Hi there,

What jumps out at me in your post is your wife's blow-ups during holiday get-togethers.  That right there has BPD written all over it.  I've noticed on these boards that holidays, family reunions and other joyous occasions such as weddings are typically the backdrop for major BPD meltdowns.  I think it's because stress and unmet expectations are huge triggers for pwBPD.  I also think that it's extremely difficult for a pwBPD to be happy for other people, when they are not happy themselves.  Seeing other happy people induces feelings of jealousy, alienation, inferiority, being slighted, not being the center of attention, whatever.  Cue the meltdown.

Another clue is the that your wife spends inordinate time in bed, and yet she can "pull herself together" when she wants to, especially for fun trips.  My adult BPD stepdaughter will do the exact same thing.  Does she complain of aches and pains whenever there's work to do, but she's magically cured whenever there's an opportunity do something fun later in the day?  Classic.  One thing I notice with BPD is over-sensitivity to minor ailments and very little distress tolerance.  Minor things like waking up in the morning appear to be major ordeals for pwBPD, EXCEPT when there's something they want to do.  Then getting out of bed is a non-issue.  I suspect that when they have nothing better to think about, they retreat in a negative thinking loop (I'm so TIRED, life is so HARD, my body HURTS, I can't DO this, I don't WANT to, it's UNFAIR, etc.).  And then the pernicious BPD twisted thinking takes over (my family is toxic, I'm traumatized, life is hopeless, I have no future, I can't take this anymore).  Ergo, they stay in bed, and it's actually fun, because they have phones to entertain them, and they get out of working.  The grand irony is that pwBPD RESENT their family for making them feel so dependent.  They hate you while holding out their hand for more money/support.  To me, that is 100% BPD.  Sure, a physical ailment can make somebody irritable, moody, perhaps unable to take on some responsibilities.  But hating and blaming people who go above and beyond to help?  That sounds like BPD to me.

The other clue to BPD in my opinion is an unstable identity.  Now I might be reading too much into your post, but I've noticed that "trying out" new identies has been a feature of the pwBPD in my life.  One month she announces she's an artist.  Another month she'll change her looks (e.g. dying her hair and buying new styles of clothes).  Another month she wants to pursue a new career.  Of course, all these things are normal, but it's just that with BPD, I think the "idea" of a new identity is more attractive than the implementation.  She'll glorify the positive aspects while underestimating the work behind it.  The second she starts the work, she realizes her vision isn't what it's cracked up to be.  She tends to quit as soon as she encounters an obstacle, and she tends to be devastated because she can't achieve the idealized identity she envisioned for herself, and then she gets depressed because she can't figure out who she is.  This is hard to explain, but my point is, she seems to have a lot of identity confusion.  She's full of aspirational intentions (some narcissistic and others "delusional"), but fails on the execution, seemingly over and over again.  Does that ring any bells?  That has been a feature of the pwBPD in my life.

Look, BPD is treatable, provided that your spouse is committed to therapy and wants to make hard changes to feel better.  But since it appears your wife has had a lifetime of untreated BPD, I'm not sure if she's well-placed to learn better social-emotional  skills.  And she probably "likes" alternative diagnoses, as they are excuses to maintain the status quo.  She's probably content enough with her situation, which obviates the need to get therapy.  On these boards you might see that pwBPD typically need to "hit bottom" before they decide to get professional help and take therapy seriously.

I guess the summary is that if your wife isn't ready to change, the only person who can change is you.  On these boards you'll find all sorts of tips, which start with self-care and boundaries.

All the best to you.

So, I really appreciate so many of your insights and have been carrying them with me.

I just wanted to quickly log in and say yes, he did cheat with the mutual friend who he is now dating. The mutual friend is also a colleague, and both of them have been concealing this from me while mutual friend works closely with me and controls some of my access to resources, including items removed from the house I previously shared with X.

It's pretty hilarious. It has also absolutely cured me of any idea that it was my 'fault' for not saving the relationship, or that I might have wanted to. Such depths of non-integrity are totally undesirable. They are also unrecognisable in the person who I thought I knew.

Quotes from this thread which have been shockingly accurate:

"we didn't do anything to spoil this 'seems perfect for me' person, we were just beguiled by a very skilled and manipulative actor"

"you're trying to understand the thoughts and motivations of a disordered mind, and they may therefore not make any sense to those who are not disordered."

"his version of events can be highly distorted and self-serving, usually to blame-shift and avoid feelings of shame. "

" when he says or does something, or answers a question, understand that you need something objective to verify it's true."
 
