So....my untreated BPD male partner and I had a daughter 5 months ago. I have 2 other daughters age 6 & 9 from a previous marriage. I'm not married to my current partner. We've been living together for 2 years. He has really struggled since the baby came and even during the pregnancy. He has extremely high anxiety about the baby and believes my other children are going to hurt her. He isolates himself and the baby to the bedroom and takes the baby on outings with him and excludes me and my children. He continues to split the children and hates my other 2 children. This is the BIGGEST problem in our relationship - his relationship with my other kids. He has been verbally abusive to them at times, responds very inappropriately to their behavior  and speaks to them like they're adults. Mostly he completely avoids them and they avoid him. I tried getting him to move out after the baby was born BUT he's on the lease and refuses to leave. Last weekend he got angry and extremely anxious because I took the baby from the bedroom and had her out in the living room with my kids and I. I sent him several videos and said see everything is fine- she's happy and safe. He stayed gone all day. I decided I had had enough as this has been going on for several weeks and he has been extremely avoidant towards me with minimal communication. I moved my bed into the baby's room while he was gone. When he came back he said calmly "You moved the bed yourself?" I said yep. And that was it. We really haven't communicated since then. He is sleeping on the floor in the bedroom.  I hear him talking to himself and he has been saying everything is bad because of my kids, that our daughter isn't safe around them (he actually truly believes this- it's one of his delusions), that all I do is fight with him, he's going to find another girl who actually cares. OH and a few weeks ago we got into a big fight he told my youngest daughter to "Get the f*** out of his face"- I called his mother who is also BPD/Narcissist -not sure which- and told her to do something about his behavior or I'm calling the cops. He then called her and was defending himself and trying to justify his behavior and explain HIS side of things. He's been talking to her ever since and at one point while he was on the phone with her I yelled "Go stay with that bitch that abandoned you" - she heard me and started texting me saying how dare you, ect....I argued with her a couple times and calmly stated the facts- I said he was with his grandparents because you couldn't take care of him and then at one point he was in a foster home because he was out on the streets. She replied "You don't know what you're talking about" and I said "those are the facts whether you like it or not" and said so you're calling your son a liar then? I then blocked her. He has continued to talk to her and I believe she is manipulating him against me because they have never had a good relationship. SHE is the reason why he's the way that he is and I wanted her to deal with him- even though I know she's not capable of doing so. This fight is was triggered the protective avoidant behavior from him for the last few weeks. He cannot handle my emotions or reactions to things - it's just too much. I don't know what he will do next- I realize I have no control over his choices. I can only make my choices which was to move into the baby's room and at least get some distance. I think this made him very angry because now he doesn't have a bed to hang out on all day in that room with his TV so he has to sleep and sit on the floor. He is very attached to the TV it's constantly on and he stays in that room almost all the time. I don't like our baby being confined to that room ALL the time - she needs social interaction, play and stimulation other than the TV. I would appreciate your thoughts or feedback because I'm going crazy here right along with him. There is NOTHING I can say to him at this point- his thoughts are delusional and challenging them does absolutely no good. Today I told him I love you and miss you. It's the truth- I HATE this distance and loneliness. I am not HAPPY at all. Calmer maybe but not happy. I'm afraid he will leave me and I don't think I can cope with that- not at this time.

I didn't know there was an actual term for this. This was common with BPD mother- the "poof all is good now" and we had to just go along with it. If anyone brought up what happened, she'd get angry, dissociate. I think some of the things she did actually did disappear from her memory as if they didn't happen. When she was very dissociated, I think this also had this effect.

I didn't pour myself into pets although I like them. My sense of safety space was school and friends there.

 I just recently saw the MJ movie. The scenes with his father (who was abusive- not BPD)  were difficult to watch. (no spoilers here- his story is known) but he did attach to his animals. Likely they felt safer and more consistent than people to him.

The typical BPD-ex-friend situation I've read here is that the pwBPD will test those boundaries in unhealthy ways.  Either they'll be constantly trying to get back together, or they'll more or less ignore the other person (until they need or want something from them), but they're not going to be friends according to the dictionary definition of the word.  They're not going to be there for you. 

I think you're looking at this more as a game, with some sort of artificial rules of behavior, when really, you need to consider what you want and go do that.  Are you hoping to get back together with him?  It seems like he communicated a pretty clear "no" to you about that.

Do you really want to talk to him regularly, even if he's not there as a romantic partner for you?  Then try that, and decide whether it's working or not.

Remember: boundaries are for you; you need to decide what you want, and what you will and won't tolerate.  It's up to you to decide whether you're getting that from him, or not, and if not, when to end it. 

I think when they escalate the emotional charge of the situation (up to, or including violence), and they get their way, this shows them that screaming/fighting/threatening violence "works," and then gets used more frequently after that. 

I also think of a behavioral theory I read that anger and rage were addictive, in that the person using them gets almost "high" on them; they feel a sense of power and control they normally don't, and so they go to them more often after that.

In my own situation, the screaming and anger was always there as a tool, as well as door slamming or throwing things, although she never crossed the line to violence.  I don't know what was going on in her head. 

