My adult daughter (30 y.o.) has said she was mistreated by me as a child. I was by no means perfect, but she was never physically abused, and as a parent I made a point to never call my children names, and tried to be positive, affirming and encouragng. Love was expressed verbally every day and often. I'm sure I sometimes spoke from frustration, impatience, exasperation, erc.  I know I made mistakes and sometimes lost my temper.
Today she used an example of how I mistreated her: When she was four she was very petite. We called her our little peanut. We moved to a different city, and a year later, a family friend came to visit. Privately, she expressed concern because in one year, Jessica had gained a lot of weigh5 and she asked if I had taken her to a doctor to have her thyroid checked. I had not particularly realized quite how much she had gained - she was not overly bese, but she was defintely no longer petite. I didn't know anything about how the thyroid could affect weight, so I took her to a doctor to see if there were any issues.
Tonight, she told me that I had mistreated her by taking her to a doctor because she had gotten too fat for ⁵me and I was unhappy about it. She refused to listen as I tried to explain the actual reason. I know our BPD kids often have skewed memories from their childhood.
My question is, do I need to ask forgiveness for something I did not do? I absolutely did not care if my daughter was on the heavy side or not! It absolutely was not important to me except in so far as her health was impacted by it, or if it was an indication of a health issue that as a parent I should know about. If her perception is what is wrong, not something she claims I did that I know I didn't do, am I supposed to just suck it up, beat my breast and claim "Mea Culpa"? I can't honestly believe taking her to a doctor, even if it was because of a concern related to her weight.
I'm really struggling and annoyed about this. My conscience is clear that I never made fun of her, or called her names, or said she was fat. I seems ludicrous that I should apologize for her false memory.

Hi Leofrog
Welcome to the family and congratulations on living the BPD journey for so long. You don't say much about the most dominant aspects of BPD that affect both you and your daughter. As you probably know the diagnosis is given when someone has a certain number of the listed criteria - so individuals can have quite different sets of symptoms and signs.

On top of that there is the spectrum of low functioning to high functioning. If I had a boundary of my DD having to find a job I know that would be saying go and live on the street - which I am not prepared to do. My DD is low functioning.

So everyone's situation is different.

Just a couple of things I notice from your post - one is a calm tone. I'm wondering if I am reading that right or it's quite the opposite. The other is that you must be an observant person - you can tell things by a tone of voice etc.

I think being observant is very helpful. You can notice patterns which can in turn help you target what you think could be helpful.

Thanks for posting.

This reminded me of something weird about my bpd exgf. This will sound so weird that there is probably something wrong in my head . I have never been able to see her face in my dreams, NEVER. It is like she is blocked from my mind. I usually see really vivid dreams but with her nothing or just her without a face.

I am currently 3.5 years out from a nightmarish BPD breakup, and I have actually been dating a fair amount in the space since then.  I wrote a lot of threads about that breakup, and she and I have remained no contact for several years ever since the breakup.  I have nothing bad to say about her now, I wouldn’t want to run into her again but thinking about her now does not cause an emotional reaction, whereas at the time of the breakup it was 10 / 10 pain.

I’ve had several good, heslthy non-BPD connections with women that had 90%+ of the same level of passion as my BPD ex without all of the problems.

More recently I began dating a woman, we went on two dates and were talking every day, she seemed like the perfect match,  said she wanted a committed relationship, monogamy, etc.  She would constantly send me messages, ask how I was doing, said she wanted to build something with me.  At least 20+ messages per day.  She communicated she had been hurt a lot in the past and had a hard time trusting and needed to go slow.   All fair points so I took things slow, no hooking up, just get to know each other first.   

Then the alarm bells started going off again (unexplained bouts of anxiety, I thought it was just new connection butterflies but I don’t tend to get anxious, and also something telling me “run!” even though I had no apparent reason to.)

For our second date, we went to a bar / restaurant to dance a bit and instead of being excited I had this inexplicable urge to cancel.  Within maybe 20 minutes she excused herself to go to the bathroom and I see her flirting and exchanging numbers with a guy back by the bathroom so I just blocked-erased her and left immediately.

