BPDFamily.com

I'm pretty confident my ex has BPD, but she denies it, we broke up and I have some unanswered questions as well as just need support. Sorry for the long post.

First off is this a normal BPD behavior/cycle? 1. My ex would do something mean, let's say she would insult me in front of people. I wouldn't react much in the moment, maybe leave the conversation, then at the end of the night I would let her know that what she did wasn't OK. She would deny that she had meant it to be mean, it was a joke, even though it was pretty clearly mean comment (condescending voice inflection, no actual joke there) and the people that were there sometimes even ask me "what was that about" later.

After I set the boundary of not doing that in public, she would finally apologize, but you could tell she didn't mean it, and it really appeared that she didn't think she did anything wrong. She even would seem upset that she had to apologize.

Within the next 48 hour she would say 2-3 more mean things in public. Same exact thing. If we hadn't had that conversation where I set boundaries I don't think she would have lashed out again like that.

I would get upset at her again, she would deny it all again. This time it was an accident or jokes, or I talk about myself like this so I didn't realize I couldn't talk about you like this. But, its like "we just talked about this, how could you think this is ok." But once again, it really, really, really felt like she meant what she said. Like she was targeting the boundary I JUST set and yet, I kind of believe her that she actually thinks that she didn't do it.

This cycle would continue until I finally blow a fuse and really come down on her hard, maybe its a 2 day fight, maybe I say something mean back. Then I apologize to her, for losing my composure (while also explaining of course why I lost it). And then the cycle would end for a while.

My big question is "Is she gaslighting me or does she believe it?" because there are many times, where her thinking doesn't "add up" and its not about me, its about some other friend or family member.

My other question is whether this is typical of BPD? Her mom seems to do the same thing with a kind of reality distortion field, but I suspect her mom of BPD as well.

Intergenerational trauma is a real thing. BPD or not, she's likely demonstrating what she knows.

This might help.

https://bpdfamily.com/content/what-borderline-personality-disorder

Innapropriate anger, then pulling back, sounds familiar. It's maddening for sure. Emotional instability. Do you still retain contact?

I mean I've read a lot of BPD, and for the last year of our relationship I was working with a therapist (she has a different one) to implement strategies from "Stop Walking on Eggshells," which I did read.'

We broke up 10 months ago - no contact for 7 months. She was suicidal 3 months ago, so I befriended her to support her at the request of a mutual friend. We ended up as "friends" and were good at it for 2.5 months in the big city, but by accident we ended up in a small holiday town together a month ago. We hung out as friends and she kept treating me poorly in public in front of people (insulting me). After trying to get her to stop and failing, I ended our "friendship" and it was very messy, like breaking up all over again. It's been ~10 days. I blocked her on all the apps, but we can both manage to get barbs through if we want since we are in certain online groups together. Right now it's like we are both posting neutrally to a lot to the same groups to sort of claim them. I should maybe just give them up, but it's frustrating as the groups are around an activity that I care about and introduced her too.