Indeed I've tried that tactic as well.  Then I get a verbal assualt:  "You're my wife, and you don't answer me (immediately) when I call!  You are horrible!  This isn't marriage!"  And then he'll demand, "What if there was an emergency?"  When I'm feeling cheeky, my response is, "What's the emergency?", which begets an out-of-control rant, because there is no emergency, unless you deem that not knowing the dinner menu or having to heat up a dinner plate in the microwave ALL BY YOURSELF constitutes an emergency.  However, my usual response is, "If you're calling me just to yell at me, I'm hanging up."  Then I'll hang up.  Typically he'll call me me five minutes later to yell at me again, and I'll say the same thing and hang up again.  When I arrive home, he typically yells some more, sulks and puts himself to bed early (like at 8:30PM instead of the usual 10 or 11PM), in protest.  Anyway, he tries to "punish" me with a tantrum whenever I go out.  Apparently he thinks I'm his full-time caretaker-maid.  The injustice is, caretakers and maids get days off, but I apparently I don't deserve a few hours off here and there to do something fun for myself, let alone whole day or weekend, let alone any pay . . .

Anyway, I've resolved to try to have a social life, knowing that no matter what I do--provide a complete itinerary and listing of other people I'll be seeing, invite him to come along, leave food for him to reheat for dinner, etc.--he will have a tantrum a third to half the time and attempt to "ruin" it for me.  Just getting his "permission" to leave the home is sometimes grueling--he wants to know locations, exact travel times, people's names, etc., a third-degree interrogation for getting a morning coffee, it's truly tiring.  One time I had a morning coffee for an hour, and since the coffee shop was near my local drug store, I decided to stop in to pick up a prescription and some household items, to save time, right?  Since that drug store errand took maybe 20 minutes extra, guess who called and chewed me out, for taking "too long" for a coffee meeting.  He demanded that I come right back home.  If I dare show him the receipts and prescription as "evidence," he'll toss them aside and insinuate that I'm doing something dishonest. Ugh.

Like you, there have been a couple of times that I've ignored his call, knowing full well that my spouse was calling only to yell at me, and I might as well delay the onslaught until I get home.  Plus, when I'm driving and he's yelling at me, he makes me so nervous that I'm afraid I'm going to get into an accident.

Thanks for all of your thoughts everyone.

I'll just reply briefly before I head out, but:


Yeah... I suppose you're right.

It's hard to believe it, but I guess it's true.

It doesn't give me much pleasure actually... I don't think I want her to wreck her life, I just want her to confront what she did - or to have not done it in the first place.

I can think of a few examples of 'devoutly religious' mothers who showed up all holy for church and saved all the abuse for their family... so I know it happens... it's just... hard when you've seen it first hand - hard to really believe what you've seen with your own eyes.


It is true - my dad was prone to psychosis because of a degenerative illness.

Sometimes the way she'd speak to me reminded me of the way that he did - dissociated and incoherent, and kind of mean.

It's one of the things I found so painful about her episodes.

I'd also love to marry and have a family myself. So maybe it's hit on a sore spot there.

I know it'll be okay eventually, it just hurts at the moment I guess!


Goodness that's wild - sorry that you've been caught up in that.

*sigh* they don't teach you this stuff in school, do they??

Thank you - I really value that.

I replied to a similar sentiment in another post so maybe I won't write the same sort of thing a second time - but you're right about social media.

Y'know when we were together, we'd sit like this ":-l....." opposite each other.

Then the camera would come out for this: ":D xxxx"

And then the camera would go away to this ":-l....."

I remember thinking, if people saw these photos, they'd presume that we'd just been laughing and joking and kissing and hugging... they'd have no idea that we were actually stilted and awkward - and that the intimacy felt forced and over the top.

She never shared those photos of us on social media (as far as I know) - I think she knew that I was hesitant about that because I was hesitant about her full stop.

But y'know... if they had seen the light of day, people would've got a very specific kind of impression.

In reality, I became kind of a shell of myself for a while.

Thank you - I appreciate your thoughts

I always feel conflicted y'know... I don't want to live in a world where people can't heal and I don't want to live in a world where people are bound to repeat mistakes etc.

At the same time, I don't want to live in a world where someone can behave like she did towards me and just get away with it.

Part of me believes that she's basically completely better now and that it was all at least partly my fault - and that maybe we were just toxic together.

A part of me also knows that honest... she'd been that way for a long time.

She had kind of a reputation in some corners of her home city, and she'd had various problems with conflict and psychosis etc quite soon up until we met.

I guess I wish I knew how to say "Ah well, good riddance!"

