One can also look at this both ways. A behavior that is predictable and consistent is also a behavior that is reinforced- by the partner. Each is in a relationship pattern. For any behavior dynamic to change- one or both has to change their behavior.

The person who has their behavior reinforced is not likely to change. This is because the behavior is working for them, and being reinforced perpetuates it.

It's the person who is experiencing the consequences of the pattern that has more of the incentive to change, but it's also a self reinforcing pattern- otherwise they'd have changed it. It's working for them in some ways, even if it's at an emotional cost to them. Without change, the partner's response to the pwBPD's behavior is predictable too.

One factor that works against the partner changing is the familiarity of the pattern and knowing the outcome of appeasing or not. You know that acommodating your wife's wishes helps keep the peace. To not do this may cause her to escalate. It's a challenging situation.

I've posted before how confusing it is when someone we see as logical and sound mind, even who has a moral compass, says and does - irrational and hurtful things, because to me, my father was the stable person in the relationship. And yet, as if he were somehow spell bound, he'd do and say things that were out of character for him.

I do believe it is a form of Stockholm syndrome, and also somehow, an extreme form of enmeshment. My own theory is that- my mother's BPD thinking and perception, and logical reality, could not co-exist. Even for me, being around her, listening to her perspective, it was hard to know what was real and what was not. She would talk to us, for validation- and press us to affirm her thinking. Sometimes she'd say things that were real and others so close to reality, that they were believable.

Borderlines are not completly psychotic, and so it is hard to discern if what they say is grounded in reality or not. I know someone with schiztophrenia and when she tells me that someone is shooting radio waves at her, I know it's not real, but when BPD mother says "your aunt insulted me"- maybe she did, maybe she didn't. It doesn't sound as far fetched, but it could be just as untrue.

My BPD mother would also put people up to carry out her wishes and the main one was my father. So she'd get some idea in her head and pressure him to carry it out. When BPD mother wants something, she persistently pressures and escalates, and that need has to be met. Dad would eventually give in, just to get her to stop.

I think my father eventually just capitulated to keep the peace and eventually, the two of them seemed to act as one person. Two separate wills can not co-exist in these circumstances. BPD mother's feelings, and wishes predominated.

But he wasn't a hostage. BPD mother was the one who was completely dependent on him and yet somehow she was the one with complete power in the relationship. This took both of them. He had choices, (albeit difficult ones)- but he also had the role of enabling partner in this situation and he was still responsible for what he said and did, however, if he didn't go along with her, her reaction was extreme.

It was a choice of consequences. We kids, his family members- we weren't going to react like she did- which included destructive and harmful behavior and under extreme pressure, Dad would just do what she asked.

As to your stepson's messages. In the era before internet or cell phones, whatever I said to my father was shared with my mother. If I called him on the house phone, she was listening in on the extention. When there was internet, every email I sent him or he sent me was also seen by her. Sometimes I didn't know who was "speaking"- him or her as they both sounded the same.

I'd be willing to bet that your stepson's wife sees every message on his phone and is either telling him to send them. When he says these things to his sisters, or father- I think she is pressuring him to say them. Does he believe what he says? I don't know. It's possible he's so stressed and confused he doesn't know either.

For those of us who are not disordered, it's unthinkable for someone to cut off a parent, child, sibling- for no real reason. In some cases of serious abuse, addiction, criminal behavior- it may be warranted, but this isn't the case with your H, and it wasn't with anyone in our family either, but it seems to be a frequent situation in BPD relationships. Why, I don't fully understand.

I know your H is hurting. I think this is one of the more hurtful outcomes of these relationships. It's understandable that he has these feelings, but what I would suggest is that he doesn't react back out of them. Because it can cause more relationship harm than good. The step son is already in a highly emotionally difficult situation, it will only confirm his unfounded beliefs.

