How much can you punish someone for a betrayal?

My wife frequently wants me to read posts on a redditpage called "loveafterporn" since I confessed years ago I had been watching porn a few times during our rs, not an addiction but I knew she didn't approve.

On this subreddit it seems everyone is of the same opinion and almost always validate each others thoughts even if it's about ideas of controlling their partner. But limiting a partners online activity like they were a child feels sick.

And how long does a porn watcher need to be "in debt"? It seems like an excuse to be abusive.

I think it's fair to say that there are people with personality disorders or quirks in all professions and with all kinds of credentials.

This would be the red flag for me- the mediator's job is to help you with your issues - not to share his professional problems with you. You felt invalidated and unsupported. This isn't someone you think would uphold your best interests in your situation.

While it was delivered poorly- I do think he had a point about marital counseling. Both marital counseling and mediation require that both people are seeking a solution, and can communicate effectively with each other. This isn't the case in high conflict relationships, and where there is a PD. If MC was a high conflict situation, then mediation may not be the best choice.

So, even though this mediator sounds like he has his own issues- it may be that it helps point you in the right direction to get the help and support you need in this situation, and that may be an attorney.

Hi there,

It can be a relief to put a name to your daughter's troubling behaviors, and to have access to resources like this site to learn how to cope and communicate better.  If your daughter has BPD, the good news is that it's treatable with therapy.  I think the other good news is that your daughter is still young--she can turn her life around and not have BPD dysfunction derail her entire life. The not-so-good news is that for therapy to work, she has to want to change for the better.  With BPD, a typical coping tactic is to play the victim, and the trouble with that is, she thinks that everyone else is the cause of all her problems.  She expects everyone else to change, not her.  Does she seem extremely demanding, entitled and mean?  That can be a manifestation of the victim attitude (you hurt me = you owe me = you need to fix it and pay = if you don't you're the most evil person on the planet and I hate you). And that's a key reason why the therapy might not work.

My advice would be NOT to suggest to your daughter that she has BPD.  Nobody, especially someone with a fragile sense of self, enjoys being labeled by others as having a disorder, no matter how much you love your daughter or how good your intentions are.  If you told her you thought she had BPD, I bet her reaction would be to accuse you of being toxic, psycho and in need of help (see the projection here?).  And then she might become estranged from you, precisely when she needs your support the most (i.e. early adulthood with untreated BPD), in a misguided attempt to "punish" you for your evil words.  To hear that you think she's disordered will only give her a reason to hate you more than ever.  Do you see what I mean?

If you do broach the topic of getting therapy, I'd recommend that you frame it as a way to get some extra help to cope through a bad patch.  I bet your daughter is saying she's been abused and/or traumatized, and you could use that angle to broach the topic with her:  getting extra help to cope with trauma.  If she's saying she's depressed, anxious or suicidal, then maybe you say, though you don't fully understand her pain, you'd like to support her in getting therapy so that she can feel better.  Wouldn't it be worth it to give therapy a try, if there were a chance that she might feel even a little bit better?  My BPD stepdaughter really warmed up to the notion that she'd be getting help from professionals, as they were experts in helping people deal with trauma, anxiety and depression.  They see this sort of thing all the time, they'll know what to do!  In a way, getting therapy was validating to my stepdaughter, because she didn't have to abandon the notion of feeling "abused," but in the process she got the right medications and support to learn how to cope better with life's pressures.  The process was bumpy at first, but when she bought into it, she really turned things around.  One of the keys was finding the right therapist.  Since her very life was at stake, ultimately I think she felt therapy was worth a try, because nothing else had seemed to work.

My other advice is only to approach this topic when you and your daughter are calm.  It's not the sort of conversation you want to have when she's actively raging, and when you're stressed out by her behavior.  

Finally, though therapy helps, it's not a quick fix.  She really needs to want to make changes.  Sadly, if you are supporting her fully, you might be enabling and prolonging dysfunction, such as if she's not working/studying/taking care of her environment and lashing out with inappropriate anger at everyone.  If you are supporting her and she's acting like this, in her mind, YOU are the one causing all her troubles.  She might have to try living on her own before she comes to the realization that you aren't the one causing the problems, she is.  Unfortunately, my stepdaughter had to go through that process herself.  She was "enabled" for too long in my opinion, around four to five years, when she was highly dysfunctional, blaming her parents for it and not getting treatment (or not taking treatment seriously).  She had to try (and fail) living on her own a few times to admit that she couldn't cope anymore, and therapy was a last resort.  The good news is that she really turned her life around in a couple of years, and I bet that doctors would say she doesn't qualify for a BPD diagnosis right now, because she's not showing a number of the behaviors anymore (suicide threats/attempts, persistent feelings of hopelessness, paranoia/delusions/losing touch with reality, intense bouts of uncontrolled anger).  Though she still struggles with her intense emotions, she's managing them much better now.  She's also reduced the frequency of therapy visits to every other week, down from weekly.

How?  Well, he went to Harvard!

(only half joking... I've met very few Harvard alums, but they've all been uniformly incompetent, or at best, so arrogant and self-absorbed that they really can't function)

This is all extremely troubling, as is his practice of keeping both parties in the room.  There's a reason no one else does it that way...

  Hi Superflychr and on behalf of everyone here, welcome to this thoughtful and caring community.

Myself personally, I do NOT recommend telling her yourself.  You could pay for this for years.  No good deed goes unpunished?  I know you have the best of intentions. 

I feel this needs to come from someone other than you, and not from an opinionated friend or relative but from a therapist.  If you can get her to a therapist.

Your risk is getting accused of gaslighting.  She might feel that you are blaming her for everything and not taking any responsibility for your part in the relationship by telling her there is something wrong with her that you have diagnosed.   And she might never let you forget it. 

