Divorcing a high conflict person is really difficult, especially if you instigated it. They are hypersensitive to rejection and will fight as pwBPD often do to hang onto you. My ex-h subjected me to word salad and nonstop mentions of his new girlfriend while asking me for money and asking me to drop the divorce. It doesn't help to move the divorce along which may be their goal.

It might be best to take a break from them and let the lawyers handle the issues until the divorce is final. A divorce is one if the most painful experiences in life even if you are the one who filed. It's not a surprise you are feeling deep emotional pain. Don't blame yourself. Your heart is broken. It needs time to mend.  Do your best to get through it.

You can revisit the concept of being a friend with your stbx then. You do not have to choose that if it doesn't work. Some aren't, especially if no kids are involved,  but do find a way to talk without rancor.

Hi there,

While it's good to reflect and be introspective, I also think you probably shouldn't beat yourself up too much.  First off, everyone makes decisions that they think are best given the situation and information available.  Secondly, I believe that pwBPD/NPD often exhibit somewhat delusional, "magical" thinking.  They have a tendency to idealize things, perhaps related to their black-and-white thinking.  In the context of a new relationship, they might at first envision a fairytale, and get swept up in the excitement and novelty of it.  All of the sudden, you're the solution to all their problems--perhaps you offer housing, you assuage their loneliness, you provide needed human connection, you have money, you provide attention, you make her days exciting, you make her feel loved.  She has a crush on you.  Then fantasy takes over--she thinks she'll never be alone, and that she can stop working, move into your place, and you'll take care of her, give her money, wine and dine her, shower her with attention.  So what does she do?  She puts her best foot forward, like most people do in a new relationship.  And yet with BPD/NPD, she's prone to withhold information and distort the truth (sometimes wildly), but she'll justify it to herself by with her disordered/delusional thinking. 

Only when she feels completely secure in the relationship and you're fully committed, will she show you who she really is.  And by then, you have a lot invested in the relationship.  Since you're a good person, you're willing to fight for her, because, after all, at the start of the relationship, everything seemed great.  And maybe your partner plays the victim, and you truly want to save her, because she is your partner after all.  In a normal relationship, if your partner were sick, you'd try to help so that she could get better, right?  The problem is, with BPD/NPD, conventional help typically doesn't work.  And so it's logical that you'd be frustrated that no matter what you do and no matter how much you try to be supportive, the relationship isn't working normally.  Is that really all your fault?  My guess is, probably not--my guess is that you put everything you had into trying to make the relationship work, and even that wasn't enough, because a relationship requires the cooperation and efforts of BOTH parties.  So you did the best you could, and that's all you can do.  That's all anyone can do.

Yes, I really try to put myself in my daughter’s shoes to have compassion for her disordered thoughts and behavior. I really do! I think that is why I have been so reluctant to completely cut off contact. I feel so sorry for her and I feel so responsible for her, at least emotionally. I’m her only living parent and I simply love her. However, I have gotten to the point where I cannot mentally and emotionally handle the constant roller coaster of being her favorite person and then being the devil mother who has ruined her life. I am getting older and I have decided the costs of withstanding and dismissing her erratic moods and words is taking its toll on my soul and body. I have decided to forgo even a short and kind response to her. I believe it will only fuel her rage further. I am trying to see this as temporary. It’s causing me a lot of anxiety, but I will try to work through it and hope that she gets the help she needs. How heartbreaking!

You seem to have a really good grasp on this and you're right, when someone is in a disordered state and lashing out, they're experiencing so much emotional pain that in the moment, everything is all about them.  We do the same thing without realizing it when we get hurt; our focus is purely on the physical pain in that moment and we expect others to understand what we're going through. 

For instance, cutting ourselves with a kitchen knife or accidentally closing a door on our hand- for the first 5-15 seconds, it's all about what we're experiencing and we might act out of character.  The difference here is that with BPD, you can't see what's causing pain so you don't understand the outburst or the sudden changes.  And when they're all "poor me" and we're dismissive of the way they're acting, that's when it turns ugly because they can't understand why you don't see what they're dealing with (or maybe you're intentionally ignoring it because you don't care about them- that's where their thinking goes).

Honestly, it's very sad for everyone involved.  You sister is a victim of her own mind and I can't imagine how difficult that would be.

One thing you mentioned, that you need to fall silent when your sister turns abusive...that's where you start.  But if the abuse continues, you must walk away instead of just standing there and taking it.  Maybe it hurts their feelings, maybe it initially makes things worse, but you must make it clear that while you love them, the abusive stuff is not okay and you're not engaging in it a second longer than you have to.

