Hi there,

I'm sorry you've been dealing with the negative behaviors, for what sounds like almost three decades now.  There must be a ton of emotional baggage.  You must feel exhausted, while at the same time worried sick.  You might even feel some PTSD.  Do you tense up every time the phone rings, bracing yourself for more traumatic news?

Here's the thing though.  I get the sense from your post that you might feel overly responsible.  When your daughter was a child, you were responsible for her.  But she's 31 now.  The excerpt above stood out to me:  She's unwilling or unable to take interest in her life.  It sounds to me like she's abdicating responsibility for herself.  That way, she can blame her problems on YOU, or maybe on the world in general.  I think the victim mindset is perhaps the worst part of BPD, because it renders her helpless.  She thinks others should change, not her.  She thinks others should over-function for her, that they OWE her.  She's stuck, and the victim mindset keeps her there.  That could be why therapy isn't working--she doesn't believe she needs it.  She's telling you she doesn't care about her life--she thinks she's worthless.  The sad reality is that she has given up, while you hold onto hope for something better.

I think that's why on these boards we sometimes read that pwBPD have to "hit bottom" before they decide to get some help.  It's just that it sounds like your daughter has to sink even lower.  And if you rescue her, giving her a comfortable landing when she's released from the hospital, she might think, Mom's responsible.  Even if your daughter is miserable, her life is "working" for her.  She hasn't learned yet the "rules" of adulthood--that violence lands you in jail, that unemployment leaves you virtually penniless, that being mean leaves you friendless, that nobody owes you anything, that happiness is a choice, that adult life is full of tasks you don't necessarily want to do, but you do them anyway because you are responsible.  It's not your fault she didn't learn these things--her BPD emotions have gotten in the way.

My sense is that you could benefit from some happiness in your life, to get some distance and help get over the grief.  Maybe you could spend more time with the grandchildren?  I think you owe it to yourself to find happiness in your life, now that your kids have all grown.  In fact I think you should model for your kids what a healthy adult's life looks like--including time for friends, grandkids, hobbies and fun trips.  How does that sound?  That way, should you resume contact with kids in some sort of crisis, you interact from a place of serene happiness, and you uphold boundaries to keep it that way.  In addition, they might learn from you how to have a healthier, balanced life.  How does that sound?

Thank you for more insight.  Minus the not working, my son sounds a lot like what you describe.  Makes me think twice about his inheritance and I will have a talk with his siblings about that.Is there any online counseling that addresses this kind of disorder? 

Hi there,

I'm sorry you're in a tough spot, essentially wanting to protect your grandchildren from the disordered thinking patterns of your son.  I can relate a little bit, because I have an adult stepdaughter with BPD, and another person in the family with undiagnosed NPD.  But the situations are somewhat different because your son seems to be functional, at least in terms of earning a salary.  The people with BPD/NPD in my life are not as high functioning right now.

Anyway, the uNPD in my life is long-term unemployed, suffers from "fantastical" thinking and neglects his three young children.  His "fantasies" and his bizarre "narrative" of his life have gotten worse, not better, over the last decade.  Without a rigid structure of employment or a wife to cater to his every need and usher him around, he slipped into increasing dysfunction.  Even though he has three wonderful kids, he can't seem to get his act together, not even for their sake.  The underlying problem is that with narcissism, the only person he cares about is himself.  His distorted thinking--grandiosity, elements of paranoia, extreme arrogance, demandingness of others, exceptionalism for himself, vindictiveness--seems to taint his decision-making.  He basically makes little, if any, effort to be with his kids, and when he deigns to be present, he makes the entire visit about him and his extensive needs.  It's as if the roles are reversed:  he's the kid, and his kids are his caretakers.  When he doesn't get exactly what he wants, he can be cruel, to his own kids!  And yet he can "pull himself together" when he wants to.  He can appear almost normal and be very convincing with authority figures, such as CPS or cops.  He has no problem with lying.

