While the tools here on this board recommend validating, that is in the context of a conflict, and a tool to decrease the drama in the moment, and lessening the circular arguments. It doesn't mean that you are responsible for constantly soothing and validating your BPD partner. You have seen that doing so is taking a toll on your emotional and physical well being.

Also, the validating is not a "cure" for BPD. It's a tool to lessen drama in the moment. However, to continue to do this kind of emotional caretaking also reinforces them looking to you for their own soothing. Since their emotional needs for this continue, so will this behavior. It may even increase if reinforced.

Your feeling depleted is your own sign that you've done too much and need some self care to feel replenished. Your partner may not like this and may react.

Ch0p- we aren't being critical of your family dynamics when we point out any boundary issues. It's because we recognize what also has been a common dynamic for many families where there is a person with a disorder, and the rest of the family focuses on helping that person. It was this way in my family of origin too. When children grow up in this dynamic- it's the "normal" we know, as we don't know any other way for a family to function.

Having a family member who has life threatening behavior is terrifying for parents and siblings. The family goes into survival mode when it comes to placating and rescuing that person. Yet, the flip side of it is that it gives that person a bit of power in the family- as the family complies with them to avoid the reaction.

There was a Dr. Phil episode where one child had anorexia and it had serious effects for her. The whole family was hyperfocused on that child. Did she eat? Did she eat enough? If that child refused to eat, the family panicked - for a real reason. If she didn't eat it could be very dangerous for her. This also gave her some power to get her way- as she could not eat if she didn't.

Dr. Phil said to them "you are all lost in the woods and looking to a disordered person to lead you out". This quote resonated with me. The whole family needed therapy to change their dynamic.

One part of your post stood out to me. Despite your family concerns about the relationship "they had to let the partner live there as your sister had already decided".

Whose house is it? If it's not your sister's house then she doesn't get to decide who lives there. Your parents may have been afraid to say no as they were afraid of her reaction, but it if it their house- they could have said no to a situation they didn't think was a good idea.

How much of your sister's needs are driving your decisions? That's for you to think about. It's not about if what you are doing is wrong or right- but what it is actually doing- to you, your future, and is it giving your sister the power to drive it?

You are the more emotionally stable and reliable one, and I think in the best position to chart your own path "out of the woods".

I wish I was told as well but she kept her medical information private from us. Also, the family unspoken rule was to not disclose that she had any issues and  that she was "normal". It felt like the Emperor Had No Clothes story and we'd be in trouble if we said anything.

One reason I wish I had know is- if she didn't have a disorder- then she behaved like this for some other reason. She would blame others, including us kids, and so somehow I wondered if it was my fault, and also that maybe she didn't like me.

But even as a young teen I could have understood mental illness. By high school I was looking in psychology books to see what might be going on with her as I suspected something was. BPD wasn't a main point in the books yet and no internet.

She told us her medicine was for "asthma". In college, I looked in her medicine cabinet and looked them up and realized they weren't for asthma. I naively tried to speak to one of her therapists but he wasn't willing or able to do that.

With the internet, I found BPD while looking up NPD as someone in our community was classic NPD and he was difficult to deal with. I looked this up for more information. On the page was a link to BPD and it sounded a lot like my mother.

It wasn't until BPD mother's elder years that she signed a consent for her nurse manager to speak to me. I still didn't see her actual records but the nurse carefully mentioned "PD" to me to see if I knew. I told her I thought she had BPD and the nurse agreed. By that time though, she wasn't in therapy and the medicine that helped her was for anxiety and that was the diagnosis they used.

I think a lot of confusion may have been avoided if someone had discussed BPD with me earlier- but it wasn't well known until later.

As for my own personal therapy- I haven't done it continuously. It's been more on an as needed basis. Some therapists have been more helpful than others, but a main benefit for all of them has been someone to talk to, in confidence, as these can be personal situations.

I work in tech and I've been watching the big data companies harvest our information more and more over the past decade.  It worries me and people will think I'm nuts for saying this, but I wouldn't be shocked if your phone didn't hear you say that a year ago and the information was stored to your digital profile.

Why do I think that?  Well, it's a guess.  But I've noticed dozens of times I'd have a conversation with my wife or my kid in the car, we'd talk about something and then the next day, I'd see ads for those things appear out of nowhere in my mail account, on Google, etc. 

For instance, we mentioned going to Orlando one time and I saw Disney ads and hotel specials for the next week.  I was going for a sick relative, not Mickey Mouse, but it still stood out to me.  Other times we mentioned joining a gym, getting a home security system, etc and sure enough, Google and Facebook somehow knew to show me those exact ads.  I never searched for any of that online...it was all spoken verbally in regular conversation.

