breakup was mutual fault, because that's the pop-psych thing to say, and people can buy that. I say something similar to people that I'm not close to since I don't want to either be the guy slamming his ex- or turn every conversation into dismal misery. Her short version is more about how we mysteriously, gradually drifted apart, (which is really not true) while mine is that we ended up arguing all of the time and didn't see anyway to stop that (which is true).

I don't think she really sees it that way though... .in some stuff that she posted (anonymously but I recognized her right away) and some things that have filtered through people, she tells a different story. Supposedly the problem is entirely my poor communication skills, and all of our friends and even the therapist agreed. I was just being unreasonable and wasn't willing to leave any room in the relationship for her emotions. And I had grossly unrealistic expectations of adult relationships. Technically she's not blaming me 100% like the title says, but it's really blaming me but adding 'oh, I'm not perfect' at the end to make it easier for someone else to believe - just like she did during the relationship when she'd say that she did 80% of the work in the relationship.

I have issues with communicating feelings and boundaries, but I put in a huge amount of effort to get better at it. It's not my communication skills that are the problem if I say "I have a problem with this specific thing, I would like to work on this" and she decides I mean "I regret this entire relationship and hate you and want nothing to do with you and am thinking of ways to get rid of you" then segues into a multiple-day fight. I learned reflective listening from therapy, but when you try to reflect and just get 'no, that's wrong, you obviously don't care about me and aren't trying to understand and now I'm not going to talk to you' it doesn't really help anything.

To be perfectly honest, it is indeed a mutual fault, as we all kept forging ahead despite the signs and against the odds.

My stb ex-wife is like this. I think she's able to pay lip service to the idea that we both have a shared responsibility for our behavior and how we manage our feelings, but it's only an intellectual understanding; at heart I think she sees herself as the victim.

I saw her this weekend for the first time in a couple of months (see moved out abruptly in March), and we actually had quite a pleasant, very casual and enjoyable conversation for a while. The kind of conversation that makes you think, "How did we wind up separated?" Then at one point she asked "Where did we go wrong?" Surprsingly, she initially had some very lucid things to say about how our communication broke down, how we let conflict escalate, ways be both struggled to express our needs - things I agreed with to a large extent. But then she went into, "I felt so lonely because of you, you caused me so much hurt and made me feel so abandoned". An angry look came across her face, and she started crying, and I could see that she wasn't crying for us, for the lost relationship, but for herself; she was weeping tears of pity for herself, the poor victim. It was the first time I saw it in such an obvious and naked way. She left our meeting by telling me how angry and hurt she still was with me. Pretty sure I've been painted black for a LONG time in her mind.

I used to hang on to a vague hope that we could reconcile; I figured that she's high functioning enough and has just enough insight into her own behavior, that maybe she'd come around and we could manage to keep the difficult stuff under control if I just put strong boundries in place. But after seeing her over the weekend, well, I can see the victim card will always be there for her, her trump card, the thing she'd hang on to so she can ditch me before I could possibly ever do it to her. She might even stash it away for a decade or two, but it will always be there.

No, blamed the situation

Hey terranova79, Yup, same thing happened to me.  We were divorced two years ago and she is still assigning me !00% of the blame for the break-down of our marriage.  I would suggest that a pwBPD has such low self-esteem that it is nearly impossible for a pwBPD to accept responsibility for his/her behavior.  Has to be someone else's fault, usually the SO.  If a pwBPD admits to making a mistake, he/she will turn completely black, so it doesn't happen, in my view.

LuckyJim

I agree. A relationship takes two. I think that the difference is that it's mostly not reciprocity. Our exes suffered mental illness, have social impairments and have low emotional intelligence.

I can see how that would hurt if your ex partner says they shouldn't have married you, wish that you don't return if you're going out of town and puts your son in the middle of all this with divorce poison. I'm sorry to hear that.

My ex partner blamed me for the failure of the r/s and still does two years after she left. I understand that there many transactions between two people in a r/s and that she projects negative feelings and actions on others because she's self critical, has low self esteem and feels guilt and shame. This is BPD.

She can blame all that she wants, I know my reality and what I experienced and I don't JADE ( justify, attack, defend, explain ) and her defense mechanisms self sabotage, she will repeat the same chaotic interpersonal relationship patterns if she doesn't get help.

Own what's yours, learn from these lessons and identify what is projections, cognitive distortions and dissociations. We're not responsible for how someone else feels.

My exBPDw blamed me for almost everything.  She was always the saint and didn't nothing wrong during our marriage.   

She did say, post-divorce, that "I have some things to work on", but as for truly working on them, she never really did.

Like you, nothing I did was good enough.  I got fed up and asked for a divorce. 

She never really had to face any of her issues because she got into a new relationship right away.

