Hi friend,

I am on day 21 of NC with my soon to be ex-husband of 15 years with BPD. The last few weeks of our marriage he really doubled down on leaving me, cheating on me, being cruel, and then for the grand finale came back to strangle me and tell me he'd come back in the middle of the night and shoot me with a gun. He burned the whole life we worked so hard to build down to the ground and did it with me still inside the house (figuratively but also I still am having to live here....).

And I still miss him. I miss his hugs, I miss drinking coffee with him in the mornings, I miss planning to do fun updates to the house with him. I miss having someone who despite everything made me laugh out loud almost every day.  The trauma bond is wild. The psychological warfare is truly outstanding. Because we also love these people and see the good parts of them, and have learned to fight for them and advocate for them and be their biggest champion.

The abruptness and often finality of these types of relationships is so turbulent and without closure. It honestly would have felt less painful to me if he'd actually died I think. I don't suffer from addiction but I imagine this is what addiction and withdrawal feels like. We are detoxing. And I know that even when people detox and get on the straight and narrow, they still often crave these things years down the road. But what I'm telling myself right now through this anguish and pain is that I need to focus on my mental health the way I wish they would have. Pour everything into myself and going to support groups, therapists, and getting on supportive medications that I wish they would have let me help them with.

It's our turn now. And unfortunately we have to feel all of the *normal* feelings not just for ourselves, but for the pwBPD who is out there just "living their best life" without us now.

Hang in there <3

Wow that must be difficult to navigate.  In my case I am speaking of the same person.  Associating with her is a nightmare.  How do you deal with these people in your life?  I really need to understand what I’m dealing with so I can protect myself accordingly.  At this point she’s discarded us and so I think it best to just go with that and don’t seek her out at all. 

Hi there Eagleman133 and welcome to the group 

Sorry to hear you're going through this painful time in your relationship. Two weeks without a phone call would be hard to handle for anyone, especially after 4 weeks without seeing each other.


That can be a challenging combination. Do you know how long ago she was diagnosed? Is she accepting of her diagnoses, or in denial of them? Is she in any kind of treatment or therapy?


One thought that came to mind is that many persons with BPD take longer to get back to an "emotional baseline" (place of being regulated) than persons without BPD. Additionally, many pwBPD struggle with overwhelming feelings of shame. And, many pwBPD have poor, low, or unhealthy coping skills for their intense emotions.

I could see how she could initially feel shame for cancelling on you; then, due to pwBPD being extremely emotionally sensitive, she may have felt more hurt and shame than most people would, after hearing that you weren't happy about the cancellation. A big reaction to feeling very hurt and ashamed would be to self-isolate. And, in self-isolation, she may be trying to come back to an emotional baseline, but it's just taking longer than you might expect. For you, you might be able to re-regulate after 30 minutes or a couple of hours. Her timeline could be more like days to weeks to more.

In fact, this topic came up earlier today:


...


Am I tracking with you that even though you two are not talking on the phone, you are still communicating via text messages?


To me, it seems hard to say at this point. She may just be doing the best she can to decrease her own pain, using lower skilled approaches (isolation).

Have the two of you had any "breakups" before this one?

Hi there,

I suspect that when a young person with BPD gets mad at the entire family for no apparent reason, what might be going on is that she's embarrassed or ashamed about something she did, she feels she can't face anybody, and to cope, her brain concocts a victim narrative, like, "My family has always been abusive towards me, my family is toxic, they ruined my life, I'm cutting them out."  However, in reality, something else happened.  Maybe she broke up with a love interest or bestie.  Maybe she got fired from her job.  Maybe she got evicted.  Maybe she failed out of school.  Rather than deal with these temporary setbacks, she feels like an abject failure, and to cope, she blames her family for all her problems.  As a victim of abuse (supposedly since childhood), how could she possibly keep a relationship, job or apartment?  It's easier to blame others.  And her "punishment" for you is estrangement.  She likely thinks she's hurting you by ignoring you.  Ironically, she probably needs you more than ever.

I also think it's fairly typical for a pwBPD to have a negative reaction whenever others are the center of attention, such as during a holiday or when somebody is sick.  It's as if they feel slighted by not being the in the center.  If your attention is diverted away from her, even temporarily, she might lash out or cut you off.  We know that abandonment issues are significant for pwBPD, and a sickness or death in the family might trigger those fears.  If you feel you need support from your daughter, that's a valid feeling, but in her mind, you're the mother, and you're the one who is supposed to support her, and not the other way around.  The BPD relationship tends to be very one-sided that way.

I agree with what you wrote, my way of handling things wasn't always good, especially at the end. I did try to validate her emotions, where she was talking about family issues for example. Though, I need to correct something I wrote. In the past, before she broke up, everytime she something bad about herself, I reassured that she's the best person I've met, she liked it, cause not many people told her anything like that in her life I imagine, and usually said something along the lines of "You're a dork, I love you". But, after the breakup (April 7th), or rather the day I "broke something inside of her" by me looking at her so much, which was around 4 days before the breakup. She didn't wanted to hear that she's a good person, or that she's amazing. She was, in my opinion, angry and upset at me for not respecting the boundaries, for example: "Don't look at me that much, it's pushing me away and I feel pressure". And <maybe> feeling guilty, she felt like she was hurting me a lot by her words when she was angry, and maybe that's why, when her emotions reached all time high, she thought she's the worst person, and me reassuring her didn't work, cause she truly believed otherwise.


