In my family, and my BPD mother's FOO- it was like "The Emperor Has No Clothes" story when it came to BPD mother's behavior. We were not allowed to ask about it or talk to anyone about it.

If someone didn't go along with this, they were the problem. As young kids, we didn't know any different. I guess it was when I began spending time away from home- going to friends' houses, school, eventually I noticed- my mother was different from my friends' mothers. My BPD mother would have dissociated rages at night, and the next morning, my parents would act as if nothing happened. We learned to not ask about it.

But we saw what we saw and eventually if there were any issues between me and my mother, - she would say that I was the one with the problem.

I credit my father for the stability in the family and the good his support did for us, and yet, I think he had to know.  Same with my mother's FOO who at one point also believed I was the "one with the problem". They were all intelligent people, so how was it that they couldn't have known something wasn't OK at the time? Many years later, they figured it out but not then.

It's so different depending on who we're talking about.  I have BPD in-laws that have been trouble in the past, but they're not an essential part of my life so it doesn't matter.  They'd get mad and we wouldn't talk for awhile.  Then things would be okay.  And that was 100% fine; they didn't change the outcome of my life either way.

For my BPD ex, we're on good terms now but we only talk once in a blue moon over the kids or something like that.  So it's easy to have that relationship as well.  Strangely though, there's a part of me that really doesn't like who she is as a person anymore and I wouldn't want to be close again anyway.  So in my case, distance has not made the heart grow fonder...it's let me see the past abusive stuff with crystal clarity.

With a BPD kid, it's entirely different because you want to reconcile no matter what.  You don't want to be a stranger or the favorite person, so it's a balancing act of staying sort of close and distant at the same time.  I still haven't fully figured it out and probably never will.  The analogies ring truest with this relationship though because I'd love for it to be more normal like with my other kid.

In my experience, BPDxw made new "friends" easily, which I initially thought was unusual, given what I knew about her own poor self-image, and insecurity about her childhood and family situation.  I put "friends" in quotes, because really she made new acquaintances easily. But I surmised that because she had such a lousy self image, she needed constant contact so she could compare herself to others.  The alternative was sitting with her own thoughts, which was apparently torture for her. 

She liked to meet people with worse situations in life than her, because in her mind, feeling superior to someone else felt better than being alone with her thoughts.  When someone was more successful than her, more accomplished, had more money, etc., she would pin it on me, and complain I needed to make more $$$, or a boat, or a bigger house, etc.  I noticed over time, the "friends" she got closest to were the ones who had problems. 

ANYWAYS, I asked BPDxw once, after we had a lousy experience with a play date (because the parents were trash) "We've met a lot of nice moms and nice families in these mom groups.  How come you don't invite THE NICE ONES over?"

She said something like "I don't like interacting with the moms who are perfect because it makes me feel bad about myself."

 

I agree with this. The problem in my family has never been that someone has been identified as a problem-person, it's that problem-people were never identified as problematic. Years of growing up in this normalized adaptations that translated into dysfunctional roles and symptoms. Now, as I've stepped out and built a life independent of the family system, I've been able to get the distance I needed (and exposure to healthy family systems) to recognize the dysfunction. It took a long time to sort through all the complicated dynamics, acknowledge the pain they caused me, forgive those responsible and acknowledge them as victims of the same system, and establish and maintain the boundaries that allow me to maintain this perspective. That did require calling out someone as a "problem" person - and to identify behaviors from others, including myself, that contributed to enabling it. Now the difficulty is being the only one who has stepped far enough outside to see it for what it is. It can be lonely, but that's where acceptance, forgiveness, and boundaries come into play - at least for me. I base my relationships on consistent behaviors now and try to let go of the past. Only one person in the family, the one who is problematic, is not able to consistently engage with me in a healthy way. That's where my boundaries are focused.

I think the line about "familiarity breeding contempt" could be a litmus test for if you're in a good relationship or not.

In an ideal relationship, or at least a healthy one, familiarity should breed affection.  Like I sometimes saw among my grandparents that sort of vibe, "aw, he's a big lug, but he's MY big lug" said with real warmth, not sarcasm.  It could sometimes go both ways of course if they were annoyed at the other person, but most of the time they got along fine (neither sets of my grandparents divorced; they all stayed married til death). 

Like the little habits we all have that your significant other sees, but you might not want the whole world to see should be endearing if you're with the right person.  You love the other person, despite their flaws; you don't use their flaws against them. 

