BPDFamily.com

Hello, I’m so glad I found this site. Hopefully someone can help me find guidance on my next steps & ways to navigate life moving forward with my fiancé or if I should get out of this relationship and not marry someone with BPD.

My mother has BPD & I endured both a verbally and physically abusive childhood. She never got help or admitted to having BPD, but I’ve been to therapy myself & understand the trauma she caused me & decided to keep her out of my life.

I’ve known my fiance as a friend for about 7 years & we became romantic & got engaged recently. When he is not splitting/raging then I couldn’t possibly ask for a better or more loving partner or human in general.

When we first started having minor issues, seemingly out of the blue, it confused me & then the pattern felt familiar to my childhood and the way my mother would just change out of the blue so I know he has BPD.

He will apologize for saying untrue horrific nasty things about me, but I’m not sure I want to marry him and stick around to deal with these chaotic and random episodes of putting me down & mean comments that are unprovoked. We can be having the best day then something random will set him off.

By now I’ve learned to just walk away from the situation and not engage until he’s gone back to “normal”. The thing is, we currently live in different countries. I’m supposed to move there later this year but I’m not sure I want to live my life with this chaos. Does anyone have any advice on if it can work if we have the right tools? I do actually love him, but I also stopped speaking to my BPD mother for peace in my life so I don’t know how it is with a romantic partner vs a family member.

Thanks in advance for any help,


sarizzlewestcst

hi sarizzlewestcst, and *welcome*


if bpd is anything, it is big feelings + a great difficulty, or inability, to regulate them. it is a lack of adult coping/regulation mechanisms. a comparison youll often see in the literature is that its like having emotional third degree burns.

loving someone with bpd isnt easy. its a special needs relationship. for it to thrive, it takes great patience, great strength, a strong support system, and great coping skills.

even with those things, it means that it will always be challenging, and that there will likely always be storms. if you choose this relationship, you should do so with eyes wide open, and a full sense of whats at stake.

with the skills we learn here, we learn to weather those storms, and ideally, they become less frequent, less damaging, and we create a healthier environment where both repair and trust can exist. to what extent really personally depends on our partners, ourselves, and our unique relationships.

this is a good place to start; it really lays it all out there: https://www.bpdfamily.com/content/what-does-it-take-be-relationship