I love someone who was recently diagnosed with BPD…I just need someone to talk to that will understand the toll this disorder takes on my own mental health…can someone offer me some help and or advice on what to do or say when I’ve reached my breaking point…I’m so down and exhausted in this moment.

Hi, I’m new to this whole board and to bdp. I was married for almost 20 years with four beautiful kids and a loving wife that we’ve been through so much stuff.
And then last Christmas, I found out that I had an estranged daughter of 21 years who was diagnosed with BDP in her teens 
After almost 6 months of still getting accustomed to the whole situation and researching about BDP, we’re finally getting ready to start making contact with my estranged daughter and wondered if anybody has any tips on setting emotional boundaries or boundaries that would help

Thank you! Yes , it is our reality and I feel very lucky to have found this Forum which offers support from people who can relate to the same experiences, plus the amount of resources and information that is available to all of us on here. so grateful that people take time from their busy lives to administer and run these sites.

I will post on here updates on how it goes with the support group and everything else going on with my situation.

Be well and we’ll stay in touch 

William Eddy's excellent handbook Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder will answer many of your questions and help you avoid many typical pitfalls and traps encountered during a divorce.  Since this is for you, order it from a private account so its delivery or any bills will not trigger your stbEx.

That leads to the topic of privacy and confidentiality.  You have that Right, regardless of demands and interrogations.  When trying to repair a marriage, of course you would share information to rebuild trust.  However, ending the relationship means you only share what is appropriate, in this case typical parenting information.  Choosing a lawyer, determining legal strategies and much more would henceforth be considered as part of that private and confidential category.

Did you choose an experienced proactive lawyer, one familiar with the local divorce court, judges and processes, even protracted hearings and even trial?  (You don't have to hire the first lawyer you interview.  Many lawyers are fine for "normal" cases - filling out forms and holding hands - but our cases require more.)

One reality you will likely face is that family courts typically don't have any inclination to seek a diagnosis of possible mental health issues.  They deal with litigants as they are and don't try to fix people.  We do well to follow that example and focus on facts, documentation and a range of proposed solutions.  Usually by the end of the divorce process the court may notice, sadly in a disinterested manner, who the problem spouse is and who has practical solutions.

A high priority will be for you to get the court to make a temp order that is as favorable as possible.  Set aside any thought of being "fair"... do what is best for (1) you and (2) the children.  A warning: our sort of cases take much longer than most.  Our temporary orders typically continue one or two years, sometimes longer, as the process grinds slowly.  And by that time temp orders have a tendency to morph into final orders since judges conclude after all that time it must be working. So if your lawyer whispers to you, as mine unfortunately did, "Shh... we'll fix it later" then be forewarned, it might be two years later.  So, to restate clearly, try to get the "least bad" temp order possible.  My court never modified my lousy temp order.


This is where we not just curb our desire to share but also our otherwise excellent quality of being overly-fair and overly-nice.  As long as you're not nasty, that's enough for the court.  You have to look out for and prioritize (1) yourself and (2) your children.

Your lawyer should have strategies to deal with typical divorce issues.  We also have here many time-tested strategies and much collective wisdom.  We've been there, experienced that.  As the scripture states, "Keep on seeking and you will find.  Keep on asking and you will receive."

Feel free to browse our site, especially this Separating & Divorcing board.  You will find many questions similar to yours and the prior responses will enlighten you on your options, various approaches and possible solutions.

Your stbEx may try to claim you're not an involved parent since you are the one to go to work.  Document all the parenting you do.  Ensure you know all the pediatricians, doctors, dentists, teachers, coaches, school counselors, day care workers, etc.

Thank you all, I am considering very carefully everything that has been said on here. I am stuck on leaving the playground so the bully doesn’t win.. isn’t that what the bully wanted? I don’t know honestly. I had a lot of trouble with bullies. I need to remember that it seems my wife does need me with her ringing three times a day for the duration of my availability, and saying she can’t put the kids to bed without my help.(I also get them up in the morning).

PW, I understand your concerns. The government is loaning the money to put w through college, I am not responsible for that. I am hoping that the experience will help with her mental health. I know that pwbpd do not just “get better” especially without therapy. But my wife has sat on the sofa breast feeding for 6 years!!! She needs to get out and gain some confidence. I really want this for her. She has no qualifications and no friends. I’m rooting for her partly because she’s that crazy she might even change her mind about my Mum once she’s feeling happier.