I do know that later in our relationship, we went through an abortive near-divorce where we both saw attorneys, but she begged me to reconsider and I did.  After that, threats of divorce became more common from her, as I think she felt secure I would never actually leave her, and "If you don't like it, divorce me" became her way of basically saying "shut up, I don't care, I'm not going to change, and I'm going to behave however I want."

But then I actually did divorce her after another time she told me to, so, I guess that didn't go the way she hoped...

Hi there,

In my experience, this is extremely typical of the BPD push-pull, rage-isolate-reconnect cycle.  Let me guess:  your sibling had a meltdown, where she put you down and/or blamed you, when you did nothing to deserve it.  Even if there were a kernel of truth to what your sibling accused you of, she wildly distorted the fact pattern and made you out to be a villian.  Then she cut contact, possibly to punish you, and also to give you no opportunity to defend yourself.

My guess is that your sibling knows what she did was wrong and feels ashamed about it.  But with the passage of time, she felt compelled to reach out to you again--maybe to ask you to do something for her, maybe to feel less alone, whatever.  A "normal" person would probably apologize and try to make things better.  But your sibling isn't normal; her sense of shame is unbearable.  Besides, she has to maintain her running narrative of feeling victimized, at all costs.  What does she do?  She pretends like nothing happened, in the hopes that you will forget . . . and that you won't mention how she acted poorly, let alone hurt you in the process.  You see, in her world, there's no room for accepting any blame or dealing with other people's feelings.  So she's just pretending right now.

Is she trying to butter you up for something?  Possibly.  But maybe she's just trying to be nice.  Maybe there's a temporary lull in the pressures of her life for the moment.  The pwBPD in my life would seem to be fine whenever she was "in between" obligations, such as on a summer vacation.  Without the burdens of working, school, schedules or much of anything, she was relaxed and not under pressure, and she could actually be nice for a week or two--provided she was allowed to sleep in as late as she wanted, she could do whatever she wanted, and her family provided for her 100%.  But all that could fall apart in an instant, the second she had any responsibilities, didn't get her way, needed money, or found out about good news from a family member which made her writhe with jealousy.  With the pressure of real life, unmet expectations and constant disappointment, she'd act out again.

You must protect yourself against a false domestic violence charge. The way it works in many jurisdictions is that the police are required to arrest one of the two partners when it appears that there is domestic violence. If the woman does not have a lethal weapon, then the man is usually arrested because he is considered to be a lethal weapon because of his physical strength. Do document any incident in which you are attacked by your wife whether just verbal or physical And find out how to best protect yourself from a false domestic violence charge.

Also you are not alone, in that many men who are abused by a partner can end up hitting a woman after years of being verbally and/or physically abused by her. Address these concerns so it does not happen to you.

Hello all, just to followup. My parents called me that night, on speakerphone together from the hospital parking lot, to share the pathology results. To put it briefly - it is cancer in several organs but awaiting more tests to see the full scope of it.

They even asked my advice on some diet things he needs to change, asking for recipes I use, etc. That was surprising to me.

We've continued this past week on the same line of minimal contact, and all contact revolves around medical things, appointment dates, etc. Which is fine for now. It's enough for me, emotionally, to deal with this part without approaching any other conversation topics.

In this thread you added a new dimension: BPD wife escalating, getting physical

Thus I believe your relationship is worsening.  I was married for 15 years before separating.  The discord was minimal at first, she had come from a home with child abuse.  In the early years I had felt I'd saved her but the final years saw her getting more and more distressed, agitated, critical and disrespectful.  She refused help and when I called the police she fully transformed into oppositional and obstructive.  I was unprepared, didn't even have a lawyer.

What do I consider the biggest factor that crashed the marriage?  If I had to choose, I'd say it was the disrespect and disparagement.  I realized there was no future without a trusting spouse.

I tried to quote just a portion of the above quote but everything there applied in my situation too.

Yours is a relatively short marriage, just a few years, no children.  You tried.  You really have tried but it is a case of irresistible force versus a brick wall of necessary boundaries.  It sounds like there has been no substantial improvement - rather, conflict has grown worse - despite her getting some level of therapy.

In my case, I had been married 15 years and had a preschooler when I saw no alternative but to separate, which morphed into a divorce.  I had fooled myself into thinking that if we had a child she would be happy, but it just made things so much worse and the custody issues made everything vastly more complicated.

Are you still trying to fix the marriage or have you concluded that, in a practical reality check, it is hopeless to keep trying?

One of the things often seen in Borderline Personalities is "haltlose", functionally the inability to place themselves on a timeline - it's the ultimate "living in the moment" mixed with "unable to distinguish past from present from future" - in Europe's ICD-10 they're recognised as much more co-mingled symptoms.

Ultimately this means you'll so frequently see the "I used to be bad BACK THEN, but NOW I am turning over a NEW LEAF and I'm totally fine NOW" - even if they don't realise it's been less than 24 hours since their last egregious action, - and less than 24 hours until their next one perhaps.

It vicariously gives you/me/us anxiety because, especially if you lived it as a child with a BPD mother, "nothing is ever genuine" when dealing with these people - Dr. Christine Lawson references this ties into children often pouring themselves into pets or "simple" peers, because of the chaotic frenzy of the constantly changing "now I'm good", "now I'm bad".