"it was nothing you did, and nothing you could have done to change the end result"

And now it's time to turn myself to Mutt's wise remarks:

"Over time, what helped me wasn’t trying to figure out who they “really” were underneath it all, but noticing what stayed consistent on my side:
- what I believed a relationship meant
- how I showed up
- what I was willing to tolerate, and eventually what I wasn’t"

I believed the relationship meant a shared commitment to work together to uplift shared values, and each other. Not just the personal relationship, but the supposed values X and I shared have been utterly violated and trashed. I am not willing to tolerate that, now or ever.

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm a Philippines husband and currently living there, so I can relate to that part of your story.  My American BPD ex-wife allows me to relate to everything else and it's a big reason why I'm on the opposite side of the world.

One thing that jumped out to me immediately is your wife's "illness" that keeps her in bed for days at a time.  My ex did exactly the same thing and it was labeled as chronic depression.  We can dress it up and blame it on all sorts of things, but at the root it is mental illness and genuine struggling.

Why do the pet projects get her out of bed?  It's exciting, it's new, it's fun and adventurous.  Plus, it's a great way to run from your problems....just go do something else instead.  All of this aligns to my experiences as well almost exactly.

I noticed that you posted in the "Conflicted" board, even though you're openly in divorce talks.  If you could overcome the negative aspects of the marriage and get a portion of what you had 20+ years ago, would you still leave?  I'm asking because it's possible....although super hard for both of you to get there.

Please tell us about some of the deciding factors (from your perspective) on what it would take to stay or go.

 

Hello everyone.  I'm in my early 60s, with two daughters, 24 and 17, and live in Singapore as an expat. The 17-year-old lives with us and is in grade 11.  I have been married for 27 years and our relationship has long been tumultuous, starting even before we got married.  We share many of the same interests -- enjoying travel, the arts, food -- which has made for a great life together. But it has also been a life punctuated by blow-ups associated with my wife's relationships with other people, often me but other times one of our daughters, my wife's sister or brother-in-law, someone in my family, my daughter's boyfriend, a co-worker, or others. As such she has few friends (one best friend in another country who she sees only once every few years) and poor relationships with most people (including her estranged sister, with whom she had a huge falling out a few years ago). She is a well-educated and bright lawyer but has had difficulties holding down a job due to difficult relationships with bosses and co-workers. In one case, her company thought highly enough of her to ask her to see (and pay for) a counsellor. She was fired from two other jobs before deciding to become a stay-at-home mother when our older daughter was a toddler.  She has not had a paid job since but instead (and with a full time live-in helper to do most household things) has pursued a succession of passion projects, including real estate investments, where she bought rental properties and then neglected them, art investments, where she bought a large number of paintings by young artists in Asia and then neglected their care, and most recently religion (she attends services and bible study groups at two different churches locally), and humanitarian aid, where she has essentially become a free-lance non-profit in Thailand, dispensing medicine, equipment and money to displaced persons from Myanmar living in Thailand.  Altogether an Interesting Person, but with significant interpersonal issues, including with me and our daughters. 

We have had couples counselling over the years and each of us individual counselling too.  That has been somewhat helpful but has not prevented blow ups.  Visits home to see family have been particular triggers, with jetlag exacerbating dysregulated behaviour.

My wife has had an ill-defined fatigue issue for over twenty years, which means that (episodically) she will stay in bed for days at a time. She attributes this to pre-diabetes but yet she finds energy when she needs to travel to Thailand and pursue other passion projects. But the fatigue has been a longstanding excuse for her not to do other more mundane things, including tending to "ex" passion projects like our rental properties and our art collection, and supporting our teenager's needs. 

Starting in 2018, I started to get fed up. Fed up with the blow-ups, including a DRAMATIC one during Christmas 2018 with my wife's sister while we were visiting her family in Australia, which included things like my wife threatening to call the police alleging that her sister had kidnapped our kids and a nasty one with my older daughter during Christmas 2019, the details of which I don't even remember.  Fed up with my wife not trying to address her fatigue issues, and at the same time using it as an excuse for staying in bed a lot and not pulling her weight around the house, at the same time as finding energy to do the things she wants to do. I tried to reengage her in couples therapy, unsuccessfully. I continued therapy myself, and came to the conclusion with the therapist that I needed to change things up to get her to focus on the seriousness of our relationship issues, so I asked for a same roof separation while we worked through a couple's therapeutic process.  She refused to engage and further withdrew.  Things got steadily worse after the separation, and we find ourselves where we are now, three years later, trying to negotiate a divorce, where my wife accepts that the relationship is over (and has a new relationship, which has become her new passion project) but is unwilling to work with me to decouple in an orderly fashion. Discussions about living arrangements for our daughter and other aspects of the inevitable divorce have become acrimonious. It feels like we are in a death spiral. I've hired a lawyer and I've urged her to do the same so some of the more emotive issues can be addressed more dispassionately, but she seems much more interested to fight.

