Hi there,

Kudos to you for maintaining boundaries.  I know it can be hard sometimes.  You mention that your adult sibling lived with you, borrowed money and always played the victim.  I bet you tried to help her out, to help her get on her feet again, right?  But the thing is, with untreated BPD, her needs are endless, and furthermore, she's ungrateful and/or mean, and/or blaming YOU.  It's like no good deed goes unpunished, right?

In my opinion, you are all adults now.  You've done enough for your sibling.  You know full well how toxic your sibling can be if you let her in too close.  And your kids know it too.  Sure, mom is "distraught" because she's spent a lifetime protecting/enabling/making excuses for her weakest child, and she just doesn't see how it's harmful to you.  Maybe she can't be happy when her BPD daugter is clearly unhappy.  But you know what?  That's their problem.  I think you stick to your boundary:  everyone is an adult here, I'm staying out of it.  I'm not meddling.

It sounds like your kids know better, too.

Here's an observation for you.  In my family, grandma just doesn't seem to understand that 20-somethings are BUSY!  Yet the reality for most young adults is that they just don't have the time, money or energy to be a caretaker of an aunt's emotional/financial/logistical/housing turmoil.  In my opinion, young adults deserve to focus on forging their own lives.  Maybe they show up to a Christmas or Thanksgiving gathering, and that would be wonderful, but demanding much more than that sounds too needy and whiny in my opinion.  If grandma insists that the grandkids call their auntie regularly, check in on her and help her with domestic duties, I think that's out of line.  Maybe you say something like, My kids are really busy these days, and I'm not meddling in their lives.  Besides, Sis is an adult, she can take care of herself.

Now my guess is that your sis is needy, blame-y and complaining all the time to Mom about how horrible everyone is, especially you, for not being her emotional caretaker.  You can't control that.  Mom is falling for it.  My opinion is that's between them, and it's probably best that you stay out of it.  You can say that:  This is between you and Sis, I'm staying out of it.

I know it's hard, but just remember, if you relax your boundary, things get infinitely harder, right?  You deserve a peaceful life too, you know.

 I have been able to recognise that my sibling was manipulative all my life for the last 15 years or so. Growing up it was a pattern many of you will recognise, pointing our flaws, when I made mistakes. Making me question if I was adopted. As we grew into adults this intensified, but they made sure to keep me in their orbit. As my career grew and I got married with kids always playing the victim, borrowing money, staying with us. When the kids would visit them, telling them they would inherit there house. The thought of my kids being dragged into this cycle was the final straw. I cut her off completely for years.

But then the flying monkeys started. My own mother in tears about it, saying when she was gone I would be their only family, I couldn't turn my back on them. So I opened the door again. This time more guarded, more careful, more arms length for the sake of my parents.

For a few years this seemed to work. Minimal contract. Civil almost friendly at family occasions. Then the nasty messages started up again. I pulled away again, not announced, just pulled away. My adult children recognised what was happening and chose to pull away themselves. One broke contact altogether, one maintains a text relationship, but is guarded. This seemed to work another year or so.

The flying monkeys have just returned. That's what has prompted me to join this forum. I am running out of ways to cope. My mother is upset that the kids don't contact their auntie. She believes my partner and I are controlling them into no contact. They are old enough to be part of the conversation now in their 20s so we have given them full disclosure.

Where do I go from here? I can't cut my mother out of my life, but the distress this is causing her is unbearable. I am also not about to try and persuade my kids to speak to her when they don't want to. I don't want them dragged into this cycle of harm.

I agree- it's something in addition to the physical appearance that is the magnet. I think we learn early on what works to get our needs met, and pwBPD may have different needs and so develop a different skill set to meet them.

People notice attractive people- that's natural. BPD mother was a pretty child and people noticed that. There are pretty children who don't have BPD and people notice them too but perhaps the way they meet their attention need is different for them. All children want attention. It's common to see a small child say to their parent "look at this" as they do a big jump on the playground or show their drawing.

Children have innate abilities and so when they get attention for them, it may reinforce them. If a child is a good reader, or good at sports, gets praised for that, they read more and become good at these activities.

Imaging there's a high need temperment child, who may be more stress for parents and teachers and so doesn't get a lot of positive attention but is attractive and gets attention for that- and that becomes their skill focus? Or they find other attention to be something to work at but being attractive- they just get the attention. That would become their reinforced skill set. This won't create BPD but perhaps that tendency was already there.

