Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry you're going through this and so many of us here have pretty much the same story.  It's so heartbreaking.  I a very glad you found us though!

Question- how would you contact the ex?  And what would you hope to achieve?  It's good to have some sort of plan before just winging it.

For the psychiatrist, you may have the best of intentions in wanting to reach out, but they will not talk to you about your ex and they probably won't listen either.  Their loyalty is to her and protecting her privacy, so that conversation wouldn't go the way you'd expect it to.  And just because nobody has mentioned a diagnosis, doesn't mean that they're completely in the dark.  There are telltale signs of mental illness and I'm sure they're picking up on it.

My bigger question is how you're doing, how you're coping, etc.  It's such an incredibly hard situation and I hope you're keeping your mind busy with other things.  In time, this feeling will pass, so try not to focus too much on the "right now".  I promise it's temporary and part of the healing process.

I'm sorry for all you've gone through with your ex. Her splitting and isolating you from family and  friends is exhausting and abusive.

About contacting her therapist and her ex, you should be clear about why you are doing this. Is it for closure of the relationship for you? pwBPD discard partners abruptly and without explanation.A relationship with a pwBPD causes trauma and PTSD. It's more painful and confusing than a breakup with a normal person. 
 
 I can understand why you'd want to pursue this but is it helpful for you? Healing begins when you have your own support and go no contact or strictly limit contact.

Contacting others about your ex keeps you tied to this person, thinking about them, ruminating on the relationship. It can lead to re-establishing contact with them and maybe returning to the relationship with the usual push and pull, splitting, chaotic behavior, and out-of-the-blue outbursts. 

I'm guessing her ex is certainly aware that she is difficult though he might not be aware of BPD. Her therapist may may not know though.

My uBPD ex was seeing a psychiatrist. He was not aware of my ex-h's personality disorder and violent behavior when I told him and showed him an arrest record. My ex was very good at appearing calm, friendly and reasonable. The psychiatrist immediately dropped him as a client. That gave me the sense he completely fooled the doctor.

Your ex's therapist may be unaware of her problems. You may not be believed and it may come back to haunt you if her therapist tells her. They are not supposed to but you never know.  Things slip out. Telling them seems like touching a hornet's nest.

Hello.

It's been 15 days since my ex broke up with me, once more and this time apparently forever. I am having a very hard time getting over it even if I know this is the best for my mental health. After a lot of research along the last six months, I have come to the clear conclusion that she is BPD, and quite probably NPD too.

We have been together for almost three years and our daughters are best friends since ages (we are divorced). Soon after we started dating, some things started to look weird, and to make it short, I bent myself over backwards along the three years to accommodate to her demands, mostly related to extreme jealousy, and I have ended up quite isolated, also at work (I am a teacher). I could tell you countless absurd exampled of her jealousy: colleagues, shop clerks, neighbours, students!! and even a female voice cheering in a video of my son's handball match (she assumed it was the voice of a mum I was "on" with). The examples are countless and absurd to anyone's eyes except hers. No.matter how much I tried to reassure her, it was totally useless, and I passed.evry other week from being the man of her life to a ________er who only made her suffer on purpose. I passed from hero to vilain continuously along this time.

The drop that spilled the glass was her demand to block and explicitly write to my distant 4th degree cousin in Miami (we live in Europe - Luxembourg, but not together) that I would not want to be ever again in my life in contact with her. My "fake cousin", as she calls her, happened to visit Madrid when I was there on a weekend - I am Spanish and my kids live in Madrid so I fly there every two weekends to be wirh them. We met around 15 minutes with my brother's family and my kids. I have never felt attracted for my "fake cousin" or anything of the kind, but my ex of course thinks differently and even assures that I told her once that I found her attractive (I never said this ever iny life). By the way, she was also sure that I felt attracted to my brother's ex wife once I showed her a picture. She was sure to know better about me than myself. Not only related to women but also about any other field, she always knew better than me (kids, work, money...)

