Hi Forever Dad,
The reason my daughter with BPD has fixated on her nephew is because both of his parents- my daughter and my grandson’s father were in jail.  She is protecting him…. And she has done thé ‘he confided in me that’ once before and now again.  She has CFS (child and family services) on the job now, .  Now no one can see him unsupervised unless they go through some police checks… including her.  So she is causing him distress because a social worker had to come and interview him… so she is not really protecting him, she is hurting all of us… but that is the nature of this horrible disorder…

Hi there,

Welcome, you've come to the right place.  I can see there's a lot to unpack here, but I also see a familiar pattern that seems like classic BPD.  First off, a history of severe past traumas.  I wouldn't wish trauma on anyone, but with BPD, there ALWAYS seems to be a history of past traumas.  Some might be true, but some might be perceived or completely fabricated.  For example, I bet your wife thinks you traumatized her, when you've gone above and beyond to be loving and supportive, right?  Yet she'll tell everyone how your marriage has been traumatic, and probably that you left her and cheated on her, while twisting fact patterns and conveniently leaving out critical details like her own violence towards you.  Anyway, a pwBPD typically perceives life as an endless series of traumas.  A consequence of that is a victim mindset.  She's always a victim, which means that other people are to blame for her troubles.  The huge problem with this mindset is her inability to take responsibility for her own life and behavior.  You see, she's so busy blaming you that she can't solve any of her own problems, making her tremendously unhappy.  Worse, she thinks she's justified in acting out, and that you deserve to be hurt and/or punished.  Does that sound about right?

Secondly, things started to go south exactly when you fully committed to the relationship.  The summer of 2024 was around the time that you got married, correct?  You were legally and morally committed to each other, and you were presumably living together, thinking about a shared future together.  At first, she probably bought in to the "fantasy" version of marriage.  Given a pwBPD's black-and-white thinking, her vision of marriage was probably idealized, as white as her wedding dress.  She finally felt "secure" in the relationship, and able to show her true self to you.  But once married, the wedding dress came off, the honeymoon was over, and the attention wasn't squarely on her 24/7 anymore.  She likely started to experience some daily stresses, disappointments or need to compromise, and her fantasy started to unravel.  She might have harbored second thoughts; she didn't see everything as perfect anymore, and she was suddenly extremely insecure, seeing everything as black.  It's one of the paradoxes of BPD in my opinion--only when she feels secure enough in the relationship does she show her true, insecure self.  I think this relates to a pwBPD's distorted, unstable sense of self.

Finally, the false accusations.  This is mainly projection of your wife's insecurity onto you.  It seems to me that she's insanely jealous, of you spending any time with other people (including colleagues, clients, family or friends), because she sees that as stealing attention away from her.  PwBPD tend to have a high need for attention, reassurance and emotional caretaking; they might fabricate constant "tests" of your loyalty, too.  They generally expect too much devotion from friends and family.  Anyway, since your wife appears to be extremely jealous and insecure, she'll ruminate about your devotion (or lack thereof), convincing herself that you have to be cheating to make her feel so neglected and unworthy.  Worse, she hurls these accusations at you constantly, to reclaim your attention which she thinks is rightfully hers.  Your natural reaction is to engage and JADE (short for Justify, Argue, Defend and Explain), but that's using logic when your wife is in an illogical, emotional state.  The more you JADE, the more she feels invalidated.  She even flips the script and deems your arguments as PROOF that you're guilty.  You see, you can't "win" arguments like this, because the basis is all emotion (insecurity, displeasure, alienation; feeling neglected, unworthy, unloveable, unattractive, unsexy, etc.).  That's why she'll refuse to entertain any evidence, and why she'll turn any evidence of your innocence into something else--namely proof that you're a hacker who manipulates data and erases electronic records.

Anyway, that's my attempt to explain the situation.  What to do about it though is complicated.  Here the general advice is to take care of yourself first.  That includes doing your job, keeping your friends  and staying close to family, because that's what healthy adults do.  Keeping friends and family close is especially important, because they help keep you grounded.

As for the unfair accusations, how I react might depend on the situation.  My main advice is not to JADE when her emotions are running high, because emotions are hijacking her brain, and she can't process any logic or defensiveness from you when she's all riled up.  If she's upset, you could try to be reassuring (I love you, I married you and I choose to be with you every day).  But if she's being mean/disrespectful and hurling insults, my advice is to calmly exit the situation, in effect putting her in an "adult time out."  You give her time and space to calm down, while you protect yourself from abusive or disrespectful treatment from her.  Only engage when she's being respectful.  If you can't exit the situation, for example if you're riding in a car together, my advice is to "gray rock," as in, sit as quitely and still as a gray rock.  The idea is not to react, not to lend any emotional energy to the conversation, in the hopes that she'll calm down.

In much of your post I note that you've repeatedly tried appeasement.  Sadly, most here have found that you can never appease a person with BPD traits (pwBPD) enough.  It seems appeasing just enables more problematic behavior.

