BPDFamily.com

I am nearly 4 years into a 2nd marriage to someone that I believe demonstrates BPD traits.  After the past weekend I just need someone to talk to and help me on how to move forward with this situation.  This past weekend was so incredibly traumatic I am having a hard time functioning.  I'm not ready to get into all the details yet, but let me just say that I have got to figure out how to deal with this including the potential of ending the relationship.

Thanks

 

You are in the right place to learn all there is to know about living within a BPD relationship. You are not alone in dealing with this.

How long have you suspected this, and what are the aspects that are causing you the most concern?

Ending a relationship is a choice. There are many choices, the important thing is to get an educated handle on what you are facing, what you can do, and what you cant.

It probably feels like everything you do just seems to make things worse, learning to alter that is the first step.

Waverider

There has been a pattern of completely erratic behavior for years.  Looking back it started before we got married.  There was a huge red flag the night we got engaged that I ignored.  Once we got married any form of intimacy stopped.  Again I noticed some of this starting before we got married but overlooked it and then completely stopped after the marriage.

She is an incredibly angry person with wild mood swings.  She can be incredibly cruel and I'm at a point where I can't take the abuse anymore.  Over the past several months things have started coming to a head.  I gave up on any form of intimacy nearly a year ago and of course now she's interested and tells me I'm being cruel.  Everything gets turned around on me. 

This past weekend an argument started Saturday afternoon that quickly escalated to an extreme level.  What made this one different was the direct attacks on me.  Saying that I have a terrible personality, I'm no fun to ever be around, and on and on.  She has successfully over the years really beat up my self esteem to a point that I've begun really questioning myself.  The pattern is continual arguments over small things that usually relate to me or how I do something.  She has a very tactful way of destroying your self worth over time.  However this weekend the attacks were much more direct. 

Since my kids were here I left with them for a while to get away from the situation.  When I got back she had gone to bed by around 6 pm and I never saw her again till the next morning. 

Sunday morning as she was leaving the house with no explanation of where she was going, I called her and asked that this all be handled differently.  That the kids are here and I'd appreciate protecting them.  She went crazy on the phone saying I was the cruelest person she'd ever met, that she hated me and was tired of having to explain my behavior to everyone else.  She then stated that she was coming back to the house.  I told her on the phone to not come back and make a huge scene or I would have the police remove her.  That set her off even more.

So she gets back to the house sitting in the car in the driveway attacking me then all of sudden starts screaming at me " I need help. Take me some where, take me somewhere, i need help".  I didn't know what to make of the entire situation.  I sat in the car with her for a while as she began to talk about how all of this is her and not me and that she is so sorry for how she's treated me.  Problem is this has happened hundreds of times.  The exact pattern over and over.  After sitting with her for a while and allowing her to calm down I went back in to check on the kids who were in the house the whole time this is going on. 

Shortly thereafter she comes up to our bedroom where I've just gotten out the shower, hugs me says she's sorry and says we should all go to the park.  Then we go about the day (or at least she does) as if nothing had happened.  In the meantime I'm completely shell shocked from the experience and still feel that way today.

My sense of self and self worth is at an incredible low point.  I'm exhausted  from the entire situation.  I feel like I'm doing something wrong but then I play back what happened in my mind and I know I didn't really.  I don't know how someone can be so incredibly cruel and then just go on with life like nothing has even happened.  I can't keep dealing with this.  I'm a successful business person who has overcome lots of challenges and worked hard to be who I am.  But all this is just tearing me apart inside.  I hate it most for my kids.  Their mother has a diagnosed PD and I realize now that I just repeated the same thing with my current wife.  Had to be the hero and save her.  Problem is people with this disorder cannot be saved by someone else.  They just pull you into their personal hell and tear away at your soul.  I just don't know what to do at this point.  She will start back up soon saying I'm holding grudges and not doing anything to make the relationship better while completely ignoring how much damage she has done to me.  I have to protect myself from the situation somehow but I am struggling to just keep myself together.  I don't know what to do at this point.

I'm sorry that you are going through this. Your description sounds like many of the things so many of us have/are going through also. I think one of the hardest parts of living with a pwBPD is that once their emotions are over they can move on as if nothing happened. But for us nons, we are left destroyed, confused, and hurt by their words or actions. We don't get over it quite so easily. Our emotions last a little longer and over time build up little bits of resentment.

You did good by leaving the situation and even setting boundaries by telling her you would have her removed. If she had not stopped would you have really followed through?