Some time ago, I received an email when someone in my mother's FOO hit "reply all" instead of "reply". At first I thought it was about BPD mother- discussing mental heath issues- but reading it, I realized that they were discussing me, and how they came up with these ideas, I don't know how they came up with that but most likely because they assumed the difficulties in our relationship were because of me, not her.

This created some distance between us, because, I was embarrassed in their presence. It's hard to be around people who think you are disordered. Later, BPD mother got angry at me and they didn't communicate with me.

Then, BPD mother, in what was a push pull, I think, tried to smooth over communcation with them. She forwarded me a group email with a topic of interest to the family- and asked if I was interested. I looked at the email list and saw that I was not on it. So, I replied- no, I wasn't included.

They later realized more about my mother's behavior and reached out to me. We have reconnected. It's better, but still difficult, as now there's been distance between us and I still feel wary.

I don't believe he's only looking for friendship either. What gives me caution is this indirect way of asking you out and also it's insulting. Taking someone out for dinner to test the food before you take someone else out is already putting you one down.

IMHO, someone who wants to take you out to dinner will ask, directly. If he cares about you, he wouldn't make this comment, he'd know the restaurant was a good place. It does sound like he's joking a bit but on your part, if you accept a less than acceptable place to eat, he then knows you accept less than kind treatment. By acceptable I don't mean it has to be an expensive 5 star restaurant but some place he's been and likes and thinks you'd like it too.

"There's a great Mexican restaurant nearby- want to go get something to eat sometime?" is a casual, yet direct way to ask.

Someone who respects your boundaries wouldn't push the "no thank you" to his dinner invitation. That he keeps pushing it, tells me he doesn't. I don't think he's a good choice for a "just friends" either.

Seeing what you don't want here can also start you thinking about what you do want in a potential friendship or relationship. Direct and clear communication, respecting boundaries, to name a few.

Imagine you meet someone who you would like to get to know better? And he asks you to dinner, directly.

I'm not single but if I were, I wouldn't go anywhere in someone's car or accept a dinner invitation right away from someone I don't know well. I would reply, directly- I'd like to get to know you better but I prefer we meet for coffee first. If he respects that boundary-  pick a place, drive there with your own car, and it's coffee only until you have checked him out, and feel you know him better.

This is an insightful post, and it also can tie into the other thread by PearsBefore about what traits in a person seem to predispose them to being in a long term relationship with someone with BPD.

I think it's possible to be initially attracted to someone with BPD, but have that not lead to a long term relationship if there are incompatibilities, but some people who are inititially attracted to someone with BPD stay longer. Why?

From what I have read, who we attract and who we are attracted to is a result of many factors, and some not conscious. Our family of origin dynamics is one influence. If somene grows up with family dysfunction, a person who has a disorder may feel "familiar" to them, and they may not see the red flags as different.

You have also identified aspects of your own personality that somehow the situation you had fit an emotional need of yours, even if it was a dysfunctional one.

Another factor that is not conscious is boundaries. If someone has emotionally healthy boundaries, they will feel a sense of discomfort around someone who doesn't. Pairing up with that person for the long run may be a result of both people having poor boundaries. Boundaries can be too weak or too strong.

I think it is very wise of you to explore your own succeptibility to the previous relationship, doing the work of your own recovery, so that your feeling of a "match" with someone is different next time. I have read that if someone ends a dysfunctional relationship without doing this work, they could be more succeptible to another similar relationship. Doing this work can also be beneficial to you in general.

The Karma analogy is interesting. I think it's a universal concept to many religions although western religions don't discuss it in that term or context. As you say, it's not a system of reward- do good things, get good things back or vice versa in the immediate sense. It's more of a recognition that there's a higher order in the universe than we are, and that we don't know the big picture, we don't know the ultimate justice,  but we should do our part to put some good into the world, to the extent we can. It may be a different view than in the western world but it is not incompatible with western religions that recognize the higher wisdom and order of the universe as belonging to God.

This is not the same as natural consequences. Some things we don't control but we do know that actions have consequences.

It's recognizing that we don't have the power to change another person, only ourselves and that we are responsible for our own behavior. One is that, if we enable a person's behavior, that behavior is likely to increase. So we can do things that contribute to dysfunction.

What can appear like "helping" someone is actually self serving if we are doing it with the intent to change them or gain a certain response.

With the post by PearsBefore- this discusses some attributes of people who may be more inclined to stay in a long term relationship with someone with BPD. Labels don't tell the whole of a person and someone can have traits without completely fitting a label, but if the attributes lead to insight and personal change, there's a use for them to give us ideas about ourselves. Someone may find they have traits of all, some narcisism, some enabling, some being socially less savvy,  without the entire labels fitting them and still want to work on these traits.

