Hi there,

I'm sorry that the constant reassurances don't seem to work with your loved one.  It sounds to me like she's excessively dysregulated, and she can't hear anything you have to say.  Even if she listens, her brain is going to interpret your meaning the wrong way when she's like that--she'll probably find that you're being argumentative and invalidating.  That's why you'll see on these boards a recommendation not to JADE--justify, argue, defend or explain.  Her emotions are overpowering, they have hijacked her brain in that moment.

Anyway, when your wife is accusing you of being mad at her, and generally not supporting her enough, it may be a projection of her own anger and resentment.  On the other hand, it's very possible that she's just trying to pick a fight, so she can unleash her pent up anger onto you.  My guess is she's looking for "evidence" of ill treatment, even if there was none intended.  You see, she wants to bolster her narrative of being victimized, mistreated and disliked, to keep her identity of unfortunate/unloved/abused(?) woman intact.  She might experiment with new evidence on a daily basis--accusing you of not helping her in the car, not paying attention to her, pulling away, whatever.  Deep down she probably knows she's being unreasonable--she'll stonewall you whenever you try to defend yourself, and probably give you the silent treatment for a while--but eventually her feelings become overpowering, compelling her to air her grievances, and maybe get a false confession or concession out of you in the process.  After a time of not getting attention from you because of her self-imposed silent treatment, she decides to make a scene, to unleash her anger and reclaim your attention.  Throwing a fit is perversely working for her, even if it seems to make both of you miserable.

The pwBPD in my life would similarly "manufacture" grievances out of seemingly nothing.  One example was accusing a beloved aunt of mistreating her and being condescending.  Why?  Because the aunt offered her niece some water!  The next day, the niece "tested out" this grievance with a nasty text:  How dare you treat me like a baby!  Like I couldn't get water all by myself!  But the more she ruminated about the water, the more dysregulated she became, and she ultimately threatened violence, as well as cut her aunt completely out of her life (an amped-up version of the silent treatment you describe).  But since I knew what else was going on in her life, I understood that the water incident had nothing to do with water, and everything to do with an unrelated disappointment.  The day after her visit with her aunt, the pwBPD in my life found out she didn't get the career break that she wanted.  She felt incapable, desperate, unable to cope as an adult should.  And she took out all her anger on her poor aunt, with the "trigger" being treated like a "baby."  This was all just projection of her own obsession and ill thoughts about being "stuck" living like a teenager and not getting what she wanted.  Maybe it was equal parts projection and deflection.  Anyway, this negative and distorted thinking pattern, combined with a compulsion to let out misplaced anger, and the general maladaptive means of coping with stress and disappointments is very typical of BPD in my experience.  My strong opinion is that daily marijuana exacerbates the situation.

Anyway, you mentioned quiet BPD.  I understood that people with "quiet" BPD tend to blame themselves most of the time.  Their anger tends to directed more inward than outward.  I think the pwBPD in my life fits the petulant BPD subtype, characterized by high irritability, intense mood swings, high demandingness/neediness, lots of anger and misplaced blame, and passive-aggressive behaviors.

Hope that perspective with lived experience helps.

What a strange situation. So he's been actively emotionally cheating on you the entire relationship, yet you seem to be ok with it because you have access to his phone? Has a single status on FB and deleted you? These are very horrible things that most people would immediately end a relationship over.

Why do you stay, because of the child? I assume you are hurt by all of this and are not ok with it. Like SuperDaddy said, at this point you should remove yourself...

Hi Infortewin,


My udd had her first child at 19yo and I remember feeling very sadden for my unborn gc as udd had shown only shown up to that point that she could barely look after herself, yet udd wanted a fanfare  and was disappointed that we (her family)werent happy or excited by this news. I remember it being a weird time as dd didnt want my support and only wanted to do anything baby related in secret and only had time for her b/f and friends.


I think your friend means well and as an outsiders view I would probably have said the same but see LC as a good option.
I think the fear that you are feeling comes from FOG (fear. obligation, Guilt) Once the FOG is out of the way we can often  see the situation for what it really is. I often compare now how udd treated me to if she was a friend and whether I would put up with it, and often the answer is NO i wouldnt, but because she is my udd I allowed her to get away with it.

