BPDFamily.com

Hi Everyone,

I’m sharing my story because I need support, clarity, and connection with others who have experienced the chaos of loving someone with Cluster B traits. I want to be seen, heard, and understood, and I hope that by sharing my experience, others may recognize red flags and protect themselves before it’s too late.

I have only been married for less than two years, and the trouble started from the very beginning. I overlooked all the red flags because I truly love this man and believed that he truly loved me.

When I finally spoke to a therapist and described everything I’d been living through, he told me that my husband shows strong signs of Cluster B personality disorders — including Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality traits, Antisocial tendencies, and Histrionic traits. He also told me something that shattered me: that a person like this is incapable of feeling or giving real love.

Even after the therapist said this, I continued to be with him. From the very beginning, he had told me he had been sexually molested as a child and had endured great trauma. As someone who is naturally empathic, I felt deeply for him. I stayed not just because I wanted to help him, but because I loved him deeply, and I believed that he loved me deeply. I thought that through my care and support, I could help him — that I could show him love in a way that might heal some of the pain he carried. My empathy and love made me vulnerable, and he preyed on that vulnerability from day one.

The Secretive Nights and Disappearances

He regularly disappeared late at night and throughout entire weekends, claiming he was “working” or “on jobs.” He would vanish for hours, sometimes days, only returning in the early hours of the morning. And every time I asked where he was or requested his location, he turned it back on me — accusing me of being “controlling,” “insecure,” or “invading his privacy.”

Meanwhile, those were the nights and weekends he was out entertaining other women, booking accommodation for them at hotels, buying them gifts, gambling away the money that I worked for, and living an entirely separate life behind my back.


The Cycle: Sweet, Kind, Loving… Until I Said No

He had two personalities:
   1.   The sweet, loving, affectionate version — the one who appeared when he wanted money.
   2.   The monster — the one who emerged the second I questioned him, confronted him, or hesitated to give him money.

When the “kind” version didn’t work, he switched instantly into rage:
   •   He broke things.
   •   He screamed.
   •   He threatened to kill himself.
   •   He threatened to drive into a wall.
   •   He threatened to hurt himself until I gave in.

He emotionally blackmailed me every single time.

He accused me of cheating, even though I never gave him a reason to suspect anything. I now understand that this was always a deflection tactic — a way to shift the focus away from his lies, his actions, and his manipulation.


The Financial Exploitation

I am now in financial ruin because of him.

He constantly needed money — every day, sometimes multiple times a day. He always had a dramatic story to justify it:
   •   His life was in danger.
   •   Someone was coming after him.
   •   He owed dangerous people money.
   •   Someone was going to break his legs.
   •   Someone was going to kill him.

When I began to question these stories, suddenly he said MY life was in danger, and that he was trying to “protect” me. Anything to create panic. Anything to control me. Anything to force me to hand over more money.

And where did the money go?
Not to debts.
Not to emergencies.
Not to “jobs.”
Not to anything real.

It went to drugs, to gambling, or to meet and entertain his girlfriends.

He also stole my jewelry and valuables, along with many other things, to support his addictions and lifestyle — the drugs, the gambling, and the women. Nothing was sacred, nothing was off-limits. Everything I owned became a tool for his lies and manipulation.

The Disappearances After Getting Money

The pattern was always the same: the moment the money arrived, I didn’t hear from him again. Not a word until he needed more — which was almost every single day. He kept me on a leash of constant crises, always dangling some emergency, some danger, some threat, until I paid. Then he vanished again to gamble, to entertain other women, or to feed whatever addiction he was hiding. I only existed when he needed money. The rest of the time, I was ignored, lied to, and discarded.


The Betrayal

He swore he would never cheat on me because he claimed he had been cheated on in all his previous relationships. That was a lie.

There were other women.
There were hotels.
There were gifts.
There was even an OnlyFans video of him with another woman — and he still had the audacity to tell me “nothing happened.”

He also sold and pawned anything he could steal from me, including all my jewelry and valuables belonging to my parents.



His Public Image vs Reality

He wants everyone to think he’s:
   •   the good guy,
   •   the helpful rescuer,
   •   the man with money,
   •   the hero in everyone else’s story.

But behind closed doors, he is:
   •   a pathological liar,
   •   a manipulator,
   •   a gambler,
   •   a drug user and dealer,
   •   emotionally abusive,
   •   financially abusive,
   •   psychologically destructive.

He is the villain who pretends to be the hero.



Where I Am Now

I have taken out a protection order.
I am moving forward with divorce.

