This is my first post.  I just discovered this board, and hope it will provide some personal help in coping. After years of bewilderment and frustration, I'm coming to the realization that she my have BPD.  I just stumbled onto this, but when I looked at the list of symptoms, it all lined up with high-functioning BPD.

We have cycles of highs and lows in our relationship, but never seem to be able to stay in a happy, sustained place.   

I'm so exhausted and frustrated, but persevering.  As I begin to read more of the archived material on this site, I hope something will be helpful.

Hello and welcome

You're in very good company here as we've all been through the same experiences, some with a mercifully short BPD relationship, some like myself with a few years and some who spent a lifetime with their partner.

When I first read about BPD I too was amazed how accurately it described my situation and just how script-like the illness is; it's very predictable for the most part once you've experienced it for a while.  It was also good to realise that I wasn't the villain - as we can be made to feel by our partner's actions - and that BPD's can be skilled manipulators who can turn every innocent and kind thing we do against us, making themselves the 'victim'.

Though our BPD partner can exert quite a hold on us and make it very difficult to end things, once we've seen the futility of continuing the relationship then things atart to improve, though very slowly.

There is life out there - you had a life before you met your BPD partner and you'll have a life again. This time you'll hopefully be experienced enough to see the red flags in future -  and avoid any repetition.

You'll also have read that many ex-BPD partners try to re-engage after a while, either due to not wanting to be alone or just to know that you're still there and possibly still interested, so if you're definitely decided on the break it's important to stay strong and not be drawn back onto the roundabout again, which is all too easy to do.

I'll quote again the 'Three C's' which you may have already seen in posts; you didn't Cause it, you can't Cure it and you can't Control it. If you did your best then you could have done no more.

Write more if you want to or just plain rant to get things off your chest - that's what the site is for and we're all here to support each other.

Best wishes.

Hi all,

Just making a first post, I found this site through the book The Essential Family Guide to BPD. After one amazing, and then several confusing and chaotic, years, I have separated from my life partner who exhibits nearly all of the borderline characteristics in books and websites I've started to read. I stumbled on the borderline term online kind of by accident and was shocked to read people giving such accurate descriptions of how my partner acts - particularly defensiveness and lashing out when there is a percieved threat. I feel like my head is spinning from all the new info and from the fact that I'm actually not crazy for all the feelings I have from my varied and (de-)evolving experiences with my ex-partner. I've already got some tools to use from the book on keeping boundaries as we navigate a separation and they continue to act in bewildering ways. Glad to be here and looking forward to learning more and maybe finding more peace in my future life.

Good for you.  Sorry you went through all this; it's awful.  Hope you can move on and recover, and experience some relief and joy for having survived it. 

I think it's important to learn from this; don't let it get you too down though.  You had the misfortune to meet a serial user, and didn't have the experience you needed to protect yourself from him.  Hopefully, going forward, you do. 

Why are mentally sane people mean and toxic in relationships?  It's likely the same list.  For BPDs, they just get there a different way by not being able to trust and self-sabotaging relationships.

In my experience, you can rebuild the trust and mend broken fences to some extent.  But it takes two to tango and the other person has to meet you at least part of the way.  For my BPD daughter, she actively met me halfway and our relationship changed drastically.  For my BPD ex, she was manipulative, hurtful, and secretly in another relationship...there was no way to mend that.  But we did at least find common ground to be able to communicate about the kids.

From my own experience, if a child wants to know, they will ask and then they need an honest but age appropiate explanation.

What was confusing to me was that, my perceptions were often invalidated, probably in an attempt to be protective of us. (and BPD mother). So people would say things like "of course your mother loves you" if I brought up a behavior that was hurtful rather than validate my feelings. Or if BPD mother was dysregulated, and my parents were arguing, the next day they'd act as if nothing happened. We didn't dare ask about it.

From my own experience, seeing what is a normal situation provided a good contrast to what we experienced with BPD mother. Kids learn more than one set of rules. Your D may take on some behaviors like walking on eggshells or not upsetting BPD mother but these are survival adaptations for her. At your house, she has another set of behaviors. I could see that my friends' mothers, other relatives, did not act like my mother. We could even be mischevious (not bad- there were limits) at some relatives houses. We may have gotten disciplined but in a calmer way. Kids will learn by example from both parents.

This is also what I meant by co-existing situations where sometimes if our best efforts don't work, it's not that we didn't try hard enough or did something wrong. The message "try harder" and "we didn't do it right" is also something those of us who are children of a BPD parent have heard since we were young and inappropriately given the responsibility of our BPD parents' feelings. If an adult in a marriage to a pwBPD struggles with this task, how on earth can a child succeed at this? Yet, every child wants their parents' approval and will try repeatedly.

One way I described this is like the Peanuts cartoon where Lucy holds the football out for Charlie Brown. Each time, he runs for it hoping that he will succeed, but the ball gets pulled away from him. But we keep at it and that ball of success remains elusive to us.