I think it messed with my perception of the world a bit - you tend to presume that good things happen to good people (at least more or less - barring tsunamis and cancer); and that bad things happen to bad people (as in - people get their comeuppance eventually).

I'm surprised how easy she finds it to find and keep a guy.

Even when she found me, I always sorta knew that I absolutely should not marry her... but somehow... I guess other people don't quite think in that way... it's a puzzle to me!

I was curious what the legal standard for an insanity defense is, and it's pretty established (going back to 19th Century English case that's been accepted and cited favorably by U.S. courts for almost as long as that) that either the person is not able to understand what they're doing, or if they do, that they don't understand that what they're doing is wrong. 

That might loop in some of the behavior of a pwBPD.  I think a pwBPD would understand that cheating is wrong.  A lot of their other behavior, though they might not see an issue with it when confronted by their partner, family member, or spouse, they would not want their behavior to be public knowledge, so they must know it's wrong in that regard.  In court, a pwBPD would fail the standard and be convicted. 

They often do display a double standard, i.e. they might yell at, scream, and insult their partners, but of course, the second you start to respond in kind they are the victim and it's not fair... so again, they know.  They just have no shame when it comes to their close relations, and no concern for other people, and so they feel they have a license to behave this way. 

In my own case, there was often a clear pre-meditated factor when BPDxw would pick fights, insofar as I would look at it in hindsight and see she came up with a pre-text to get angry about that she knew was wrong, or was inconsistent with how she behaved in other contexts. 

As I understand it, there's a pretty high burden to this.  And I suppose I can understand why, if the court is going to take away someone's legal rights and give them to someone else, but yeah, it's unfortunate when it allows them to keep making bad decisions so far into the end stages of life. 

It’s called a facade. Don’t get hung up on how things appear as it’s often an illusion.

My ex monkey branched to a guy selling her class A. She’s told our kids she is with him because he can financially support her better than I can. He takes her on holidays abroad, she moaned that I didn’t (because of logistical reasons). She rang me up ranting because her car wouldn’t start the day after we broke up as it was clearly my fault. He has bought her a (cheap) Range Rover. She now lives with him in a house he has a mortgage on, we were on an assured tenancy with a housing association.. She’s happy, she’s moved on, she used to tell me to move on and go on dating sites.

Looks all Rosie for her then doesn’t it.

I’d asked her numerous times to stop buying drugs from him, and to stop drinking as much (they are both borderline alcoholics) she didn’t want to and ran off with him. She has been hospitalised 3 or 4 times that I know of and now has health issues, more than likely caused by the drug abuse, definitely once through excessive drinking.
I receive letters/emails/texts through for things that she has missed payments on every month. Our kids have lost a lot of the respect they had for her because she has basically said she is using the guy for his money, and she was still sleeping with me behind his back for a year which kind of confirms she is using him.
The car that wouldn’t start, well it’s her pride and joy, owned it for 18 years and would never sell it. 2 months after she rang me ranting it wouldn’t start, it failed it’s mot and has sat in the garage for nearly 2 1/2 years waiting to be repaired. The car he bought her, well it looks fancy but it’s been sat outside his house broken down for the last month, and is regularly breaking down.
The house she is living in rent free, he needs to give half of that to his wife. His kids that live there do her f’ing head in according to her sister.
And the holidays abroad he takes her on, she has contracted skin cancer twice in two years so they are well worth going on.
Then there is the fact that I am now with someone else. They have never met but my ex keeps cropping up on my partners Facebook as someone she might know. I’m not on Facebook so we can only assume my ex has been stalking her.. They bumped into each other in a supermarket a few weeks ago. She then started making excuses to my sister in law as to why she looked a mess when she bumped into my girlfriend, which kind of tells me she is somewhat insecure
They are both still abusing drugs because the sad lives they lead is only bearable through the use of stimulants rather than having a proper healthy connection.

So the reality is far different to what they would like you to think. Call it karma, the universe balancing things out, or just negative reactions to all the bad actions and life choices made, but I don’t see them as coincidence, and I have no doubt that it’ll carry on happening until she learns life’s lessons. So concentrate on being the best version of you and less so on her because life has a way of levelling things out eventually.

BPDs are incredibly loving and caring people, especially at the start of the relationship.  Their mental illness tells them that everything about you is "perfect" so they shower you with love and affection.

Where in any of that sounds like a person we should avoid starting a relationship with?

Are there usually some red flags?  Of course.  I'm also in my second marriage and I saw potential red flags going in as well.  My current wife does not have mental illness though, so was I just as "fooled" as you were?  Or did we both choose women who loved us and took care of us?

