Many of us, perhaps most of us, never had confirmation that the other was diagnosed with BPD.  Partly that is due to their avoidance of therapists.  So what we do is ponder the evidence (documented behavior and actions) and conclude what fits.  It's not an official diagnosis but it's enough to guide us in how we deal with whatever it is.

That was my situation.  I had been married for over a decade when I thought having a child with my spouse would make her happier upon seeing our child discover the joys of life.  How clueless I was!  So when we separated we both were ordered by the court to get Psych Evals.  They aren't in-depth assessment but they're better than nothing.  Mine was by a university grad student.  My report?  Anxiety.  Yeah, Sherlock, that was obvious after what I went through.

What was my ex's report?  She never turned one in.  For all I know she never got an evaluation.  I learned some lessons.  They may not apply here, but I mention them in case it helps anyone.

• Many times when it goes to court one is cast as the victim and the other as the perp.  In many cases the court only orders an examination of the accused.  Because the situation may really be the reverse, when a court orders investigations, try to get both parties to be examined.
• With us knowing there may be non-compliance, have our lawyer not submit the report until the other side is ready to submit theirs.

Good list, thanks Hotchip. I have been ruminating too much lately. Feeling quite sad and alone. At least I have stayed 5 months no contact already.

Hi there,

I'm sorry that things have gotten out of control in the relationship with your pwBPD.  I know you know that violence isn't the answer, and that you feel awful.

Here's the thing though.  You know you were wrong, and you know there's no excuse.  You let things get out of control, probably because you were trying really, really hard to make the relationship work.  And your pwBPD takes advantage of that, manipulating you.  Your mistake in my opinion was to let him get away with too much.  The irony is that YOU feel bad about it, when objectively, the root cause of the blow-ups is the pwBPD's atrocious behavior.

I've noticed with the pwBPD in my life, that sometimes it appears that she's manufacturing a scene, in order to provoke another person into doing something they might regret.  Typically the scene involves over-the-top behavior on her part, actions that always seem disproportionate to the situation--the emotional outbursts, the cruelty of insults, the duration of a tantrum, the accusations, the physicality, the dire threats, the refusal to participate as a collaborative/rational person, whatever.  Sometimes it seems to me that her unspoken goal is to get the other person to crack.  And when they do, typically with a reaction that's minor compared to what she's done just moments before, well, she pounces all over that.  Suddenly, she focuses on the latest offense, and then doubles down.  She shifts into full-on blame mode.

In the most extreme form of this tactic, the pwBPD will completely flip the script.  Their version of events will highlight your small reaction, while ignoring their own behavior leading up to the break.  Sometimes this is psychlogical manipulation strategy is known as DARVO, short for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.  Typically the result is that YOU end up apologizing for your behavior, when the behavior of the pwBPD was worse and is what started the debacle.

At the core of this strategy is blame-shifting.  In my experience with pwBPD, the victim mindset is pervasive, as is the inability to take any responsibility for their actions.  After all, a pwBPD is convinced that others are causing their distress.  So this is not only an EXCUSE to act out and be mean to you, but also an attempt to get a rise out of you, so they can pin absolutely everything on you.  They feed on that reaction while blaming you for everything.  By blaming you, they feel increasingly justified in treating you badly, while they generally won't feel any responsibility.  My guess is that you never, ever get an apology from a pwBPD.  Does that ring true?

What to do about all this?  I think you have to recognize when you're being provoked earlier, and leave the scene earlier.  It comes down to boundaries.  You don't let people treat you like crap because you deserve better.  When they start crapping all over you, no matter how sorry you feel for them, that doesn't give them the right.  You leave the scene and only engage when they are treating you better.  I know this is easier said than done.  I'm working on it all the time.  I've found it helps to have a Plan A and a Plan B for certain situations.  For me, that usually means creating an "adult time out," time and space away from the pwBPD.  Usually that involves going to another room, but sometimes it might mean taking a walk in nature or getting out of the house--a quick errand, a stop at the library, parking in a tranquil spot.

Just my two cents.

Combined with the drastic personality change after dissociation, which I’ve witnessed myself, it’s actually a little frightening. I wonder where that kind of magical thinking comes from in people with BPD, if it’s common among them.

Really? No way! That is mind blowing

Well there’s a thing. My ex was,is, adamant she is a witch too, and also told me I am an extraordinary person capable of extraordinary things. I’ve got a feeling this might be quite common among bpd’ers

Ashesanddust, I'm so sorry you're going through this. You sound like me just a few months ago, and other people on this site and elsewhere very kindly and gently helped me through the process. It does get better, I promise.

I do not believe either of the situations you have described constituted abuse enacted by you against your partner.

To my mind, abuse is one person in a relationship using power over the other to harm them, and to entrench a dynamic where one person dominates and the other is subservient. Usually abuse is cyclical and ongoing, but one-off acts can be abusive if the intensity of harm and disparity of power is large enough. For example, punching your girlfriend in the face is abusive even if it only happens once.