To compare Tel Hill's mother and roomate. The roomate was also attractive but focused on other skills, like acting and her college classes, got a sense of accomplishment from these. BPD mother didn't have these other avenues of sense of self and so her attractiveness became her main way of getting needs met. She had poor executive function. She was intelligent and liked to read a lot- but to work at a task that brought a later sense of accomplishment may have been more of a challenge.

My friend's young adult daughter who has BPD also has this "attraction factor".   I have known her since she was little. I didn't notice any problematic behavior then. It emerged as a teen. She has an intense need for attention. In her teens, it became possible to gain attention from boys- so perhaps this is something she did more- so she could have that need met.

One of my BPD mother's needs was that she couldn't tolerarate being alone for long. She needed someone with her. She seemed to not be able to regulate her own emotions and having someone with her in the role of emotional caretaker met that need. This young woman is similar in that need. So perhaps their being able to draw people to them was reinforced for them.

Oh I agree too. The problem is she is very charismatic. She is very confident, and she bullsh*ts so freely and easily everyone falls for it, and it’s much easier to fall for it and sweep it under the carpet. I get it, her father doesn’t want to think she’s a drug addict, that she has mental problems and to him I suppose it seems she doesn’t because of her confidence. I know just how f’ed up in the head she is though because I’ve lived with her a lot longer than she has lived with any of her other family members. I know how she lies, manipulates and twists people.

My sons gf’s parents are a doctor and a nurse. I think they have even been swayed by her bs, even though every time she has met them she has sounded coked up.

The problem is I’ve told her family enough times what she is like, what the bf is like and I’m not sure it’s taken until now for them to show it, but 24hrs later it’s back to acting like nothing has happened. I’ve also told them what will happen, her health is suffering and I’ve told them all it isn’t going to end well.

I’d like to think it’s all the drugs but she’s been like it for far too long for it to be. She is the eldest child, her mum was not loving because her own mother wasn’t and put in a mental institute a couple of times. Her dad used to work all day every day and wasn’t there much, but when he was and she had been scolded and sent to her room he would go up and speak to her and just validate her and tell her not to upset her mother, so he has always enabled her from a young age. All the perfect recipe for a personality disorder/mental illness to develop. What is the saying, show me a boy at 7 and I’ll show you the man.

Her 'happiness' will not be the happiness we non-BPD sufferers would have; it will only be bursts of happiness during her ever-changing emotions.  She can never stay in one mental state long enough to truly enjoy it as we would. For every burst of happiness there will be more chaos and turmoil in her life as her moods swing.

As for feeling no guilt, she probably does feel some guilt at times but due to her illness is unable to express it so re-writes the facts to enable her to cope with it. My exBPD of 4 years never once said 'sorry' or even came close to acknowledging she'd acted badly.

I've often said that I'm sure BPD's are far more aware of how they're acting than they would have us know and they do feel guilt to some degree but are unable to deal with it.

Rowdy, I'm really sorry this has happened and that your FOO continues to enable this chaotic and toxic behaviour. I hope you find some mental peace.



I agree with TellHill on this. The family's behaviour is not about reality or truth. It's about doing the thing that is easiest for them in the moment. If for years they've found it easier to paper over and ignore your ex's destructive actions, this is likely to continue. These dynamics sometimes remind me of The Simpsons and how every time Krusty the Clown meets Bart, he doesn't remember who Bart is.

It might be worth considering what you can do to protect yourself and your sons that relies purely on your own or their actions, and does not depend on cooperation from your ex and her FOO.

Yes I’m afraid they will all go back to enabling as you are right the FOO seems to be just as you say it is. She has a cousin that is just as bad if not worse. Has always been bad news, stealing, drug use, heroin abuse, getting involved in drug running ending up with dealers banging on family members doors when he has stolen money from them etc. and he has always had a free pass from his family, my ex clashes with him real bad because they are so alike. They both bullsh*t their way through things and I too am in disbelief at how people just fall for it.

They came home from hospital yesterday and my son asked us all round at 6 to see him. I was there with my ex, two sons, sons girlfriend and our grandson. My ex just carried on as if nothing had happened. I didn’t mention anything because it wasn’t the time or the place.

