Hello all,
I (25M) broke up with my BPD, OCD, autistic ex (21F) back in June after 8 months together, and through those 8 months it was a huge rollercoaster. I had never felt closer to someone before in my life, and we ended up becoming very close and I had some of the best times in my life in that relationship. I had never been with someone who was so loving, caring, thoughtful, funny, and frankly attractive. Over time however, things began to creep up such as a lot of codependency from her side, and needing me to quash her feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, jealous, sadness, and over time I began to feel like I was in a relationship with someone who was mentally a child and I began to realize that I had become a therapist for her whenever she split, and had to ground her almost every time we were together for some reason or another. It would usually be over something silly, like not knowing how to use chopsticks in a restaurant and thinking the employees would make fun of her. I had attempted to set boundaries at certain points regarding being her therapist, and they'd be respected for a bit, but something would happen and I'd break them and then it was like they had never been there.

She was/still in therapy the whole time we were together however it seemed like there wasn't much progress being made there in terms of her self-soothing as it just seemed to get worse overtime. We had planned a big trip, and about a month before we were supposed to go, I had all but decided that we should break up but selfishly I wanted to go on this trip and decided to do it after the trip. However over the course of the trip, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and we mostly had a good time, save for some reassurance every now and again. When we returned home, I debated my decision and ultimately decided to let it ride. After a couple days she got upset with me for hanging a phone call up early, and all of a sudden everything clicked. For about a day or so I didn't reply to her texts and she texted me and told me how she knows how poor she's treated me, and that she knows she has to get better and she can't lose me but at that point I had kind of just become numb and I met up with her and broke things off and enforced no-contact. During no contact, she had a lot of car trouble which she needed my assistance with as she wasn't able to afford to get her car professionally fixed which I assisted with. Every few days she would text me late at night telling me how much she missed me, and one night at 3AM she texted me that she had had a really strange night and missed me and that text drove me crazy for a few days until I replied and told her I needed to block her number and that I was sorry.

2 months on, and I go back and forth on my decision. All I think about is how amazing she was to be around, and how she cared about my hobbies and interests, and got into them herself, and I loved her hobbies and interests and she got me into hers. I miss her so much it aches, and I've attempted to dip my toe into meeting other people but I just don't click with them the same way I do with her. I keep thinking about what she said about wanting to be better for me, and I keep rereading this letter she gave me the day we broke up about how much she loves me and cares for me and wants to be the best version of herself for us. And I feel like I didn't sit her down and tell her that we were at a boiling point until it was too late, and that maybe I should give it another shot.

I feel like her case of BPD is very mild compared to a lot of others that I've read, she never called me names, hit me, was unfaithful, made rash decisions, threatened to harm herself or anything of the like, and I'm just unsure if putting hardline boundaries and really sticking to them and being honest and open whenever I'm overwhelmed from my side, and her working hard on her need for self reassurance could in fact fix most things and make the relationship as good as it could be.

Thank you for the welcome.  I do understand that it may be counterproductive.  I have written many letters at this point.  I myself suffer from C-PTSD which i had before I met my pwbpd. I have never before come into contact with anyone with bpd as far as I know. This was a whole new experience for me.  Incredibly wonderful to start, quickly got tumultuous. Felt like I wanted to try to help him but things just kept getting more chaotic. My own trauma responses made gray rocking almost impossible. I would need to talk about it after and it almost never worked even though he said he would be able to. I made mistakes and I lied once to try to avoid a fight. That was stupid of me but is hard to believe the outcome would have been much different if I had been honest. I later found out that he had been talking to other women. Women he said he broke up with because he never really felt much for them.  I also found out that he told our coworkers that I had assaulted him. Which is horrible for many reasons and also untrue. I myself had been assaulted about a year prior to meeting him and had been vulnerable with him about this. So it blows my mind that he would say something like that about me. I feel the need to call him out but to also apologize for being so reactive when we would fight. A mutual friends called the cops on him and they took him to a hospital for holding. While he was in there, i took care of his dog. When he got out,  i didn't get a thank you. He refused to be at his apt when i dropped her off and made me kick in the door and break the frame since it was still messed up from the cops. He has another ex who started out being kind to me and quickly switched to saying i was the crazy one amd blocking me. To be fair, I did lash out at her because she also lied about her intentions and had been trying to get back with him the whole time we were together.  To be honest,  I DO feel crazy. It's all so complicate and messy. I oscilate between hating him and wishing we had never met and wanting to make things right for my part in it.