I will try and get some legal advice in the little free time I have. I’ll try to go against my instinct to be honest and keep my wife informed at every step. I don’t want to serve her divorce papers and be like, “I really didn’t want to do this, I just want the children to see Granny!” It sounds ridiculous but it’s how I feel…

This is where I often step up and remind our members that we all, each of us, have rights to our privacy and confidentiality.  That includes our future options and future decisions.  It's not being mean, it's being wise and smart.

How so?  Sharing too much information can - and will - be used against us.  That's just the nature of an acting-out disorder such as BPD.  If sharing too much information beyond typical necessary parenting matters has a potential to expose us to being sabotaged now or in the future, then wisdom dictates that we avoid divulging sensitive information, either when being manipulated or by guilting or by interrogations.

It may sounds strange to put it that bluntly, but many here sabotaged themselves by sharing too much information.  I explain this so you are forewarned and prepared.

On a related thought, if she has sought to finance college by having you co-sign loans, what that would mean is that if she never repaid them, then you'd be responsible to repay them.  From a practical perspective - for yourself and for the parenting of your children - do try to limit your financial exposure since presently you are not confident your marriage has a solid future.  For example, if she seek for your to guarantee a loan for her them you could limit your agreement to one year increments.  Or that doing so would require her to acquiesce to grandmother contact?  (In other words, you give a little and she gives a little.)

I am new to the group. My spouse has BPD.  I thought for a long time that he had NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). They both have similar behaviors.   As hard as it was, I finally accepted that my marriage of over 30 years is over.  He has put us in a tight financial bind..not the first time.  I love him dearly and always will. However, he doesn't take responsibility or accountability for his actions. He deflects, shift-blames, and gaslights when I try to express things that we need to work on in the marriage.  I am currently in counseling. I've mentioned individual counseling to him, but he refuses. There isn't anything more I can do.  I am in the process of grieving my marriage... It's pretty tough, and I am healing from past trauma.  Is there anyone who can relate?  I've come a long way, but I'm still a work in progress.   

Hi mom,

You must be exhausted tolerating dysfunction for so long.  You love your daughter and want what's best for her, but she refuses help while clinging to a victim attitude like her life depends on it.  I bet she blames you and others (ex-romantic partners, ex-roommates, ex-family members, ex-friends, ex-coworkers, etc.) for all her problems, correct?  I bet she tells stories of enduring abuse, bullying, condescension, deceit and unfairness, where details are highly warped and/or questionable, and the common denominator of her grievances is that she's always the victim.  Sound familiar?  If it does, it's because that's typical for BPD.

You don't want to see your daughter suffer so much, and yet she's stubbornly making one bad decision after another which begets more suffering, and in the process, she's making you suffer.  That's because she's making decisions based on extreme emotions and impulse, not logic.  And though technically she's an adult, she's functioning like a child, in that YOU bear the consequences of HER decisions.  In her world, the incentives are all mixed up, as are her priorities.  Because of this, you both are stuck in a pit of despair.  I bet you cycle through emotions of desperation, bargaining, anger, resignation, exhaustion and hopelessness, over and over again.

Look, I'm not a mind reader, but I bet your daughter's internal dialogue is exceedingly negative.  Deep down, I bet she hates herself.  She hates her life, she hates the bad decisions she's made, she hates feeling inferior to everyone around her.  I bet she suffers from intense shame, and that her self-confidence is in the pits.  Moreover, since she doesn't really do anything (but fail), who is she, anyway?  She doesn't know who she is, except for a freeloading mess-up that is an embarrassment to her family.  She's in her 40s, she thinks she's hopeless.  But she suffers too much when she thinks like this, so she starts to look for scapegoats--anyone else to take some of the blame.  I imagine that, since she's alienated everyone else, the only person left to blame for her messed-up life is YOU.  She RESENTS you for making her feel so incompetent and dependent.  Thus she'll bite the hand that feeds her.  She doesn't care if she bankrupts you--because it's YOUR FAULT!  She has become the gold medalist of the grievance Olympics.  If only she could channel her stubbornness towards a more positive, productive pursuit, she'd be a champion . . . But she has exercised her brain with negative thoughts so extensively, for so many years, that she has worn deep ruts in her brain.  In a way, the negative thinking patterns--and the stories of victimhood--become almost automatic, routine to her.  Does that sound about right?