From my own experiences, I would suggest your H "quietly retreat" - for his own emotional well being. Don't make any grand statement of "you are cut off" to his son. Just be quiet, don't keep trying to communicate with him for now, because if it were with my parents, any communication to him is filtered through his wife, and may be deleted, used as evidence, whatever.  If the son reaches out, ever, reply in a calm and non judgmental way but let the son come to you, if he decides to.

However, this is just my suggestion. I am not a therapist and so IMHO, your H needs counseling and professional advice on what to do. This is emotionally painful. He needs to take care of himself and process these emotions, and the feeling of loss. What I think is happening is that the son has lost himself in the relationship, and he's the only one who can choose to recover that, if he ever does. Giving the quiet space allows the son to feel that void, if he's going to.

Whatever happens- please don't cut off your son on legal papers in any way. As Pook said- it's for now, maybe not forever. Words hurt, feelings can change. The son will always be his son, whether or not the son can recognize it from the situation he's in. Your H can.

There is a light at the end of your dark tunnel, but don't think it is the express train bearing down on you.  Instead, see it as the sunshine on the other side, dim now but as you progress closer it will get brighter.  It will.  Now, to get there...

Over on our Book Club board we have reviewed many helpful books and the handbook by William Eddy will be especially helpful for you... Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder .  It's also available from Eddy website as an eBook.  Between this book, your therapist, your family law attorney and us here in peer support, you'll have many options when seeking guidance and strategies in the coming months.

Probably best for you to not order a copy yourself.  You don't want her to see it come in the mail or have a purchase record in a shared account.*  Perhaps one of your trusted friends can order it for you?  Note that your mutual friends (hers and yours) are not trusted friends right now.

* There will be things NOT to share with your spouse going forward.  Why?  When seeking to repair a damaged relationship, you would share to foster improved trust.  But once you've concluded the relationship is beyond repair, then some information is best not divulged or else you risk enabling her to sabotage you in some way.

Many of Eddy's warnings are aimed to help you avoid common mistakes and hidden traps as you maneuver through the unfeeling legal environment of family court.  Much of what you learn won't make much common sense to you, at least, not at first.  My lawyer never referred to Eddy's priceless book.  My lawyer trusted his experience and so appeared more as a "seat of the pants" guy.  Me?  I listened to both Eddy and my lawyer.

A pwBPD, like an alcoholic or drug addict or similar, likely won't "hit bottom" until there is no other option.  Problem is, no one can state in advance when that might be.  You might think, "This time it's her bottom", yet the chaos, blaming and rages continue.  You might think she's bottomed out many times and still she doesn't reverse course and truly seek help.  No one can predict how many false bottoms.

The only way to recognize a true bottom is when she seeks real help and diligently applies it in her life, perceptions and behavior over an extended period of time.  There are no quick fixes.  Granted, she would "fall off the wagon" but true recovery means she would get back up and keep working on herself.  It would be a long, long series of "two steps forward and one step back".

That's IF and WHEN she chooses recovery.  She may never fully recover, to be realistic, but in the spirit of "something is better than nothing", it would be an improvement for herself and those around her.

Hi again,

I'm sorry I missed this detail when I responded to you earlier.  I agree that there's always a risk of your niece re-writing history and accusing you of nefarious things.  My adult BPD stepdaughter tried pulling that stunt a few times.  Initially, I tended to give her the benefit of the doubt.  But as time passed, her claims became more outlandish, and she started to change her tune when challenged.  In parallel, as I discovered more details about past incidents from other people, I realized that she had wildly misrepresented events, always portraying herself as a victim, when more often than not, she was the abuser!