He has said that he will “never let me go.”

And I know exactly why:

Because without me, he loses his cash cow.
He loses his gambling money.
He loses the money he uses to impress and entertain other women.
He loses the financial supply he has drained from me since the beginning.

But I am done.
I am choosing myself now.
And I am telling my story because for the first time, I’m finally seeing him for what he is.

Anonymous Lee,

Thanks for sharing your story. You have a lot of courage to leave and divorce him.

It sounds like my life with my late ex-husband. He hooked me with a story of child sexual abuse too. Knowing how he was during the course of the marriage, I doubt the veracity of that story. I'm a victim of SA myself so I don't say that lightly or believe sexual abuse of children doesn't occur. He showed no effects of it like most people do.

He stole money from me, refused to work and cheated on me. I didn't see it then but he was dependent on an otc drug that ruined his health.

I hope you have some records of his squandering of joint assets. It could reduce his financial award when the divorce is granted.

I'd also encourage you not to give up any financial assets you can keep.  My husband relied on the pity play about money. They tend to do that.  I had no empathy left to give and didn't care. You want to stop the financial bleeding and get him out of your life.

Good for you.  Sorry you went through all this; it's awful.  Hope you can move on and recover, and experience some relief and joy for having survived it. 

I think it's important to learn from this; don't let it get you too down though.  You had the misfortune to meet a serial user, and didn't have the experience you needed to protect yourself from him.  Hopefully, going forward, you do. 

Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry you're going through this and we're all heartbroken for you...because we know exactly what it feels like.  We've all been there with a puzzled look on our faces.

I believe your therapist is wrong- BPDs love deeply.  But they're also so afraid of rejection or abandonment, they're quick to seek new relationships instead of actually digging down and working through things.  Your story could be my story, even though I was married for 23 years.  The same patterns emerged.  Over time, I have realized that my BPD ex wife loved me, but at the same time she was incapable of being the constant in my life.

Please continue to ask hard questions and we will give you hard answers.  There's no template for healing after a relationship like this; everyone is different and it could take months, years, or decades before you're truly "over it".  I'm going to give you the long-term answers up front though, the stuff it would take you years to realize on your own.

Are you ready?

1)  This is not your fault.  You husband is mentally ill and that's where all his dysfunction comes from.  No matter who he married, or what they did together, they'd probably end up exactly where you are right now.  So hear me here, this is not about you...it's about mental illness and a person doing anything they possibly can to feel normal.

2)  This is not completely your husband's fault either.  His brain is wired differently and he's constantly seeking praise to feel like he fits in.  But he doesn't fit in, he's mentally ill and people can't relate to him, so he's always seeking the next thing to fill the voids.  And that creates a destructive pattern that shows up over and over again as he burns bridges and believes the other person is always at fault.

3)  If we combine #'s 1 and 2, this is not your fault and it's not his either.  He needs therapy, medications, and a complete lifestyle change, but he'd have to admit his problems first and actively work to change.  That's literally the hardest thing in the world for him to do, so he suffers in silence (or sometimes rage, as you said).  He's sick and that deserves compassion.

Now, you're not ready for any of those yet; they'll come in different seasons of your life as you lean to cope and move on from this.  But please read them once more and try to prove me right or wrong over time.

I wish you luck and again, I'm so sorry.  Please feel free to ask questions, vent, or whatever you need.

You were married only a couple years.  Such a short marriage ought to reduce the risk to near zero of him successfully seeking spousal support.  Count your blessings.  You could have been married for longer before you sought help and put the pieces together.  You could have had a child or two with your stbEx and that would have been a life-long ordeal.  As it is, though he can't stop a divorce, he can obstruct and delay in a variety of ways, so be prepared.

I was clueless and thought my then-spouse would be less unhappy if we had a child together.  I had hoped she would rejoice watching a child discover life.  I was so wrong.  Rather, she pulled away from me and obsessed over the baby.  At the time I could only guess that she couldn't love both of us so she chose "her" child and discarded me.  (I later came to realize it also could have been that once I became a father then she likened me to her abusive stepfather.)

That was two decades ago.  There was a huge amount of conflict and allegations.  Our child is grown now.  She is attached to our son.  But me?  I haven't even so much as touched her in all these years.  Though when she's visiting her son - our remaining connection - I can still trigger her.

Ensure you don't put yourself at risk of intimacy or pregnancy with him at any time going forward, no matter what.  That way you can make a clean break from him going forward.  You can and should take responsibility for yourself and your future. |iiii

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