I completely understand that a proper diagnosis and the right therapy plan can work wonders...but that's only if your girlfriend actually wants to make changes in her life.  If she's not ready, then not even the best psychiatrists and therapists in the world can make a bit of difference.  Therapy requires real work over time and actually being open and vulnerable...two things BPDs struggle with a lot.

The only person who can make a difference in your girlfriend's mental health challenges is her.  She has to want it and be so tired of her current life that she's willing to do whatever it takes to make real change.  I don't want to discourage you here but very few BPDs put in the work, and never until they're personally ready.

For the detective part, I'm not asking you to solve her problems.  Because here's the thing- the stuff she complains about is not her actual problems.  The real stuff comes from mental illness and it's emotional, so she says and does things to avoid dealing with the destructive thoughts she's having.

For example, if you hit your finger while hammering a nail, there's no telling what you might say in that moment.  Are you speaking pure truth right then?  Probably not, you're cussing at the hammer or the house, whatever.  And that release of energy, as dumb as it is, actually helps you feel a tiny bit better at that instant.  This is how BPDs feel when they think about being abandoned, betrayed, lied to, not valued, etc.  It's an emotional energy burst that feels good in the moment, yet they might regret it a few seconds later.

The detective part I mentioned wouldn't be catering to her every need, it would be recognizing when her mood suddenly shifts and realizing that a "mental hammer" might have just struck down.  So you focus on her feelings, her emotions, and you try to help her level out the disordered thinking.  Now, you have no idea what she's thinking or dealing with...but you can recognize things like angry, sad, or depressed.  So you soothe those emotions until the moment passes.

Why does this work?  She's sad and you help her out of her funk, which validates her feelings and let's her get back to her baseline thinking.  When she's stable and balanced, she thinks just like you or me.  When she's unstable, emotions take over and it's a rollercoaster of toxic thoughts.  Your job is to pay closer attention to the feelings and how your words, body language, and other things effect her in the moment.

This is true whether she goes through the proper therapy or not, she will always have tough moments and she will always be unstable in hard times.  For instance, my BPD daughter takes funerals really, really badly and we have to keep a closer eye on her when someone passes or their passing anniversary comes around.  My BPD ex wife would start to shut down whenever there was other people arguing...even if it was a couple at a restaurant we didn't even know.

For my kid, you can say, "Okay, I see the problem and understand the touchy subject."  But for my ex, it was seemingly out of nowhere and our day would eventually collapse into chaos.  We rarely know the "facts" so we pay close attention to the feelings and understand where they can lead unchecked.

Does that make sense?

I understand your point about "diagnosis"... what I mean is that in order to undertake the right therapeutic path, it is also important for a therapist to identify the range of dysfunction that a person has. Specifically, my girlfriend has a clear emotional dysregulation, but in a year of individual therapy she has never addressed this problem regardless of what name to give to the "diagnosis". I read with interest the part of the message about "your job as a partner is like being a detective"... this part leaves me a little confused because from what I read on the forum it is very important not to act based on what your partner needs to avoid putting yourself in the role of savior... am I wrong?

Yes..... All the time! 

Yeah, welcome to the family and thanks so much for sharing your story.  It's so incredibly hard and I'm really glad you found us.

You ended your post with, "I need to talk."  What specifically would you like to talk about?  Ways to keep the drama to a minimum?  Advice on therapy or a diagnosis?  Whether you should stay in this relationship?

Side note, you posted on the "Bettering a Relationship" section of the site, so the advice others give has to focus on reconciliation.  If that's not what you're looking for, report your own post to a moderator and ask them to move it to a different category (conflicted or detaching).

One thing I did pick up on was that you'd love for her to get a diagnosis, but unfortunately that's not a major help in itself.  What really makes meaningful change is her wanting to get help and take control of her emotions.  It's an uphill battle and it will be the hardest thing she's ever done in her life- most never do take it seriously.  But there is hope.

