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My boyfriend and I were dating for about 5 months. Out of nowhere due to a miscommunication about our plans for the night, he believes I cheated on him, started to insult me, called me a narcissistic, and says we can never be together unless I admit I lied to him and cheated. I have never done that and no matter how I refuted it, he took it as all lies. We were so in love prior to this and had talked about the future, and i feel things were just starting to become more comfortable between us. Nothing I said helped, he just saw it as more and more evidence that I was a liar. I tried to empathize with his fear that I would leave him, tried to go through my whole day with him, tried to reassure him of my love, but he refused to believe anything but that I made up a story to deceive him and hide that I was with someone else. He called me manipulative and said many more insulting things. I am not that kind of person and have never done anything like that. Ive been single most of my life. I can understand a lack of trust being part of the disorder, but I just feel so hurt and lost that hed even think Id do that to him. He said he'd block me and won't even talk to me now. How do I cope? What can I do? Why did this happen? Can anything change this?

Hi Laurenzen and *welcome*

What a painful situation you've been going through. The one person closest to you, who you'd hoped would be your partner and support, instead is blaming you for perpetrating a horrible betrayal. It seems like a double loss  :hug:

As far as you know, does your BF have a diagnosis of BPD? If not, what led you to suspect that might be going on -- or was the miscommunication incident when you started to wonder?

While there are no guarantees about how things will turn out, there are good tools and skills here, often unintuitive, to learn, so that we can stop making things worse in our relationships. Take a look at our workshop on not JADE-ing (Justifying, Arguing, Defending, Explaining) (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=139972.0) for starters, and let us know your thoughts on that approach.

...

How long has it been since he blocked you?

Thank you - just the acknowledgment of what I'm feeling helps. I can't even process what happened with how fast things went and the level of cruelty I was met with. It was as if nothing of the past year meant anything, when just the day before things seemed great.

I knew him a while before we started dating and he had told me that he'd been diagnosed with it. We didn't talk about it much but having some knowledge of personality disorders it fit with how he operates and while I knew that going in I didn't think it'd be like this. He sees a therapist occasionally but doesn't have people in his life he can talk to. Even before this he seemed locked into the idea that every person is untrustworthy or somehow a bad person, but he always told me how loved he felt by me until this incident and I sort of naively thought he'd let his guard down with me. In that sense I can totally understand the level of pain he was feeling believing I did that to him.

Since posting on here I've read through a lot of the tips and realized I did too much JADE. While I get what not to do, I don't know what to do. I felt unable to do anything else because he also took silence or redirection as admission of guilt or saving face. I apologized for the miscommunication and reiterated my commitment to things but he wouldn't have any of it unless I "confessed," and the accusations became more extreme. I tried to stay calm and loving but everything made it worse.

He blocked me yesterday. Since I can't reach him now I don't know what else to do. I just can't wrap my head around ending things over something like this with how much love we shared before.

Like you, I am a newbie and learning but I can empathize with the false/paranoid accusations.

I'm still trying to understand how to deal with this kind of stuff and develop those skills but the one piece of advice I will give is; never give a false confession to appease their anger or in response to claims like you "lying about it is why I'm really angry".

I have done this and regret it to this day.

I'm glad to know I'm not alone in dealing with this. I was very tempted to do the same just to make it stop. But I'm upset with myself for making the situation worse and I feel that if I had read some of this stuff earlier I could have prevented getting to this place.

Hi Laurenzen

Your post here really resonated with me. I am 9 days out of an almost decade long relationship with someone who for the last 1/2 of it began to show worsening BPD traits that culminated in the destruction of our relationship.

I have never cheated on my partner, not once. The closest thing to that was being caught "looking at porn" after swearing I hadn't (out of embarrassment of being caught). That was the starting gun to my partner believing that I was being unfaithful. If I lied about that, what else was I lying about?

After the porn thing, we entered a 6 month knock down, drag out, daily (sometimes multiple times a day) battle over who I was cheating on him with, which one of my friends, coworkers, etc. was I cheating on him with. Anyone I spent time with, even if spending time with them wasn't by choice, was probably who I was cheating on him with.

My boss, who lives 350 miles away and who I see in person maybe once a year (but talk to daily, sometimes for hours a day) was one of the people I was allegedly doing this with. He didn't like that our long work discussions also got into personal, political, life topics. Any part of me being shared with others, to him was a form of cheating and if I could share my personal thoughts with this person, then I was probably doing more.

There were however two main people he was convinced I was cheating on him with who I work closely with, and travel with for work/hobbies (the two intertwine).

I am bi, these two males are to my knowledge very much heterosexual and have zero interest in a male almost twice their age. Both are in committed long term relationships, one is about to propose. This didn't matter to my partner, "everyone is a little gay" he would say.