Funnily enough Pete I did notice a couple of things that sounded like it was telling me things I wanted to hear, so i would call it out on it and it would re evaluate its response.

I’m aware it’s not got its own brain and isn’t thinking independently of itself. That is actually a good thing in my book. I actually said to it as a cynic are you telling me things just to be agreeable, to which it replied that it isn’t human, it has no emotions and it doesn’t need or isn’t trying to be my friend, just going on the logic of what I had written and that it has access to a data base of hundreds of thousands of accounts of similar situations.

Therefore it is not so far removed from a therapist that uses their knowledge from their client base, but taking the knowledge from a far far larger data base. Another good thing is therapists kind of have an unwritten rule that they won’t actually give you their own personal opinion. For example, they don’t, according to this rule, tell you if you are in a dangerous relationship get out for your own personal safety. They have to kind of steer you in that direction so you make that decision on your own, even if your life is at risk. Some go against that but it isn’t the norm.

That's pretty wild! 

This made me wonder how original a lot of BPD behavior is. 

I don't know if "impressed" is the right word, but sometimes BPDxw's seemingly instinctive behavior for dodging responsibility, deflecting blame, changing the subject, etc. would surprise me, and I would feel a little bit ashamed of myself for not having the same knack for navigating human interaction. 

If it's that easy to predict, then maybe it's more common and formulaic than we think. Like it's just typical learned behavior in a very negative, coercive society (which is very much like the situation she grew up in). 

I would just caution you all that:

1) AI is not actually "thinking" it's just regurgitating information based on prompts and information its programmers "collected" (some would say, stole) from other sources;

2) AI is still "hallucinating" and making up things at the same rate it always has.  Don't rely on it in critical situations;

3) AI has tendency to tell you what it thinks you want to hear (link: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/24/sycophantic-ai-chatbots-tell-users-what-they-want-to-hear-study-shows).  This encourages you to keep using it!

AND...

4) nothing you type into an AI prompt is confidential, so be careful what you share.

Wow, I'm so sorry...that's brutally hard.  I was in that position a few times where I had to call the police and it was never easy.

You are 100% right though, she has to learn right from wrong.  The guy she was dating can't be a complete jerk if he called you to mediate.  It's a heartbreaking situation for everyone and I hope she figures some things out while she's in jail.  Depending on the state, it could be quite a long time or they could send her home due to overcrowding.

The numbness you feel is a blessing and a curse.  On one hand, you cope better because you're not completely stressed out.  But on the other hand, you're repressing emotions that will eventually resurface.  You have to deal with it, sooner or later, in order to actually move forward in a healthy way. 

And hopefully you can see that I'm saying that lovingly...no judgement here because I went through the exact same stuff.  Years later, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks and I had to process everything all over again.

My mother with BPD had a psychiatrist who was very well respected as a therapist. I think it helped that mom was going to him for medication and that the therapy was doable because she was there for her medication appointment. I doubt mom would ever have agreed to go to therapy. When I was a teenager, my father tried to get mom to see a mental health professional and she refused. I really don't think mom knew she was getting therapy with the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist eventually quit giving her therapy after several months. I think he knew she had a personality disorder. I called the psychiatrist once trying to convince him to schedule family therapy sessions. He said he could not do that. I would have liked to have known what mom was diagnosed with and what the psychiatrist thought about her mental illness. Mom did not want her children to know anything about her mental illness and the psychiatrist could not disclose anything without her permission. I figured some things out indirectly by googling a list of her medications which were all visibly in one place on a counter in her home. She was taking psychiatric medication for psychosis, depression, anxiety, restless leg syndrome, insomnia, etc.,

This post is about my initial search for couples counseling.  I specifically researched a local office for a female lettered psychologist in hopes my then-spouse would respond well to my efforts.  However, it turned out this professional wasn't a good fit.

I didn't know it then but my marriage was months away from a horrible separation and divorce.  I sought help for dealing with my ranting and raging spouse but during those three sessions all the counselor asked about was my FOO (family of origin).  I was disappointed to not hear even one suggestion or explanation for the distress I was experiencing in my increasingly high conflict marriage.

I later learned a clue - "sounds like a personality dysfunction" - from a hospital staffer, which led me to Stop Walking on Eggshells and hence here.  I have no idea why the counselor didn't mention the variety of Personality Disorders.  She was looking only into my childhood interactions but the immediate urgency at the time was the imploding marriage.