No. think about what you just said - if 'we' didn't forge ahead despite the signs, that would mean the end of the relationship, right? So whatever the 'we' does, the relationship ends, which is pretty much the direct opposite of mutual fault.

If one partner keeps behaving badly (whether it's just being disagreeable, cheating, being mean and nasty, crossing the line to emotional abuse, or crossing even further to physical abuse) and the other partner ends the relationship, the fault lies with the partner behaving badly. The pop-psych 'it's mutual fault' is blaming the victim for refusing to be victimized, which I don't consider reasonable or acceptable behavior. You don't get to put the blame for the relationship not working on your partner when you shout at your partner for hours, violate agreements over and over, refuse to contribute money to the household, stop being intimate (sexually and emotionally) with them, while all along they follow agreements, work hard at communication (including using a therapist), pay all of your bills, and live with the occasional grudging hug. Especially if you tell your partner that it's over and they say 'fine, I'm not fighting it this time'.  

That's the big realization I had at the end. I wanted to say that things were mutual, that I had done something wrong and if I just did something differently I could have made it all work. But when I looked at mistakes that I made, they all pointed to setting and enforcing boundaries much earlier on - and enforcing the boundaries would have required breaking off the relationship. I endured way more abuse than anyone should have to, and put way more money, time, energy, and love into trying to fix that broken relationship than anyone could expect me to.

It's really a no-win situation. I like to think that as non-BPW, we have the choice to walk away while the pwBPD does not. With that said can we say we're at fault for leaving/taking care of ourselves?

In the long run... .no.

Can we share the blame for engaging and sticking around longer than necessary?

Absolutely.

We went into the relationship thinking the partner will be on the same emotional and psychological level. We can't be blamed for expecting that, but what we do with it I think we can and should take responsibility

Agreed. I didn't enter the relationship looking to rescue her, but when love was involved and I learned about/experienced her issues, I was in it for sure and stuck around hoping to help. Am I partially responsible for keeping the r/s going? Yes. Am I more-than-her or even equally responsible for what made it fall apart? No. But I was certainly blamed/scapegoated. By her.

I'm glad I stayed, because I did care for her and thought we had a chance. I'm proud of myself for not giving up, and for following my heart.  The disorder kept getting in the way, sabotaging the peace and togetherness. I eventually did choose to walk away. We both wanted to be in, and both wanted out. That was something we definitely had in common at the end.

100% my fault. No admission that she behaved appallingly on times. Made the split easier as it convinced me I'd never get a 'fair trial' with her if I did hang around. I was always guilty as charged in the kangaroo court of BPD. 

Murray Bowen (Family Systems Theory) postulated that people select partners who have the same level of emotional maturity.

I remind myself of this every time I think my partner has issues. I gravitated, like everyone, to someone with this maturity level. I can rationalize it all I want - but if she kick my dog - month 1 or month 48 - she would have been history.  She kicked me - I stayed.

Mr. Brown's theory is probably one of the biggest crocks that I see posted on the boards. It is completely refutable. If any Non leaves any relationship, at any point, the theory is proven false.

People get involved with other people with the expectation of normalcy going into the relationship. Emotional maturity is only relevant after the engagement is made. Skip's example doesn't even address an "emotional maturity" issue; that's a self-esteem/self-respect issue.

Short story, essentially yes, my BPDex did blame me. Did she have reasons to? I honestly think that yes, she did have some legitimate reasons. However, the situation only came to such a state because her BPD traits prevented her from the supportive actions that would have helped enormously.

She hated my family and they never met. Of course my family was hurt. I sided with my ex, which in hindsight hurt my family a lot. Had my ex made some attempt to have a rapport with my family, I don't think we would have broken up necessarily.

My guess is that she blames my family for being "mean" and me for siding with my family. Actually, the end was more about me being so hurt that I did it for myself.

There were a few moments throughout the relationship in which she would be upset and some glimmer of responsibility for the bad relationship would shine through. It gave me hope that one day she would realize and seek answers, which may have led to BPD. She was undiagnosed. In any case, I think her feelings on the matter are complicated. I will never know, and perhaps on some level this relationship, the longest for both of us, may encourage her to be introspective. I hope so. She's a good person under the BPD. That is what makes me sad, but I have since moved on.

Well, longer the interaction is sustained, the more likely that Bowen's dynamcs are driving force behind the relationship. According to a study, a staggering 55 percent of the romantic partners of borderline invidiuals are themselves met the criteria for an Axis II PD. Which in itself is provides a strong foundation for the theory.

Boris, not attacking you here brother, but if there is one result that runs counter to the theory and can be reproduced, then the theory is proven false, providing all other variables remain the same. ("All other variables" is not being taken into account here with this theory.) As a result, it is as true/relevant as my theory that gravity only works M-W but does not work all the other days of the week.