So what are some of the factor X's? The one I saw with my BPD mother was coexisting NPD. While some of her hurtful behavior was due to disregulations, others were chosen, deliberate, and planned.

One factor X is self awareness and willingness to do therapy.

Another factor X is drug/alcohol addiction which impaires thinking and drives behaviors.

Age and relationship to the person can be a factor X. A parent can have more influence over a child than a spouse or adult child can have on a parent. For younger people, mental illness is less of a social stigma now. For someone whose behaviors have been habitual for decades- these are more "fixed" than with a younger person. For elderly people, there's the affect of the aging brain and any illness can affect thinking and how someone is feeling.

Truly, all we can do is what we are capable of and do what we can with it. We also have the right to protect ourselves from abusive behavior.

My parents stayed together and so, my father was my mother's main emotional caretaker (his choice). In his elder years, he got ill and BPD mother's behavior escalated. I didn't understand this initially, stepped in to help, but her emotionally and verbally abusive behavior was difficult to tolerate. I had to have boundaries with this, for my own sake and also for me to be able to function, at work, at home.

As Dad's health deteriorated, I also experienced my own emotional distress over the situation. If we are dealing with our own emotions, we have less bandwidth to deal with other situations. I had not gotten angry at my BPD mother probably since I was a teen. Not that there wasn't any issues- I had learned to not argue with her, but this time, I was overwhelmed and I yelled at her.

If you have heard the expression "don't pee in the wind"- that would describe why not to do this. If anyone expressed anger at my BPD mother- it wouldn't get through to her. She dysregulates and projects it all back at you. You then feel worse for having done that.

Why do we get upset with, or try to bring up hurts with a loved one? It's not because we want to hurt them. It's because, we want to be seen, understood, and hopefully find a way to move forward with them. If we didn't care, we wouldn't bother. But this didn't work with BPD mother. She'd dysregulate and project her feelings back out. It didn't connect with her. It only made things worse.

I think a determinant for our relationship was my own ability to self regulate and also decide on what boundaries I would have to have. Her needs could be constant but nobody can be someone's 24/7 emotional caretaker. She didn't like boundaries. It seemed that whatever I could do for her was not enough. I'd visit and do things for her but she'd find something I did or didn't do that would upset or disappoint her. What helped me to see that this wasn't personal to me but a part of the BPD dynamics is that she did this with caretakers too in her elder years. The closest a caregiver got to her, the more this kind of dynamic happened. It doesn't seem fair that the closer one is to someone with BPD, the more they experience the disordered behaviors.

It helped to have a spiritual perspective on this. There's a higher Judge in all of this, who sees both of us in a much clearer way. While I think we are required to act in ethical ways towards others, I don't think we are expected to tolerate behavior that is hurtful to us without limits. Where you find yourself in this balance is an individual decision- something you will be wrestling with your own conscience over. It felt more like walking a tightrope, sometimes falling over one side (too much) or the other (not enough).

I think this article describes the emotional situation well, even if it's not exactly the same circumstances. https://slate.com/technology/2022/03/mentally-ill-parent-elder-care-boundaries-liz-scheier.html

All the BPDs in my life were female, and from reading here over the years I think that plays a role as well- men are more aggressive in nature without mental illness.  My BPD ex wife was extremely manipulative though and hurt me in different ways.  At the start of the marriage, it was physical and that's easy enough to let go of...she'd hit me and I'd walk away.  The mental stuff was so much worse on me since it leaves scars we can't even understand at first.

I do have a decent relationship with my ex now though and I think her getting re-married really helped a lot.  My only point was that it's possible to work through it in some situations.

I remember talking to a psychiatrist one time that told me, "Someone being mean has nothing to do with BPD- it's a conscious choice everyone makes regardless whether they're mentally ill or not."  That's likely the "x-factor" in all of this; some people just aren't good people or have the right intentions.

There's nothing wrong with sharing your feelings and getting it out on the computer screen- the process is cathartic in itself and it's how most of us ended up here.  And I personally believe that it helps accelerate the healing process as well since we're being honest with out emotions and struggles.

I also agree with you that your ex has a different realty than you.  We're all unique but share so many commonalities as well.  When we meet someone who thinks in completely different way, it's easy to think "they're wrong and we're right."  That's usually not the case though, different just means different and that's okay.

I'm sorry you're still hurting at times and looking back at the past.  I have moments as well three years later.  Time really does heal all though and those feelings will pass with time.  If you can, just stop searching for the "why" and accept that the best answer will almost always be 'mental illness'.  There's just not a deeper motivation behind it.  Even if we could go back in time and realize the math problem from earlier = banana, there'd be a new solution to find the following day.

Why?  Mental illness and disordered thinking, it's the great wild card in all of this and there's nothing we can do to change it.