Why have a joined this group?  In the course of couples therapy a couple of years ago, the therapist diagnosed my wife as having ASD. My wife kind of loves the diagnosis, using it often as an excuse for making insensitive comments. And ASD does explain relationship difficulties she has had in the workplace and elsewhere. But ASD does not seem to explain the frequent blow-ups and dysregulation. My wife's sister, who is a family doctor, believes my wife has BPD and this tracks for me. Our (now former) couples therapist feels C-PTSD is a better label but had not completed a formal diagnosis.

Whatever the label, my wife is getting more and more difficult to deal with, including in relation to the divorce.  Over new years, she went on a holiday with our two daughters and our older daughter's boyfriend (BF).   Tensions mounted and BF's efforts to peace-make led him to be targeted in a blow up that has meant he does not want to deal with my wife anymore and has caused my daughter to minimize contact with my wife.  Then as in many other instances in the past, I tried to peace make and was accused of manipulating the kids and being the root of the problems with her relationship with the girls and BF. 

I've enabled my wife's behaviour over the years.  Unintentionally, when my wife says really awful things to the girls when she is dysregulated, I've been her apologist. I've said things like "Mum didn't really mean that she wishes you weren't born. She loves you very much but sometimes just can't control what she says. Don't think too much about it" when I should have said "Wow, what Mum said is not OK at all and that is not what people who love each other should ever say. That must have hurt you really deeply. Let's talk about how it made you feel."   My wife's sister thinks, and having read up on it I agree, that my wife and I have a co-dependent relationship. 

I want to try to understand the dynamics better so that I can more effectively chart a path to a divorce that isn't scorched earth. My wife at the moment seems intent on making it acrimonious and over my pleas to hand things off to lawyers has refused to do so. 

I want to extricate myself more fully from the complexities of my wife's relationship with our daughters, but at the same time leaving them with tools and resources to navigate them effectively themselves. 

And I'd like to figure out if there is room for a functional and caring relationship with my wife in future, after the divorce. I'd like that and have told my daughters that I am trying to lay the foundations for it. However, our 30-year Jekyll & Hyde relationship is mostly now only Hyde. She abruptly has a new and very serious relationship, the latest reason for her to neglect our kid. She idealizes him and I am more than ever the root of all things that are wrong with her life and in the world.

Hello and welcome to the family.  My 27 year old daughter is also diagnosed BPD/bipolar and I've had the same experiences.  Mine chose therapy a few years ago and for the first time in her life, she's <mostly> stable and paying her own bills.  It's certainly a process and I too struggle with wanting to jump in and support her financially.  That's more enablement than anything though and it often leads to bad outcomes.

Please use this site's resources to learn techniques to communicate in a less threatening, compassionate way.  It's helped me so much in terms of creating healthy boundaries and knowing when to engage/disengage.  I can also let a lot of it go these days, when she explodes I shrug my shoulders and recognize it for what it is...just a burst of negative energy that doesn't really mean anything.

Tell us how we can help and what you're struggling with specifically.  Also, what are you doing for your own mental stability?  As you said, it's a lot and it wears us down over time.

Will your daughter have any rights remaining to contact or visit her daughter for the next few years until granddaughter finishes high school or turns 18?  When you do appear for the order to be issued, confirm whether there are restrictions that you can enforce to limit her disruptive contact.  Sadly, after all that has happened, you can't afford to let down your guard.

If your daughter calls you, you can keep the calls short or even let them go to VM if too frequent or abusive/blaming?  That's why I have concern your granddaughter can find some normalcy without her mother's negativity and discord inserting itself into her life.

Hi Alone,

Well you've come to the right place, you don't have to be alone anymore.  I'm sure many parents here can relate to what you've written.  My adult BPD stepdaughter doesn't have bipolar, but everything you wrote about your daughter would apply to her when she wasn't getting therapy.

