My wife has a very difficult relationship with our youngest son. He just started his professional carrier (internship), so not making a lot of money, and living apart with his girlfriend. He hardly comes home, but his mother stills does his laundry. This leads to a lot of frustration: on the one hand she wants to help him, but only if he behaves as she would like him to behave (come more often to our home). That morning, she complained a lot about this issue, and that she would stop helping him. Some hours later, our son phoned me to ask if I (we?) could help him advance the money for his train season ticket. My wife was then upstairs. I asked him for some more info (about prices according to different periods considered), and he told me he would look it up. Later that day, our oldest son came by, and he told us that his brother inquired about what to do about his train season ticket. He adviced him to go for one year (hard to pay now, but most interesting option considering taxes). When I heard that, I considered the problem solved and kept quiet. In the evening, my wife asked if our youngest 'apped' me that day. And I answered 'no'. I didn't told her that he phoned me instead: I wanted to avoid an emotional discussion about possibly helping him financing his ticket (as that very morning, she stated that she wanted to stop helping him). The next day, our son phoned home, and asked his mother about the conclusion of advancing the money for the train ticket, and that he had that talk with me the previous day. I don't have to specify about her reaction finding out about this.
In normal circumstances, I would have mentioned his phone call and discussed his question with her. But the last two weeks were so intense that, maybe, I'm not able anymore to think straight? Or to do the right thing? And these mistakes/faults/misinterpretations just accumulate, making it all worse....

Come to that, the very first fight we had was similar.

I expressed that I was upset that he hadn't done a couple of things he had promised to do, and he just melted down and melted down and called himself a piece of _____ and got suicidal and called everyone he knew to say he was a bad person (!!) and implied this was my fault and called his former affair partner to triangulate me and ...

We did reconcile, and there was lovingness and honesty between us (I thought). But the upshot was, it was established early on that I simply could not expect that he would actually do things he had promised; in fact, that if I said I was angry or upset that he hadn't done something that was promised, I could expect a completely disproportionate and unhinged reaction.

Is this... control?

NotWendy, I really appreciate your thoughts and I'll come back to them but I just wanted to jot down a couple of memories here.

I guess one thing that made it hard for me to see the nature of control that was happening was that on the surface, and maybe in actuality to an extent as well, it seemed like uBPDx was doing everything to meet my needs and desires and to be an ideal partner for me.

But things kept seeming to come with a... catch.

Take, for instance, flowers. He went through a period when he would buy flowers regularly. I would say something like, "Thanks!" or "These look nice!" and put them in a vase and that would be it. But he would keep bringing it up - for some reason, my reaction wasn't enough. He would talk about what he perceived as a lack of romance between us, and say "I get you flowers but it doesn't seem to do anything".

Something I just remembered is that early on in the relationship, when he was talking about flowers, I mentioned that I'm quite picky with the flowers I like and told him some examples (not as a hint, it just came up in conversation). Over the course of the relationship, I... don't think that was ever incorporated into the flowers that were procured. Which is fine, it's not up to him to cater to my precise flower preferences! But it does seem strange that he would go on about how the reaction I gave wasn't enough, but also didn't listen when I said what I actually wanted.

There was another time he was spiralling and berating himself and calling himself a 'piece of _____' for, among other things, not buying me flowers. I said 'I never asked for flowers!' and he started berating himself even more, saying that even the things he wanted to do for me were useless, he was useless to me, etc etc. There was an implication that his feeling this was was my fault. It felt like I was losing in every direction.

(As I've mentioned before, he also took this occasion to call his former affair partner, with whom he had destroyed his previous relationship, then play her off against me by emphasising how, unlike me, she was 'there for him').

There were other things. He moved in with me, it was supposed to be temporary while he looked for his own place, but he never left. There were money issues, yes, and if he had asked me explicitly I would have been happy to support him - indeed, I think I was, for the most part, happy to support him.

Later, when we moved house together, he asked 'Do you still want to live with me?' And to be fair to him, I said, yes, I do - he did give me agency, and I exercised it. But at the same time... he never actually acknowledged that we had originally explicitly agreed that he would stay with me temporarily for a time, and then he would move out.