After finding out my udd was pregnant I invited her to come for dinner once a week as she was not living at home at the time. I fed her and I gave her toiletries and some groceries. I kept it all short and sweet because it was all I could mentally manage at the time, and udd behaved suprisingly well and made an effort to be there on time which is something she never did when she lived at home.

If there are any threats of possible violence however I dont think any face to face interaction alone with my udd would have been possible and I wouldnt have gone down that route. Another thing to remember is that your udd's hormones maybe all over the place too so not to take what she says seriously. It is not an excuse but a consideration when going NC. I think this decision has to be a personal one.

I know that you probably feeling obligated  as her mother but boundaries are important at whatever age and you are allowed to take a step back to look after your own mental health without feeling guilty. My udd was 19yo when she had first gc. She has had 2 more and even though we are now estranged I always think that there will be hopefully time enough to reconnect under better circumstances, so dont give up hope or think that it must be now or never.

I think if you do manage to speak to your dd it will be better to focus her and her pregnancy even if she tries to draw you into a conversation about her r/s. By jumping in I think it will backfire somewhere down the line and you will be blamed.

I think you have to do what is right for you at this stage.

While he is not engaging in physical infidelity, so far as you know, he is pursuing emotional infidelity.  BPD is a mix of a variety of poor behavior and this reflects a weakness of the relationship, of where his heart and loyalty is.

Another pattern of PD is a propensity toward projection, with him "suspecting" you of behavior similar to what he is doing.  Perhaps he is seeking to keep you off balance so you are on the defensive and your attention is deflected from what he "might" be doing.

Frankly, no one wants to look bad but this perception is exaggerated in acting-out PDs.  He is willing to do - is doing - what he openly alleges you do.

Can these issues be addressed adequately for the relationship to continue?  That is your decision.  But meanwhile you educate yourself from our collective wisdom gained over the years and can learn more communication skills, tools, insights, strategies and more such as is found on our various boards... Tools & Skills Workshops board is a good one to browse.

Hi SuperDaddy,

I read quiet some of your posts and it seems to me that right now you are determined to “proove” to yourself and to us that boundaries are impossible when living together. I strongly dissagree, I think you need boundaries even more when living together, there is nowhere to run away in this case…
I think that it is common for pwBPD to go around the house shouting at their partner trying to prove their point in a circular argument with lots of accusations etc… I had this quiet often in the past, sometimes it still happens. I think the key is in comunication and sticking to trying to get away from the argument calmly as Pook has very nicely described. I think that the whole communication has to be changed in not JADEing and in validating what is valid, but at the same time standing your ground. I managed to get this shouting hous following episodes to less frequent occurances by „just“ that. When I see that conversation is going south, usually it is because of something minior unexpected and unimaginally unimportant in seconds… I try to stay totally calm, try to validate what is valid, which is usually emotion and try to finnish the conversation asap. I reassure I did not mean anything bad to him and that I never do want anything bad to him. This usually calms him down. However, sometimes it doesen’t or I do not manage to talk like that. Then shouting will happen and accusations. At that time I would say something like: I can see that xy made you upset, let’s talk later when we are both calm. And now mostly it happens that he calms at least to semi normal level and we can “finnish the conversation” in which I usually try to finnish it asap. If even this did not work then chasing would happen, I would calmly say that I am going to another room, that I cannot talk right now, that we will talk when we both calm down. In the past that made him crazy angry, he would come after me, demanded to talk, if I would lie down in a bed and be cowered by a blanket he would pull it off me. Once I locked myself in a room, he was hitting the room door so much I was afraid he would have broke it, when I did not come out he was playing music I really do not like at very high volume, this was going on for quet some time, around 1h. I did not come out. Eventually he stopped playing it. Then after some time I came out and said it totally calmly and very coldly that next time something like this happens I will call the police. This boundary that seems to bother you the most I think it is hard to get it done, but it is not impossible and it is necessary when living together. In reallity it took us more years to get to where we are now and even now some more progress would be wanted. In the pat my reactions were puting oil on the fire and we could be in the shouting chasing phase quickly…Regarding these screaming-chasing episodes, I talked about them afterwards with my prtner, when he showed some remorse I again and again demanded that I will not talk to him when he is screaming and that he should acknowledge my right to remove myself when this happens. And then reinforced it when arguments happened, slowly, I also had to learn reinforcment. I also said multiple times that when he is behaving like that, I am very frigned of him, that I am frighned he will eventually hit me. Little by little I was able to remove myself a bit more without him chasing most of the time. Maybe it would be good for you to make a plan with your wife what to do when she is screaming (or just say „when we argue“ not to ofend her), maybe she would agree that this is not ok for children to listen to and experience, maybe you can get her to agree that when she behaves like that you take a walk with children? Or that she takes a walk and you discuss this later calmly? And then stay your ground with reinforment.
From what you wrote it feels to me that you are still coming in comunication with your wife from logical point of view, you seem to have the need to explain yourself and to explain why your wife is like she is. I agree that it is not just feeling of abandoment but also other things frim the past that makes pwBPD behave like they do, but nevertheless it is still the behaviour that we would like to change for normal life. And JADEing does not work in pwBPD, not at all. Let’s take this example of yours: The same happened today when she was preparing to go to therapy and asked me to put the power bank in the bag. I said "No, I have already given you the power bank just now, so you can put it in the bag", because it would be very easy for her to do it by herself, and again, she had been offending me badly since the day before. She then started lashing out again, had an anxiety crisis, and missed the therapy, which I had already paid for. All because she got a "No" to a trivial thing.
I think you have explained too much, you do not have to do that, it is triggering and unnecessary. I have a lot of experience of the same things, for me the best solution in such a setting would be to say stg. like: I cannot right now, I am bussy with something else right now, could you do it yourself? I also suspect she was already in triggery mood because of going to therapy.

