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Does anyone feel that despite in the face of overwhelming evidence they find it hard to believe their pwBPD actually has BPD?

It's ridiculous, the insurmountable evidence is there but something inside me just can't fully accept that this is the case.  I'm guessing it's because she's high functioning.

Being in a relationship with individuals where there are many many twists and turns leave many doubts in our minds. My ex was not diagnosed but whilst I accept relationships don't always work the experiences we've had are extreme. My exs step father told me she had a history of poor behaviour,always made a problem bigger than it was and I also know after we went to the hospital after she claimed to have extreme stomach pains she had been to the doctors previously for low mood. Of course none of this says BPD but it shows a pattern and my gut says something wasn't right,unable to hold stable friendships,would create dramas,many lies and false allegations. I don't know the answers but we know our truths and this is my truth,it's the only explanation I can unravel and try to understand in order to move forward in life

Hi WuTanger100,

I want to touch a little on what Little oak mentioned with diagnosis. My ex is not diagnosed and I did have a friend that went missing several years ago that was diagnosed schizophrenic. He met my ex wife and was a family friend. He coped fairly well on medication and he did have hallucinations a few times while medicated but he was really hard on himself. When he wasn't on medication it was heartbreaking with the delusional thinking and hallucinations. My point is  that he had a diagnosis and his mental illness was something that was very clear with how he would describe fantasies. BPD is an invisible disorder and the acting out is directed at loved ones and it's the push /pull behavior that is crazy making behavior for us.

I struggled for a few months with accepting that my ex wife really suffered from mental illness. I didn't want to believe that someone that I loved so much has a serious personality disorder. We're not professionals and cannot diagnose but I felt like "borderline personality disorder" made all of pieces the puzzles fit with a profoundly confusing experience with a loved one. Mental illness never came to mind. I didn't clue in that there's something fundamentally wrong in our relationship until I noticed how I was always wrong. I'm the type of person that looks at things in a logical sense and her blaming and altering events left me second doubting myself.

BPD is complex and I think that it's important to learn the psychopathology to depersonalize our exe's behaviors. I'm divorced and have been out of the relationship for nearly three years and I co-parent with my ex partner and BPD is a persecution complex. A consistent pattern that she displays is she'll rescue the kids and cast me in the role of persecutor, blame shifts and projects often. She's not diagnosed but she chronically displays traits of the borderline personality type. I had that same self doubt, I was also in denial and it was understanding the behaviors that showed me a clear pattern and often I can guess what her likely action / reaction will be.

Do you feel the uncertainty is because she's not diagnosed or that your heart hasn't caught up with your head or a combination of both?

Ditto to everything Mutt said.

Additionally, for me, there was/is a tendency to preconceive what mental illness is. For example, when I was a kid the preconception of an alcoholic was an old man in the alley way, wearing a trench coat and bumming money.  I was shocked when I learned that someone in a suit and tie could be alcoholic.  I kind of didn't believe that for awhile either.

Further, there were logical observations about her that made it hard to conclude she was M.I.:

1) She taught me a lot about myself.  How could someone with "mental illness" be kind and understanding and teach me?.  In my mind it could not be.

2) She could function normally in the world and people gravitated toward her, another sign of stability and balance, not MI.

3) She was super organized - arent mentally ill people supposed to be disheveled?   At least I thought so.

I know a lot of what I said may sound judgmental.  It is less that and more overcoming the stereotypes that I developed from watching tv and listening to parents and older siblings. 

Understanding BP requires some reorganizing of our own understandings, not easy to do - especially when we believed our loved ones were reading and understanding the same script as us.

Yes, I question it all the time.  That said, the traits are there even if they aren't as prevalent or as severe as some people report on this forum.

I struggle all the time between trying to convince myself that maybe she isn't that bad and I should have given her more latitude.  Then I remember some of the things she does and I ask myself, is that what I really want to live with for the rest of my life ... .or at least until she discards/divorces me.

When you are in love with someone it is crazy the things you are willing to overlook, even at my age.  I've spent the entire day wrestling with whether or not she lied to me about being in a new relationship because I want a chance to reconcile with her.  Then in almost the same minute I remember how nothing ever really changed during the course of our relationship in spite of repeatedly talking about it.

To put it simply, it sucks a$$.  I want her back, but I don't want her back, but she has moved on, but has she? ARGHHH

I questioned it also. What seals the deal for me is if she doesn't have a personality disorder then how did she manage to take me to the brink of a nervous breakdown.

Not all the behaviour is big and visible. The more damaging stuff was the little things that acted like an acid drip slowly eating away at me. The gut feelings that something was wrong that you couldn't put your finger on.

I think the hard bit is that taken individually there actions may not be seen as that bad. Its only when you put them all together you can see just how much was going on.

Wutanger

I'm coming from the pserpective of someone who is choosing to stay .

My pwBPD thinks he has outgrown BPD and that he no longer has any traits of the disorder however I experience them every day. People told me it didn't matter whether or not he accepted he had these traits, it mattered how I dealt with them. My pwBPD is also high functioning in the outside world.

Does what I'm saying make sense ?

It's partially both but mainly my heart hasn't caught up with my head.  I keep replaying the year long tape in my head.  I've got a pretty damn good memory (which is a gift and a curse) and I can remember tiny little comments or things she did.  As the days roll on the FOG is lifting and I can see how in congruent her actions were with her words and how it was nowhere near a normal relationship.  Although I'm not a mental health professional and I can't diagnose it's getting clearer and clearer even from a layman's perspective that she is not mentally well.  She came across as beautiful, sexy, alluring and confident at first but over time that image faded.  I vividly remember times where she was completely depressed and filled with self-loathing where she made comments that are so key to BPD.

I've read quite a few of your other posts man and it sounds like you and I have had very similar experiences (same girl? I joke).  I completely agree with you.  I have had this constant see-saw in my head. One side I think I want her back and I try to convince myself that she isn't bad and I should have done something differently.  But the other side says I put a lot of effort into this relationship and she completely trampled on me and there is no way in hell I want her back.

joeramabeme - Cracking point too.  Stereotypes play a massive part in our interpretation of mental illness.  It really is a silent illness as I'm coming to understand more and more.  It's just so odd that they can function in some parts of their lives but emotions go out the window in relationships.

Enlighten Me - Again, the 'acid drip' analogy is spot on.  It's only when you look back you can see the corrosion that was done to the relationship.  I went back through the calendar.  I mark little day trips or events we went to (I'm sad like that!) and it's uncanny how a few weeks or sometimes days after having a loving, close moment we would argue and fallout in a massive way, usually over something trivial.  I now directly attribute that to her creating distance due to getting to close.

WuTanger, Not that you need any more validation but this resonated with me.  I used to tell my ex that every time we had the car going straight down the road she would jerk the wheel and put the car in a ditch.  I too have retrospectively concluded that this was her way of avoiding intimacy. 

It has been 4 months since she moved out and a couple of 3-week periods of NC.  I can tell you that as that time has passed my doubts about her having strong BPD traits have diminished greatly and seem to be in direct proportion to my FOG lifting.

Hang in there.  Message me if you want to run any ideas by about whether or not you think your ex is BPD style.