BPDFamily.com

Meeting the woman of my dreams, year 1
My amazing crazy journey started when I went for work to Latin America in 2012.  At that time I was 30 years old and finishing my PhD. In Latin America I met this amazing beautiful, super intelligent, innocent  and sweet girl, just on the street, and I was immediately crazy in love. She was still finishing her medical residency and had to do 1 more year. During this year I went 5 times to Latin America  and she came 2 times to the Europe. For me it was immediately clear that I found my soulmate, I had never been so in love. After 1 year she came to me to the Europe, after a very intense search for a perfect PhD position for her. I was happiest man on the earth, the most beautiful women I have ever seen came to live with me.

The second year
As I am Europe  and my wife was from Latin American, we had speak English and we had obviously some cultural differences. During our relation I blamed the cultural differences, and the fact that we didn’t speak in our mother tongue for the “strange” things that happened between us. She told me that she had 2 major depression episodes in her life and told me that she therefore was using medication to prevent another major depression.  Also, she had therapy for this and to manage the cultural differences and helping her to handle to new work environment.  For me this was okay, both the drugs and therapy didn’t raise any question marks.  I thought that she used valid reasons and that this was probably “normal” in Latin America . Now looking back there were already in the first months some signs of borderline. For example, after 2 months she totally panicked and was crying on the bed while calling with the therapist. She asked me if I wanted to please talk to the therapist and I did. The therapist asked me if I was planning to break-up or kick her out of the house. To me this was such a ridiculous question that I couldn’t even believe she asked it. She was the love of my life, so of course not. I explained it to myself as some kind of miscommunication/translation issue and didn’t pay any further attention to it and my girlfriend calmed down and everything went back to normal. Looking backwards we might had a small argument or I might have might a joke or something like this which triggered her feeling that I would leave her. Another thing that came to my mind that happened during the first months is that she thought really bad about her ex-boyfriend, she told me she afraid he would come to the Europe  and would hurt her. When she broke up with him  he tried to commit suicide, but this also didn’t ring any alarm bell with me... I was blinded by the love.

The third to fifth year
For me our relation was perfect, we never had any fight. But looking back some strange happened during the years.  For example, she didn’t make much friends. Actually she only had 1 good friend, she and I blamed it on the different culture, the “coldness” of the European  people. Anyhow, she had one  really good friend with who she drove together with work and to me she always told me that this girl was amazing. But one day she got really angry with this girl over a small argument and from one to the other she broke all contact with her “best friend”. It was like she didn’t exist anymore. According to my wife (we got married after 4 years and bought a house)  it was because she was too aggressive towards her. Again I thought this was cultural. Similarly, she freaked out pretty often about aggressive  work emails she got, but then when I read the emails they seemed perfectly normal. She used to call me often at work, completely panicking over very small issues. I told her please do not to call me anymore at my work and that I wouldn’t answer but after she called several times I always started to worry and answered anyhow. Also, she was often all of a sudden very angry to other people but never directly to them. She would curse them in the house and be really upset, always giving me the feeling that she was really angry with me. Once I confronted her with this and she told me she was not angry with me but I kept feeling this way. What was also strange to me was that one day a colleague could the best and amazing, and a few months later he was a ass and a jerk and this could switch around again in the future. The same goes also for her family members, one moment someone was a ___ (when the person was not around) and the next moment she was hugging the same person like nothing happened. I also confronted her one time with this but she always had an excuse ready as she was also really intelligent. For example, she said I said similar things about my colleagues at work etc. Despite all this I loved her so much, we had plans for children to marry again in Latin America  and we would stay forever together. It was the happiest time of life.  I also helped her with everything, from writing emails to helping her with her research I did everything for her and I didn’t mind. I actually liked helping her.

