Despite a perhaps different history of the term "Borderline", I've often felt like Borderline fit well with the concept of... not quite criminal enough to be incarcerated in prison but also not quite insane enough to be committed to a mental health asylum.  That in-between world is a very hard place to navigate and still keep your balance or prosper.

The irrationality of it is scary isn't it! I have been accused of being controlling and stopping him from doing the things he likes to do when I genuinely couldn't be any more laid back about that stuff if I tried. In fact I just said to him "Do you think you will feel relieved now that you will be able to do all those things I've stopped you doing?" (he's in a good headspace today so was feeling brave!) He didn't know what I meant because that was said weeks ago, so in his mind it didn't happen.

At the end, I didn't even know if she would turn up if we'd arranged to meet or if something totally out of my control had upset her, like an argument with her mother or a bad day at work and she decided to take it out on me.

Her first break up with me after a couple of months into the relationship was when she turned up to meet - but just walked right passed me and ignored me. Turns out she'd had a bad day at work but in her disordered thinking she thought I'd be mad at her for 'ruining our night' and I would then break up with her so she decided to break up with me first. How do you cope with wild thinking like that?? You can't.

Looking back, I wish I'd stayed broken up and saved myself 4 years of grief.. but I still liked her so kept chasing.  It wasnt until her final - and worst - meltdown that I eventually did end it. That was day she waved her finger at me and yelled 'You never buy me anything!'..  On her fingers were diamond, sapphire and gold rings, on her wrists were heavy gold bracelets, round her neck was a gold chain and she had other jewelry I'd bought her at home. It was in full view of her while she raged yet in her mind it didn't
exist. That actually scared me; the fact that she was so detached from reality.

Hi Mama,

My observation with pwBPD is that validation, especially validation of a highly distorted memory, generally backfires.  Why?  I think it's because your daughter is clinging to a victim narrative, which means blaming you for messing up her life.  She's creating this narrative, compiling "evidence," dwelling on it and getting more and more riled up about how terrible her childhood was.  She might do this to get attention sometimes, but I think it's mostly to DEFLECT and BLAME.  Deflection entails not dealing with issues of the present.  Blaming means not taking responsibility for her own life.  And so if you validate her, I think it actually makes things worse.  She'll probably see any admission of guilt as an invitation to demand additional "confessions," "atonement" and "reparations" for even more wrongs and ancient grievances.  You see, she's not looking to repair past misunderstandings, move on or reconcile with you.  If you apologize, she won't accept it.  She won't accept that parents aren't perfect, but they did the best they could the overwhelming majority of the time, including taking their children to the doctor whenever they thought something was worrisome.  No, she's trying to paint you as a terrible mom who is responsible for ruining her life.  And I think that is dangerous, because when she blames you, she's basically abdicating responsibility for her own life and happiness, and she's giving up on herself.  She is demanding that you are responsible for her life and for fixing all her problems.  But you can't live her life or make her feel better, no matter how much you'd like to.  Does that sound about right?

Most people here will advise to validate feelings, and say something like, "I'm sorry you feel that way, I never meant to hurt you."  There's a chance that might work, but in my experience, it just doesn't.  In addition, I think it's a good idea not to JADE, short for justify, argue, defend and explain (eg "I took you to the doctor because I wanted to ensure you were healthy"), because when you JADE, you're dealing with facts, not feelings, when feelings are your daughter's currency.  While I do like this advice, and I follow it often, I don't think it necessarily works all the time when it comes to past wrongs that are highly distorted in your daughter's memory.  Because anything that "indulges" a victim narrative, which isn't even true, is counter-productive in my humble opinion.

Instead, I tend to say something like, "We can't change the past," or "We never get anywhere with this conversation, it's too stressful" and try to turn the conversation to the present.  If that doesn't work, I try to exit the "conversation" (aka blamefest) completely.  In other words, I don't "reward" her routine of dredging up ancient grievances with my attention.  What I reward is talk about trouble-shooting current issues where something can actually be done about them.

All my best to you.

My adult daughter (30 y.o.) has said she was mistreated by me as a child. I was by no means perfect, but she was never physically abused, and as a parent I made a point to never call my children names, and tried to be positive, affirming and encouragng. Love was expressed verbally every day and often. I'm sure I sometimes spoke from frustration, impatience, exasperation, erc.  I know I made mistakes and sometimes lost my temper.
Today she used an example of how I mistreated her: When she was four she was very petite. We called her our little peanut. We moved to a different city, and a year later, a family friend came to visit. Privately, she expressed concern because in one year, Jessica had gained a lot of weigh5 and she asked if I had taken her to a doctor to have her thyroid checked. I had not particularly realized quite how much she had gained - she was not overly bese, but she was defintely no longer petite. I didn't know anything about how the thyroid could affect weight, so I took her to a doctor to see if there were any issues.
Tonight, she told me that I had mistreated her by taking her to a doctor because she had gotten too fat for ⁵me and I was unhappy about it. She refused to listen as I tried to explain the actual reason. I know our BPD kids often have skewed memories from their childhood.
My question is, do I need to ask forgiveness for something I did not do? I absolutely did not care if my daughter was on the heavy side or not! It absolutely was not important to me except in so far as her health was impacted by it, or if it was an indication of a health issue that as a parent I should know about. If her perception is what is wrong, not something she claims I did that I know I didn't do, am I supposed to just suck it up, beat my breast and claim "Mea Culpa"? I can't honestly believe taking her to a doctor, even if it was because of a concern related to her weight.
I'm really struggling and annoyed about this. My conscience is clear that I never made fun of her, or called her names, or said she was fat. I seems ludicrous that I should apologize for her false memory.

