A lot of people will say, When they hit bottom then they will recover.  It's not as simple as that.  In our cases, with persistent disordered perceptions in their lives, no one knows how many bottoms it will take before real recovery and improvement occur... if ever.


Generally, letting family or friends administer supervised visits can be opening a bag of worms.  A better option is to engage professionals to handle such visits, if locally available.

As for repairing her car, it may be helpful if... it helps her start and stick to a better path in life.  Otherwise it could be ultimately enabling her to sit back and expect others to rescue her.

Hello and welcome to the family.  You are certainly not alone and so many of us have faced the exact same obstacles.

Let me ask you, what type of mother do you think she needs right now?

From what you've shared, it sounds like you'd answer that by saying a mom that would let her stay with you, a mom that will fix her problems, a mom that would put up with her abuse, etc.

But is that the mom she actually needs?

What if she were a drug addict, begging for money to buy more drugs?  Would the mom she needs be a person who would buy her drugs that could kill her, or a mom that would insist that she gets into rehab?  Because in all honesty, that's exactly the same as your situation.  The mom she needs is the one who will enforce healthy boundaries and hold her accountable for the mess she's created on her own.

Why?  Because she has to want to make internal changes to actually start getting better.  She has to take therapy and medication seriously.  She has to work through this stuff, even though it's her greatest fear in life.  Nothing changes until she's ready to make those active changes from within.

If a mom allows a person like that to sleep in their home while paying their bills and making everything the best it can be, then where's the need for that person to change?  If things are bad, she can say that it's not her fault- it's your fault and her ex husband's fault.  You guys did this to her....she's the poor blameless victim.  That's the crux of the disorder, blaming everyone else so you don't have to take personal accountability.

I would encourage you to be the mom she actually needs...which is not going to be the mom she wants.  This is not about wants though or what makes her feel better today, this is about baby steps towards lifelong changes that can turn all of this around and let her become a productive member of society. 

My 27 year old BPD daughter was told last month by her therapist that they probably need to end therapy soon because it's not really needed any longer, she thinks my kid is stable and fully in remission.  We couldn't imagine that three or four years ago, but she's put in the work and is coming out on the other side of this.  There's still problems at times and she still grossly overreacts every now and then, but she now has the coping skills to work through it without the scorched earth approach.

Your kid can get there too, but it's 100% on her to put in the work.  So be the mom that encourages that work and doesn't enable her to avoid it.