CC43, your comments on shame are on the money. With uBPDx, the day after he cheated, he spent the entire day walking and walking without eating (and then came home and tried to deny what he had done, by retrospectively claiming we were not in a relationship). When I first told him that this wasn’t true and that his actions fit the definition of cheating, he nodded and said ‘sorry’ and seemed so ashamed he could not even lift his head.

Then, just over 2 weeks later and seemingly apropos of nothing, the lashing out began - accusations, word salad, demanding that I move out, etc.

It’s not really possible to logically reconcile uBPDx’s seemingly genuine deep regret for destroying his previous relationship through cheating, and his actions in our own relationship. But in emotional terms, it makes sense. uBPDx was able to emotionally paper over his previous misdeeds by telling a story to himself and others (me) that it was a special circumstance, his former partner’s fault for being ‘horrible’ and so on. I think when that story becoming unsustainable, the shame became unbearable and anything, to the point of treating me appallingly and telling desperate, stupid lies, became justified to him.

About two weeks after the cheating, and a few days before uBPDx started painting me black, we were talking about another situation. Someone being dishonest and seemed to live in two realities at once, both believing and disbelieving their own claims, even contradicting their own accusations at the same time as they were making them. I told uBPDx that I found this extremely destabilising. uBPDx looked at me with what seemed like great compassion and said, “Is it because of me?”

At the time, I didn’t understand. I didn’t know yet that he’d been lying to me, but he obviously did and it was preying on his mind. Which wouldn’t be the case if he was entirely incapable or not cognisant of his own actions.

There was another thing I might have mentioned before – uBPDx accused me of making him feel ‘guilty for existing’. I pointed out that a year ago, he had described another friend as making him feel ‘guilty for being alive’. He looked at me with hate and said, “Are you trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to kill myself”. Which is obviously nonsensical – pointing out that his mental health spirals were following a cycle, is not the same as trying to make him feel guilty for wanting to kill himself. These are two different things.

In this case, the reality – that he was mentally ill, that there was a problem in his own head, not just the outside world – that no-one else could save him from it – was completely intolerable to uBPDx. Blaming and projecting onto me was easier.

So to summarise, I believe uBPDx, and maybe many BPD people, know exactly what they are doing cognitively, but are unable to handle the truth emotionally because they don’t have the distress tolerance or other skills. The shame or awareness they have done wrong, or that they have responsibilities to fulfil that they don’t want to, feels like an assault to them. Lashing back feels like self-defence against the assault. Thus the projections, blame shifting, distortions of reality, etc.

But then, because they aren’t actually (for the most part) psychotic, they do know they are harming others tremendously. That their actions are bad and look bad to other people. Cue more intense shame. Which feeds into more desperate attempts to relieve shame. Which leads to more lashing out. And the cycle continues…


NotWendy, my mother was just the same! There was an incident in my childhood just like this but with fish, not soup.

This! Sometimes I'd get too engaged in my own emotions that I forgot to hear the emotion behind their words. Whatever emotion they feel, it was ok, but the words they were using it to express were not, and all they really wanted at that point was to get us engaged in an argument so they could find a way to explode without being "wrong". It's so hard to always remind myself of that though, and when I forget, things get bad because I engaged and reacted in a bad way...

Congrats on the birth of your grandson. He sounds perfect and adorable.

I'm really sorry your ex tripped out in public embarrassing herself and your family. I'm very sorry your sons had to witness her meltdown at the worst possible time. I have had a few pwBPD in my life and they have never thought twice about throwing me under the bus. I have never gotten used to their lack of conscience and self centeredness either.

I'm glad your ex SIL has seen your ex as she really is. It may be temporary. She has surely seen her sister's disordered behavior in the past. She didn't acknowledge it then. She may have acknowledged it now to not add to your distress or prevent more embarassment to her and her dad.

Once this blows over, she may return to being an enabler since that was her role in her FOO.  My late dBPD mother would spend days on end verbally attacking me and screaming when I was an minor living at home. One time she went off the deep end and started pushing me out of the blue. I think it was a psychotic episode.  My enabler  dad told her to stop and actually comforted me and protected me. I thought things would now change for the better for me.  I don't know if he was just de-escalating her behavior at the moment never intending to stand up to her permanently or if he wanted true change and was afraid to go forward with it, but he went back to enabling her and ignoring me.  I was bitterly disappointed.

What do you plan to do now that your grandson is here. Can you protect yourself from her outbursts and drug problems? What about your sons?