Hi Leofrog
Welcome to the family and congratulations on living the BPD journey for so long. You don't say much about the most dominant aspects of BPD that affect both you and your daughter. As you probably know the diagnosis is given when someone has a certain number of the listed criteria - so individuals can have quite different sets of symptoms and signs.

On top of that there is the spectrum of low functioning to high functioning. If I had a boundary of my DD having to find a job I know that would be saying go and live on the street - which I am not prepared to do. My DD is low functioning.

So everyone's situation is different.

Just a couple of things I notice from your post - one is a calm tone. I'm wondering if I am reading that right or it's quite the opposite. The other is that you must be an observant person - you can tell things by a tone of voice etc.

I think being observant is very helpful. You can notice patterns which can in turn help you target what you think could be helpful.

Thanks for posting.

This reminded me of something weird about my bpd exgf. This will sound so weird that there is probably something wrong in my head . I have never been able to see her face in my dreams, NEVER. It is like she is blocked from my mind. I usually see really vivid dreams but with her nothing or just her without a face.

I am currently 3.5 years out from a nightmarish BPD breakup, and I have actually been dating a fair amount in the space since then.  I wrote a lot of threads about that breakup, and she and I have remained no contact for several years ever since the breakup.  I have nothing bad to say about her now, I wouldn’t want to run into her again but thinking about her now does not cause an emotional reaction, whereas at the time of the breakup it was 10 / 10 pain.

I’ve had several good, heslthy non-BPD connections with women that had 90%+ of the same level of passion as my BPD ex without all of the problems.

More recently I began dating a woman, we went on two dates and were talking every day, she seemed like the perfect match,  said she wanted a committed relationship, monogamy, etc.  She would constantly send me messages, ask how I was doing, said she wanted to build something with me.  At least 20+ messages per day.  She communicated she had been hurt a lot in the past and had a hard time trusting and needed to go slow.   All fair points so I took things slow, no hooking up, just get to know each other first.   

Then the alarm bells started going off again (unexplained bouts of anxiety, I thought it was just new connection butterflies but I don’t tend to get anxious, and also something telling me “run!” even though I had no apparent reason to.)

For our second date, we went to a bar / restaurant to dance a bit and instead of being excited I had this inexplicable urge to cancel.  Within maybe 20 minutes she excused herself to go to the bathroom and I see her flirting and exchanging numbers with a guy back by the bathroom so I just blocked-erased her and left immediately.

I walked down the street and I see a friend of mine who owns a nearby restaurant and he asks me how I am doing.  I relate to him how the date went (poorly) and tell him a bit more, it turns out he and his wife actually know the woman.  He won’t go into specific details but he says “let’s just say she’s not a very nice person” and he said she seemed to have a new “serious boyfriend” every few days, not that there is anything wrong with dating multiple people at once but it was definitely 1000% different from what she had conveyed to me about herself.

All in I didn’t know her long enough to say for sure, but si definitely got BPD vibes from her and also the real tell was how many of my own alarm bells went off for her that had remained silent for years with other women since my last BPD relationship.  I’m glad I discovered so soon before she and I had gotten physical, even in the short amount of time it still felt like a gut punch that one managed to get past my defenses.

Nowhere close to the 10/10 pain that came from a longer term relationship ending but still it hit surprisingly hard, because of how the BPD dynamic hacked into my own wounding.

I think I have had the same or at least a very familiar feeling.

When I started dating my ex, she lived a few towns over. I used to take a bus to her town and then make my way to her place by foot.

The memory of the walk and her place is haunting to me. Not in a necessarily creepy eerie way, but it floats in my memory like a sickly sweet, nostalgia-laden thing. Think of seeing a monochrome or sepia toned photograph of the perfect American suburb. It reads idyllic at the surface and sort of liminal when you dwell on it. Even thinking about it now I feel a strange pull "there".

Reflecting on it now and reading other responses I think it's because that place in my mind was and is the symbol of the "realness" of the love. Our relationship already had its rocky moments there but the stuff didn't truly hit the fan until she moved in with me. There she seemed genuinely vulnerable and down-trodden those first few months. It gets creepier now that I see it as a kind of a limerence-ridden love nest that it was, woah.

Yes that's so true! I don't know which version I'm going to get throughout the day. He's just came home from a days golf and he's talking to me but definitely not like the remorseful husband he was 2 days ago. He's just gone to have a bath so who knows which version will come out of that bathroom in an hour.

Thankfully we both had our children with other partners so we haven't got that to deal with. We've only been married 2 years but this side definitely showed up after the honeymoon