You've identified some traits in yourself that you wish to change. I think working with a counselor who can be objective and help you through this process is a good idea. One doesn't have to have something "wrong" with them to decide to work on personal growth.

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You will find frequent mention of BPD "FOG" on this site and elsewhere.

• Fear ... of threats, pressure, intimidation, disparagement, more ragefests, etc
• Obligation ... the years in the relationship don't make it easy for us to step away and observe the dysfunctional relationship objectively
• Guilt ... if we decide the relationship is unhealthy, since we are indoctrinated by childhood FOO or the relationship's history "It's All Your Fault!"

This is a peer support site.  We've walked in your shoes; we've "been there, experienced that".  There is immense collective wisdom here in the posts, topics and various boards.  We can share communication skills that can address some of the discord in your lives, much of it you will have already heard from your therapist.

We can also confirm that you can't "fix" your spouse.  It appears your spouse is trying to work on her issues just as you're working on yours.  We don't sugar coat here, well, not too much.  It may be that your marriage doesn't have a healthy, functional future.  What you decide for your future is your decision and yours alone.  We are remote and anonymous peer support and not here as experts.  That is why we urge you that seeing therapists is good for both of you, no matter the end result of the relationship.

Whether you decide the relationship does or does not have a future, I would caution you about the inclination that having children might save the relationship.  While children are wonder blessings, they do not fix troubled or dysfunctional relationships.  Rather, having children vastly complicates everything... whether the marriage continues or it ends.

My story... I had been married for over a decade and thought that my increasingly troubled spouse would find happiness if we had a child.  Frankly, I was desperate but clueless.  After his birth she grew apart from me and became more troubled.  I did not realize it at the time but, upon looking back, I believe my morphing from just husband to also a father was a huge trigger for her.  (Both her parents were disordered.  I can only conclude that once I became a father, she was reminded of her abusive stepfather.)  Our home life with a child didn't improve, it worsened even faster than before.  So when our marriage did implode within a few years, the police, social services and courts were involved.  Since we were parents, there were the added custody and parenting aspects and years of agency intervention that made unwinding our marriage vastly more complicated.

As you can tell, I’ve been posting quite a bit, and also reading old posts by user 2010 which have been extremely enlightening. I think I am at a stage where I am ready to ask some difficult questions of myself about why I sought and remained in such a harmful dynamic, what the interaction (not a relationship) represents for me now, and how I can avoid it in the future.

I’ve particularly appreciated 2010’s remarks about a common (especially) western misunderstanding of karma as a law of reward and punishment as opposed to cause and effect. I did not deserve the lies, manipulation or controlling behaviour. Experiencing these things was not a punishment for being ‘bad’. However, there were actions I undertook which contributed to causing or allowing these things to happen and a negative interaction to develop.

These actions were based in beliefs, patterns, narratives and worldviews that I had and probably still have, and which it is now the time to scrutinise. One is quite a grandiose self-perception. For example, I had an idea I could change or influence another person who lacked integrity, to the point where they would have integrity.

Prior to our relationship, uBPDx acted in ways that were extremely contrary to the values we both nominally shared and which were supposedly the cornerstone of our relationship, yet I believed that through the relationship we could transcend these patterns. To be fair to me, uBPDx initially represented themself and their history as being quite different from what it actually was, hiding some aspects that significantly lacked integrity. If I had known this from the start, I would never have entered the relationship.

However, once I learned about the discrepancy/ misrepresentation, my response was first a toxic expression of anger at the perceived betrayal; and then, after we made up (re-idealisation), to believe that together, we could both somehow change things so that uBPDx could really become the person they had misrepresented themself as.

This choice reflected my own denial and neediness. I was lonely and isolated and didn’t want to face the evidence this seemingly perfect person was not all they seemed. It also reflected an unrealistic, ‘love conquers all’ narrative. People cannot change and develop integrity based on an outside influence, integrity is something you develop within yourself.

There is also grandiosity – the idea that *I* was so special that a person who had previously acted without principle would, though knowing me, become someone different. There is a degree of narcissism here (not NPD, just the traits, which can be healthy, but in this case were not).

Letting go involves relinquishing the idealised, all-powerful vision of myself that was mirrored in uBPDx’s eyes during the ‘good’ times. Which was quite an intoxicating vision! And is quite difficult to relinquish, even now. Accepting that the interaction (not relationship) was based on falsities is one thing, accepting that the ideas and hopes it was premised on were also false is another, and quite difficult. I think it is something I need to do so I do not simply go out and replace the uBPDx with a similar relationship.