That’s interesting Pook as it’s a similar pattern to my breakup.
Very similar.

Did you tell her about your concerns she has or could have bpd?
Did you have these concerns when you were still together or did you, like me, only find out about bpd after the breakup?
Is she still with the person she had an affair with or did that relationship end up going sour too?

Compassion and saying "you'll always be there/support her/fight for her/etc" is the recipe, until the next dysregulation happens.  And if you catch it early, sure, the conflict can end very quickly or maybe there's no conflict at all. 

But you also know that BPDs can hold back and hide so much of what's really going on.  Maybe catching the mood shift early isn't possible, maybe everything blows up a week or a month later.  You're thinking everything is fine and then 'boom'.

For instance, my marriage ended because my ex wife stopped talking.  She was depressed out of her mind, she spent all her free time away from home or in bed, and I kept asking her what was wrong.  Each time she said, "I don't know."

Today, I could respond to that a whole lot better.  But back then I had no idea what was happening or why she was becoming so distant.  There was no argument, no big fights, nothing.  Plus, she hadn't been diagnosed at the time so I wasn't even thinking major mental illness.  She ended up having an affair and left me for the guy.

Once she was gone though, within days I saw the classic BPD venom on full display.  I was thinking, where the heck is this coming from?  All the anger and hatred exploded out of her and she said things I never thought she was capable of saying.  That's when I talked to our family doctor, who knows my BPD kid's full history, and she started connecting the dots.  I felt like a complete idiot not realizing the patterns from early in our marriage and how our kid was at the same age.

On thing my ex said to me after she left really stuck with me.  About two weeks earlier, she walked up to me in the kitchen and just looked miserable.  I stopped what I was doing and hugged her for maybe 10-15 seconds, then finished whatever I was doing and went on my way.  Fast forward to days after the breakup, she said, "You knew how badly I needed you to hold me and how horrible I felt, yet you just gave me a quick hug and walked away like I was worthless."

Three years later, that still stings because I HAD NO CLUE she had disordered thinking and felt anything like she described. 

So if you can't see it and you don't know about it, then the explosions can seem like they're coming out of nowhere.  They're rarely about one little thing though, it's a buildup of things that stem from unstable emotions and dangerous thinking.  And when it builds, it's much harder to reverse in the moment.

Since I've really dug into this though, my ex and I are now on good terms and can speak normally.  I just had no idea what I was dealing with or how sick she actually was/is.

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.