Psychology is not an exact science. It does not perform repeatable experimental studies that formulate falsifiable theories and generate predictive mathematical equations in the way natural sciences does. Theories mostly formulated by psychiatrists based on years of personal interaction with patients, while use of research to underpin and identify symptoms and behavioral patterns to reach informed conclusions.

Bowen's theory  leaves quite a room for interpretation

I think Bowen's theory is an interesting topic of discussion.

I would like to remind everyone that the topic of this discussion is: Did your ex with BPD traits blame you for the failure of the relationship

You're welcome with starting a new topic or similar topic of discussion re: Bowen's theory.

Having bitten into your thread hijack, allow me to digress back to the topic.

Scapegoating is a central part of the disorder. Beliefs are never divorced from strong emotion and anyone threatening that belief that they are not to blame will be attacked and scapegoated. They have such a negative self-view and such a harsh superego that they see failure as an indictment of one’s entire being.

I was also blamed for the demise of our relationship. We both trigger each other and brought unresolved emotional material to the surface so I owe at least 50 percent of that while not being responsible for her shady behaviour(multiple types of infidility for example)

Briefly, I do believe the theory holds water. In some cases. Through therapy and introspection, I've seen some of it in myself. But overall I know that's not the key to what went wrong in the r/s. For one thing, there are levels of deep dishonesty coming from pwBPD that trick us into thinking we're in a similar space as our partners, at least until the light begins to really come in through the cracks. I don't believe many of us were, beneath the surface, looking for someone who was an emotional mess because we were disordered/etc. ourselves. If Boris and Skip were 'immature' at the time, OK, that makes sense. Good thing they've grown out of it, and are here to add encouragement, opinions, facts... .It leaves me wondering, getting back to what the thread is about as Mutt pointed out, if they were also blamed for their relationships not working, and how they handled/processed it.

My exwife who I divorced 15 years ago blamed me for everything, of course. Then she marries an alcoholic and he ends up hitting her and treating my kids badly and then she marries another guy and divorces him in 4 years. And guess what? She proclaims that she is "done with men." She is now a psychic. Feelings = Facts. Feelings = Facts. That stuff will drive a rational man insane... .

Same here. After being accused of cheating again (projection I believe, because I for sure know I sure didn't cheat) and her getting physically and verbally abusive and telling me to get out of her house and taking my key she later said she didn't know why I left, she never wanted me out of her life. Later I would get texts or voicemail raging/crying asking what she did to deserve this.

It was like she completely forgot all the stuff she did or said to me that was bad and so she didn't understand why I didn't want to be with her. When I questioned how she can do and say the things she does and call it love there was no reply to that. Total lack of responsibility for anything other than cursory apologies when it seemed to suit her.

She also had a need to put things back the way they were, almost like it was a way to alter history. The first time and worst time she got physical she broke a necklace I've worn for almost 30 years and ripped a work shirt at the same time - not to mention biting me and scratching my face. The next day she asked if she did that to my face, and seemed to feel sorry when I said yes. She also HAD to leave the house and immediately take my necklace to get it fixed and seemed anxious until I got it back and had it on my neck. Then all was well - until the next episode anyway. It was weird. She also kept wanting to sew up my shirt. To me, I never wanted to wear that shirt again - painful reminder of one of the most shocking experiences I've ever had but she never wanted to acknowledge anything. Her apologies were always worded in such a way as to NOT take responsibility -  "I'm sorry if I ever hurt you" when I said yes, you did, it was glossed over or the subject was changed.

She did say at one point that she knows she needs to talk to someone about how she treats others - but then I heard she's said that before and like yours, the help was never sought.

I guess I have a hard time getting my head around the blame, just the view that it's all my fault and nothing she did was ever really that bad, just who she was, and it's my fault for not being able to accept it. Maybe there's truth in that, however where's the ownership of their part of the problem? There is none from what I've seen. It must be too shaming to admit they did anything wrong.

Yes my ex pinned everything on me, it was awful.

"Maybe we could of got back together in a few months if we missed eachother but you've made sure that's not a possibility anymore".

Half way through our relationship I started to realise that my ex was continually blaming me for everything. I sat down with her one night and said "can you stop blaming me?"

I can't remember exactly what she said but it was basically "no i can't"

Even then I said to her that I feared for the relationship

Great line, Soar: 


lol  Love your honesty!  Yet a pw/BPD doesn't work that way . . .   :)

LuckyJim

Mine blamed the breakup on my mental health issues . . . which are incidentally far less significant than his.

I asked him about his previous relationship, because he talked about it so much.  He claimed that his previous partner was basically a con artist who took advantage of him in a variety of different ways.  They got engaged after knowing each other for ten days.

Me:  ":)o you feel like you have any responsibility for what happened?"

Him:  "No, absolutely not.  I was the victim.  I wouldn't have done anything different."

