Welcome, BigMac — glad you found this place. I'm new here too (first posted this week), and your intro resonated with me more than I expected.

What struck me most wasn't the BPD part, honestly — it was losing your mom at 21, on your birthday of all days, and then finding yourself writing blank checks and calling utility companies for your father a few years later. You went from being the kid to being the responsible adult for everyone around you almost overnight. "I'll start with the short version" and "hanging in there" sound exactly like someone who learned early that his own needs go last. That kind of shutdown doesn't just undo itself, and it makes sense that anxiety built up quietly underneath it for years.

One thing I've been chewing on since I started reading here: a lot of us grew up managing someone's big emotions, and then ended up in relationships where we're... still managing someone's big emotions. It feels familiar, so it feels like love. Not a verdict on your marriage — just a pattern worth being curious about as you read.

The Essential Family Guide is the one most people here start with, so you're on a good path. If you feel like sharing — what was the snag that recently sent you looking for answers after 11 years? That's usually where the real conversation starts.

Glad you're here.

Your story reads a lot like mine, so let me offer the thing that took me the longest to learn: missing her this much is not evidence that you made the wrong call. You are grieving the real parts — the shared hobbies, the closeness, someone who genuinely studied your interests and folded them into her life. Those parts were real. The exhaustion was real too. Both can be true at once, and the grief doesn't get to vote on the decision.

Two things stood out to me. First, the new people not clicking "the same way." A relationship where you ground someone through every emotional spike creates a level of intensity that calmer connections simply can't match, and early on calm reads as boring. That's not a sign she was the one — it's withdrawal from intensity, and it fades slower than anyone expects.

Second, rereading her letter. I'd gently put it away, at least for now. It was written by someone who meant it in that moment, and it was also written by someone who wasn't yet able to do it. Eight months of therapy without movement on self-soothing isn't you failing to communicate — you set those boundaries more than once and watched them wash out. "Wanting to be better for you" only becomes real when it survives without you in the room.

Two months is still early. Be patient with the aching — it means the good parts were real, not that you should go back.

You are married to the man even if only during the last two years.  There are options you have not that may not have been so obvious before.

First, as a  side thought, look back... Did getting married a couple years ago help the relationship or did it overall make it worse?  Remember our phrase BPD FOG = Fear, Obligation, Guilt.  Once married, did your spouse feel you were more obligated to the Relationship, that you were more obligated to tolerate his poor behavior and less likely to abandon him?  Ponder that.

Now, back to my main thought... What options became more straightforward now that you're married?  What you may not realize is that inside an official relationship there are built-in protections for the disadvantaged partner.  If you report extreme poor behavior, particularly including abusive behavior, whether verbal or physical, then the system is set up to protect you.

This means you're able to seek a protection order (or restraining order in other jurisdictions) and get several months apart in a court order and - if done correctly - he would be the one obligated to move out and stay a specified distance away from you.  Have you consulted a DV resource or a family law attorney?  They ought to be able to describe the options available to you.  For example, they may tell you that more recent incidents are typically actionable and that older incidents, although equally bad, are more likely to be considered stale or beyond action.

A TPO or TRO is temporary, not permanent, but it would handle the immediate separation and the start of a divorce.  And if you request it, you would remain in possession of the home temporarily.  Does that provide a possible answer to your worry about where to live for the initial time apart?

Of course, if you both have the pattern to behave poorly, both engaging in long shouting matches, both throwing things at each other, both being aggressive in your responses to each other, then seeking help from the police or courts is less clear and the outcome is more unpredictable.  Yes, police and courts can assume you're both part of the problem, but the more obvious it is that one is the aggressor and the other a victim, the scenario is clearer to the system and they would be more likely to deal with it.

That means you can't retaliate in kind, you have to imagine you're having an officer or a judge always looking over your shoulder.  Also, document the poor behavior.  That's what I did 20 years ago with voice recorders, long before we had modern cell phones.  It help both my mental clarity and my awareness that I could prove I wasn't the one being aggressive.  (Yes, my ex posed as a victim, though a very, very demanding and aggressive one.)

Well, the situation there at BPDxw's home has taken a very serious turn for the worst, and so it looks like things are about to get much more complicated for a while.  I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel yet, but it must be there somewhere.  wish me luck.  Got a long way to go right now.  Will share more when able.

Hi Cat,

Many people here can relate.  It seems like you have a decent solution to the problem:  separating yourself from the daily drama by not reading the texts for a while.  If your sibling is lashing out, you are under no obligation to get sucked in, let alone to respond!  Besides, if you respond when you are upset, you run the risk of saying something you might regret.  And if you respond to your sibling when she's riled up, you're probably only going to add fuel to the fire.