I highly suggest that you start reading the lessons on the right side of the page. ---------------> There is a lot of info that can help you begin to take care of you, change the way you respond to her, and begin to understand your own behavior.

Like the others I would like to say welcome the group! 

I like others know what you're going through because we've been there ... .we've experienced similar things that you have. As Chillbean has suggested you've set some boundaries and you've needed to maintain those boundaries or like a 3 yr old toddler they will constantly test you to see how weak you really are. And I like her encourage you to read the references here and seek out professional assistance to help you navigate through your emotions & thoughts.

Here are some definitions of what BPD is and just how serious the mental illness is.

Mayo Clinic defines BPD as ... .

Cluster B personality disorders

Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic, overly emotional or unpredictable thinking or behavior. They include antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. It's not necessary to exhibit all the signs and symptoms listed for a disorder to be diagnosed.Borderline personality disorder

Impulsive and risky behavior, such as having unsafe sex, gambling or binge eating

Unstable or fragile self-image

Unstable and intense relationships

Up and down moods, often as a reaction to interpersonal stress

Suicidal behavior or threats of self-injury

Intense fear of being alone or abandoned

Ongoing feelings of emptiness

Frequent, intense displays of anger

Stress-related paranoia that comes and goes.

BPD as defined by John Hopkins Medical ... .

For people without a personality disorder, personality traits are patterns of thinking, reacting, and behaving that remain relatively consistent and stable over time. People with a personality disorder display more rigid thinking and reacting behaviors that make it hard for them to adapt to a situation. These behaviors often disrupt their personal, professional, and social lives.Examples of dramatic/erratic (Cluster B) personality disorders

Borderline personality disorder. People with this disorder are not stable in their perceptions of themselves, and have difficulty keeping stable relationships. Moods may also be inconsistent, but never neutral. Their sense of reality is always seen in "black and white." People with borderline personality disorder often feel as though they lacked a certain level of nurturing while growing up. As a result, they constantly seek a higher level of caretaking from others as adults. This may be achieved through manipulation of others, leaving them often feeling empty, angry, and abandoned, which may lead to desperate and impulsive behavior.

Narcissistic personality disorder. People with this disorder present severely overly-inflated feelings of self-worth, grandness, and superiority over others. People with narcissistic personality disorder often exploit others who fail to admire them. They are overly sensitive to criticism, judgment, and defeat.

BPD as defined my a Harvard Medical study ... .

BPD is believed to emerge from an interaction between genes and environment. The major twin study showed that genes accounted for 69% of the variance in diagnostic concordance. This concordance rate is similar to that found in bipolar disorder and stronger than rates for depression or anxiety. Functional MRI studies of BPD patients show abnormalities in the amygdala (an almond-sized and shaped brain structure linked with a person's mental and emotional state) and the prefrontal cortex (a part of the brain associated with planning, reasoning, solving problems and regulating thoughts, feelings and behaviors).Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe mental illness seen in approximately 20% of inpatient and outpatient clinical samples and between 1.2% and 5.9% of the general population. It can co-occur with other disorders, but studies of its heritability, diagnostic validity/reliability, and of specific treatments indicate that it is best considered an independent disorder that negatively affects the patient's treatment response to comorbid disorders, particularly mood disorders.

Borderline Personality Disorder is severe and can be lethal, with an estimated 65-70% of individuals making at least one suicide attempt and 10% dying by suicide. Persons with BPD are high utilizers of treatment, especially emergency departments and inpatient hospitalizations - the most expensive forms of psychiatric treatment.


As everyone has suggested, come back here as often as you need to or WANT too and ask questions ... .seek out guidance ... .but in the end ... .the choice of what path you take is YOURS to make!

J

The ability to turn high intensity emotions on and off while you are left feeling wounded and "holding grudges" is because pwBPD do not work through their emotions, they haven't really gotten over them. This is why they can struggle to "grieve'. They simply shelve the emotion (turn it off), but it is not soothed so that when it is pulled back out of the memory to validate some other later feeling it is just as forceful as it was when it was shelved. Except the facts are rewritten by the emotion of the now.

It is these somewhat distorted, but forceful recollections that cause us to doubt ourselves, and believe their promises and plans, as there is often enough truth under all the smoke and mirrors. That we give to much credit.

relearning to believe in  ourselves is a major starting foundation. We have been exposed to so much dysfunction has become our new "normal" our benchmarks have been misaligned. Often by isolation from true normality