I have never done anything like this before but am really struggling and hoping someone out there maybe understands. Going through a dissolution after 20-year marriage to high functioning BPD spouse. I invested everything that I had - emotionally, financially, mentally and he was ready to move on after a three-month separation - just didn't want the broken relationship and family he created. Have a teenage son that we are co-parenting, so no-contact is not an option. It is amicable but the emotional pain is brutal and just feeling hopeless, angry, and just devastated. Can anyone out there relate and want to share?

Hey ya'll. I know i have been posting a lot. I am having a hard time reconciling everything. I have been thinking through so much of the relationship. Examining pieces and fights.  My actions and responses to him.
There were 2 times that things got really out of control and I slapped him in the face. I feel horrible about it. I know violence is never the answer and there is no excuse.

To give you a better idea of the situation, the first time, we had been fighting nonstop for a couple days and this one day was especially bad. Probably about 5 hours of accusations and cruel words. It was late and I had been trying to go to bed for a while. He had the tv all the way up, all the lights on, was trying to push me out of the bed. He decided I was hiding something and insisted on going through my phone. He went really far back and wound up finding a sexual message I had sent to a man about 2 years before my bpd partner and i had even met. He started laying into me about it. At one point, he called me a stupid slut. At that point, I snapped. I followed him into the living room and said what did you call me? He got this incredibly malicious look on his face and said you heard me you disgusting slut. I slapped him. I left. I went to a friend's and fell apart. I told her how horrible i felt about my response. She thought it was warranted but I still do not.

The other time was when we were broken up. At this point, he had ignored and abandoned me when I was going through a miscarriage with his child, he had been on a smear campaign telling people that I raped him, he had called me every name possible, berated me while I was having panic attacks, left me alone for hours after tearing me apart while he would disappear into the night, would be upset if i tried to talk about it later when I desperately needed to, constantly blamed me for his suicidal ideation, held knives to his throat and his chest, slammed his head into walls, tore apart his apartment, pushed me to my breaking point over and over. I also have cptsd and he would trigger me very badly. Anyway, he had been calling nonstop for two nights and I had been ignoring him because typically, answering when he was like that would lead to more fighting. But i was concerned that maybe he was hurting himself. So on the third day, i reached out to check on him. Nothing. I called and texted a couple times throughout the day and no response, no read receipts. I was so stressed out all day thinking he had actually hurt himself so when I could, I went to check on him. He had another girl over, they were making out. He had turned his read receipts off. I lost it, called him a liar, slapped him. It was stupid and awful. He had spent all this time telling me that i was the only one for him and he couldn't even imagine thinking about someone else and there he was kidding this woman that he had claimed he never felt much about in the first place.

I have never hit anyone outside of the rough housing my siblings and I did as young kids. I feel so incredibly guilty about it. I know there is never an excuse for physical violence.
I guess my question is, have any of ya'll ever been pushed to that point? Is reactive abuse a thing in that way? How do you cope with doing that to the person you love? How do you cope with knowing you slapped a mentally ill person?

I have never done anything like this before but am really struggling and hoping someone out there maybe understands. Going through a dissolution after 20-year marriage to high functioning BPD spouse. Have a teenage son so no contact is not an option. It is amicable/friendly and we are separated but the emotional pain is brutal and just feeling hopeless, angry, sad and just devastated. Can anyone out there relate?

Note the recent additional stress is after having a baby.  The relationship expanded from a two-some to an extra complication.  Many have reported that the conflict and discord increased after adding a baby to the marriage.  My story... My then-spouse had been having increasing friction with her co-workers and others but after we had a child, our home environment became so much worse.  When the police eventually got involved, we separated and one of the first steps of the divorce process - after the initial temp order - was the mediation attempt.  We agreed on assets, debts, equity, vehicles, everything but custody and parenting.  Mediation failed and we limped through a lengthy divorce.


This is the Bettering board so we are focusing on ways to use practical tools and communication skills to make the relationship less unmanageable.  Only time will reveal whether your attempts find a measure of success.

But "sticking it out for the sake of the children" may turn out to a poor option if the relationship is very dysfunctional, the children may suffer more by staying than separating.  Here is one of my posts from years ago:

Anonymous, that sounds incredibly heavy. Your kids are lucky to have you. Your advice of walking away when the storm clouds gather is sound and probably the most effective solution to maintain sanity long term. Apologies if this is an inappropriate question, but what keeps you going in this situation - do you still see a way forward in the relationship, or you're just sticking it out for the sake of the children?

CC43 - I think a lot of this makes sense on paper, tho I do wonder if it ain't a bit the same trap of trying to reduce all extra sources of stress, and in the process just reducing the stress tolerance even further? Hiring more help probably would be good regardless, even if expensive I feel like it'll save a lot in the long term... I do feel like just having an extra witness in the house often either reduces the amount of conflict, or redirects some of the anger their way - feels like a band aid solution and I'm not sure if it's long term helpful, but in the short term the logic is very tempting.


Pook075 - this hits close, the stress is already causing elevated blood pressure for me and like yourself, I'm in otherwise great health and lack other levers I can still pull, other than managing the stress and/or getting on meds to reduce risk of more serious consequences down the line... My child is everything to me, and providing a safe and loving home is so important to me. But obviously I can't do that on my own, and if my partner refuses to cooperate on regular basis, I guess I'll just have to lower my standards of what that means to me.

None of us here can put on therapist hats and have a clear answer for you.  As for me, I have no psychiatric education, which is true for most of us here, so we're firmly in the peer support zone.  That said, it appears that something seems to have changed or happened in the recent past to trigger these changes.

What did the counselor(s) comment on their observations of him?  Since he hasn't been diagnosed - and probably won't if he refuses counseling sessions - what gave you the idea of a BPD possibility?  I ask because your spouse doesn't appear to be as aggressively negative or conflict-causing as many report when arriving here.

Research also about the Stockholm syndrome, a psychological response wherein a captive begins to identify closely with his or her captors, as well as with their agenda and demands.  It may not be an official psychological description, but it might be related to the trauma bonds mentioned here.

In August 1973 four employees of Sveriges Kreditbank were held hostage in the bank’s vault for six days after a botched bank robery. During the standoff, a seemingly incongruous bond developed between captive and captor.

I think we all feel this way. It's a trauma bond, and so hard for anyone to understand. He'll keep doing these things. At some point understanding what was real or a lie needs to not matter, but this is fresh for you. In the moment, when he was 'happy' it was real in a sense but the intent behind it was shady. Don't go back please. And we all feel like that, I felt like I let my family down. She ruined my bday and dumped me...we took a 1 month break (not really a break as she came over all the time and we had sex a lot), she punched me and trashed my house....I took her back...only when she almost got me arrested is when I had to leave completely. It doesn't say much about you other than you have a codependent personality and a caregiving mentality. These are generally good if done in a healthy way with someone who reciprocates. I think you need to fully block him everywhere.

Sorry, my auto correct is terrible and I cannot figure out how to edit these posts. That's what I get for responding at work.

Yes, I know it is much more likely that they don't get help and they just keep repeating the same cycles for most of their life. I just had so much hope and i truly love him so much. Or maybe it's a trauma bond because how can i love someone who has treated me this way? Did the things he's said. Done the things he's done. But it feels real. And so all encompassing. And I now that's part of the design but how do you even start to weed out what was real and what was a lie? I feel like if I didn't have much family or many friends, I would absolutely go back to him. I am now worried about disappointing them than I am about disappointing myself. Which I'm sure says more about me and my self worth than anything.