Anyway, the "least bad" formula that seems to work for the uNPD father is this:  his visits with children must be supervised, and in practice that means supervision by his mother.  She's the one who organizes visitation, including driving and meal preparation.  She picks up and drives around the uNPD father, and my guess is that she "parents" him right along with the grandkids.  You see, the uNPD is generally unable to prepare regular meals for his kids or supervise them appropriately.  Since grandma is responsible, she'll ensure the kids get three meals a day and go to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up all night on screens.  And grandma is fun, she'll take the kids to a museum, beach or some sort of excursion, even if uNPD father stays alone to nap all day.  UNPD father is supposed to send child support, but he's generally negligent, and every payment is an argument with him.  Courts have mandated child support and sale of the marital home, but he is generally uncooperative, and since he has no income, there are no wages to garnish.  My point is, assuming ongoing "compliance" from someone who is uncooperative because of mental illness doesn't work very well.  The uNPD father has cited every excuse possible for noncompliance--it's never his fault, always someone (or something) else.

Another point might interest you:  my understanding is that any inheritance going to uNPD father is to be held in a trust administered by a family member.  Why?  Because uNPD father has proven himself to be unreliable with finances, as he chooses unemployment while he binge-spends on frivolous items.  Apparently he has piles of unopened boxes of online orders shipped to his home.  His family obviously came to the conclusion that he'd be better off if he had someone more responsible manage his inheritance on his behalf.

I'm sorry you've struggled so much, probably for years.  I imagine that you've tried to protect your son, but he just won't cooperate.  Maybe it makes sense to focus on the welfare of the grandkids, provided you're in a position to help in some way.  In reading these boards, I've seen that a typical scenario is for the pwBPD to isolate kids from grandparents as punishment for perceived grievances.  That is heartbreaking as well.

Certainly, there is nothing like having a BPD child to expose all my own maladaptive behaviors.  I've struggled with enmeshment, depression and poor boundaries.  I know (now) that I have these issues.  It is a constant up and down.  I've learned how to block her from contacting me.

As some backstory, this daughter (caller her #4) is one of five children we adopted from social services.  We have no birth children. She is fourth youngest. #5 is also a daughter who was born addicted to heroin.  They are about 14 months apart.  #5 became addicted to heroin in her teens, and currently lives in a car with her boyfriend.  They are on and off of fentanyl.

#3, son, had/has reactive attachment disorder.  we have not been in contact for several years.  Son #2 just remarried his ex - wife and is stable living with a career.  Son #1 has been married for 25 years and has 3 lovely grandchildren. We see them often.

This is about daughter #2.    The most difficult part is that she keeps reaching out - if she left us alone that would be different, but I keep being dragged back into her life and have to deal with all the miserable aspects of it.

.... and, looking at what I just wrote, I clearly see a boundary issue.  If I were to set a boundary, though, and not see her or talk to her, I think about her.  How she's surviving.  How she's eating.  How lonely I know she feels.

Hey y’all, just felt the need to post and vent a little bit. My plan is still in motion to inform my wife in two weeks that I’m divorcing her, and giving her paperwork my lawyer’s preparing.

I’m having a lot of mixed feelings - some days, happiness and can’t wait to rip this Band-Aid off. Other days, almost feel crippled with anxiety over it. I only got about 3 1/2 hours of sleep last night. Woke up with disaster vision thinking of the various scenarios I might face.

Working through my task list week by week as I get closer. I’ve got my storage unit and started moving important things to me out of the house. I have a post office box to have packages and change mailing addresses as needed. Currently all the household bills are paid from a joint bank account. Leading up to the time I tell her I’m transitioning all the auto payments to a separate individual bank account. Once I tell her, I won’t be keeping any funds in the joint account. By the end of next week, I’m planning to get some banker boxes to pack up and get some files, passports, other docs I want to be sure are safe out of the house.

I’m resolute, but I still have a lot of moments where I feel like a fraud because of the lies I’m having to tell week by week. I know 100%. This is the right decision. But it does feel bad cause I’m still pretending as if I’m staying. I’m sure it’ll just be one more reason for her to split an attack me.