I think there's hope, because BPD is treatable, provided that your daughter wants to make some changes to start to feel better.  Unfortunately, she may have to hit bottom first.  I think that for as long as she's living with you (or off of you), she'll continue to blame you for her situation (even if, deep down, she knows that's not entirely true).  Though she's suffering, she's happy with the status quo, because she thinks it's working for her.  She has "her" car, she eats enough, and she gets to blame you for everything.  But my question is, are you happy with the status quo?  Is keeping your beloved daughter off the street the best situation for both of you?  I'm not asking that to be cruel, I'm asking that as a genuine question.  I understand that as a parent, you can't bear to withdraw assistance, because of the fear that your daughter might end up on the street and wind up dead.  Is that the scenario that you're dealing with right now?

I'm not sure what to advise you here, because these situations are really tricky, and pwBPD can be highly volatile, and act out in predictably impulsive ways.  All I can say is that the pwBPD in my life had to try (and fail) living semi-independently a few times before she hit bottom and was ready to commit to therapy.  In addition, she had to hear some ultimatums from her doctors as well as her dad.  The doctors said something along the lines of:  We've tried everything for you, and you say nothing has worked.  The only option left is for you to participate in a treatment program.  It's your choice whether to do it or not.  But if you end up in the hospital again in the future, we'll have no choice but to commit you against your will.  Her dad said something like this:  I love you and want to support you in getting some help to recover from your traumas.  I will support you if you do exactly what the doctors say, whether it's a program, medications or therapy sessions.  You can choose to go your own way, but then you're on your own.  You're an adult, it's your choice to make.  Fortunately, she decided to do the recommended therapy program(s), and she managed to turn her life around.  Though her progress didn't happen in a straight line, her life got much better in a relatively short time (1-2 years).  And though she still has some work to do, she has a much healthier lifestyle today.  I don't mean to rub this in, but merely to provide a little hope.

Therapy doesn't have to be a condemnation.  I think the pwBPD in my life actually warmed to the notion of working with "professional" therapists.  It validated her thesis that her life was so full of trauma that she needed some professional help to learn to cope with it.  In fact, I think that's a positive way of framing therapy (getting extra/temporary support to help to cope with something), rather than being labelled mentally ill.  Nobody likes that label.  In addition, I think her dad also warmed to the notion of heeding professional advice.  That way, he was alleviated of coming up with new solutions--he felt that everything he had tried to save his daughter had failed, and their relationship was already too strained.  His main job as a parent transitioned (temporarily) to ensuring that his daughter followed doctors' orders, in order for him to continue to provide financial and other support.  That seemed much cleaner and simpler.  Does that make sense?

To add Zachira's comment, my experience with boundaries is that:
1) they can be emotionally difficult to set (for example setting boundaries for my own mother has been difficult)
2) the other person is going to react to them with extinction burst kind of behaviors and that is more difficult to navigate than setting them in the first place
3) if you can get through the extinction bursts, it does get better.  But in my circumstance where it's my mother and she lives so close, even when it gets better, it never goes away, meaning even with my boundaries, her behaviors don't stop.  But they have lessened for me, especially now that she's in assisted living. Somebody else gets to deal with her and make decisions.

Right now she's choosing to eat like a bird, and then send me texts about how she is losing weight.  She says she doesn't like the food.  The truth is, she never liked any food (anorexic).  And so even when I used to bring her food, she would give it away or throw it out.  Sometimes she would tell me hers tasted better.  So I eventually stopped bringing her food. When the text comes about losing weight, I roll my eyes and move on.  She's an adult.  She's a nurse.  She makes her own decisions.

So boundaries do make things better, potentially significantly better, but it's still a roller coaster at times.  And they never stop finding ways to blame us.  She is blaming me less than she used to, but that's because I only see her once a week, and no longer go alone to these visits.  Those are some of my boundaries.  So for the newbies on the site, this is an example of how boundaries are for US, and not for the other person.

How are boundaries working out for others?

Generally, your attorney will ask for a lot of this; they'll have a standard playbook of the information that is routine in a divorce, namely what assets each party is bringing into the marriage, what assets are jointly held, how much money there is, etc. and so on. 

In your case, I think you also need to document the costs of the kids' support, what they require, and how they get this support. 

If your STBX-H has made threats about taking the kids, discuss this with your attorney, and any basis he may have for claiming this. 

Note that pwBPD often have to feel like "they won" in a divorce, so it may be worthwhile to come up with something you can concede on that allows them to save face and go away.  Maybe give them a favorable property dissolution, like go 55/45 instead of 50/50, or let them keep some asset. 

My cousin divorced a guy who - if not BPD - was certainly on the spectrum, and had been physically abusive to their kids.  He basically wanted more money to give up parenting time, which she had and was willing to part with on the basis that the extra $25K or whatever she was paying him was a one-time expense & she could make more money, but getting him out of their kids' lives was priceless. 

That sort of thing.