The "secret" to a happy BPD marriage is learning a different way to communicate, especially when things begin to become heated.  This site has helped so many of us learn that language and put it into practice.  At the very top of any page, you'll see sections like "tips" and "tools", that's where you can really dig in and start to get a feel of how to communicate more effectively. 

It's not intuitive at first and we all see that we got it so so wrong in the past; that's okay though.  You learn and grow, exactly like she's doing in therapy.  That's where you actually start.

Do you have any specific questions so far?  Maybe talk out a little more of your current challenges.  Also, I'm so sorry to hear about your ex-wife.  That's heartbreaking.  I'm a Christian as well and I'm glad she finally found peace.

I remember that feeling very well, that sickness in the pit of my stomach when the phone rang and I knew it was going to be judgmental.  I overcame that to some extent by just not answering anymore.

Now, that did make things 10x worse when I did get home and there would be a huge blowout argument.  But I'd explain that she knew where I was, who I was with, what I was doing, and I arrived home when I said I would.  If she was going to act like I was a horrible person no matter what, then I'd just wait to be accused of being a horrible person once I got home.  I might as well enjoy me night until then if it's the same conclusion no matter what.

Sometimes this worked, sometimes it made things much worse.  I didn't realize it back then but I was essentially setting a boundary- if you use my phone to harass me, then I'm turning the phone off after the first unkind call/text.

With my BPD daughter, she always had to punish someone much, much greater than she was being punished to "teach them a lesson."  I didn't know my wife was mentally ill back then so I didn't understand the need for healthy boundaries, but basically that's what your husband and my ex do occasionally as well.  If they have to heat up their own food and watch TV alone, then you might as well know how miserable they are.  That's not okay though.

Sorry...I meant Dialectical Behavioral Therapy in the above post.

Pook, I've talked about my husband's controlling nature and seeming unwillingness for me to have a balanced life a few times.  Sometimes he admits to jealous feelings, and sometimes he admits he's not being rational.  But mostly, he makes promises not to overreact when I'm away.  You see, many times I go above and beyond to ensure my absence won't inconvenience him, by preparing food for him, and ensuring I'm out for the shortest time possible, and according to a strict plan (with no room for improvisation or deviation).  I'll say, "I'm having dinner with such-and-such girlfriend, you know, she attended our wedding, and we're meeting at this restaurant; since the drive time is 25 minutes each way, I'll be out three hours total, tops.  I left you some lasagna in the fridge, all you have to do is reheat it."  Then he'll say something like, "I can handle it, you know I was a bachelor for years and cooked for myself all the time, don't worry."  Well, that's what he says, no big deal, right?  But as the evening progresses, he typically flips and starts calling me, demanding to know why I don't pick up right away (usually restaurants are noisy and I don't hear my phone in my purse), where I am (I told him already), why I'm gone for so long (ditto), and how horrible I am for leaving him alone with nothing to eat (lie) . . .  He's not like this every time, but maybe 30-50% of the time.  It's happened so often that I'm sick of it, I flinch every time he calls, and I try really hard not to let him "ruin" it for me, but man, he punishes me for daring to leave the home and having a social life.  His issue:  I have a social life "without him."  Of course it's OK for him to have a social life without me, say with his sports and hobby buddies, but he doesn't see the unfairness of it.  And yet, when I invite him to outings, he's reluctant to go.  If he does relent and decides to accompany me, half the time he's a sourpuss and insists on leaving early, for example.  Or he'll pull me aside and chew me out for talking to other people at a party.  Not always, just often, depending on his mood and maybe what I'm wearing or the way I acted, for example if I took "too long" in the ladies' room (where there was a line) . . .

Indeed I do think that this sort of behavior is BPD-like, but he's not BPD the way his diagnosed daughter clearly is.  He doesn't exhibit feelings of hopelessness, he doesn't have disordered/volatile relationships everywhere, he's not impulsive in his actions in most environments, he doesn't self-sabotage, he's not suicidal or self-harming, his identity is solid and consistent, his executive function is extremely high.  I'd say he's somewhat insecure (with me), he's prone to angry outbursts and has some hair-trigger "abandonment" feelings which emerge as bullying.  And when he's agitated, he becomes irrational and petulant with me.

My coping skill is mostly to ignore it.  When I argue back, it gets worse.  I think he knows he's being a jerk but just can't help himself because deep down he's insecure, even though he shouldn't be!  That's what makes it even more confusing.  If he's really toxic and demanding unrealistic things (e.g. a curfew of 5 PM for me), I'll say, "Fine, but if I have a 5 PM curfew, so do you and all the other adults in this household.  I'm not a slave you know."  I know that's not helpful, but it has enabled me to avoid a 5 PM curfew that he continues to try to impose every few months.