But even this week, it’s hilarious. There’s daily drinking and marijuana use. She keeps saying things like she’s changed so much, there are hardly any blow ups. (I just think in terms of if this was a spouse getting beat physically would she say “I’m only beating you once month now, you should be happy” ) Such baloney. The other day she talked about how she was respecting my new budget, I recently told her I wasn’t going spend more than $400 a month eating out. Soon to be zero dollars for her. Then last night she asked me if we’re still going out to eat for Thursday or Friday this week. I said yes, but woke up this morning thinking to myself, messed up it is. We have a family day planned out tomorrow that’s probably gonna cost at least $200. The kids are really looking forward to it, I’m hoping we can enjoy the day. Then this weekend my sister comes with her three kids so we have houseguests for five days. And this is the sort of nonsense, I’m already gonna be over budget tomorrow with the family outing, it’s gonna be an additional cost for groceries and what not hosting more people. So now I have to have the conversation which shouldn’t be uncomfortable, but it is because it’s her, letting her know that if she wants to go out for dinner Thursday or Friday she has to pay. And really if she has money to go out she should chip in for groceries instead. That would be common sense. Actually common sense would be not eating out every week, let alone twice a week, which is what she wants and expects.

I know this is gonna cost a lot financially to go through this divorce process, but I still feel very confident that in the long term I’m gonna be much better off financially.

The other little wrinkle happened this past weekend. The details don’t even matter, it’s the same pattern. Escalations, she’s threatening separation and wanted  me to go with her to look at apartments for her. I said she can go look, but it’s not what I wanted to do that day. She wasn’t serious about it, she’s just trying to get attention or wants me to beg for her not to go. I did bring up the apartment listing website on her computer to show her apartments in our area. I left the house to do some grocery shopping and just get away from her. Apparently she had posted something on social media saying she was looking for apartments or something like that. I didn’t see it but while I’m out my 19-year-old daughter text me and asked me what’s this post mom just did about an apartment? My wife must’ve taken it down right away because it wasn’t on her page when I saw it and my daughter said she didn’t see it either anymore. But my wife talked to her mother. And that’s when her mom told her she wanted to come down right away…


Now my MIL is pretty good and definitely sees the patterns and extreme behaviors. But I would also consider her an enabler. She doesn’t call my wife out on her behaviors. And even though she’s seen my wife explode, she still says platitudes to me that it takes two to argue… after my wife rages that takes two?? Anyway, I’ve texted my mother-in-law a couple times since then and she hasn’t responded, which is fairly unusual. I just texted her and let her know she’s of course welcome anytime and if she had made any decisions about what dates she might come down. Crickets so far. For me the dilemma is I don’t know if this is going to mess up my plans on how I’m going to tell my wife. I actually think it may be a really good thing if her mother is here to give her support, maybe even be present when I tell her.

Logistically this messes me up a little bit however if my mother-in-law is here the week, I’m telling my wife… I had it all planned out that while my wife is at work for the day I would be doing the last-minute packing up of my things frantically, moving a few things into storage so making a few trips there. But the bigger thing was installing a deadbolt on the spare room door and moving all my belongings from our bedroom to the spare room, essentially moving myself in there and having a locked room to keep things in complete with cameras.  If my mother-in-law is there, she’ll be staying in the spare room is the issue. There’s no other area that’s really available for me to put my clothes and bedroom belongings.

Anyway, it’ll be what it’ll be. Trying to look at this positively. Her mom might be able to calm her down somewhat and it would be good for my wife to have support, or help her in finding an apartment asap would be a dream. But don’t know for sure if she’s coming so continuing as if she won’t be here for the time being.