The final year
The last year was busy, especially the last 6 months. We were searching for a job for my wife. She often panicked she wouldn’t find a job and her negative and pessimistic view of the world and people didn’t help. During the first years I was always able to stay very positive but during the last 6 months I got also pessimistic and “depressed”. Around the summer my wife got an amazing job offer in from  the USA, I was so happy for her. I started to figuring everything out for us to move there. However, after a view weeks it was clear that it wouldn’t be so easy to obtain a VISA for her, and even more difficult for me. The company she would started working for was a start-up so they didn’t have any experience. I had to hear all the stories from my wife, which were always pessimistic like “I just lost the job”, “I will only get the VISA in October next year” etc. This made me really stressed and insecure as I couldn’t prepare anything, I just didn’t know what to do anymore. At the same time my wife has been crazy busy during the last 1,5 year, we didn’t go together anymore for real holiday (just some very stressed city trips) and my wife was always working from home so the only person she would see was me. During this year she often said I was “mistreating” her. I never really understand what she meant by this because I always did everything she asked and in my view we never had an argument. Except one time when I got sick being abroad for work, didn’t sleep the entire night and had to fly back  resulting in an enormous ear pain. When my wife picked me up 30 minutes too late she was really angry with me saying I always mistreat her etc. At that point I got angry that I said if I was always so bad for her she should just divorce me. This was of course really, really stupid looking backwards but I just couldn’t handle it at this moment. Another stupid thing is that I refused to do couples therapy, which she asked for many times. In my defense, I never saw the need for it, for me the relations was also not good at that moment but with me being very busy with work and studying at the same time for an MBA, my wife finishing her PhD I believed we had a temporarily bad period due to all the stress and everything would be ok once we would both finish everything. I was still so crazy in love with her.

Break up
Two months ago I came home from a work related trip and found a letter in the kitchen from my wife. She left, took all her clothes and went to her parents. I couldn’t believe it the first day and the next day my world collapsed. Even more because she didn’t want any contact for 1 week and blocked me in every possible way. This was the most painful period of my life. After some days I was able to reach her by email and asked if I could talk to her therapist to which she agreed. Talking to her therapist was good and could calm me down a bit but I was totally confused and devastated.

2 months later
I still can hardly sleep at night, but at least her therapist told me that she expected borderline last week based on all the stories I told her. Since than I have been reading a lot about borderline and watched many lectures and videos on youtube and read several stories on this website and I see a lot of similarities. For example, clearly there was a fear of abonnement, there was a very though childhood, her paranoia the anxiousness etc. There are however also some major difference, for example, she could control her anger really well to the person that she was angry with. For example, I never had the feeling we had a fight but according to her she screamed a lot to me (while she never did) and we had many fights. This might be due to the therapy she is already on for >15 years and the medicines she is using, making her able to hide her emotions?

I wrote her a long letter which I send 3 weeks ago telling her my perspective on everything that happened and apologizing for the things I said and that I didn’t realize that this had such a big impact on her (at that time I didn’t expect borderline yet). She send me a message back that she needs time to think and she doesn’t know what she wants (this is also strange in my opinion considering the black and white view of borderline patients). What I do know is that she is still really angry with me blaming me for everything that happened. I started to work again but there is no focus since I cannot really sleep at night, waking up every 30 minutes completely soaked in sweat.  I have the feeling I lost everything:  my future, the love of live, my soulmate. I am still sending her some sweet messages some times per week but I don’t get any response.
I don’t know what to do anymore, I am still so much in love with her. How long should I keep hope? And is there any hope, she already has therapy but doesn’t know yet (at least I think) that she has borderline? Maybe if she get proper therapy everything will be much more manageable and now I know I can also be more careful and adjust accordingly. But this all doesn’t really matter as long as she doesn’t want me back in the first case. Furthermore, she moved now already the USA for her new job while I am still in Europe, living in "our" house.

Hi aMess,

I'm sorry that you are going through such a hard breakup. You say that your W does not have typical BPD. What do you think makes her BPD different than others?

What are you doing for yourself to begin healing, regardless of whether she comes back or not? Self care is very important either way.

Did your W's counselor share anything with you about whether he was going to tell your W about BPD or not?