So I guess I did ultimately have a choice. But it also became an onus on me to ask him to leave, rather than his responsibility to... stick with the agreement we'd made in the first place. I had freedom of choice, nominally. But it was hard to exercise this, knowing the meltdown that would likely follow.

It was just really hard - in part because we often loved living together, but also, it was pretty clear that any signs of even slight rejection or recalibration from me would be met with a nuclear reaction, and I was conditioned over time to be afraid and avoid that, and to accept a shrinking of my rights and possibilities within the relationship - namely, that I couldn't expect agreements between us to be honoured if this conflicted with his mental health or emotional impulses.

I don't know if this is BPD or not but it's a sign of a troubled kid, and not typical moody teen behavior. By moody teen, I meant, being hypersensitive, mood swings from happy to sad, feeling insecure. Acting out behavior like arguing back.

This is serious acting out behavior. It's having a negative affect on his life and it's causing harm to other people. It's impacting his education, which is necessary for his function as an adult.

I think this warrants intervention. I don't know what your options are but I think it's worth looking into what is going on with him. It might be BPD, it might be some other issue, the dysfunction with his mother, and possibly a combination.

There are some books by author Patricia Evans that you might find interesting. One is called "Controlling People" which describes this situation. I found this one to be helpful in understanding why someone would do this.

Another one is "Verbal Abuse" which helps identify hurtful language. They aren't specific to BPD but there are other situations where this could occur. They are also gendered- the man is the abuser, or controlling person, and the woman is the one being abused but it could be either gender and one can apply it either way.

However you wish to call it, I think it helps to identify hurtful and controlling behavior. I grew up with a BPD mother who was controlling and verbally abusive but it was "normalized" or downplayed. There was no evidence of any abuse that people could see.

As an adult, I found that I tolerated being treated poorly in some situations. It's not only with romantic relationships- and one reason was that I didn't recognize the more subtle forms of this. Overt abuse is obvious- there's physical evidence, but a controlling and verbally cruel relationship can also be hurtful.

This wasn't to accuse someone of abuse. That's a strong term in the legal sense but it still is helpful to be able to identify how people behave and decide on a relationship- in general. I think we tend to consider motive- like if the person is intentionally mean or not- but either way, the emotional effect still feels hurtful. I think it is acceptable to say "this person is not an emotionally safe person to be very close to". I think we attach abuse to some kind of evil but they can also be people who are feeling hurt or are mentally ill, or who have been abused themselves. It's for us to identify behaviors we don't wish to tolerate.

Some people we can't avoid, like co-workers but we can remain aware and not get too close to people who behave like this.

I took this as a a strange way of asking you out on a dinner date!  I agree, it's not really a nice way. I'd avoid the park for a while too.

Many years ago, there was a person who I think was disordered. She moved so I haven't seen her in a long time. During that time, she made friends with my friends and I have no idea what she said to them.It seemed someone- one of them, would be yelling at me. One time I asked- why are you yelling at me and one answered "because I can".

Who does that? I've had the issue of being "too nice" to people. Seems this adult bully found someone to pick on and rounded up some flying monkeys. I heard after she moved that she was mean to other people I know too. She runs a business in another city and I saw a review that she yells at her employees too.

I had to work on being nice but not too nice. This doesn't happen anymore but I think I also tend to go too far in being distant from people sometimes. I do care about how I behave with people and treat people with decency and also haven't stopped being helpful in situations that I choose to- but I perhaps I "read" people better?

However, you should be able to enjoy the park- it's not his park. I'd avoid it for a while to create some distance with the guy,  but in the future, he needs to know you aren't interested in further talking with him. It's hard to say when we feel we need to be nice, but don't enagage him in long talks and if he brings up dinner, be direct and say no thank you.

Thank you for these perspectives and insights!

I think that for me, for now, the question of 'was it or wasn't it an abusive relationship' is not something that needs to be resolved in any objective sense, since there isn't any singular diagnosis or test for emotional abuse. But the fact that there is a reasonable case for it to be described as abusive, tells me enough about the seriousness of the situation and the importance of getting out, as well as the limitations of my own perspective - I couldn't see what seems quite clear to other people.