If not... then get out, or be prepared to suffer for the rest of your life just for the crime of being yourself at home!

genuinely not generally

Focusing too much on the disordered person without having healthy boundaries can be a way of refusing to take a look at oneself. Dysfunctional highly narcissistic families like to have someone to blame, to scapegoat so the members do not have to be accountable for their own disordered behaviors. In my large extended family, there are at least 5 generations of scapegoats. When my parents were alive, I listened to hundreds of hours of their scapegoating certain siblings from both sides of the family. The scapegoats were actually nice people and treated me well, the scapegoat of my generation. When we hear too much about a problem person, there are usually enablers who would rather complain about somebody else than take a hard look at themselves. The person being focused on can generally be a seriously disordered person and/or a person unfairly scapegoated.

I had to remove about ten words from your first two paragraphs to make your story my story.  Exactly the same.  Exactly. 

I felt invisible for years and the more depressed my ex got, the more she pulled back.  I should have known it was over years before it actually ended, but I'm not built that way.  I stand by my comittments...until death do us part.  I actually thought that meant something in my marriage.  It didn't.

I knew it was over maybe 4-6 months after she left me for another man.  I know, that sounds pathetic.  But I was still clinging to that version of my ex that I married 24 years earlier.  I saw all the good stuff and let go of all the bad, because that's how you love someone in marriage.  And I just couldn't see it, I couldn't see how I'd been abandoned years before she actually left.

Around the six month mark though, things became crystal clear.  The abuse, the maniplation, the constant needs while never providing for my needs.  I had been the lowest prioritiy in her life for over a decade and that's no way to live.  Yet, I couldn't put 2 and 2 together, I never actually got to the answer of 4.  I just kept thinking that this was a phase, she'll grow out of it and things will get better.

For my BPD daughter (who's now 27), she sought treatment after a similar breakup.  She couldn't handle the rejection or the betrayal, even though she's the one that ultimately caused both by cheating.  It may have been the first time she ever realized, "Hey, I'm not a very good person to the people I'm close to."

It was the first time my kid actually wanted to change and she did quite a bit over the next year.  It helped her get her life in order quite a bit.  That was about 3 years ago.

Today, my kid is still BPD and still struggles, but she does have a better understanding of herself at least and her destructive tendencies.  There are times I think she's 'almost' past it and there's times I think that nothing has changed at all.  She's definitely better overall though and there is long-term hope.

I also think part of BPD is maturity and people can grow out of their most destructive traits.  But again, it takes that realization in the first place to begin that healing journey.

Anyway, I'm glad your kid got dumped.  Maybe the short-term heartbreak will lead to some long-term adjustments on how they treat others.

That's insightful of you.  I agree 100%.  The pwBPD in my life often asks for help and validation.  But the help she want's isn't help in solving the root cause of a problem; the help she wants is money, allowing her to AVOID solving the problem.

She doesn't really want validation, either.  She requests validation of her convoluted victim narrative:  that she's traumatized by life, that it's too hard for her, that all her problems are caused by other people.  That she can't work, she can't study, she can't get anything she wants.  I might ask her, Well, what do you really want?  She'll reply that she wants more plastic surgery and to move abroad, for example to Paris, because she can't stand where she's living right now.  I might say, Well, I can certainly see the appeal of moving abroad, and it's certainly possible.  In fact, I lived in two different foreign countries when I was around your age.  It's doable if you work for it.  Now, what sort of steps do you think you might take to work on making your dream come true?  (She doesn't offer any ideas.)  May I suggest that you sign up for a language class and try to work here at company with offices in Paris--later on you could apply for a secondment, how does that sound?

Unsurprisingly, she doesn't like any of my suggestions, because it's the wrong type of validation and help.  Why?  Because my proposed real-life solutions don't involve me forking over cash, but rather involve her working on herself and towards her supposed goals.  It becomes increasingly clear that her goals are mostly based on fantasy.  The moment she starts thinking about practical realities (learning a foreign language, working a job), she feels overwhelmed and wants to give up.  That's when she'll double down on her victim narrative:  My family is the reason I can't do anything I want, my life is miserable, it's hopeless, it's your fault, you're horrible, you OWE me, I never want to see you again but send me money because I have to get out of here ASAP.

Besides, when trying to validate someone's feelings, there's an underlying assumption that the validator has some empathy and understanding.  Yet the pwBPD in my life doesn't want to admit that other people might "get" her and understand her issues.  No, she wants to be the gold medalist of the grievance Olympics, unique in her traumas, untouchable.  In her mind, it's impossible for me to empathize with what she's going through.  Basically, my pwBPD's suffering has become a core part of her identity, and if I claim that I "get" her, it probably feels like trespassing or stealing the one thing that belongs to her.

Underneath it all, I think she knows she's being unrealistic and unreasonable.  But her negative emotions take over and interfere with her life, hampering her ability to maintain stable adult relationships and tackle the mundane tasks of daily living, while  working gradually towards future goals.  She's convinced she doesn't have what she wants, and yet she's also utterly confused about what she really wants, while she doesn't have the patience to work towards what she wants, either.