May I ask, how old is your daughter?  If she's lacking insurance, my guess is that she's in her late 20s, but I could be wrong.  It sounds like she's not fully "launched" yet, in that she basically expects you to continue to provide her rent, spending money, logistical support, etc., correct?  Perhaps more importantly, she probably hasn't really embraced the notion that she's responsible for herself now.  My guess is that not only does she act extremely entitled, but she also blames you for most of her problems, correct?  In addition, she needs loads and loads of reassurances, even for the most mundane things.  It sounds like you're completely worn out, and you can't keep caring for her like a little kid, right?  And yet you try, try, and try--to support her, to reassure her, to forgive her, to tolerate her outbursts--while it seems like she has given up on her adult life, before it has even started.  Sure, if you "force" her, she might try out a new job, but does she tend to quit (or get fired) in a couple of days?  It's because she's given up on herself.  She doesn't need to try very hard because she knows that YOU will.  (By the way, I'm not saying that getting fired is the end of the world--it's not.  What's important is to try again and get another job, which is what a healthy person would do.)

I know you love your daughter because you wouldn't tolerate the years of dependency, financial exploitation and abuses if you didn't.  But here's the thing:  your daughter is an adult now.  Unless she's severely handicapped and deemed incompetent (and needs to be on disability/social assistance), she's responsible for herself now.  By my thinking, BPD shouldn't be an excuse for abusive behavior, and it's not an excuse for giving up.  If your daughter can drive, fly on planes and go to parties, she can work.  She might need therapy and medications, but it's up to her to get them.  Everyone has their health issues, and as adults we're responsible for going to the doctor, getting treatment and making healthy lifestyle choices to make our lives better.

Meanwhile, you deserve to have a life.  If you're so stressed out that you get heart palpitations every time the phone rings, then I think you need to prioritize your own wellness right now.  In fact, I think you should model for your BPD kid what a healthy adult's life looks like.  That includes taking care of yourself, getting therapy if you need it, having downtime to yourself, enjoying your friends, going on vacation and practicing your hobbies.  Your whole life shouldn't be about work and stressing out about your adult daughter's behavior.  In addition, you need to plan for your own retirement someday, and my guess is, unless you're loaded, you probably can't afford to pay your adult daughter's living expenses for the rest of her life, correct?  What will your daughter do when you are gone?

It sounds to me like a good place for you to start is with boundaries.  Boundaries aren't about changing your daughter's behavior, but rather changing YOU and your responses to her behavior.  My advice is not to make any "announcements" that you will be enforcing boundaries, but rather just to do it.  An example might be, you don't respond to any mean texts from your daughter.  That way, you don't engage with her when she's riled up, to protect your own well-being.  Only when she texts in a civil manner do you reply.  Another boundary around texting might be that you do not respond to texts during your workday, because you are busy and need to concentrate.  Maybe you only text back at prescribed times, say during your morning or afternoon break, or only after work.  Chances are that if you slow down your responses, your daughter might have more time to self-regulate and solve some problems on her own.  (I call this the Slow Walk approach, which I find very helpful when dealing with overly needy people.)

As for financial support, that can be trickier, and I'm not sure what to advise without knowing more about your daughter's situation and history.  However, my sense is that you don't want to see your daughter suffer, and you don't want her to experience negative consequences from her decisions, especially as she seems to be in great distress already.  Furthermore, YOU can't stand to see your daughter in distress.  However, if you always jump in to "save" her, you're depriving her of the opportunity to learn from real-life consequences.  An example might be, if she doesn't pay the phone bill, her phone will be turned off.  I'd say, let it be turned off--having no phone is not life-threatening.  That might be what it takes for your daughter to learn the value of money and the notion that she has to work to get the things she wants, just like everybody else.  But if you always pay for the phone (and everything else), she hasn't learned that lesson.  Instead, the lesson she has learned is, she just has to cry/scream/beg/threaten/insult you, and sure enough you'll pay for her expenses, because you don't want her to feel deprivation/discomfort/hunger/stress/inconvenience.   Look, I think we all walk a fine line between extending support and enabling unhealthy behavior.  To me, being supportive is when BPD daughter is generally DOING what she's supposed to be doing (e.g. getting therapy, maybe working part-time, maybe studying part-time, maybe living semi-independently), and you provide some money/emotional support/help with logistics to lift her up.  I put DOING in all capitals because I pay more attention to actions than to moods, words and empty promises.  In contrast, enabling is when BPD daughter is NOT doing what's she's supposed to be doing, and you're stepping in to do things for her that she should be doing for herself.  Sure, you do it in the name of love, but in the long term, it's not helping your daughter to learn to live in the real world, and it's destroying you in the process.  Does that make sense?

Hope that perspective helps a little.  All the best to you.

