Your grief-group observation is the most useful data point you have: she opened up when the format was peers talking to peers, and stayed shut with experts evaluating her. After a childhood of being "treated," that's not defiance — it's self-protection. One more professional telling her what's wrong with her reads as one more verdict; a group makes her a participant instead of a patient.

A few directions worth knowing about:

DBT skills groups for teens and young adults (DBT-A) are the best-studied group format for exactly this profile — mood swings, impulsivity, emotion dysregulation. Many programs run a parallel multi-family group where parents learn the same skills. That structure matters: it signals "we're all working on this," rather than "she's the identified patient."

NAMI's Family-to-Family program is free and built for parents in your position — not for her, for you both. Long waitlists for the young person often move faster once parents are in the system and known to the providers.

If she's in college, campus counseling centers usually offer groups at no extra cost, and "free" sometimes lowers the barrier that "therapy" raises.

One caution from families who've walked this: at 19 you can't compel care, only invite it. The invitation lands best when it's small ("try one group meeting") and framed around something she wants — less overwhelm, better friendships, sleep — rather than a diagnosis. It took our family several rounds of that to learn the difference.

Thank you both for these replies — this is exactly why I posted here.

To the five-decades story: what stays with me is the line about realizing something was abnormal a week before the wedding and believing you'd "saved" her. That savior reflex is such a quiet trap — it dresses dependence up as love and hands you a role before it gives you a relationship. The fact that you can narrate it with that much distance now says a lot about how far you've traveled.

And the "those two things are the same thing" point landed harder than I expected. The unstructured time observation especially. I've been the one keeping everyone okay for so long that silence feels like a job vacancy. Lately I've been trying to sit with small unstructured stretches without filling them with someone else's needs — it's uncomfortable in a way that feels oddly promising, if that makes sense.

A question for both of you, since you've clearly walked this further than I have: when you started finding out what you actually like, did the people around you resist the change? I keep half-expecting that the relationships built on my "keeping everyone okay" role won't quite know what to do with a version of me that occasionally says "actually, I'd rather not."

Yes, and the way you laid it out - the pleasing, the smoothing-over, then noticing you look for people who need caring - reads like the textbook arc so many of us share here. One thing that struck me in your post: you describe a lifetime of managing other people's emotions, and then say you don't know who you are in relationships. Those two things are the same thing. When your role in the family was 'the one who keeps everyone okay,' you never got the unstructured time to find out what you like, what you want, what you'd choose when nobody needs anything from you. Identity isn't something we reflect our way into - it gets built from small acts of preference.

Something that helped me was to stop treating the reflection as a search for the moment it all went wrong (that tends to slide into self-blame pretty fast) and treat it as data-gathering instead. Two questions that produce more usable answers than 'how did I get here': 'What did being the caretaker give me?' - because it did give something: a sense of purpose, being the irreplaceable one, feeling loved conditionally is still a form of feeling effective. And: 'What would I do this Saturday if nobody's crisis needed managing?' The first one makes the pattern make sense instead of just making it shameful. The second one is embarrassingly hard to answer at first, and that difficulty is itself the measurement.

The fact that you can now see the thread from your parent to your choices means the pattern is already losing its automaticity. Thanks for putting this into words so clearly.

Hello and welcome back!  I remember talking to you because I'm in the Philippines with my wife, waiting to bring her to the USA, and my mind instantly went to visa stuff when I first heard your story.  Is there any updates there on what a divorce will mean for your legal status there?  Or maybe it doesn't matter since you're both from the same original country.

For cohabitation, I have some pretty simple rules.  Stop arguing, stop defending, and only focus on his emotions.  No matter what he says or does, do not let it affect your mood and be there for him for emotional support whenever possible.  If he's sad, try to cheer him up.  If he's angry, try to help him calm down.  Whatever he's sad or angry about, it doesn't matter one bit.  Ignore his "facts" and only focus on his feelings.

Why no arguing or defending?  Because it's like arguing with a goat.  How can you verbally defeat a goat when it doesn't understand English?  Both of you are only going to get frustrated.  Let your husband say whatever he wants and if it's ugly, walk away.  No matter what you say when he's disordered, it won't make a bit of good in your life...but it could make things much worse.  So don't argue, don't defend.  You're there to live only and his opinions no longer matter.

When my BPD ex and I separated, she also got very excited about the future and all the possibilities.  She was already being unfaithful though (without me knowing), so the relationship was officially doomed.  There was a part of her that did want to come back and fix things though; I just think she was too mentally weak to actually do it.  She wanted that shiny new thing so badly and because I fought for the marriage, it led to severe backlash and heartbreak.

So don't fight, don't argue, don't defend.  If it's over, then treat it like it's over.  Be kind when you can, stay away from him when you can't.  That will make things signifigantly better immediately.

Hello:
My wife and I are dealing with our 19 year old daughter who has suffered all of her life with mental illness.  We have been involved with several counselors, therapists, and psychologists.  Most of her life we have treated her for ADHD & depression but just recently it was brought to our attention that she maybe bipolar or dealing with borderline personality disorder.  A lot of her actions, moods, and symptoms point in this direction but she refuses to see a psychiatrist for meds and therapy.  We were wondering if anyone knew of support groups for teens where they discuss their feelings and actions as a group?  We attended a grief therapy session that was structured this way and she opened up and talked a lot with the other teens.  Thank you

Hello and welcome to the family!  My journey is so much like yours- looking back, I'm pretty sure my mom had BPD as well.  I came from a good household, lots of daily ranting from my mom, but my dad knew how to handle/avoid it and their marriage somehow worked.  My first wife was also BPD and I didn't realize how unnormal things were between us.  I went through the same patterns and slowly discarded my hobbies, my friends, my sanity in order to appease my wife.  Meanwhile, she was always on the run and I was always at home waiting on her.

We separated maybe 5 years ago and eventually divorced.  She was having an active affair so there was no coming back from it.  Yet, we saved the relationship so we could be mom/dad by learning how to communicate once again.  I learned to validate her feelings (not her "facts", just her feelings) and show empathy when she was sturggling.  She learned that I wasn't the enemy and it wasn't okay to take her frustrations out on me.  Slowly, over time, we found a balance that worked and we are actual friends once again.

Looking back, I realize now that if I would have found this site maybe a year earlier and recognized what was going on, I could have saved the marriage.  And you're already starting to walk that path- sticking to boundaries in a compassionate way, learning to communicate, learning to work through therapy to find middle ground.  It's a lot, I know, and you'll continue to get it wrong at times.  It is entirely possible to turn things around though and have a strong relationship once again.

I also have a BPD daughter, which is a big reason why I had to find a middle ground with my BPD ex.  We had to work together as mom and dad whenever our kid is in crisis...I refused to have it any other way.  The kid bad mouths me frequently to mom, mom bad mouths me frequently to the kid, but that's okay.  My relationship is good with both of them and it was worth the fight to get there.

I'm sure you have many questions, so I'll hold off on adding more.  I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone here and there are some that have dealt with BPD their entire lives just like you.

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.