 I’ve went through multiple estrangements with my daughter lasting initially a few months.   After my son died 12 years ago there was a 5 year stretch she was absent from entire family.  When she “came back” she was upset because I wasn’t “close to her” like my nieces (who lived with me growing up).  I told her that our relationship would always be superficial unless we did therapy together, work through what caused her estrangement, and pain from it.  Til that happened we couldn’t be close.   For 5 years I made the offer multiple times and would cover the cost because I desired to be closer which she adamantly refused to do therapy with me.  
There was another blow up when I refused to go along/agree with a lie she was trying to spin concerning an affair she had that was causing her divorce.  This led to another estrangement, this one has been for 1.5 yrs.  She has berated me publicly and privately.  Even though she got a divorce, her ex supported her and really tried to help her despite pain she’d cause him.  He recently had his fill when she started publicly accusing him of things that are not true.  He evicted her from an apartment he had been letting her stay in.  He let me know what was going on, how her behavior was escalating, and what he was doing.  I did a legal commitment on her because she was posting news clips about suicide and some other concerning things after he evicted her.  I let her stay with me til bed became ready at the crisis unit.  Told her she couldn’t live with me.  I don’t trust her.  She has rages where she says the most hateful and hurtful things.   The only reason she reached out to me is because she’s burned bridges with all her immediate family and what friends she had have distanced themselves from her.  
She was discharged this past week and left without having housing arranged/lied and said she had a friend that was taking her in.  
I’m currently getting her car serviced and hopefully will be ready today. My nieces partner is putting her up in a hotel for the week til her car gets ready then she can live in her car.
She really hasn’t apologized for anything (and there’s a lot of pain she’s caused) but she’s willing to go to counseling now when it’s been complete refusal for over 10 years.   Her ex husband went against her wishes before he evicted her and brought kids over to my house a couple of times.  
I feel bad for her, and especially feeling the guilt trip about “your my mother and should help her only daughter, only living child who’s at the worst point in her life”.  
Doesn’t understand why I don’t want her living with me after all the help my mother has given me through the years.   I know the only reason she’s speaking to me is because of her current circumstances.  I want to help her but she still doesn’t acknowledge her responsibility or take any accountability for the pain and lies.   Says she does.   I’m on eggshells when she’s around and physically ill from the stress of it.  My nieces who have been there for me throughout all these years.  Since they lived with me also, they know how I was when they were children and as adults.  One of them asked her to please explain what kind of trauma did I cause her because she didn’t see anything.  Which she replied that it was because I worked all the time.  (I was a single parent raising 4 kids) They (my nieces) were there for me grieving the loss of my son and grieving the living death of my daughter.   My daughter would make posts about being “an orphan”.  
They are all in their mid to late 30s now.  My nieces don’t want their children around her because of her behavior.  
I struggle with wanting to help my daughter and let her live with me but I know her behavior and my home wouldn’t be a peaceful place.  I’d be limiting who would come to my home because others in family don’t want to be around her or have their kids around her.  
Her ex husband has a temporary restraining order against her that includes the children and full custody.   He’s also charged her with defamation and harassment lawsuit.  He asked me if I’d supervise visits with her and kids. Crazy how she’s called unsafe so much but I’m safe enough to supervise her visits.  
I know this can be seen as a “bottom” and I’m not helping her by giving her a “safe place” to rest and restore.    I feel terrible for not “being the mother she needs right now” and wonder if this really is a moment of change.   But also have the fear of a rage attack when I don’t respond just so….
Thanks for helping me to know I’m not alone.

It might help to look at these behaviors as a pattern and their reason for them. One concern of yours is your SO dysregulating/emotion dumping/being critical of you, and no matter how hard you try to meet their needs, not succeeding. You have realized that this relationship isn't "normal". That's a very difficult point to emotionally process. While you wish to make the situation more manageable by finding a way to quell your SO's reactions, it isn't possible to change someone's thinking or feeling. Another approach is to look at how you can manage yourself in this situation.

How manageable this situation is- that is also an individual decision as well as a function of the two involved. BPD is on a spectrum and it affects how someone thinks, behaves, and functions in a relationship. Some partners may choose to tolerate a level of dysfunction more than others. One isn't right or wrong for staying or leaving- as each person's situation and tolerance is different. However, I do think you are correct- this isn't normal. A relationship with someone who has a mental illness isn't the same as one with someone who does not have one.

So why does your SO persist in bringing up her hurts, blaming you, demanding an answer or you do something and it's not correct or enough? Because this isn't the function of this behavior. The behavior serves to release uncomfortable emotions by projecting them- often on the closest person to them. BPD affects the closest relationships the most. Your SO may be able to hold it together with less familiar people. However, the people closest to them are the ones they project on to- due to the nature of that relationship. Why- I am not completely sure. I just know that for me, it was my father and then, us kids in that position for the most part.

So, the answer isn't going to be right, the action isn't going to be right, because it's the release of emotions that is needed. This may not make sense but BPD thinking isn't rational, it's emotional and run by disordered thinking.

If doing things to manage your SO isn't helping, then another option is to consider how to manage yourself in this situation, not your SO. Your SO is doing what they need to do to manage their feelings. Try to stop it, or respond to it- its going to happen anyway.

You need to carve out some time and space where you are away from it, for your own sanity. Listening to this all the time isn't realistic. How much your SO can manage on their own is a factor. My father who stayed (it was emotionally difficult for him but that was his choice to make) coped by - going to work, and after he retired- he would go to exercise, go out for breakfast (she slept in), but a lot of his time was spent being the emotional caretaker. Yes, he enabled her but she was very affected by her BPD and her own emotional coping skills were very poor.