Hi, I'm wondering if anyone here has an adult child with both BDP and Bipolar 1 disorder?  She does not have insurance and I'm pretty sure she is off of her meds.  I'm the only person that will really talk to her or (entertain) her.  I now have PTSD everytime the phone rings.  My heart hits the floor when her picture pops up on my phone or ever just a text these days (actually it has been this way for years).  I have done so much research and finally know how to talk to her and valadate her feelings, this has made it somewhat easier to "talk her down".  Also I have been using Chat GPT to help me have text conversations with her.  Today for instance she was at work, only her 2nd day at work during orentation.  She text me I want to be home, I don't want to be here.  With the assistance of Chat GPT she actually stayed at work her full shift, one she left she call me and said I did it, are you proud of me.  Of course I'm proud of her but it was two hours of texing back and forth.  I also have a job...... anyway I realized last month that I have her over 14,000.00 dollars of the course of last year.  No wonder why she didn't keep a job or work I was her part time job.... I am so angry at myself!!!! and I don't want to give any more.   However just this week I paid for her rent.  This is alot and all over the place, I'm sorry!!! has anyone here used NAMI as a resourse?

I've read your post several times and every time I tell myself this is exactly what I experienced, you wrote my story.  I don't write this often.  Married for years, one child, Christians in public, increasingly aggressive ranting and raging in private, she had a very dysfunctional, controlled and abused childhood, etc.  So nice at first but as she gradually fell apart I came to sense I'd saved her.  But I couldn't save her from herself.


Our most spiritual event of each year was in the Spring.  Our final year together I remember her so worried that we would be late - we weren't - so much so that when we arrived that evening, she leapt out, grabbed our toddler and stormed away exclaiming "I want a divorce!"  That was just one of a long series of shocks.

I suspect you will find that her childhood FOO (Family of Origin) was even more dysfunctional and unhealthy than you knew.  Likely she was more impacted by them than even she knew.  (That's how dysfunction can be passed from one generation to the next.)

Despite all my attempts, she refused to respond positively.  It was like she was trying to drive me away with all her outrageous extremes.  I accepted our changed reality when she started threatening she would disappear with our child and I'd never see him again.

Strangely, as much as I feared separation and divorce, when the marriage failed the divorce process turned out to be my most powerful resource.  She had long since lost all respect for me, not seeing me as having any authority whatsoever in the marriage, believing she could do whatever she wanted and I was powerless.  Divorce brought us to family court and there she encountered The Real Authority.  Though it was quite passive and reluctant to take obviously needed action, it did place structure and limits on our post-separation lives and parenting.  What we call Boundaries within our relationships are what court terms "orders".


I agree.  That is what all of us desired and still crave.  But the reality is that your spouse is currently on a doomed path, sabotaging the marriage.  You can't make her change course, only she can do that.  As is often said, it takes two working together to make a marriage succeed but only one to make it fail.

Unless things improve, you are probably approaching a time when the only option left is to choose to make (1) your welfare and (2) your child's welfare your top long-term priorities.

Sadly, set aside thoughts of having more children until you are solidly in a stable and loving relationship.  Having more children in a home full of discord and conflict won't make it all get better.

Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry you're going through this and honestly, it brought up many memories from my own marriage.

Like you, I knew something was "off" before we were even engaged.  I saw red flags and ignored them.  And for the next 23 years, I put my wife first in everything under the sun...even above our kids and other family members.  It was a huge mistake though because as a faithful Christian, I should have been putting God 1st.

You mentioned that you're both Christians, and I wanted to point out that a Christian marriage is two imperfect people submitting to God together to become one.  Biblically there are three exceptions for divorce- infidelity, abuse, or when a non-believer walks away.  Maybe one of those apply to you, maybe not, but my advice would be to continue praying and working with your pastor.  If you have a men's small group at your church, lean on your brothers and actually let them in.

As far as what to do immediately in your marriage, I think you've received some excellent advice already.  Create healthy boundaries and learn to communicate in a different way.  Your wife is feeling unappreciated and those insecurities make her unstable- her feelings simply spiral out of control. 

The stuff she complains about is like a symptom of the deeper, darker picture...mental illness and low self-worth is the actual problem.  The stuff you fight about is just a way to release pent-up mental energy, it doesn't actually mean anything and there's no purpose arguing over it.

My last piece of advice is to read 1st Corinthians 13:4-7 and how God calls you to love your wife.  The way you love is not dependent on anything she says or does, we're called to love unconditionally in a marriage because that's how God loves us.  Patience, kindness, slow to anger, forgiving all wrongs, etc...those are the traits you're called to in these impossible times.

And I heard you- it's impossible right now.  I do agree, it's impossible for you to do alone.  But you serve the God of impossible and He can do anything.  Like I said earlier, lean on your pastor and your brothers at church, you'll be amazed how far it can get you in this type of season.

I hope that helps!