Pretty much same thing I wrote above, after the breakup, we still had contact, less but it was there, which I described starting from april 4th. And during that time, whenever I  tired to say something good about her, she either said "I'm not" "I don't want to hear that" "I'm not that good, I'm not the person you're telling me I am. You don't even know how mean I can be to others." "I'm can be really toxic" To add to that, she was also very angry for me texting her at all, and that was (In my opinion) the biggest trigger of her getting really mad at me. After i texted her too much (it happened few times after the breakup), she said "I need my space and time, you're not giving me what I ask for, you're not listening, it's always the same." "Please, leave me alone I want to be with myself, I don't want to exist.", so these were the things that really made her mad after breakup.

Before the breakup, maybe it started a month before, whenever I didn't hear what she said, either by external factors like noise or my poor hearing, and me asking her to repeat, she would get irritated or worst case just not repeat what she said. My memory isn't good, and whenever I forgot something she said she would get upset/irritated, again, probably related to me not listening. So in summary, she told me I'm not listening, because I was doing things she told me not to do, trimming my beard once, looking at her (Trauma from the past, as she told me), insisting on driving her home even when she didn't want to etc.

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I think, partially the reason why she really wanted a break a week or two before the breakup, was cause she felt how angry she was on everything and everyone around her, she wanted to avoid hurting each other. I think she was just emotionally overwhelmed by everything in her life and by me not listening to her/understanding her. Maybe she couldn't handle all of the emotions, and me not really giving her the break she wanted, or me being a disappointment in her eyes. So, in the end she decided broke up.


That seems likely. To me, the way she's handling post breakup, is very confusing to say the least. From what I understand, she's trying to move on, or like you said, to stop the pain. Wants to remove all emotional triggers related to me, even mutual friend. She changed her profile picture after 1.5 years, she said she doesn't feel anything anymore, and yet two weeks later tells me to remove her photos off my personal phone. Then week later removes me off discord cause she doesn't want me to look what she's doing. And again around week later, she removes mutual friend everywhere. And most likely, she didn't block me anywhere, just removed me, but for me to check that I would have to msg her and that is a bad idea. Like I mentioned, she started to feel anxious around me, because I was looking at her TOO much (trauma probably), she wanted to find peace in me, but right now she can't.

Just to be clear, In my view, she didn't do or said anything wrong, most of the issues were easily fixable by me, but I didn't do enough.

Apologies for a long one again, and if I'm repeating myself too much. There might be things I missed, but I think I did wrote down all the important things. If something doesn't make sense, it's because I'm overall poor at explaining these events.

Hello Pook,

Yeah I agree with you.

In all honesty the line of "the one thing I can avoid right now is you" really got me and not in the way I expected. She is really unwell right now but I can't have someone I thought would be my future say look out of everything going on right now you're the one thing I can avoid.

As I was cleaning I did catch some of her notes recently from a session and she's very much feeling like she has no self worth, she's a burden, no one checks in with her etc which is hard because I feel like I always did but those feelings run deep for her and she needs to figure that out.

She also stated that she knows she withdraws and that she has concerns that people with leave. Again I understand those feelings are deep rooted but its very difficult to understand when she's the one leaving me and that in turn will cause me to leave.

I think I have a very good grasp on how she feels but at the same time it's tricky to understand her actions if you get me?

I think she's right and her mum's right as well she almost needs this time alone to really try and deal with her mental and physical health and as much as it pains me to do it, I'll just have to keep on trying to just live my life and get on with things.

Right now I'm actually feeling like I'm in a okay headspace. You guys are helping a lot and I'm less emotional. Obviously I have good and bad days.

I think I'm still in denial about her moving out and when / if that day comes I think it'll hit me hard. But until then I'm making progress I think

Hello and welcome to the family- I will certainly pray for everyone involved.

I'm so sorry for the reality your grandson faces.  My only advice is to be there for him as an ear to listen, and avoid getting too far in the middle of anything.  He must choose what to do in that relationship.

And like you said, keep praying.  God answers prayers everyday.

That's because at the end of the day, you have to make a choice.  Nobody can do that for you. 

It's true for every person in the entire world, we all make choices to stay in our habits or change.  Good habits like exercising or eating healthy- those are choices.  Bad habits like smoking or getting angry- those are choices.  We all are in the same boat in that regard.

Others around us can make suggestions, bribe us, scream at us, etc.  But it still comes down to us making a choice.

Hello and welcome to the family- I'm so sorry you're in this position.  I've found myself there several times with my BPD daughter as well.

You mentioned pulling away and stating that the disrespect is unacceptable...bravo!  That's teaching that actions have consequences in life and you don't want that sort of relationship anymore.  Good for you, that's a smart boundary. 

And you're right, maybe she does withdraw for awhile, which will pull the chaos out of your life.  Take that time to heal yourself.  Your daughter will reach out again though and you will have a fresh start one of these days, so you're doing everything right and making smart choices.  It just stinks because you need to bear through it.

If your daughter does have BPD (it sounds possible), then her new favorite person won't last forever.  I hate saying it that way, and it doesn't mean divorce, but she will change her viewpoints on his control and come to resent it over time.  That's also about the time she'll reach back out to dad.

One last thing- if she does reach out, it's not your job to "defend" yourself from the husband.  That's putting you in the middle of their conflicts, and it's not a place that's going to help you in any way.  Let him say whatever he wants, and you just focus on being you.

I hope that helps!

Hi there,

In my extended family I have a diagnosed BPD and an undiagnosed NPD. I think there are many overlapping traits and behaviors, as both are afflicted with highly distorted thinking, verging on the delusional when emotions run high. I’d say that both have had very complex interpersonal relationships and dysfunctional habits. And yet both seem able to « pull themselves together » when they want to. Both seem to be extremely selfish and lacking empathy for others. That’s my perspective. A key difference though is that BPD involves very negative self-talk, whereas NPD thinks he’s special. It may be no coincidence that the BPD has a diagnosis, because she admitted to herself that she needed therapy to improve her life, whereas the NPD is convinced he’s special and everyone else has problems, not him.