Thank you PeteWitsend. I do validate when I can, ie. if their dad has yelled at them or snapped at them in anger I agree daddy should not act like that and it’s not the right way to treat someone. Of course he would view this as betrayal, and some part of me feels guilty.

A day like today is difficult. He has been in a snit for days (leading up to Mother’s Day, no coincidence). So all our plans for today have a negative cast to them. I am good at never letting him ruin my good time, I just want to spend the day with my beautiful children. He can choose to join us or not. What do I say though when the kids ask me why he didn’t come? In the past I’ve said things like “I think daddy isn’t feeling well”. I feel like I’m stuck either covering for him, or throwing him under the bus. I don’t know the right way to answer their questions.

Yes, it is awful to do what he did. It might help to separate the behavior from the motive. I don't know if we can know what a disordered person is thinking but we can decide, the behavior is awful.

I compare this to water safety courses I took at a teen. The lessons included being a possible lifeguard if we wanted to. The first lesson was to never let a drowing person grab on to you. We learned ways to avoid that and to get out of their grip if it happened.

Because a drowning person is frantic for air, and they will push you under and climb on top of you for air. It won't help the person either as actually, both people might go under.

Does this mean they are intentionally wanting to drown someone? Are they murderers? Probably not.

However, the result is, whatever their reason or intention, in this situation, they could drown someone.

Whatever reason your ex had for this- it was awful behavior. You can call it that, whether he was intentionally being awful or not.

I think we connect abusive behavior with the motive of intentional abuse, but sometimes it might not be intentional-- but it's still abusive behavior.

I am sorry for the loss of your friend. I understand the feeling of wishing you could have done something. I think this is normal to feel this way. But I also think there was nothing you could have done, you had no idea this would happen.

Sometimes we have history, or something about our past that leads us into these relationships.  I think it's good to recognize it so it doesn't continue to trip us up.

In your own case, that's a horrible burden to have to carry.  I hope by understanding the nature of mental illness better, you can accept that none of this is your fault or your responsibility. 

I look back on some of the red flags I ignored about my XW, and one was the absolute mess of a situation she was in when we met (financially and legally).  But we worked in the same profession, and I remembered the struggles I had getting my career started in the same city.  And she was an immigrant with a tenuous residency situation in that she would need a work visa if she was hired, which obviously made getting a job even more complicated than the situation  I faced.  So I used that reasoning to excuse the things I didn't like about her behavior, and rationalized my way to thinking that if we were married and her immigration situation was resolved, she would calm down and things would be better.  WRONG!

Ebb, please don't apologise It's completely normally to feel conflicted and confused and contradictory when making a big decision, even without the added complexities of emotional abuse and mental illness thrown in.


From the way you describe your experiences, you seem to be quite alienated -  physically, mentally and emotionally - from accessing your own desires and hopes. There's a lot of FOG as ForeverDad has noticed, lots of guilt and 'shoulds' and ruminating over whether you are making a mistake, but not a lot about what you want.

One thing that sometimes helps me is to detach from judging my own internal state, and to try observing it instead. 

What if, regardless of what is 'right' or 'wrong', who you are in your heart and what you desire for your life, matters? What if this in itself is a good enough reason for you to decide whether to continue with this relationship?

A relationship can improve but you don't know if it will (promises are virtually meaningless, action and results are what count) and even then the possible improvement may not be enough to make the dysfunctional and unhealthy aspects become - over time - sufficiently functional and healthy.

The intensity of Borderline Personality Disorder, as with the other PDs, varies from person to person.  There are 9 or 10 traits that help identify a PD.  Some traits may be more severe than other traits.

Some behaviors that make BPD more resistant to therapy are the intense Denial, Blaming, Blame Shifting, etc.  Many are prone to bouts of anger, distrust and insecurity.  Too often feelings and moods become their perception of reality, rather than trust and facts.

I suspect her behavior worsened recently because you just got married, which she perceived as you being more obligated to her and the relationship.  Maybe she relaxed her vigilance and senses you're now less likely to respond with an annullment or divorce, a step you no doubt want to avoid.

She says she's willing to start therapy.  Is this to please you or does she truly want to improve herself?  Will she start meaningful therapy?  Will she continue sessions for the long term and not just until she doesn't like it?  Will she diligently apply what she learns in her life, thinking and perceptions?