I walked down the street and I see a friend of mine who owns a nearby restaurant and he asks me how I am doing.  I relate to him how the date went (poorly) and tell him a bit more, it turns out he and his wife actually know the woman.  He won’t go into specific details but he says “let’s just say she’s not a very nice person” and he said she seemed to have a new “serious boyfriend” every few days, not that there is anything wrong with dating multiple people at once but it was definitely 1000% different from what she had conveyed to me about herself.

All in I didn’t know her long enough to say for sure, but si definitely got BPD vibes from her and also the real tell was how many of my own alarm bells went off for her that had remained silent for years with other women since my last BPD relationship.  I’m glad I discovered so soon before she and I had gotten physical, even in the short amount of time it still felt like a gut punch that one managed to get past my defenses.

Nowhere close to the 10/10 pain that came from a longer term relationship ending but still it hit surprisingly hard, because of how the BPD dynamic hacked into my own wounding.

I think I have had the same or at least a very familiar feeling.

When I started dating my ex, she lived a few towns over. I used to take a bus to her town and then make my way to her place by foot.

The memory of the walk and her place is haunting to me. Not in a necessarily creepy eerie way, but it floats in my memory like a sickly sweet, nostalgia-laden thing. Think of seeing a monochrome or sepia toned photograph of the perfect American suburb. It reads idyllic at the surface and sort of liminal when you dwell on it. Even thinking about it now I feel a strange pull "there".

Reflecting on it now and reading other responses I think it's because that place in my mind was and is the symbol of the "realness" of the love. Our relationship already had its rocky moments there but the stuff didn't truly hit the fan until she moved in with me. There she seemed genuinely vulnerable and down-trodden those first few months. It gets creepier now that I see it as a kind of a limerence-ridden love nest that it was, woah.

Yes that's so true! I don't know which version I'm going to get throughout the day. He's just came home from a days golf and he's talking to me but definitely not like the remorseful husband he was 2 days ago. He's just gone to have a bath so who knows which version will come out of that bathroom in an hour.

Thankfully we both had our children with other partners so we haven't got that to deal with. We've only been married 2 years but this side definitely showed up after the honeymoon

I recall one incident in my final months of my marriage.  I was noticing a pattern, rather, a lack of a pattern.  I would leave in the morning with a normal spouse and return at night to a raging stranger.  I also could leave a raging spouse in the morning and return to a normal spouse.

There was one evening I returned to a normal spouse but as she was telling me about her day, it reminded her about something and all of a sudden her face reddened and contorted into her other persona.  I think I witnessed her transforming into a dissociated state.

No, it didn't start out that way, but as is often reported here, it worsened once we had a child, going from a twosome to a threesome.  I had imagined that if we had a child together, she would be happier watching our child discover the joys of life. I was so clueless then, it didn't fix what was the deeper issue, but it did make the custody and parenting issues vastly more complicated in the coming years.

The rest of my message didn't post for some reason.
What I went on to say is that it's so hard for a non BPD person to understand how someone can suddenly be so cold.

When he said 'I can't live without you' he probably did mean it. Unlike narcissistic PD, BPDs do feel love in their way. Unfortunately the feeling of being so close to someone is also a threat to them because of the fear of losing it, so they will often do the abandoning first.

Try to look after yourself and get the support you need. I know it's hard when every fibre in your being probably wants to hear from him but all it does is prolong the pain.

From what I understand, it is possible for them to come back, but less likely than in a non BPD person because they have difficulty with object permanence (the ability to hold someone in mind even when not around them). It's also a protective strategy - the fear of being abandoned is so strong that they will do the rejecting to avoid the risk of being rejected.

It's so bloody painful isn't it

Yes, it is hard to explain to someone that isn't in it! He is a delight when he's around others and yes, can switch to nice mode. Although if he's in hostile mode he will often just decide not to go out even if it's something we are both supposed to be doing, which leaves me in the lurch. There have been many times we've had something planned socially with others, something has pissed him off and he refuses to go.

That's a really helpful way to look at it actually - that it can be totally different from one day to the next. I will try and keep that in mind so I don't expect the same and feel disappointed.