He will be 44 in April.  He had a forceps delivery that caused a head injury at birth which gave him headaches since birth until I realized at 10 that he had issues and sought manual therapy and helped that but he struggle in school with LD in reading, writing,math.  He kept it together at school and blew up at home.  I tried taking him to a counselor but that caused more scars (I didn't know what he need but I knew their technique wouldn't work).   He was also ADD.  He was always oppositional defiant and by the time he was 5 he hated me.  With spiritual warfare that improved and our relationship was good in early teen years because I evolved with approach--pulled from public school, tried 2 private schools (drew picture with dagger through heart at 8 in private school).  Finally homeschooled him and was able to improve his learning environment for all those issues with innovative approaches.  All the time raising his sister and brother (he would literally kick his little brother).  Since it was a challenge to find a counselor that was appropriate for him, I resorted to counseling for myself to learn how techniques to use with him and to address my issues with my past and how to deal with my husband who apparently had his own mental deficits (in denial about our son's mental state and not providing a consistent united front for our son).  So, we made it to adulthood without major issues, he married (2007) and finally he had kids(all und 7 yr.) .  He has always been gainfully employed (never blew up on the job).  Blows up at home.  I raised him to be independent and ultimately he went into business for himself and they have never been financially destitute.  He is a workaholic. Currently they actually have a beautiful house down the block which is quite an accomplishment considering all I have been through with him since the day he was born.  He does not have an offical diagosis BPD and I also believe he is absolutely narcissist ---I think it is a combination.  He has never viewed the world correctly.  Currently he comments that his wife is evil because he says she just stares at him.  After looking at the video about BPD (he has not been suicidal) I heard the comment about reading faces----it fits.  When he first married,  he commented when they were apart, he couldn't visulize her face.  He may not be 100% borderline but the issues include BPD traits and I do need a counselor for me to help me approach him in way that we can even discuss counseling and what to say to my grandkids.  I NEED SKILLS to make through this unbelievable dark time.  We have made it to this point without him taking his first drink ever (ETOH is genetic)---his brother and sister had a big argument with him when he was a young adult.  He wanted to drink "to fit in".  He has been faithful in his marriage and not gone down a path of self destruction.  But if his mousey wife is no longer his wife, I am very concerned.  We have never had the heart ache others have suffered .  I love my daughter in law and she loves us but I want her life to be better but if she does divorce,  my world will be more of a mess.  My husband has mentally always been a challenge to communicate with (due to environmental challenges I now realize) and it has progressed to just a little bit of dementia.  I need a counselor for me that understands borderline personality so I can receive wise counsel for myself !  My daughter talked with him and told him he need counseling but he is convinced he is the only one that is right and refuses to go (my daughter in law is in counseling and that is why she had the courage to leave---she believes in joint counseling) .  In his eyes no one else knows anything! Sorry for the long response,  This is it .

This reveals why the relationship filled a need in you... not being a stranger to toxic relationships... likely you probably grew up in a dysfunctional home or regularly exposed to acting-out dysfunctional people?  There was something about him that resonated with the childhood that shaped you?

Our members often ask, "How was it that I picked him/her or he/she picked me?  Why me and not so many others?  Why was I the one who decided to stick with that person despite the mental health signs?"  It's often because we tend to gravitate toward the familiar.  Besides discussing this in peer support - which of course is helpful - you can also decide to seek counseling to discuss and learn why you're inclined to persist in troubled relationships.

I recall when I first met with a counselor, thought it turned out she wasn't a good fit.  I didn't know it then but my marriage was months away from a horrible separation and divorce.  I sought help for dealing with my ranting and raging spouse but during those three sessions all the counselor asked about was my FOO (family of origin).  I was disappointed to not hear even one suggestion or explanation.  I later learned a clue - "personality dysfunctions" - from a hospital staffer, which led me to here.  I have no idea why the counselor didn't mention the variety of Personality Disorders.  She was looking into my childhood interactions but the immediate urgency at the time was the imploding marriage.


We have dozens of books listed in our Books board.  One book there discussing the push/pull dynamic is I hate you - Don't Leave Me: Understanding the Borderline Personality.  That's quite a contrast, from one extreme to the other, but so commonly experienced and described here.