Separation is one way to avoid much of the conflict but there are at least a couple downsides to that.

One is that distance apart may tend to make you feel the other is getting better when they are in fact unchanged.  BPD is a disorder most impacting to the closest of relationships.  People on the periphery can notice something is "off", shrug and move on with their life.  It's totally different if you are a spouse, sibling or child.  Close relationships are the most triggering and the most impacted.

Another is that being separated still leaves you connected by marriage.  Financial complications can result, especially if the other is irresponsible in finances.

It may seem hopeless but the fact is that you are in the midst of a bad situation.  Try to look positively, step outside the box and view your life from another's objective perspective.  A couple ideas...

• If you had a friend come to you and explain his life is like yours, what would you objectively tell him?
• Imagine yourself 5 or 10 years from now... what would you look back and advise the today you to change?

Well, overall, I'd say it sounds like you're in a pretty lousy relationship.  I take it that if you want a chance to heal, you're looking for a way out (?) or considering ending it?  Why do you feel trapped? 

My husband went off  his one med he was told he needed to
The nurse said we never said that
Due to like u said all the risks involved
I guess he took it well but due to I have him blocked and he wants to talk I don’t know. .
Dr said same thing he is competent and can do what he wants
Primary dr    he took me off everything
But like my daughter and I talking the past year even on this med he was giving us signs of he needs something eles .
When time come to tell him this he won’t do it.
And I can’t deal with it any more never cried yet
More sad about my animals .

Well, I didn't have this exact situation, but I did hear this phrase, or some variation of it, several times during my marriage: "You knew I was like this when you married me!" and this was in the context of me saying "stop doing X" or "I don't like when you do X."  Her statement, as I understood it, meant that I had to accept her problematic behavior and she was not going to change it, i.e. if I didn't like it, I shouldn't have married her.  Ultimately, I saw this as another form of blame shifting on her part: attempting to dodge responsibility for her behavior by putting it on me.

Now, to be fair, my XW was not diagnosed, only saw a therapist a few times during our marriage, and before she stopped going told me that her therapist said she was "fine" and that I was likely the problem, and was generally in denial that there was anything wrong with her or her behavior... "all couples fight" she liked to say, during the occasions she wasn't blaming me for it.  So that's quite unlike your situation.

I think in your case, her admission could be admirable for being open with you like that, but only time will tell.  If or when she does have a "volatile episode" you'll have to see how it goes.  Is she able to genuinely apologize for her behavior and move on?  Or will she attempt shift blame from herself to you or one of your kids? 

Until you really experience BPD, i.e. see what a "volatile episode" from her entails, you can't know whether you're able to tolerate it in the long term. 

It's not really fair for someone w/BPD to say to their partner "you knew I was like this when you married me" and hold them to that, because it's impossible to truly convey to a person how something like BPD will be to experience ahead of time.  It's not like saying "I play golf every Saturday" and letting them decide whether they can accept that or not.

Hi there,

I recently went through something similar in my family.  A family member decided to stop taking her meds (for high blood pressure) because of an upcoming medical procedure (dental work).  As a result, she had a medical emergency, was rushed to the hospital for treatment, and sure enough she was told she needed to take her medications as prescribed.  She might have mistakenly thought the meds would have some sort of adverse reaction after her procedure, that she didn't need the meds anymore, or whatever.  We asked why she didn't call her doctor or pharmacist to ask questions, but she couldn't explain it.  She just decided to stop her meds.

The moral of the story is that she's not entirely mentally equipped to handle her own health care, but she's not really prepared to sign over authority to a loving family member, either.  The takeaway is that we have to remain vigilant, but also that she's going to do whatever she wants, and that's a tricky situation to be in, for as long as she's considered competent to make her own decisions.

Well it’s me again
 ubpd found out yesterday that his surgery has to be postpone he wasn’t suppose to be taken off med . You think

No worries whatsoever.  We have lots of visitors here and I merely wanted clarity to others that this site is for us and, to a great extent, our refuge.

I walk around with a copy of a Mother’s Day card in which she was very affectionate. I told her when this latest splitting episode occurred that she was bastardizing me in order to justify her bad behavior towards me. Telling her that while she is in that state didn’t help but it is the only way I can describe what she does. I am as her adoptive Mom the recipient of the most harshest insults and degrading language. She doesn’t have these intense feelings of anger towards her living birth father. I think in part because he is incapable of caring about what she says. Her mother died when she was seven and she only briefly expressed anger that her mother left her behind. (Her birth mom died of a heart attack at a young age due to drug abuse related heart disease.)

I wish she would work on herself harder. She has access to mental health care but she doesn’t apply herself to the process. At this time, I cannot see a way back towards her. The bad mouthing online is nothing new by the way. It’s her go to way of “getting back at me”. She does know she has anger issues. I have described her as getting angry with the heat of a thousand suns. She herself has told people that she gets angry with the heat of a thousand suns. So there’s occasional insight I guess.