After my father passed away, we kids also experienced being in this situation. It's difficult. We chose to not live too close to BPD mother and even on visits, needed to take some time to ourselves so we could manage our own selves- not attempt to manage her feelings or reactions. She was going to do what she was going to do. We knew it too. She'd act like she wanted us to visit but something about us being there- would just open the gates of venting. On the other hand, we didn't want to not visit her at all- due to her being an elderly mother, that didn't seem right to do- but we had to visit in ways we could manage. We also tried to do nice things for her and to be supportive but the emotional venting would happen anyway.

It also wasn't just with us. In her elder years, she had caregivers- and caregivers spend a lot of time with their clients, and they too would experience the emotional venting. However, they were trained to manage elderly clients and also could go home to their own places afterwards.

You have come to the realization that your relationship isn't normal. This is how your SO copes. You've tried all you know to do to change this pattern for your SO, change your SO's reactions but - its possible that if this is how your SO manages their emotions- this is who they are. One suggestion is to shift to how you can manage.

One is to have a boundary on your schedule. If you are at work during certain times, then you are unavailable then. Also, if you have an exercise class, or some other commitment. Then decide when and how much to listen to your SO vent- an hour in the evenings, yes, there will be insults. We kids would even describe our visits as "time for another verbal lashing". Sometimes they were hard to hear, but eventually, it got so predictable, we just knew we'd hear it. If you have a counselor for emotional support this helps.

However, even though we kids chose to have some contact, this is not the same as living with someone 24/7 and listening to this all the time. We chose not to do this. Admittedly, it's harder for you in this situation, but you still have the choice. Should you choose to stay- shifting your focus from your SO to some ways for you to cope may help.

My PWBPD starts out most mornings with a trauma dump on me.  It’s a very detailed list of things bothering them and a series of questions to answer about that list of things that they want answers for but all answers are the wrong ones.   

No matter what I might have going on (in the middle of work, pondering my own issues, doing something for someone else), I hear it.   If I stop listening, react the wrong way, or do anything negative, I know I’m in for it.   

What are the best ways to tell them “not now” without triggering their frustration even further?   

Hello, dear friend. You arrived here just a few years after I did - and I've been here a long, long time, too long probably.  That you're still together after all these years is a commendable effort on your part but with few rewards.

May I ask what has kept you both together over the years?  Sometimes having children together impels us to feel we must stay together "for the sake of the children".  Is that a factor in your life?  I guess what I'm asking is why you've not chosen a better outcome.

Reminds me of old Proverbs: "A quarrelsome wife is like a constantly leaking roof on a rainy day." and "Better to dwell in the wilderness than with a quarrelsome and irritable wife." - 21:9; 21:19; 25:24; 27:15

Millennia ago we didn't have today's mental health descriptions for such patterns of behavior.  These patterns have existed over the centuries, though with the recent breakdown of societal norms, these days it seems to be much more common than before.

We're here on the Bettering board, so my question is whether you have decided you can't go on suffering like this or are considering whether to continue limping along in an unequal relationship?  It's obvious the other will not improve their disparaging and disrespectful behavior patterns otherwise you would have seen it years ago.

I'm not sure how much more we have to say as new suggestions that we haven't said before.  Please let us know if you have come to Accept there is no more you can do (reference is to the many stages of Grieving a Loss) and need to choose another path to improve your life.

Let me tell you a story... In my youth I many times visited an old man who lived a mile from my home.  Though I quoted many citations from the Scriptures, he was sunk low into feeling there was no hope for him.  By the time I left, he would have come around to feeling much better.  Sadly, on my later visits he would have reverted to the same level of hopelessness, over and over.  (I never knew what he finally did with his remaining years since I thereafter moved to Brooklyn and continued a couple decades of religious volunteer work.)  That said, dear friend, I don't want this feeling of despair to continue to be your lot in life.