I have some additional advice for you, which is this:  please don't let your niece stay with you in your home again.  It sounds to me like your home is her back-up housing plan.  Let me guess:  she loses a job, gets evicted or breaks up with a romantic partner, and she expects you to take her in, right?  She can't stay with her own mom because she's toxic, right?  I've been in the same situation with my adult BPD stepdaughter.  She has rebounded to my home several times in her adult life, basically every time she quits and gives up--her job, her rooming situation, her one-week romance, her studies.  When she lives with me, she's essentially on vacation, in the sense that she's vacating her life.  Sure, she promises to work and be nice, that this time will be different, but she keeps her promises for only a few days.  She avoids responsibilities and dealing with real life.  By letting her stay in our home, we're essentially enabling continued dysfunction, and we can't get away from her very negative aura.  That is not good for me or my husband, or our marriage.  And enabling dysfunction is not good for her, not at all.  My opinion is that by "helping" her, we're actually hurting her, because she's able to avoid getting professional help and working on herself.

Your niece might guilt-trip into you helping her.  She might accuse you of being a horrible person until you relent.  She might make all sorts of promises to convince you to let her stay with you.  She'll try to push all your buttons--of fear, obligation and guilt.  PwBPD can be extremely manipulative that way, but they're good at it, because it has worked for them in the past.  But here's the thing:  your niece has gone "nuclear" already.  If she doesn't get what she wants, she threatens suicide.  If you take her seriously and call 911, she turns around and hates you for believing her!  Then she starts threatening you.  It seems to me that she's MAD:  threatening mutually assured destruction.  That's why you can't let her live with you anymore.  You can't fix her.  Only she can do that.  You are not the solution to her problems; she is.  I think she'll decide to get help only once she hits bottom.  If you prevent her from hitting bottom by allowing her a safety hammock in your house, you run the risk of ruining your life right alongside hers.

I know this might sound like tough love for your niece, but really it's tough love for you.  Please, help yourself by saving yourself first.  Let your niece live on her own or get evicted.  Mabye then she'll have a breakdown, hit bottom and decide to get professional help, because getting professional help will seem like her only remaining option.  Please don't let your couch be an option for her.  All that does is prolong her misery and include you in it.

I do not actually feel better right now. I am scared. This could get really really bad. I know what I need to do, but getting there safely is going to be a challenge.

My attitudes and patterns have changed the past few months as I started to figure things out. It is hard to say if she has noticed. One thing that was a change is that I started to allow myself to show anger when she interrupted me. She has been doing this for many years, and I have tried talking to her about it. But when I started to get angry about it the behavior changed. She interrupts me a whole lot less now. But it seems to be a subconscious response, and she has not said anything about it.

I know that my anger (or any anger) is tough for her to handle. It is unfortunate, but the few times I have gotten really angry at her are the times that there have been changes. But I do not want her to be different because of fear.

But for the most part I do try to play the game.I keep doing all the things I have always done to keep things calm. Sometimes I dislike that I am doing it, but my therapist reminded me that I am doing it to keep myself emotionally safe.

There are some books on this site about ways to do the split. I really need to get and read one of those to help me find a safe way to extract myself.

Thank you for your time and thoughts.

Hi Ted and welcome to the forums!  I'm so sorry you found us under these circumstances but you are in the right place.

Nobody here wants to scare you and many of us have been in the identical situation.  I've called the police on my BPD daughter a dozen times or more, and brought her to facilities several more times.  It never gets easier and early on, I took her wrath for betraying her.

What you'll learn in time though is that BPDs are highly manipulative and destructive.  I dialed 9-1-1 every time my daughter threatened suicide and guess what- she stopped threatening after a few times.  Why?  Because she didn't want to die, she wanted me to be in a panic over her and come rushing in to save the day (by doing whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, at any cost). 

And don't get me wrong, she might have felt suicidal in the moment.  But if you're going to hurt yourself, would you call someone first to tell them about it and go into detail blaming them?  Probably not.  You'd just hurt yourself.  The fact that she blamed you was just an outpouring of unstable emotion and you absolutely did the correct thing...you call 9-1-1 every single time.