I had started attending Al-Anon once a week.  I told J1 about it. 

"See? I'm taking responsibility for my side of the street.  I'm doing the work."

I remember she laughed when I told her.  The kind of laugh that meant:

"Al-Anon? That's for the loved ones of alcoholics.  But you don't have an alcoholic in your life.  What a waste of time."

I told my story at the first meeting.  I was brief. 

Afterward a woman came up to me. "So, your wife's a nurse?"

I hadn't said anything about her job.

"I've been doing this a long time," she said.  "The patterns get easier and easier to spot."

Driving home from that first meeting--having heard about detachment and powerlessness, and realizing that I had fallen into a predictable pattern--I thought:

I'm just as sick as she is.

I cried. 

Al-Anon taught me that when the storm is coming there's only one thing to do:

Do not interrupt chaos.  Let the bad thing happen.

I had been conditioned to preempt and absorb chaos.  Now I'm supposed to just let it happen?

It was my son's 4th birthday.  Friends and family. Cake and presents.  G and her husband stopped by.  J1 was drunk. 

The next day everything changed. 

We hadn't even eaten the rest of the cake yet.  The balloons were still floating around the ceiling.  His gifts were still scattered around.

"You and G are having an affair."

We were in our bedroom--her bedroom--and she had printed out pages and pages of phone records.  She had highlighted call logs, scribbled notes in the margins.  She kept a small notebook, just like I did at work.

She had been investigating me.

She didn't demand that I confess.  She had already decided what I had done.

I remember bringing logic into the room: "If I'm having an affair I'm doing a terrible job of keeping it a secret.  Why would I introduce you to a woman with whom I'm having an affair? Why would she introduce me to her husband? Why would I bring them to our home?"

"To throw me off the scent," she replied.

This played out over the next few weeks.  Her drinking intensified.  She became more and more confident in her story about me. 

She called my friends and told them.  She told my coworkers.  She told friends that I was interested in their wives.  She called my parents in the middle of the night.

No matter how I explained myself, J1 had a response pre-loaded:

"That's a convenient story."
"You're being defensive."
"Don't bother trying to explain."
"Why are you so angry?"

I was angry.  Not at the accusations.  I was angry that it took an alleged affair for her to pay attention to us.

And I was terrified by the deja vu.  Her self-assured tone.  The rage in her eyes.  The speed with which she went from suspicion to verdict. 

Eventually J1 softened.  It felt like I was getting somewhere.  She was seeing the light.  I was not the man she accused me of being.

"Maybe this wasn't a sexual affair," she conceded. 

Maybe I could I survive this with my integrity intact, I thought.

Not quite.

"Maybe this wasn't a sexual affair.  But it was definitely an emotional affair."

That was the first time I had heard such a term.  Emotional affair.  And the more I heard about it, by her definition it was an emotional affair: 

"Two people who talk often and know things about each other and confide in each other."

To me: that's simply a friend.

See, J1 had a rule that was very strictly enforced: no one was allowed to visit our house--our hiding spot in the woods--without her knowing first.  Friends, family, they had to ask before coming over.  I even installed an alarm on the driveway so she'd know if someone had pulled in.

I didn't have an affair.  I invited someone into our world without asking permission.  That was the real violation. 

Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry we're meeting like this and I feel for your struggles.  I've faced them as well and was equally lost.

Does your son have a formal diagnosis?  And is he in counseling at all?  How old is he?

I'm asking because despite everyone's best intentions, the only person who can change your son's behavior is himself.  He has to want it and he has to want to fight for his family.

Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry you're going through this and I've walked the same path.  My BPD daughter is coming up on 27.

You talked a lot about your daughter and what she's done to get treatment (or avoid treatment).  But what have you done for yourself?  I ask because raising a BPD kid leads to mental health issues for everyone in the household (insomnia, depression, stress, etc).

You can't fix your kid- it's 100% impossible.  But if you invest in yourself as you distance from her problems, a lot of good can come from it long term.