..and there lies the true problem because they don't know what they need from one minute to the next so how can we ever be able to anticipate to try and calm the waters?. We can't. Ever. We never know what particular script is about to be played until they're well into it. Like PeteWitsend, I also had the feeling at times that they were creating drama purely for the hell of it and knw what they were doing a lot of the time.

I also found speaking honestly usually just served to confirm their beliefs that they were always in the right and everything was my problem. Any slighty admission or honest confession to a BPD is taken as you admitting every crime under the sun and perfectly feeds their 'I am always the victim' thinking.

I realised after 4 years that nothing I could ever do was going to bring about change and it came down to the simple question 'Do I want this to be the rest of my life?'  My worsening nerves and physical health said 'No'.

I should say that my exBPD would never admit anything was wrong with her and would never have gone to any sort of counselling or sought any treatment.

Sounds like you're arriving at that point in the road where there's no more hope of change or normalcy, and you need to decide how you'll handle this going forward. 

Is your PWBPD diagnosed?  It sounds like you've been aware of the fact that they had a BD for a while, but just now coming to grips with the fact that behavioral disorders are very real and very unlikely to change.

For me, I sort of came upon it the opposite way, where I had tried MC with my then-wife twice, and had tried to accommodate her requests and demands, only to be met with more demands, which were often inconsistent with what she claimed was what initially upset her.  I was really perplexed, because all the advice I read about being a good partner, and resolving conflicts within a marriage, when followed just lead me in circles.  It seemed like she was hell bent on creating conflict for its own sake, and yet when I read about things, went to counseling with her, and eventually counseling for myself, the answers I would receive were unhelpfully along the lines of "No, people don't just act like that, you must not be really listening to her."

Learning about BPD - whether or not that's what she was, or some combination of BPD, NPD, and ASPD - helped me make sense of the situation for the first time.  I had already more or less accepted the situation was hopeless, and now I could understand why. 

I think for you, some radical acceptance could help you see the path forward, namely accepting that this is what your partner is like, and this is how they will always behave.  Knowing that, what do you plan to do about it?  Consider your options, and the paths forward with each. 

For me, taking some actions, even if the went nowhere in the short term, helped me deal with the hopelessness of the situation.  In my case, I decided to end it, but it was hard because we had a kid together, and owned a home that she could not afford to keep on her own.  Just planning and thinking of how to unwind all this and separate successfully provided a mental escape and relief for  me.  As did some of the steps I took: getting my own checking account for emergency funds, getting a storage unit to start moving personal belongings into, etc.   

I think you will be OK, because, you have held to a boundary of what you value.

While my perspective is from the child's- it's not only about the children. Your kids will grow up and have their own lives. They would want you to also have a partner you are happy with if you choose someone for that.

A partner who is emotionally stable would not put you in a situation that would compromise your kids or your relationship with them. You saw where this situation would do that, and so held that boundary.

What happened over your Disney plans was not a one time issue. This was after a series of issues between the two of you. The subsequent verbal abuse showed you another side of her disorder and the impact it can have on you and your kids.

I say you will be OK, because if you continued in this dynamic, I think it would have an emotional impact on you and your kids.

So she was silent for 2 weeks.  Then reached out to my family member asking if she wanted to hang out sometime.  Interesting. 
Then the next Friday she texted me that she saw me driving and got mad when I didn’t respond for an hour and said “so much for being cordial with me”.
Then the following Saturday she texted me that she wishes we would have worked out.
Then Monday texted me that she felt so alone and was struggling being a mom on her own. Tuesday texted me again checking to see if my family was okay after a storm.
Then went quiet for 6 days and the following Monday she messaged me that she saw a family member of mine somewhere running. 
Then Tuesday texted me that the gym’s AC was off and proceeeded to chat with me for the next 4 hours.

I want her back and am wondering if I should chase or not.