Additionally, BPD is a mental illness of extreme emotions.  When you're happy it's the best day ever!  When you're sad it's like the entire world is against you in every possible way.  There's rarely a middle-ground, even though that's exactly where our minds function the best.  Your job as a partner is to be like a detective studying the clues- if she's down, make her laugh and tell her how much you love her.  If she's angry, apologize for hurting her feelings and let her know how much she means to you. 

This sounds so basic, so silly almost, that you might think you're already doing that stuff just fine.  But I promise you're not, and it's not because you haven't tried.  This particular mental illness needs positive confirmations constantly because they can become unstable over the smallest of things.  It's like learning a new language in a way.  If you're determined to make things work though, it's a language you must speak fluently to understand her subtle mood changes and what it may lead to if you don't take charge and help her find balance.

I hope that helps and please, ask away with questions!

I'm so sorry you're going through this and all the escalations.  It's heartbreaking and even though it's a common story here, it still shocks me when others experience something like this. 

I used to get hit often early in my relationship and it stopped over time, but then my BPD ex started getting into fights with our BPD daughter.  I mean, literal fistfights rolling around on the floor.  I never knew what to make of it and somehow it felt sort of normal, that was just my life.  I look back years later though and think, "OMG, what was I doing?!?  How could I accept that!?!"

Where you're at right now, it's all still so fresh.  It stayed that way for me for at least six months, and the thoughts didn't fully go away for over a year.  Somehow, I still wanted "that relationship" where I was never prioritized and was often told off for the most minor things.  I just couldn't see how bad it truly was for a very long time.

For your main question, how can someone so loving also be so hateful and violent- that's the mental illness part and the instability of not thinking logically in trying circumstances.  For them, everything becomes emotional and they go to extremes in the blink of an eye...not because they want to, but because they're literally falling apart inside and trying to make sense of it themselves. 

It's truly sad and I wish there was a way that I could "fix" my ex or my daughter, but they'll struggle for life with those same issues.  Therapy can help, DBT can help, medicine can help, but at the crux of it all they must want to change.  Realizing the problem comes from within just happens to be their worst fear, so very few get the help they need and take steps to grow emotionally.

Moving forward is simple- you get through today, and tomorrow you figure out how to get through tomorrow.  That's all we can do because it's a process.  I don't think you have to forget the good or focus too much on the bad; your ex was all of those things and they were real.  Mental illness just got in the way and made things really complicated.

did you ever thing...why should ANY of this be SO hard!

Hi is all of this real,
Welcome to bpd family. I’ve been on and off this forum for five years. But of history I’m in a lesbian marriage with four young children. My wife was diagnosed bpd before we met but denies she still has symptoms. She incredibly stole me from a 15 year relationship where I had emigrated to the other side of the world. I wasn’t happy with him either but fact is I didn’t want to leave him but I was so drawn and addicted to her. We have been together 12 years and married for 8. It’s certainly been a rollercoaster. But with the support of members on here I have managed to single-handedly improve things to the point where my wife presents as sane most of the time and our children seem emotionally stable and happy. There are problems like her not allowing my Mum to see them which is heart-breaking. You can message me if you like. Honestly I can only think of three members on here who had a functional successful relationship with their pwbpd, most were either looking for advice or permanently split, but I haven’t met many of the newer members. Good luck and definitely read “stop caretaking the borderline or narcissist” it’s the best book I read.

yes this is the second time we broke up. im no where near as bad as I was the first time due to more understanding leading to a higher level of acceptance.

I think it is very hard to make sense of these simultaneous realities and I'm not sure that we really have to.  We need to be able to accept that two (or more) things can be true at once -- as dialectical behavior therapy teaches us -- but that's not the same as making sense of it.  If we can make sense of it (which I guess comes with understanding more about the disease), all the better, but acceptance (not being happy about it but just radically knowing it to be true) is the key.  Or so it seems to me. 

We have had to have to police out to her once for suicide threats she told them avc paramedics that she was going to give herself and her dog pills, they wanted to take her for inpatient care.but she refused to go and they was that. I've updated her doctors surgery that she is self harming so they document.it in her records and nobody can accuse us of not doing anything to help her. I'm trying to convince my brother who lives near her to reduce his visits to at most once a week to stop her being mentally cruel to him.