My kid did take mental health seriously and went through a pretty hands-on DBT treatment for about a year.  So it certainly played a factor as well and I don't want to minimize that.

In terms of severity though, she's the worst I've ever seen the way she flies off the handle and resorts to violence.  When her mood shifts in that direction, she's like a pit bull how she locks in and loses all fear of consequences.  In those rare circumstances, nobody is calming her down and it scares me.  That anger is never pointed in my direction anymore, which is great, but I'm still fearful that the wrong person will cross her someday.

There were two instances in particular that I don't feel comfortable sharing here.  They were that bad.  One was when her sister was getting bullied at school- my older BPD kid made the bully (who was twice her size) cry and run away in terror.  The second was much worse than that.

Did she feel loved. Well that was a big problem throughout our relationship because no matter what I said, or did, she thought I didn’t love her, or didn’t show her, or never told her. I told her every day. We would kiss and cuddle every day. We would hold hands every time we went for a walk, or our shopping. I did everything I could for her. But it never seemed enough. Everyone that knew us as a couple knew that we were a loving couple. That’s why I’m here, trying to work out if it’s bpd that she has.

Did anything happen in those two months. I’ve spoken about the drug addiction on here. We were both tied up in that but I’d been asking her for years to stop getting it. In those last two months I said to her, stop getting coke you are killing me, and stop drinking so much you are killing yourself. That was pretty much the catalyst for the discard in my opinion. Add to that the fact her business was/is in quite a bit of debt, I wasn’t working much because of the drug addiction rendering me next to useless and a neighbour that had just retired and started complaining if our dogs barked while we were at work, so became paranoid about that, her ‘networking’ her wealthy clients so they would offer her money to bail her business out, and then finally her new best friend leaving her husband, the guy that was selling my wife coke. She started playing them off each other, plotting to keep his money from his wife, then monkey branched to him as he has got rich parents and some money in the bank.

All very toxic reasons in my opinion, along with the fact he was the third married man she became over friendly with going through a marriage breakup, which to me looks like a pattern of behaviour designed to give her some sort of ego boost because of her, I don’t know whether it’s fear of abandonment, but along with the belief that I didn’t love her, she would be incredibly jealous of ANY female contact and accused me of all sorts of twisted nonsense like father friends children etc when I wasn’t in the least bit unfaithful to her.

well, 'welcome'. Everything you wrote resonates. Self harm, that is somehow your doing? Makes sense right...the horrible curse word filled insults, yup.

The main thing here is you and your daughter's safety. If he was diagnosed at least it shows he's been seeing someone about the issue, but that doesn't mean he's going to change or your life will get better/safer. You need to worry about YOU; mental health, physical health, personal safety. Police intervention seems to be needed if these outbursts continue or even escalate. 20 years of abuse is horrible and you're trauma bonded. Strongly consider leaving this situation.

It sounds like your kid is a bit more regulated than most. I've tried this and it backfired entirely. An example, I drive a moderately lifted SUV. I opened the door for her every time, and almost every time I would give her a little boost into her seat. This time I was holding our to go boxes from lunch, couldn't boost her. That turned into me being mad at her, thoughts of me pulling back and not caring, etc. I tried to explain that it was nothing like that, I simply had my hands full. I used to always reassure her saying I loved her and would never do anything to intentionally hurt her. That was my go to reasoning a lot of the time. But no, I got ignored, silent treatment, then an hours long verbal lashing at home that night. My ex had absolutely zero abilities to regulate. Anything I said was apparently avoiding my issues, lacking accountability and being abusive. Justifying my 'mistreatment' of her. I would have been able to stay with her forever if simple reassurances and other doable things would have worked. I'm assuming the addition of adhd/anxiety/depressions/meds for all of those, plus excessive use of THC edibles impacted her brain as well.

Hi. I'm pretty nervous to write this — it's all very new. I've been with my husband since we were 22 (for 20 years), and he's been emotionally abusive for nearly all of it. We've broken up twice because of his anger. I've never really understood how/why/but-really-WHY I kept coming back. During the last time we were separated, my mom died of alcoholism... I'm sure grief played a part in it. Anyway.

He recently received a threshold diagnosis of BPD (a score of 5 on the SCID). I am in my final year of graduate school to be a therapist (the irony) and am struggling to accept what this all means. I've been reading old journals and doing a lot of research into relationships in which one person has BPD... and while it's been somewhat validating (I'm not actually crazy, something he says often), I'm feeling pretty hopeless and frightened. We have a 3.5-year-old daughter. Since she was born, his outbursts have become increasingly frequent and increasingly violent (consistent, as my attention was necessarily diverted to taking care of the baby).

The most recent explosion was 2 weeks ago when he grabbed himself by the throat and punched himself repeatedly in the face, all while calling me a "dumb f***ing b****h" and telling me it was my fault, that I was doing it TO him. It's not the first time he's engaged in that kind of self-harm in front of me and blamed me for it. He has been physically aggressive with me as well. I've understood for at least 3 years that he was mentally unwell, and am struggling with my own beliefs about prioritizing loyalty v happiness v safety v emotional abandonment...

I just... I don't know. I don't even know the questions to ask, here. I'm looking for any lifeline of someone who understands how confusing and devastating this all is.

Hi Pook075 ,

I thought you were telling me that with compassion and by making her understand that I'm always there for her, I would be able to end all of the interpersonal conflict between me and my wife, and therefore enforcing boundaries would not be required.

