In truth, she told me that her diagnosis was CPTSD, not BPD - but her behaviours were very BPD-ish. She also told me that there were some things that she'd only tell someone after she'd married them... so - no idea what those things were!
...
I guess CPTSD manifests itself similarly to BPD. But unlike BPD, it's cause can be traced to an event, or series of events. I wonder if this makes it more of a treatable condition? Or at least allows for a more treatable condition. Maybe that's why she seems to have shown some improvement?
That part about not telling someone things until after they're married is wild. It's one thing to find out someone is BPD or CPTSD after you're married, and have been in the dark before then because they kept it together. However to knowingly tell someone "
I have a deep dark secret, and I won't share it until you're legally bound to stay with me" is next level!
...
Yeah - well, she's the child of an eminent scholar who taught at a really famous school; and they had two houses - so she's living in one of them.
She's an interesting person career wise - she's well educated, and had some really well paid, responsible jobs.
At the same time, her 'outside of work' life seemed super messy.
It seemed like a case of 'I can show up for work and somehow force it; but the moment I leave, things become fraught.'
...
So much of the world works on a "who you know" rather than "what you know" basis that I would assume her father's prestige opened career doors for her that wouldn't be open to the typical university graduate. And similarly, earlier in my career I had been surprised many times by interactions with members of my profession that had absolutely golden resumes & respected positions at their firms, but couldn't handle simple tasks or do their job competently. I've learned you just never know what someone is like at work until you see how they actually perform.
There was a period of time after our divorce that BPDxw's career trajectory changed dramatically. She was younger than me, and started her career later, but landed a really good job and looked to be on the rise. We work in the same profession, and you'd think this would've bothered me, but I knew better. She was from another country, although she did a master's program here at a fairly prestigious American university. But I've since learned that this school often fills out their masters programs with candidates for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with actual ability, intellect, test scores, grades, etc. So again... you just never know what someone is really like, or how they got where they are unless you saw how "the sausage gets made" so to speak.
Anyways, I remember wondering "
how the hell did she get THAT job?" then checking out her bio page at the firm, and noting that she had claimed expertise in a lot of areas where she had none, or at most, a bit of highly-supervised work on one or two projects. She really had no expertise whatsoever, but I digress. And in addition to the falsely claimed expertise, she claimed to be fluent in two other languages - aside from English and her native language - that I knew for sure she was not fluent in. But she was not a nepotism hire; she wasn't there because she was bringing in business or had an influential parent who could benefit the firm; she was now in a position where she was expected to perform, and I knew it would be only a matter of time before that exposed her. Sure enough, one evening my daughter told me her mom was crying at home a lot because her "boss hates her work" and she thought she was going to get fired. And then she was fired not too long after that. She went back to her glorified clerk job at the firm where she started her "career" and she's been there ever since.
I do sometimes wonder what finally got her... was it just general incompetence? Or did she actually get asked to sit in on a meeting conducted in one of her fake fluent languages and get exposed hard core as fraud? How had they overlooked this? There might be a story there.
BPDxw also grew up in a notoriously corrupt country, where competence does not matter, and "the truth" is whatever you can convince people it is. Lie on your resume. Tell them you designed and built the Eiffel Tower. You have 4 PhD's from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and MIT. You cured cancer. If they buy it, you're golden. If not? No big deal! Just find a bigger sucker next time.
And not to act like America isn't also horribly corrupt now, but at least here, for example, doctors can't just buy an M.D.; they're expected to go through medical school (without paying each professor for a passing grade), pass the boards, and learn how to specialize in a medical field via a multi-year residence. So we have
some standards. BPDxw keeps learning that the hard way.