His accusations got stronger, more detailed and raunchy, as time went on. Every fight would be "just admit it, I don't care about the cheating, I just want the truth, I want you to stop lying to me".

I would share my location history, I allowed him to monitor all my communications (text, email, etc). When no signs of cheating could be seen, he would say it's because I'm sneaky and have "other ways" of communicating with them. If he let me out of his sight for 30 minutes, that's when I was doing it. Towards the end, I was being accused of being with anyone and everyone he encountered.

His own sister who lived with us while finishing high school and is now 2 hours away going to college, was someone he was always sure I was cheating on him with. One day I needed to use the bathroom and he was occupying the one in our bedroom. I went into his sisters old bathroom (she hasn't lived with us in 8+ months) and later he EXPLODED at me for doing something as intimate as peeing in a toilet she once used. I was "sick" for doing this.

Later, in the last few weeks, he became convinced that I had brought his sister with me on a work trip to the other side of the continent. He wouldn't believe me or her that she wasn't there with me. He said he heard her voice in the room while we were on the phone, which he didn't. His sister moved her stuff out from our house and split contact with him a month prior because of BPD related treatment she was getting from him, and couldn't deal with it anymore, so she had stopped sharing her location with him. He took that to mean she was hiding it because I had brought her with me on this trip. No matter how many ways she and I tried to prove that wasn't happening, no logic would seep through.

To tie this all back to what you're experiencing... what you have laid out was exactly what I had been dealing with. I would have never believed anyone else was having the same experience as I was, it seemed so surreal. Honestly I started to doubt my own sanity, maybe I was cheating on him??? Maybe he's right and I'm just blocking it out... like that's a thought that legitimately went through my head at one point. He was so convinced it was happening, he dragged me into his reality.

To you question of what you can do, from someone who's been where you are, the answer is there's nothing you can do. I would constantly tell him "if you are that sure I am cheating on you, then just break up with me, leave me, go find someone else who you can trust", but he didn't want to do that. He wanted me, but he wanted a version of me I could never be, no matter how hard I tried.

I am, as I said, less than 10 days past the break up and it's all still so fresh it hurts every single moment I'm conscious. The one thing I am realizing as the dust clears is there was nothing I could've said, done, proven ,etc. I could've worn a body camera where he could monitor the feed of, and he still wouldn't have trusted me. The same is said for your situation, your partner is not going to listen to reason or see proof, that proof and reason doesn't align with their reality just like your reality where you didn't cheat on them conflicts with theirs.

As others have told me on this board already, only the BPD individual will be able to change their views with time, help, etc. In the meantime, we broken hearted ones have to move on and do what's needed for ourselves.

I hope my ramblings helped. I tend to overshare, sorry for the long read.

Very painful feelings you are experiencing and I am sorry that you are having to experience this.

In my experience - they react based upon feelings - not facts.  The more facts we share, (explaining/justifying etc) it will never change their feelings.  Feelings come from somewhere in their past and 99% of the time it isn’t you.  You can’t fix that, or explain it away with your logic of today.  You have to hit the emotion on the nose.

Try things like  “I hear that you feel I have betrayed you in some way, or you feel I am going to abandon you and I can sense that this feeling is intense and really hurting you, and making you angry/scared/sad etc..  Although I haven’t betrayed you, it doesn’t take away from the truth of what you are feeling.  I can sense that this feeling is very strong and it is scary and it hurts you and it makes me sad/concerned for your feelings etc..  So I can understand better how you feel and we can grow closer together and not be pushed apart by this intense feeling you are having, can you tell me more?  Where do you think this feeling is coming from?  Why did it suddenly happen?  (Uncover a trigger) How can I best support you through this feeling?”  While I cannot accept you accusing me of something I haven’t done, and won’t accept you yelling at me (etc) (insert boundary consequence as necessary) … I can 100% support you and believe in you that these intense feelings exist and are true for you….and I want to work through these painful and scary feelings with you… Etc.

Reinforce that you believe how they feel (why wouldn’t you? It is what they are telling you they feel!)…validate the feeling.   By defending yourself and explaining the facts (nothing will convince them) - it invalidates the feeling in my experience.  Go on the offense into finding out what is going on in their heart  - not defense and protecting yours.  Don’t defend - get curious.  Validate. 

Hope this prompts some ideas…

Thank you to all who have shared, it has been really helpful.

Outdorenthusiast, I really appreciate the tips. I am hoping we can reconnect and that I have a better idea of what to do now if it happens again, but he was so cruel to me at the end that I feel he isn't open to anything more from me and that my opportunity at being supportive to him is lost.

I don't think reaching out to him now would be of any use, but I also don't want to perpetuate the idea that I abandoned him (the fear all along).