Now, she might lose her job or be evicted.  But is that on you?  Really be honest with yourself here because you did nothing wrong and you were manipulated into making the call in the first place.  This is 100% on your niece and she will accept that or she won't...my guess is she won't because that's what BPDs do.  They blame everyone around them and seek to punish them when they feel betrayed.

Besides, the ploice showed up and she was still hysterical.  They didn't take her to the hospital just for the heck of it.  She needed to be seen and treated.

The title of your thread ends with "I need help."  We'll certainly do everything we can to help you.  But here's the thing, you're here because you want help.  Your niece refuses help or medication.  Hopefully you can see that those are two completely different things.  You can't help her or save her- she must be willing to help herself first.

You did right.  No one here will criticize you for calling for a wellness check.  Many members have reported being faced with hearing suicide threats.  The best response is to admit we aren't trained to distinguish how real suicide ideations might be.  Therefore it is best to call in those trained to handle such situations... 911, suicide hotlines, police or other emergency responders.

After a few instances of the above your niece ought to learn to stop making such threats since doing so causes real consequences.

Proactively, it would be smart of you to save and archive any communications you receive (texts, phone calls, etc) where she either states how good you are or apologizes for acting poorly.

I was in a similar situation- early 40's, my BPD ex suddenly turned nasty every now and then.  It was never a full explosion like she had in her early 20's, but she'd snap at me over nothing and then pretend like it never happened.  Each year in her 40's, it got worse and she was also tested for early menapause.  I haven't heard many others talk about that here but I've always thought there was a direct connection.  My ex would have been the unconventional type as well.

I did want to point out that mood stabilizers can certainly help BPDs since...well, they help stabilize moods.  BPDs are given a wide range of prescriptions to treat the symptoms of their condition (depression, mood swings, etc) and they also tend to not like how the medicine makes them feel.  None of us are doctors or psychiatrists here so we can't talk that in depth, I just wanted you to know that medicines absolutely can help if the right combination is found by her doctor.

One more thing- getting out does not mean ending the marriage.  In many cases, it can improve it considerably.  This is a hard boundary just like anything else, saying that you're not going to accept the abuse anymore.  It could be a good first step if you decide to take it.

I wish you luck and please keep us updated!

I'm so sorry to hear your latest update; I've been there as well and it's so heartbreaking.  My quick backstory, I was married to a BPD wife and had a BPD daughter, plus a 2nd daughter.  Teenage years were bad...every bad.  Then suddenly my wife left for another man and turned the kids against me.  This was about 4 years ago.

Going though that was so impossible, but I found myself standing on a self-made motto, "This is only for right now, it's not for forever."

My non-BPD daughter gave birth the same month my ex-wife left, and within 6 weeks I was cut off completely because she needed mom and I was being unreasonable.  Deep down I got it but man, it hurt so badly.  I got over my wife in time, I made up quickly with my BPD daughter because she was constantly playing the parents against each other, but my relationship with my other kid and newborn grandson vanished.

"This is only for right now, it's not for forever."  That's all I had and I clung to it as tightly as I could.

Eventually, my daughter figured out her mom was in fact cheating and lied to everyone about everything concerning our marriage.  Slowly, we rebuilt the relationship and there were a lot of bumps in the road because of mom and sister.  But we did get there and things are better than they've ever been.

For your husband, it's time to face a very hard truth- he may never have a relationship with his son.  It's not up to him though and he can't control anything about it- his son is getting bombarded in every direction.  I know because that was me.  I was always so stressed out and frustrated without even realizing it, but every day was some major battle with what felt like life or death consequences.  

However, this is still hope, it's just not the kind of hope you can sit back and eagerly wait for.  Your husband has to let go completely and accept that he's powerless to fix what's wrong with his son.  He's in a terrible marriage (referring to the son) and so far over his head, and if he tells dad that then there's going to be absolute hell to pay at home.  So he puts his head down and gets to work, just like I did.

This stinks for everyone involved and I'm so sorry.  But I'll say my little motto one more time, "This is only for right now, it's not for forever."