This may be about your own boundaries. Boundaries are about knowing what is us, what isn't us. I think for some of us who are empathetic, we do consider what others say about us, but some people are disordered.

Borderline is named for being on the border of what was known as neurosis and psychosis. Someone who is fully psychotic is more obvious, but for pwBPD- feelings can feel like facts. So if they feel something - they may in the moment believe it's true, even if it's not true.

I know someone who sadly aquired schitzophrenia. If she says something like a person is shooting radio waves at her, I know that isn't true, and her saying it doesn't make it true. But when someone with BPD makes a false accusation or statement, it could be just as false, but not sound as obvious. What can help here is a stronger boundary- what is true about you, and what isn't.

If your ex called you a pink elephant, would you be ruminating over it, wondering if perhaps you did something or didn't do and you might be one? No, you are certain you aren't an elephant. You wouldn't be wondering.

Now, substitute "pink elephant" for the accusation of keeping him from his friends. You know that neither of these statements are true. You don't need to give them any more thought or defend them.

In my own experience, when I realized my BPD mother could say things that weren't true, I was shocked. In my own mind mothers don't do this. Why she did, I don't know but if she thought something, it seemed real to her.

If I could step out of my emotions, I could see where I could do or say something and she'd experience it in a completely different way. One example was when she was getting some construction work done in her basement. I had just had some work done in my house and had cleaned up the construction dust from it. I casually mentioned that she might want to cover a bookshelf in the basement as it would be a lot to clean up.  I didn't mean literally- she is a short person- she'd have to ask the workmen to do it but that wasn't how it came out or how she heard it.

What she heard was that I ordered her to climb up a bookshelf, which was not feasable or safe for her. I would not ever have even thought that. This resulted in her getting upset with me, and accusing me of telling her to do that.

You probably never even thought about keeping your partner from his friends but if he thought it, he believed it, even if you did nothing of the sorts. This is disordered thinking. We can't control that. What you need to keep a hold of is your own reality. It's not true and him saying it isn't true.

Sometimes we just can't ever know what someone else is thinking but we can decide for ourselves if it's true or not.

He actually made a direct threat, saying, 'if you tell me to leave, i'm going to tell everyone that you've been controlling me'. !!!!

The correct answer to all of this is, 'who cares?' I am not perfect, but even if I have done something bad, uBPDx is simply not a reliable narrator. His thinking is distorted and impossible and cannot be used to deduce the reality of what has happened. My focus should be on stabilising myself so I am not caught in these swirls of delusion, as NotWendy says.

For people who know me, it's quite obvious that in many situations, the opinion I have about what should happen is very clear. And maybe that might be experienced as compulsion for some people. For example, there was a situation when uBPDx was going to borrow money from his sister that I believed had been acquired through unethical means, and I said that I thought this was unethical, but it was his choice whether to take it (in the end, he did not). Maybe this was experienced as control and isolation?

Thank you as ever, NotWendy.

It's just crazymaking because I know I am a person with a lot of faults and a strong personality. I know this. So when someone accuses me of something serious like abuse or control, I really want to dig into whether it is true or not, and not lie to myself or hide my misdeeds. So I am really reluctant to just dismiss it when someone says 'actually, you did this terrible thing'. This is a quality which often serves me well, but right now, it's looping me into a spiral of disordered thinking.

As much as we wish for closure, trying to make rational sense or have a discussion with a disordered person can leave you feeling worse than before you tried. These are called "circular arguments" - they don't lead to anything and you only feel worse after one of them.

That's the point to take from this. If you find yourself in this situation again- you can see more clearly that this is not an emotionally stable or rational person.

I think we all have an idea in our own minds about how a relationship should be, according to how we'd act in one. We tend to fit the person into that idea and possibly a lot of the time, it matches. When it doesn't- there's dissonance and we want to make sense of it but we can't.

You wouldn't lie or deny something to your partner, so why does he do that? Because his thinking is disordered. That's the most anyone can know.

Sometimes we don't know the result of something unless we've experienced it. Now that you have, what do you know? For one- if you run into him, trying to go back and get an explanation doesn't work. You feel awful afterwards. So now you know the results of this, and won't do it again if you run into him.