That is what happened to me by my son when I asked him to see a therapist because he was telling me he wanted to end his life.  My reaction before I knew about BPD, before I read any books was really?  You tell me you are suicidal but when I respond with "you really need to talk to a professional" your answer is "how dare you!?"   He felt that I was telling him that there is something wrong with himself personally and not his situation.  In his mind it is his situation that makes him want to end it all, not his brain.  He feels that I have undermined his character and ignored his situation.  Thank goodness I read some books, came here and learned about validation etc.

I wish I could tell my son he is BPD but I never have and I can't.  The hope would be that he would finally understand why he is and has been going through so much pain.  And then he would feel so much better knowing there was help out there, right?  Except that is not how it would turn out if I told him. 

I'm interested in hearing from others who have successfully gotten their adult children diagnosed.  Did it take a suicide hospitalization?

The only way that I was able to get my son to a therapist was to find one who also described himself as a "mediator".  That worked and he came to the first appointment but skipped the second.   I think he was afraid to be found out or called out.

Thanks for posting and asking this question!

R

There are a few different types of attorneys pertaining to PDs and high conflict cases:

1) attys who deal with conflict all the time, and therefore believe and represent that they have experience - and expertise - that they don't truly have
2) attys who fully understand PDs and have specific thoughts about how to manage the dynamic with their clients' best interest (and their professional reputation) in mind
3) attys who at least partially understand PDs and view cases with these dynamics as their personal gravy train - maximum time and billable hours

Conclusion:  It's up to you to manage your case, to select the best available atty for your specific dynamic, and then to manage your atty accordingly. Choose carefully.

it is a letter you can feel good about, not just taking the action of sending it, but the content.

be prepared to give it some time. anecdotally, i have seen people take a month or more to respond to letters like these. sometimes even, a response without a direct acknowledgment. if anything, odds are that if you get a quick response, its more likely to be a bad one, eg " off and dont send me any more letters".

she will take some time with it, if she responds. its also very possible that she may appreciate it but not know what to say. it wouldnt be out of the realm of the ordinary if you decide shes ignored it, and then a few months later she reaches out but doesnt even mention the letter. be prepared for things like that.

and remember, there is no letter, no combination of words, that would have made her ready to jump back into a relationship. this was an attempt to thaw the ice. and it was the best shot you could have made to try to do it.


this may be a hard couple of weeks, with the waiting, the wondering, the mind filling in the gaps. try to fill the time. get ahead of it the best you can.

worst case scenario, you did your best, and in time, youll be able to feel good about that.

Maybe it would help to look at the terms.

Toxic is relative to you, not the motive or reason of the other person. If you drank poison, it would be toxic, no matter what the "motive" of the poison. If it were accidental, or deliberate- the effect on you is the same.

People may use the term "that person is toxic" but that isn't about the person- it's how their behavior affect you. The behavior is toxic to you, the relationship is toxic to you.

We have the right to decide if a situation is not good for our own emotional well being. It's not about the other person.

BPD is a mental illness however, not all mental illnesses mean a person isn't legally competent. Most people with BPD remain legally competent- which means they are accountable for their decisions and behavior. If a person with BPD who is legally competent robbed a bank, they may go to jail like anyone else. A pwBPD has free will and can choose to break up with someone if they want to.

Yes, they need treatment but they also have the ability to consent to treatment or refuse it. The best anyone can do is offer it to them.

BPD is on a spectrum. Some people with BPD are relatively high functioning, some have other issues- such as addictions. Some are physically abusive. Each person decides how the relationship affects them. Is this toxic to you?

Forgiveness is separate. It's a decision we make, regardless of the other person or what they did. It may be easier to forgive the elderly uncle than the ex, due to the different relationships, but you can still decide- the relationship is toxic, not good for you, not something you want - even if you choose to forgive the ex,

Hello. I am new to this site and so grateful to have found all of you. My daughter is 24 and exhibits all of the signs of BPD that I have recently read about. Learning about BPD gives me some comfort because now I know that we are not alone and that there is hope for her. However, I am feeling actually scared to share with her what I have been learning about BPD because I don’t want to offend her, you know? That sounds like a weak excuse, as I write this, to possibly save her life, right? I would just like to know other parent’s experiences with approaching their child and discussing BPD. Thank you.

 

After my long-term marriage to a BPD spouse ended, I started dating online and met someone overseas.  And at first, I saw some worrying trends- she idolized me, she was fiercely strict on her son, she got angry at family and exploded, etc.  But none of this was ever directed to me except in a few cases of jealousy (which is another red flag).

I kept thinking though, could this be another BPD relationship?  Or am I just being paranoid?

I've been married to this person for 9 months now and at times, I still question if BPD can be in the mix.  But the beautiful thing is that the skills we learn on this site work regardless if we're talking mental illness or not.  So when my new wife feels invalidated or brushed aside, I stop whatever I'm doing and love on her.  And 99% of the time, the problem never actually becomes a problem.

Every now and then my wife will get her feelings hurt and give me the silent treatment for a little while.  This includes dirty looks, aggressively pulling away when I try to touch her, and general pouting throughout the day.  But I'll kiss her on the cheek anyway, tell her I love her, and then I'll give her space to work it out in her own mind.  Usually by the end of the day she's apologizing and back to being her normal goofy, fun-loving self.

No matter what happens, whether it's BPD or not, I validate my wife's feelings and we have a great marriage.  And I think that's the key for any relationship, we're there to love and support the people we care about.

Does my current wife have BPD?  I really don't know, it depends on what day you ask me.  But I do know how to love her and validate her feelings, so I'm not too worried either way.