Hi,

I wish you wouldn't feel guilty.

You sound like an empathetic person.  But I'd ask, is your empathy crossing over into being toxic for you?

Are you absorbing your sibling's negativity too much?
Are you enabling your sibling's own toxic behavior?
Are you ignoring your own needs to keep the peace with your sibling?
Are you not holding your sibling accountable for their own harmful actions?
Is your sibling overstepping your boundaries designed to protect your own well-being?
Is your sibling always blaming you for things they did?

I'd say, you focus on you, and let your sibling be responsible for them.  My guess is you have little to feel guilty about.  Maybe you feel "guilty" because you've created a nice life for yourself.  Instead of guilt, I'd suggest framing it as being a role model for you sibling of what a healthy adult's life looks like.  Maybe some of your healthy habits will eventually rub off on them.

Boy do I hear you!  Being lied about without JADEing is so hard! What I ask myself is what my goal is, what I want.  Nobody's stopping us from defending ourselves.  We just have to know the consequences and ask ourselves if that's what we want.

I don't know whether the anger ever goes away, but I know that in general our feelings come and go and come and go and change in intensity and frequency.

OK, here's my view of what's going on here.  Your wife is re-hashing old grievances.  She wants you to "admit" to causing her distress, even if the version of the "truth" she's seeking isn't actually true.  And she goes through this routine, over and over again.  She's trying to wear you down, to get you to "confess," "atone" and pay retribution.  What she wants is for you to validate her distorted victim narrative--that you abused her, you traumatized her, and it's all your fault.  Meanwhile, she refuses to accept any responsibility for her own actions.

I've seen this dynamic play out a number of times with the pwBPD in my life.  On the one hand, she creates an elaborate victim narrative, one of feeling constantly traumatized by other people.  That way, she can blame others for all her ill feelings, while avoiding responsibility for her own life and choices.  On the other hand, I think there's a lot of deflection going on.  While she's rehashing all the old grievances, blaming you, she won't let go of the past, and in so doing, she's avoiding dealing with the present!  My observation is that the farther back in history she goes, the more she's stressed about the present and future.  It's a perverse coping mechanism, through avoidance and deflection.  It's almost like she's picking on you, to unleash her ill thoughts, as a distraction to avoid actually dealing with the present, but giving an outlet for her chaotic feelings in the process.  Oftentimes there's projection going on as well.  "You aren't the same person" could be code for how she thinks of herself.  Ditto all sorts of accusations:  "You're a liar, manipulative, selfish, lazy, unsupportive, a terrible parent!"  She's so consumed with feeling this way about herself, that she unleashes these feelings in emotional moments, blaming you of course.

What does this mean?  I think it means that no matter what you do or say, she won't feel any better, not in the long term.  You might be able to "buy" some moments of relative calm if you give in and do exactly what she wants.  But you won't solve the problem, because what she claims is the problem isn't really the problem--her negative thinking and inability to handle her emotions are.  Moreover, if you satisfy her unreasonable demands, that just gives her license to make even more unreasonable demands.  You are showing her that her outbursts get her what she wants.  In the meantime, her expectations of you and others remain totally unrealistic.  She wants devotion, attention, money, comfort, praise, adoration, servitude, etc., but to do none of the associated work herself to deserve it.  Her expectations are impossible to meet, and so she's constantly dissatisfied, and blames you.  Does that sound about right?

I think my advice would be not to get sucked into this sort of conversation, when you've already talked about it and tried to apologize, but she doesn't accept it.  You could say, "I can't change the past," and then leave the room.