I cut ties in the past with a lot of female friends (and even a couple of male friends) to calm her down and as a stupid way of proving my loyalty, but this time she went too far. I tried to explain to her how doing what she required as proof of loyalty made no sense and in addition it would create havoc in my family, and it would be in her worst interest in front of my parents, brother, aunts..., doing something like that to my cousin (who would actually flip out if she knew this, as some.work colleagues would flip out as well if I ever told them that mentioning a conversation with them or exchanging a text created chaos in my relationship). She slapped me (not first time), threatened me that she would call my parents herself (also not first time she threatened to do so) to tell them the kind of _____ person I am, asked me to say goodbye forever to her daughter (who is like a daughter to me and I have taken on holidays with my kids so many times) and leave her appartment. Luckily her daughter was not aware.

This all happened after spending the greatest 5 days with her in a kind of honey moon in the Netherlands and after planning next summer holidays together and with our respective kids. Totally unexpected out of nowhere. Or not exactly, because a innocent comment about greeting a female friend of a friend that I came across at my school sparked the fire some days before... Always any contact with women taken as a "public humiliation".

I know objectively I should run away. I felt ashamed to share some of these things with my brother and friends, even with my psy, but it was therapeutic opening up and having people who genuinely care for me that what I described was not only normal but psychologically abusive.

I know all this, but I can't help feeling like _____ after all the time, energy and love invested. She often told me she was never like this before, but she also told me some weird story about her previous relationship.

The idea of contacting her ex has crossed my mind so many times and now more than ever to try to understand if this was her pattern too in previous relationships, contrary to what she states.

I have also read that telling her about her probable BPD condition may result very negative, and I wonder if contacting her psy might be a good idea. I don't think she is aware at all about it because, seen from the outside, my ex seems the most beautiful, calm, balanced and fair person. Nobofy could believe what I have lived when just the two of us. The incredibly good and the incredibly bad. A horrible roller coaster that became more and more chaotic in time.

Thanks so much for reading and for your help. It helped putting all this in writing. I could hardly believe it if a friend told me, but all my research confirms.so neatly all her BDP traits.

Best regards

Hi there,

It must feel difficult indeed to be constantly on edge, isolated and doubting yourself.  Usually when I reply on these boards, I'll try to explain some BPD dynamics to illustrate that her behaviors aren't your fault, so you don't have to take her words or actions to heart.  But this time, I'm going a different direction and will reflect on some aspects of your post that are somewhat unique.

First, you're living in you're partner's home.  It's not really yours, and that could make you feel like you're alienated from yourself.  It sounds to me like you're a bit stuck, maybe even trapped.

Second, you haven't proposed, even though you've been committed for a decade and you're living together.  I'd say you haven't proposed because you don't want to.

There are situations in life where you can feel like things are happening TO you, rather than actually deciding something.  Your situation might be that way:  you might have moved in with your partner out of convenience, because it was economical, it could be fun, and because it would let her stay close to family.  But it might not have been something you really "decided," meaning with true intention.  Then time passes, and staying together represents sliding--not deciding--creating some relationship inertia.

And now you're feeling stuck and torn.  Maybe you're "comfortable enough" in your partner's family's home.  But here's the thing.  First, it seems to me like you're in a sunk cost fallacy situation.  That's a cognitive bias where people continue an endeavor, project, or relationship based on past invested resources—time, money, or effort—rather than current or future benefits.  (Maybe you can tell I was a CFO in a former life.)  And here's another CFO-type quandry I sometimes faced:  bosses (like CEOs and boards) tend to discount the cost of NOT doing something.  It's like nixing an investment proposal because the up-front costs to implement the project seem like a lot, while the company is running well enough today.  But that's when I'm prepared with another analysis, which is, What are the risks if we DON'T make this investment?  Have you considered that?  Because if you don't make a critical investment in the company (or in this case, yourself), you could be wiped out in the future.

So I guess I'd ask you to try an exercise.  Imagine you could talk to yourself from five years ago.  What would you say to him?  And now switch to the future:  Project your future self out five years from today.  Based on your history and your current trajectory, what are the "worst case," the "status quo case" and the "best case" scenarios?  And what do you think is the most likely scenario, based on what you know today?  Maybe you have some "optionality" in your scenarios, but if you do, how would you assess whether the scenario is working for you?  What would trigger a course correction?  Now, what advice would your future self give your current self? 