But then you just agreed with Rowdy on the fact that the BPD partner can devalue you and leave you just a few weeks after having stated that you are always there for them.

Now I'm confused. What's your final opinion on "How to enforce boundaries when living together" ?


Yes, I understand that anger can be poisonous. But not if you act out on it. If you get angry at the cockroaches in your basement, but you exterminate them successfully with fire, you then feel good about it and you have a good day. We can do an analogy here in which we are the cockroaches.

Just know that for someone who has mental illness, two months is literally an eternity.

In my case, my wife and I split up around the end of July.  My birthday was a month prior and she posted a super long thank you on my Facebook page for always being there for her.  When she left, she told family that I was mentally abusive and she had to get out.  Every single one of them pointed to that Facebook post though, saying what's changed in the past four weeks since you said he was the best husband ever? 

She had no answer...and of course she deleted the post.

Disordered thinking is literally a cancer and I think all of us have experienced it at some point in our lives.  I can remember being fired from a job in my 30's where the boss just hated me.  I was the hardest worker there and I was always trying to make the boss's job easier, but she really had it out for me and I never understood why.

I can remember after being fired, I'd catch myself daydreaming about revenge.  I'm not that guy, and I'd never go after anyone, but the more I thought about it, the more my mind came up with ways to get her fired from the job too.  And truthfully, I hated thinking that way...I hated being so angry that my mind wanted vengeance.  So I can't imagine having a mind that does that 24/7 when things aren't going my way.  That's pretty much what BPD does though.

Sure, let's talk this out in terms you can easily understand.

Let's pretend you have an insane fear of spiders.  You see one and your reaction is so extreme, there's a chance you have a heart attack.

So if you see a spider, you're getting out of there no matter what it takes.  Maybe you knock down old ladies or kids...it doesn't matter.  Your only mindset is to escape for self preservation.  What a spider is in your midst, it's 100% about survival and nothing else.

That's sort of how BPD is as well.  I've talked this out for hundreds of hours with my BPD daughter and when something goes wrong, she second guesses everything in her head and literally goes down the rabbit hole. 

The "problem" could be me not holding a door for her.  Maybe I didn't even see her coming, or maybe I had 6 bags of groceries in my arms.  Whatever.  But that one slight makes her question why it happened...was it an accident or was I trying to be mean?  Before long, she's thinking about something similar that happened yesterday, and last week, and that thing from 5 years ago.  Her mind is putting these pieces together throughout the day in an illogical way. 

This happened and that happened, so that means this is connected to that and proves this other thing...it's all mumbo jumbo.  The name for it is "disordered thinking" because that's exactly what happens.

Maybe that night, my kid explodes at me over something completely different, and I'm thinking, "What the heck is that about?  Why are we arguing over me not petting her dog?"  But it's not the dog, it's the 50 other things she's built up in her mind to prove that I can't stand her and I'm only around to harm her. 

They're all a jumbled mess of thoughts, mind you, and they can't be articulated (because they don't make sense).  But they are real thoughts and they send a borderline spiraling.

So when my kid makes a comment about me not holding a door, I intentionally apologize and explain that I had a hand full of groceries and I didn't even see her coming.  Sometimes I'd even add that I love you and I'd never do anything to hurt you.

Once that's said, once she gets affirmation that my actions were genuine, all the chaos disappears...because she's not worried that her daddy doesn't love her anymore.  That's ultimately where all of this comes from, an irrational fear that consumes every part of their life.  Once we get past that though, then we're just two people again and everything is normal.

If I had discovered this maybe 3 years earlier and what was happening with my BPD ex wife, we easily could have saved the marriage by just communicating a different way when my wife was disordered.

There is a real hope and it comes through a different style of communication.  But at the same time, I did choose to stop fighting for my marriage so I understand the cost of staying.  In my case, there was adultery by my ex and so many lies to everyone in our life, I just couldn't come back from it.  I just wanted you to see the other side of this clearly and I hope that helps.

Hi

I have read your first post, and I see you both have a young baby. That brings more tension.

Do you frequently argue with him about his "almost cheating" behavior? Do you get angry? You have all of the right to be angry at that, but I'm asking because if you feed into the drama, it will make the behavior worse.

To be honest, I think things will only improve if he loses access to you as a consequence for this behavior. For instance, you could move away to a parent's house for a while. Or perhaps you could do it permanently. But it's important that the consequence does not feed into the drama, so you would need to cut off all contact with him and have someone else deal with him and his requests. Maybe someone else would request him to leave your house so that you can return.

The idea is that once you are not living together, you'll finally be able to have peace and set boundaries that protect your peace, so you'll be able to provide love while ignoring his drama, so he won't be able to force the drama onto you, and if that's accomplished, then gradually his recent drama should be reversed (settled down to the level it was in the beginning).

Otherwise, you'd have to go into an open relationship, perhaps one-sided. But I don't think you want that, and I don't think it would really end the drama.

Rowdy ,


Thanks a lot for this clarification. Did she feel loved and still keep seeking conflict after saying that? Did anything bad happen within those 2 months?


It's not manipulative because she doesn't think about it, and she does not deceive me. It is very spontaneous and automatic. It's just the BPD craziness settling down and the normal self taking over.

She does use manipulative tactics with bouts of lies, but only when the crazy feature is active, and her manipulation goal is never to promote proximity; it is to provoke me and feed more conflict.

It's so sad that living together makes it impossible for me to set boundaries, because I'll have to force her back into her mom's place, despite her being a very good person when BPD features are not active.