Regarding particular behaviours in the relationship, there were certainly many actions taken by uBPDx that were toxic and harmful (and one case of an action by me that was toxic and harmful).

The word which is now becoming more helpful to me as a specific description is controlling.

It was controlling for uBPDx to emotionally manipulate and guilt trip when I didn't devote myself entirely to meeting his needs, and to invoke or threaten self harm as a way of eliciting a reaction from me. The fact that these actions were repeated over an extended period of time, and continued after I pushed back or said they were harming me, adds to the seriousness of the situation.

Perhaps a lesson I can take from this is that someone using their own pain as an excuse or a reason to undermine my needs and boundaries, is a form of control.

I have found it hard to recognise in the past because I saw myself as the strong, resilient and capable one, and uBPDx was obviously in a lot of pain and unstable.

Now I know that a weak person can be controlling, harmful and yes, abusive, too.

What the book refers to is not getting into sensitive topics when someone is showing disordered qualities.  For example, if they're highly emotional and agitated, that's not the time to mention that your parents are visiting for the weekend.  It's better to hold off and wait until that person is in a calm, balanced mood.

Could you give us an example of an issue that escalated while you were waiting to talk about it?  I'm asking because if a BPD is off and looking for an argument, then almost anything you say defensively will cause things to escalate.  I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing before giving direct advice.

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm so glad you found us and I'm sorry you're in this current situation.  It's one of the hardest questions here to answer because although BPD comes with some predictable patterns, so much depends on the individual and what's actually going on.

At surface level, your girlfriend is upset with what happened with Z.  It likely bothers her a lot more than she's letting on, and it's caused some internal stress in her life.  When things like this happen (and they happen often), a feeling of abandonment can be strong.  That's what is happening here, she's fixated on what happened and questioning everything.

What to do really depends on her communication style.  You should reassure her that you care and want to be with her, but that is really hard in long-distance relationships.  Do you see her in person at all?  I'm asking because you mentioned a virtual movie night and wasn't sure if you lived close.

If you persist too much though, she can feel overwhelmed and run from the relationship.  So there has to be a careful balance and nobody here can tell you exactly what that is.  If it were me, I'd message less often for the next few days but be more intentional with my messages, letting her know that you're thinking of her and look forward to talking soon.

I know that's not a great answer, but I'm not sure one exists for this type of BPD phase.  She's scared and second-guessing everything and in many ways, it has nothing to do with you.  This is the worst part of BPD and why so many relationships ultimately crumble...we don't know what we don't understand and it's easy to be too distant or too pushy.

Mainly, you just need to talk and get back to the good stuff in your relationship, so she can see and feel that nothing has changed.  How you'd do that though depends on her.

We’ve been together 3 months, but were friends for 8–9 before that.

A couple weeks ago, she got removed from a Facebook group we shared, which hit her hard because it felt like “our space.” Around the same time, she had tension with a mutual friend (Z), and that’s been an ongoing stressor.

I reassured her we don’t need the group and can focus on us. We actually had one of our best, most secure weeks after that.

Then Friday, during a virtual movie date, her internet went out. The next morning she was really upset, blaming herself and afraid I’d leave. I reassured her, and she asked (while crying) if we could redo the date Saturday night. I said yes, I'd love to. She read my message and didn’t respond for about 5 hours, then responded saying she was running errands.

Later that day, after opening a message from Z, she became visibly upset again and distant. I asked twice if she was still open to the movie redo. She never responded about the movie that night, left my messages unopened for hours, and later just said she hadn’t been feeling well.

Since then, she’s been emotionally overwhelmed and inconsistent:

-- Says we’re “okay,” but avoids talking about the relationship
-- Keeps circling back to stress about Z and feeling like she doesn’t belong in my world
-- Leaves messages on read/unopened for hours at a time
-- Alternates between warmth (pet names, life updates, selfies) and distance
-- Pulls away or changes the subject when I offer reassurance or say I miss her

I’ve stayed supportive and steady, but I feel her pushing me away and won’t engage about “us,” which leaves me confused about where we stand.

So I’m stuck wondering: is she just overwhelmed and needing space, or is she starting to detach?

Do I keep showing up consistently, or step back and give her space?