It is best not to think about having children until you're confident she is well along on the path to recovery.  Having children doesn't fix serious mental health issues, rather, it makes everything vastly more complicated.  Best to wait and determine how much she does improve, not how much she says she has improved.

*cw: suicide

Sorry, the above should say that *i* had lost a close friend / close person to suicide - i walked out of her house and minutes later she killed herself. And the delusional idea i could somehow save uBPDx from his mental illness was very linked to my regret over this.

Re control and intentionality, one thing that has reframed my perspective over time is the experience of uBPDx telling lies re his cheating. Not misunderstandings, emotional outbursts, etc, just straight up factual lies sustained in moments of emotion but also calm and quiet, lies told strategically to multiple people and to secure a particular result.

At the time, i took the above outburst as a pure expression of distress. Now I am not so sure. Invoking self harm to demand or elicit a reaction from a partner is a pretty terrible thing, and the fact in the weeks after I was snappy, stressed or just wanted to hide and fall asleep when i saw uBPDx, and that this was characterised as me being 'horrible', is also awful.

The fact a close friend had previously lost a close person in very proximate circumstances to suicide, that i told uBPDx this affected me a lot, and yet he had no qualms continuing to bombard me with self harming rhetoric to secure a desired response or experience his own emotional release, is also pretty selfish.

My wife and I have been together for 3 years and legally married for 3 months. Looking back, there were emotionally unstable patterns throughout the relationship, but I interpreted them as sensitivity, insecurity, or unresolved trauma rather than something more serious.

Over the last month and a half, things became extremely volatile. There were threats of divorce, emotional abuse, fear of abandonment, constant emotional swings, and a level of chaos that left me emotionally exhausted and confused.

Recently, she acknowledged she may have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and is now asking for another chance. She’s apologetic, wants therapy seriously, and says she finally understands the impact of her behavior.

I care about her deeply, but I’m struggling to know whether this can realistically improve long term or whether I’m stepping back into a damaging cycle.

For those with partners who actively committed to therapy/DBT, did things improve in a stable and meaningful way over time? What changed, and what didn’t?

Hi Karmakat23
Thank you for posting. I am going through a very rough patch myself at the moment and your post reminded me that there are others who are in a similar situation – exhausted from years of crises and supporting, ‘being there’ when no one else was – and then being the one who is blamed and lied about while all this support is taken for granted.

Perhaps you are not gong 10 steps back. Perhaps it’s a fork in the road. Someone with BPD has a fragile sense of self – but when you are the person who supports them, you tend to lose your own self in their needs and crises. Along the journey we are given many options, and I know that I have tended to always choose to support my BPD child, and especially when the next generation child comes on the scene.

You are not in a situation of options from what I read. Your DD has cut off contact, has denied you access to your grandchild. Now your mother says you ‘have to accept’ her decision in relation to your DD.

We feel so devastated and devalued when all this happens. It is hard to carry the pain of it all. But it is also an opportunity. I may be wrong but I feel my DD has, in the past, been somewhat empowered by my pain – a pain she has caused. When I realised this I taught myself to stop myself from falling into depression etc but to see it as an opportunity to nurture and find myself that had been submerged in responding to my DD’s needs.

I am not expressing myself very well. I think what I am trying to say is that you have given now for decades – you have been selfless and loving, and without any gratitude or recognition.

I feel like I will have to grieve my mother and move on because the wreckage is just to much.

I think yes, listen to  your feelings and your insight. You have the right to grieve, but you also have the right to acknowledge to yourself all that you have done. Sometimes it is a good idea to write all these things down and read them to yourself when you are feeling low. It is a way of remembering that you have done all that is possible to do and you have loved your child in every way possible.

If you can spend a short time each day just appreciating yourself and the gift of your life I think it is helpful.

Thanks again for posting.

In our case, regarding medical decisions, the tiebreaker is the doctor. 

So if the doctor recommends a course of treatment and one parent disagrees, the doctor's recommendation is the tiebreaker. 

You could do this for mental health decisions, dental treatments, etc. 

It becomes harder to do with things where you don't have a qualified professional in the equation.  I've heard some decrees specify mediation as a tiebreaker for other things.  That could be as inexpensive as a $1,000 or so to book a few hours with a mediator, or be as expensive as a full-blown lawsuit if both parties get attorneys. 

In other matters, like school for examples, the default around where I live is the custodial parent's residence would establish it.  Even if custody is 50/50, one parent is still designated as the custodial.