How about this (which is what I tend to do):  Imagine what a realistic but "best case" scenario would be for your life in five years.  Write it down, mull it over, tweak it if you want, think about it for a week.  Then my advice would be, you go make it happen.  Sure, it might require some time and effort--maybe five whole years of effort--but the results would be worth it, right?

Here's the advice that my current self would give to my young adult self:  "Bet on yourself, and you go make things happen."  I'd advise, Bet on yourself, because the only person you can control is you.  And I'd say, Go make things happen, because being active and intentional creates a live worth living.  How does that sound?

When a mentally ill person "threatens" self-harm, take it seriously.  That means picking up the phone, calling emergency services, and tell them that your partner is threatening that.  The police will come, an ambulance will come, and he will be taken for a psychological evaluation.  He will say or do anything to get out of it, but you repeat what he told you to whoever shows up.

A few things will happen once you do this.

1)  He will be furious at you for "betraying" him.  Yet, you're doing exactly what we're taught to do as kids, in an emergency, you dial 9-1-1 and tell the truth.  Explain that you did the only thing you could do to help him in that moment when he wouldn't talk things out and deal with his emotions.

2)  He will no longer play the "I'm suicidal" card in arguments unless he realizes that he actually needs immediate help.  One trip in the back of an ambulance with an involuntary hold is usually enough to get the point across.  That's not something to be "weaponized" unless you actually want to receive the help you're claiming to need.

3)  The hospital systems in the US are virtually useless for these types of things and it frustrates them as much as it frustrates you.  He will be held until a psychiatrist can interview him, and if he's deemed a threat to himself or others he will face a mandatory hold (usually 3-7 days).  They will try to help him with anxiety and other symptoms, but real change is up to him.

Side note- while he may be saying stuff like that to upset you, deep down a part of him means it as well.  He's hurting mentally and has no idea how to express what he needs in the moment.  What he actually wants though is compassion and forgiveness for the way he's acting, even though he is incapable of expressing that. 

It's honestly sad and I feel bad for your husband...but that doesn't give a free license to abuse you either.  There has to be a balance in there somewhere.

Saying "dad isn't feeling well" is fair- it's a true statement without getting into it further.  And younger kids can understand not feeling good as well.  To me, that's not "covering for him" or "throwing under the bus"...it's just the easiest way to state a really complicated topic.

If you say something like, "Dad is busy with other things," when he's not actually doing anything, the kids will see that and pick up on it.  So you don't want to lie and you don't want to give any more detail than you have to. 

If you decide to separate, then that's a different conversation entirely.  But you can tackle that if you get to that point.

I don't have advice but perhaps my perspective can help. This is what my own situation was, growing up with a BPD mother. We did a lot of things alone with my father. That was actually OK. I later realized that when Dad was alone, he was more himself, relaxed, not walking on eggshells. When we were all together, BPD mother's moods and feelings dominated. Dad was more stressed, actually we all were.

One thing I think that didn't help was that BPD mother's behaviors were "normalized". I think my father also wanted to try to preserve the relationship, and would say things like "of course your mother loves you" and maybe that was true but her behavior didn't always reflect that. You don't want your kids to think that love means accepting hurtful behavior, as this could predispose them to accepting behavior like this in their future relationships.

This also includes you. They look at your actions. If you tolerate that, they see it. You and their father are role modeling behavior. So if they think their father's behavior isn't acceptable- then they will learn that too.

If they are asking questions, it may help to have a counselor get involved to avoid triangulating and to allow them to share their feelings without the fear they shouldn't. As kids, we learn it's not acceptable to have negative feelings towards a parent, and so there's some guilt and shame for feeling them. However, people don't like being yelled at, or being disappointed, with anyone.

BPD affects all relationships. Your H is responsible for his relationship with the kids. If his behavior impacts that, it's his doing.

Go out and have a good time with your kids. These outings with Dad are some of my best childhood memories, in a childhood that also had some difficult ones. If their father doesn't come along, maybe for the better if he's going to put a damper on the occasion. That's his doing, not yours. If they ask, simply say, Dad couldn't come, but we can have a great time.

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!