Sometimes we don't get closure with someone else. If this happens, we can give closure to ourselves. It's hard to accept that we can't understand why someone does what they do but this may be the case here.

If what you want in a long term relationship is someone with whom you can communicate and work out differences- he is't that person- but you can apply that value to others that you meet.

I am really wracking my brains to see how I could have isolated him from his friends. There was one time i said about a particular person, 'i ________ing hate M', but by that point they hadn't seen each other in months anyway and I never actually stopped him from seeing M, i just mouthed out about him? When we went on our last holiday together, uBPDx spent a day apart from me so he could go stay with his friends and go to a party and I encouraged him to do this? I supported him to go on a different holiday where he met up with other friends without me? There were lots of times he went out with friends without me and I always encouraged this. Oh, maybe it's that I didn't hang out together with his friends. But also... whenever he invited me... I did...?

I LITERALLY DO NOT KNOW HOW I CAN POSSIBLY HAVE ISOLATED HIM FROM HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS!

Like we said, talk it out a little more and let the community help.  BPD (and mental illness in general) is counter-intuitive so we often do things that feel natural, expecting it to help, yet somehow it makes things worse.

Why?  Because BPDs rely so much on their feelings...they feel everything and it defines them.  They don't have average days very often.  When they're happy, it's the best day ever!  When they're sad, their entire world is ending.  And because everything is tied to emotion, they can go from one end of the spectrum to another very quickly.

Your interactions with your daughter, they're a learned behavior.  When she's upset, she lashes out.  And when you show kindness in those moments, her mind sees it as proof that you're trying to compensate for not being an ideal parent.  So the mental illness convinces her that the problems in her life are your fault, for the way you raised her and the things that happen, because that's the only thing that makes sense to her.

Over time, these momentary lapses in bad moments become something more.  They become a way to intimidate and get what she wants, which only deepens the hold mental illness has on her.  So she manipulates, she rages, and she blames everything close to her for what's going on instead of accepting the true reality- she's mentally ill.

It's oaky to be mentally ill, but it's not okay to hurt others while attempting to make yourself feel better.  That's the fine line you must help her see.  The entitlement she feels is a learned behavior and it's not your fault.  We all got it so, so wrong because we didn't understand mental illness or BPD.  That's why this community is so helpful.

So please, talk some of this out.  Let the community help.

I just bumped into uBPDx, and it's shaken me, a lot.

I asked him why he cheated and lied to me, and he denied doing that, which makes no sense, because he did. Even if in his mind it wasn't 'cheating' because he had ended the relationship (which he hadn't), he lied about who he had slept with - this has been confirmed - like, that's just a factual lie. 

He also hid the relationship from me while i worked closely with his new partner for some weeks, during which it was highly relevant for me to know, and others were strongly encouraging him to tell me about it, because they saw it as unethical and compromising that I hadn't been told, because it was.

I just don't understand - what was the lying and hiding for, if not to conceal the cheating and manipulation? Was he just lying for the love of the game?

He also denied asking/ demanding that I move out, which is weird, because i can see messages on my phone confirming that this happened. Like, there are the words, 'I would like you to move out' from him, and a later message where i say to him 'you asked/ demanded that i move out' and he accepts this? so how is reality now being rewritten so that he didn't ask/ demand that I move out?

He also accused me of coercing and controlling him, and isolating him from his family and friends. which is weird, because i have never met his family. they're not in this country. i don't know what he is talking about, or how I could even have done that, practically speaking. He had phone calls with them occasionally and I encouraged him to do that. I covered his rent for 7 months and suggested that if he wanted to see his family, he could spend the money on going to visit them, which he chose not to.

Anyway, I asked him to leave the cafe 'out of decency'. He said, you don't control me and you can't tell me where to be, and I repeated, 'I am asking you to leave out of decency.' Eventually he did, but he also said he was going to tell others that I was controlling him, so, there's that.

I feel sick.

Thanks so much for your replies, this is all so hard and nothing makes sense.