There are a few ways I've thought about these emotionally-charged texts.  Typically I take them as a sign that my pwBPD is under a lot of stress, and she's "venting" her issues my way.  As she usually vents with meanness and unfounded accusations, I know perfectly well that I had absolutely nothing to do with her current distress.  Since I'm neither responsible nor to blame, I don't take offense so to speak.  Nevertheless, it's hard to witness someone become unhinged like this; it's hard not to worry.  If that happens, sometimes I give myself a break, by not reading the correspondence right away, let alone reply.  My opinion is that she doesn't want a reply anyway, not really, because she's unhinged.

Normally, what I do is wait.  I think of this as giving my pwBPD an "adult time out," i.e. time and space to cool down.  There's no clock on this.  I wait until she reaches out again in a civil manner.  If weeks and months go by, then I might lob a short, friendly greeting, something like, "Hope you're enjoying the summer!"  I don't ask anything from her though, so she doesn't feel like she's "forced" into a reply.

In the meantime, it might help to think of her messages as spam, because they ARE spam.  Why?  Because spam is designed to convey false urgency, and to get you to respond ASAP, typically in a way that you wouldn't do otherwise, because you feel undue pressure to act.  You know what you're supposed to do with spam, right?  You're supposed to delete it.  So go ahead and delete it.

Another way to think about the situation is to ask yourself, do you want to ride the emotional rollercoaster?  Just because your sibling is riding the rollercoaster, it doesn't mean that you have to ride alongside her.  Instead, you can choose to wait patiently at the exit.

By the way, I generally don't "do" texting, and certainly not as a way to convey emotionally-charged topics.  Ditto social media.  Instead, I tend to talk on the phone.  Like another poster said, it can be easier to control phone conversations, because you can hang up if things get too tense or hostile.  In addition, since the conversations are live, I think they tend to be more considerate, as well as focused.  With family members, it can be easier to establish a routine for calls, such as once weekly, while driving home from work, walking in nature or folding laundry.  That way, you stay in touch, but you're not subject to daily dumping and venting.  Sure, there's some venting, but it's limited to the duration of the call, which is under your control.  And if you combine a call with another activity, like laundry, you have some distraction that helps ratchet down the emotional intensity, as well as give you a stopping off point (oh, gotta go now, talk to you next week).

Having written all that, you might need to train your sibling how you want to be treated.  How?  By establishing firm boundaries.  One technique I've used is what I call the three-strikes rule.  If my sibling or pwBPD is talking about an overly negative, stressful, irrelevant or hopeless topic that stresses me out too much, I'll say something like, "This is stressing me out / we're not getting anywhere, let's please change the topic."  If they say, "Yes, but . . ." I'll respond with something stronger:  "If you keep talking about this/if you keep yelling at me, I'm hanging up."  That's strike number two.  If they're really stubborn and don't listen, and they continue to vent or yell, then I'll say, "Gotta go, bye."

When you are ready to reconnect with your sister, would speaking by phone be easier for you? With phone calls, you can set boundaries and hang up if the conversation gets out of hand. There is no limit to the length of a text and how hard it can be to read what is in it.

Hi,

Thank you for your words, and sorry for not replying earlier. As expected, the situation exploded. I would say it was more my inability to cope. It was just too much.

Hello Cat Parent. I also have a sister wbpd and I really relate. I have been that inner circle person, the recipient of vicious communications, disconnected, a little connected, all of it.  So first want to extend my sadness that you’re going through this. It’s exhausting on every level.

What Pook says really resonates for me. I won’t repeat it but I will emphasize that you don’t need to know your whole future at this point. You can’t anyway. You need to know what u to ou want to do now. And you need to know that you can’t control the outcome, just what you do.

Take care of yourself.

Papering over discord won't work.  This must be a lifetime change and improvement for your spouse.  Of course there can and will be setbacks now and then. Sort of, two steps forward and one step back.  The difference is that overall it continues to be improving.  Falling back into past push-pull patterns isn't positive.

Recovery is a process, not an event.  Counseling is so very helpful.  Of course, peer support such as the support found here is also so very helpful!

Be cautious about starting another relationship too quickly.  Rebound relationships often fail because we haven't yet regained our equilibrium.  How do we determine what might be a rebound relationship?  One indication is if we are unsettled and focus too much discussing the recent disaster.