Someone, likely my daughter’s ex husband, emailed me screenshots from a generic gmail address of Reddit posts my daughter had made about me and others. I verified these posts genuinely exist and were posted by her. Her Reddit profile is easy to find as it’s her entire legal name and her current married last name is an uncommon spelling of a common last name. Definitely her, definitely her posts. I don’t know why he bothers but guess he (her ex) thought I’d want to know and he’s a troublemaker.

By choice I have had no communication with her in several years. She has tried but not since 2024. Several years ago she used us for money, ruined one of our cars on purpose while borrowing it (shoved a bunch of plastic wrap waste in the motor via an intake), and tried to use my SSN to secure a loan after I refused to cosign. Those are just the highlights of that particular situation.

I (we) have remained completely silent over the years because reacting never ends well, helping her doesn’t seem to help. Our credit is frozen so her efforts there didn’t pan out, we paid 10K to have the motor replaced, and know we will never see the money we loaned her again.

I am grateful her chaos is no longer part of our lives. She’s remarried to someone with no apparent ability to stand up for himself and while I feel mildly bad for him in a way, he willingly signed up for the marriage and is still there despite the fact their relationship is getting his older son bullied at school (his father and my daughter’s relationship started as an affair in a small town, other teenagers who know pick on his son).

In the Reddit posts my daughter lies about how NC started between us. Compared to other things she’s done the lies seem very small potatoes. Idk if I’m angry about just the lies or if it’s just the icing on the cake. She claims I cut her off after not wishing me a happy birthday while her kid was in the hospital. This never happened and besides that, she’s never wished me a happy birthday any year and her son wasn’t in the hospital during that particular time. Just completely fabricated and not being told happy birthday is the least of it where she’s concerned.

I guess I’m just setting myself up for failure thinking she’ll ever just tell the truth or not have drama in her life. I have walled myself off from her, I learned to not JADE, and haven’t breached no contact in terms of directly reaching out or responding to her reaching out. I do not react at all and in many ways this has served me well but I’m still angry - does this ever go away?

 I would not write any letter. Anything you write in there, short of you taking blame is going to come off as you being a horrible person with no accountability. Go no contact and block them everywhere if that is a possibility. Keeping any door open will only keep you trapped. We all know how addictive these relationships are and it truly is like a drug.

The person wbpd in my life has also never been diagnosed directly as they won't seek help.  But after a therapist suggested to me that they might have bpd, I went to see a local bpd expert who confirmed that all the symptoms fit.  Having that security of diagnosis has been helpful to me.

I think professional help would be required for her to feel better, but I don't think she can accept that her feelings isn't the whole truth. It's very unlikely that she'll seek support. She's against many contemporary ideas about sex and relationships so she'd likely just dismiss any mental professional as uninformed. She hasn't been diagnosed, not even close. Nor do I know if she really has bpd.

She can appear really fine one second, joking with the kids, being a really charming mom, the next minute she wants me to talk about some betrayal. Whenever she hasn't touched a topic for some time, she has to review it again from her current perspective.

These conversations rarely go well and it makes me so stressed I can't be present with the kids. We're both interested in the psychology behind things, so just saying things like "boys will be boys" isn't what I'm after. I try saying things like "I understand that my actions have hurt you badly", "The things that happened, I would never do again with the insight I have today" and also "I'm not yet a fully developed person but I keep learning and I'm always curious to understand how to act better". But she always wants me to explain why I did things instead. And any response she doesn't appreciate is rejected as false, even though I try to put it mildly. So she indirectly asks me to think again and say something better. Until what I say is based on the truth but isn't the whole truth. I would rather keep to present day but she always wants proof that I am no longer the same person.



Not sure if it's worse, I think she has just advanced in her thoughts. She's on her own path seeking some truth in order to cope.

I wanted to think about this one before replying; what a mess of a situation!

If your mom asks you to help and it's your home, then I do think you should help for mom's peace of mind.  Your brother is verbally abusive towards her and that should be enough to get him evicted.

While you don't want to get in the middle of their mess, I don't think you have to the way you're thinking.  If you take any action against your brother, he's going to explode and then he's going to carry that grudge.  But he's already doing that so what's the difference really?  Just block his texts, calls, social, and emails.