In his mind, the whole objective was to just date people who weren't evil.

My story is actually pretty frustrating. For the entirety of the relationship I was blamed for everything. The things I did, the things she did (and then would blame me for them) and sometimes (often actually) for the things I didn't even do (I was accused of looking at other women nonstop). Literally anything that would set her off (and that would be 99% of the things around us) was pinned to me and I was the sole reason why our relationship sucked.

Until I broke up with her.

Then all of a sudden I get messages where "she is to blame for everything" and "everything is her fault". Give me a god damn break, if I heard that during the relationship at least once I would feel so much pressure lifted from me... .

Yep my exBPDgf blamed me for everything, and it definitely had to do with her feelings. Whatever she felt she would associate with her surroundings or the most important people in her life. In a way she really couldn't help blaming other people , its kind of like her feelings were so intense she couldn't handle them and shifted them onto the people close to her.

The last thing she said to me reslly showed how immature her thinking was and that she blamed me for everything:

" You know what's funny? I was in this exact same situation a year ago"

Haha and thats my fault right... .

Nope. My exBPDbf blamed himself for the failure of the relationship, mostly. He was full of self-blame. Now, I got blamed for plenty of stuff during the relationship. But he blamed himself for the way it ended up.

A few months after the breakup, we talked a little bit, and he said that "we would have destroyed each other" (which I definitely agree with) and left it at being no one's fault. He was always kind and weirdly supportive when we talked after the breakup, and he never split me back or said bad things about me to mutual friends or coworkers.

Who knows what he says behind closed doors about me, though. 

Personally, I thought Skip's analogy was apt. Having self-esteem and self-worth issues is emotional immaturity. I have little experience with Bowen's works, but my understanding is that "emotional maturity" is a term for an ages-old concept (what Aristotle called being "virtuous". An emotionally mature person has developed self-awareness, self-confidence, a sense of responsibility and accountability, empathy, healthy control of their emotions, and a clear idea of their values and needs. Being emotionally immature isn't a bad thing - it just means there's work to be done in one or more of those areas. :)

I blew up at my exBPD and pretty much vented at him about how much work I was doing for the relationship because I cared about HIM and how he was pushing me to my limit, and making me physically ill.

He called this "emotional abuse."

I guess you could look at it that way, if it were manipulation.  Thing is, it was all fact.

Twelve years post divorce from my BPD exH,   only spoke with him once in last 4 years (we still had a minor child).  Notwithstanding, he continues to blame me for everything that is apparently wrong with his life.  It's not you, it is them.  Just move on, that is all you can do. 

SavannahCat,

   Welcome back.  I went back through your posts, it looks like you are divorced for 12 years now.  Do you know, or can your share if your child / children have emotional / mental health issues?

   My uBPDw, blamed me for everything 4 years ago.  Her therapists have been good and have helped her realize some of her contributions too, even a year ago she could not do this, and it was all my fault.  For those who have issues, can learn to shift their perceptions with a lot of therapy - my wife is the exception, not the rule.

   Take care.

SD

At the very end yes she blamed me. The gaslighting of me being jealous and not her was the hardest one. She would send the most vile messages whilst I’m at work about me cheating. I never did cheat but I caught her twice.

Whats weird is that during the relationship which lasted 12 years she used to accept blame only when it was blatantly obvious, like a lie, but even then she would scream Im  “overwhelming” her and throw a tantrum (pulling her hair etc) then once it got too much I would attempt to leave the house and she would threaten suicide.

My BPD ex very rarely apologized during our 25 year relationship. I was always the one apologizing, profusely. The only occasions when she'd apologize and own fault was when both of the following two conditions were fulfilled 1. it was about something very minor (e.g. her acting irritably toward me), and 2. if I hadn't pointed it out first. Even when those conditions were fulfilled, apologies from her were rare. She'd often be furious at me when I'd done absolutely nothing wrong. And she blamed the breakup on me (i.e. after she started an affair with a new guy and then dumped me). She'll portray herself as having no choice (completely rationalizing/justifying her actions). In fairness, I do have my own mental health issues (from a traumatic childhood), and she certainly had some legitimate grievances. But trying to be as objective as possible, I would say I was responsible for at most 1/3 to 1/4 of the problems between us.

After the breakup, two years ago, she wanted to retain me as essentially a platonic husband/friend (while she continued her affair with the new guy, who is married and living in another city). I've recently imposed boundaries to minimize contact with her. But I've been a mensch in continuing to provide support and love to her son (my stepson), who is struggling terribly with addiction. She will now apologize somewhat more frequently - even, on occasion, for something substantial. And now, when talking about the demise of our relationship, she will take some ownership, but not in the sense of normal accountability/responsibility. For example, she will say that because of how she was victimized in her own traumatic childhood, she was unable to trust me more, and that contributed to our problems.