What you describe does not meet that threshold for me. Slapping someone after they have viciously insulted you for hours using horrible misogynistic words, invaded your privacy by going through your phone, physically assaulted and intimidated you by trying to push you out of bed... this is a *minor* physical altercation. You were not seeking to dominate or entrench a dynamic where you had power over your partner. You were expressing a completely natural, normal and in my view, proportional reaction - in the face of a sustained threat to your physical and psychological safety.

Similarly, your partner's actions in terms of threatening suicide, holding up knives, smearing and berating you, etc etc - this is not the behaviour of someone who is being victimised and subservient. Far from it! Your response was, again, an understandable reaction to someone who was behaving violently towards *you*. Sometimes when we are being threatened and harmed, we lash out. It's not great, but it happens.

Most people think that violence is generally bad, but make an exception for self-defence. While your actions might not be perfect, they can't be judged in the same way as if you had, say, walked up to a helpless little child who had done nothing to you and slapped them. It was probably not helpful action to respond by slapping him, as it did not solve or de-escalate the situation. But it wasn't an unprovoked act of aggression and I do not think you need to beat yourself up over it.

I had a very similar situation - if you scroll back through these threads you'll find a post of mine, 'what's the use in calling it abuse?' - it might help you to read that.

Sending care.
 

And thank you Rowdy, I really appreciate your response.

It was actually quite a shock at first when I found this forum. Suddenly, the pieces of this completely insane _____storm started falling into place.

My ex and I had known each other for seven years before our relationship went from friendship to something romantic. She is a highly educated woman, and I had always considered her rational, kind, and calm.

Right at the beginning of our relationship, I suspected her of being unfaithful and lying to me. A mutual friend assured me that I was imagining things and told me that she simply wasn't that kind of person. I believed my friend and thought that maybe my own alcoholism was making me insecure.

Early in the relationship, I noticed other strange things as well, but perhaps love blinded me into thinking they were normal, or maybe some kind of joke. She seriously told me that she was a witch and that she had something like clairvoyant abilities. For example, she said that if I ever cheated on her, she would know simply by sensing the energies. In general, she was prone to magical thinking and, among other things, believed that I was an extraordinary person who also had certain abilities.

Another thing I still wonder about is money. She has a good profession, but toward the end of our relationship, I discovered how terrible her financial situation actually was. Her mother's partner told me that she was several months behind on her rent and was about to be evicted. At the same time, our final breakup was unfolding, and she was devastated and in shock, even though she was the one who had left me. I paid her overdue rent and asked her mother's partner not to tell my ex where the money had come from, since he knew the landlord.

The worst part was that only a month earlier, I had made her promise me that she wouldn't hide financial problems from me and that she would be honest with me so that I could help her. She never told me anything.

It was horrible to see someone I loved in that condition. She would call me at night and tell me that I had destroyed her. By this point, I was beginning to realize just how ill she actually was, and all I tried to do was comfort her. I told her that I wasn't going to disappear and that I would be there to support her if she needed me, even though I had already moved back to my own continent.

I kept trying to convince her that I had not cheated on her. I don't know whether she believed me. By then, I was so confused myself that I even started wondering whether perhaps I had been carrying chlamydia without symptoms for years and had somehow infected her. Because I hadn't slept with any other women during our relationship.

Later, of course, I realized that when our second-to-last breakup happened—when she left me because I made myself tea—she had most likely gone and cheated on me.

When that breakup happened, I didn't recognize her. The woman sitting in front of me seemed like someone else entirely: completely cold and emotionless, although at moments she also seemed visibly shaken.

Hi TheFox

What you have described is a very similar pattern to what a lot of us on here have experienced. The push pull, the jealousy, the re writing of history or changing the narrative of things that happen or blowing things out of proportion does sound like a personality disorder like bpd.

Now, I can’t say for sure, I recognise and sympathise with a lot that you have said, but my ex hasn’t been diagnosed with bpd.
In many cases there won’t be a diagnoses because the person that likely has a disorder won’t usually see, or admit they have. They see nothing wrong with their behaviour. To be honest, I’m not sure I would completely trust a diagnoses anyway given the disordered persons ability to gaslight and bend the truth, I doubt any therapist actually gets the full undisclosed picture when dealing with a person with a pd.

I know exactly where you are at on your journey. You likely know she has a problem, her behaviour doesn’t make sense to you and her choices don’t make sense either. You are looking for the reason and validation for what you believe is the problem, the root cause of her behaviour. It matters less that she is given a label, it matters more that you can see the behaviour as toxic or unhealthy and take steps to look after yourself accordingly.

My relationship lasted 27 years. We were (still are) married, have two adult sons and a three month old grandchild. I know she’s got problems, and most people around us know it. What I have done is run through her behaviour, listing what she has done in chronological order, on google AI and asked it to check her behaviour against the DSM-5 for any possible personality disorder. While it can’t diagnose anything, it has given me some clarity to the reason why her behaviour is what it is. In my case, it was quite shocking as it listed 9/9 for npd, 7/9 for bpd and high enough in both anti social personality disorder and histrionic personality disorder as well, so high comorbidity in all four personality disorders.