If you think a volcanic eruption is simmering over in ex's home, have your lawyer be alert if/when to file emergency paperwork to remove your daughter from the impending disaster, whatever it is.  Though since courts are usually slow, if emergency services action is needed, then the paperwork comes a close second.

Broken Mom2,  My heart hurts for you. I 100% understand how you're feeling and hurting. I could have written your words. Except I have a swubpd - who has been in emotional pain most of his life. He's now 45. I would do anything to stop his pain. I've rescued him from consequences he should have experienced, given him money in the tune of 10s of thousands over the years, I've inserted myself in his first marriage. I'm not proud of my actions. And I'm being transparent because I'm making the point to you and myself that I can not take away his pain, heal his mental illness, make him "see" the past or myself realistically .Believeme, I tried. And I tortured myself replaying his words. 
So what can we do as parents who love our kids inspite of their illness?  We can choose to get healthy, get support from people who understand and will be honest with us. A good therapist who understands bpd and all the people and info we can gain from these boards. We need to believe our own reality. We need to protect ourselves from replaying those hurtful words over and over in our minds. We need to realize we're hurting and suffering too. This will be one of the greatest gifts we can give our kids with bpd. I could have shared all the cruel and hurtful words and beliefs about me that my son has said to me. What I know is he can be full of so much pain, shame anger that he has to project it somewhere. It has been me. That is very sad to me but he's the only one who can decide to be serious about getting help. I've tried for him. To give you some hope, it's been awhile since I've been dumped on. I sometimes get an I love you in a text or a big hug.I used to get I hate you, you make me sick, what kind of mother..  I think what's making a difference are the boundaries I'm learning to make to protect myself. I've pulled back my involvement in his daily life. .I believe also in his own way he's trying to manage his emotions. Maybe we're both growing up. I have a lot of hope for you and your daughter. Not saying it'll be easy, or that you won't feel pain. You just don't have to live therr. I'm trying to do that the best I'm able.

I'm sorry to hear that.

The blocking relief part got me. I felt the same guilt when I stopped picking up my mother's evening calls, and what I eventually figured out was that the guilt wasn't proof I was doing something wrong. It was just the old habit complaining.

One thing that helped me was realizing texts are not a to do list. My mother fires off thoughts the moment she has them, and for years I treated every one as something I had to answer, close out, resolve. She never asked for that. I assigned myself the job. You can read a message about her neighbor's dog and just... not have a response. That's allowed.

The other thing, for what it's worth, is that blocking isn't only an exit, it's also information. When contact comes back and how it comes back tells you a lot. My mother's first calm call in months happened after I went quiet, because the crisis channel was gone and she had to decide what was actually worth using the remaining ones for.

Being involved and being on call are two different jobs. You can quit the second and keep the first.

Your grief-group observation is the most useful data point you have: she opened up when the format was peers talking to peers, and stayed shut with experts evaluating her. After a childhood of being "treated," that's not defiance — it's self-protection. One more professional telling her what's wrong with her reads as one more verdict; a group makes her a participant instead of a patient.

A few directions worth knowing about:

DBT skills groups for teens and young adults (DBT-A) are the best-studied group format for exactly this profile — mood swings, impulsivity, emotion dysregulation. Many programs run a parallel multi-family group where parents learn the same skills. That structure matters: it signals "we're all working on this," rather than "she's the identified patient."

NAMI's Family-to-Family program is free and built for parents in your position — not for her, for you both. Long waitlists for the young person often move faster once parents are in the system and known to the providers.

If she's in college, campus counseling centers usually offer groups at no extra cost, and "free" sometimes lowers the barrier that "therapy" raises.

One caution from families who've walked this: at 19 you can't compel care, only invite it. The invitation lands best when it's small ("try one group meeting") and framed around something she wants — less overwhelm, better friendships, sleep — rather than a diagnosis. It took our family several rounds of that to learn the difference.

Thank you both for these replies — this is exactly why I posted here.

To the five-decades story: what stays with me is the line about realizing something was abnormal a week before the wedding and believing you'd "saved" her. That savior reflex is such a quiet trap — it dresses dependence up as love and hands you a role before it gives you a relationship. The fact that you can narrate it with that much distance now says a lot about how far you've traveled.

And the "those two things are the same thing" point landed harder than I expected. The unstructured time observation especially. I've been the one keeping everyone okay for so long that silence feels like a job vacancy. Lately I've been trying to sit with small unstructured stretches without filling them with someone else's needs — it's uncomfortable in a way that feels oddly promising, if that makes sense.

A question for both of you, since you've clearly walked this further than I have: when you started finding out what you actually like, did the people around you resist the change? I keep half-expecting that the relationships built on my "keeping everyone okay" role won't quite know what to do with a version of me that occasionally says "actually, I'd rather not."

Yes, and the way you laid it out - the pleasing, the smoothing-over, then noticing you look for people who need caring - reads like the textbook arc so many of us share here. One thing that struck me in your post: you describe a lifetime of managing other people's emotions, and then say you don't know who you are in relationships. Those two things are the same thing. When your role in the family was 'the one who keeps everyone okay,' you never got the unstructured time to find out what you like, what you want, what you'd choose when nobody needs anything from you. Identity isn't something we reflect our way into - it gets built from small acts of preference.

Something that helped me was to stop treating the reflection as a search for the moment it all went wrong (that tends to slide into self-blame pretty fast) and treat it as data-gathering instead. Two questions that produce more usable answers than 'how did I get here': 'What did being the caretaker give me?' - because it did give something: a sense of purpose, being the irreplaceable one, feeling loved conditionally is still a form of feeling effective. And: 'What would I do this Saturday if nobody's crisis needed managing?' The first one makes the pattern make sense instead of just making it shameful. The second one is embarrassingly hard to answer at first, and that difficulty is itself the measurement.

The fact that you can now see the thread from your parent to your choices means the pattern is already losing its automaticity. Thanks for putting this into words so clearly.

Hello and welcome back!  I remember talking to you because I'm in the Philippines with my wife, waiting to bring her to the USA, and my mind instantly went to visa stuff when I first heard your story.  Is there any updates there on what a divorce will mean for your legal status there?  Or maybe it doesn't matter since you're both from the same original country.

For cohabitation, I have some pretty simple rules.  Stop arguing, stop defending, and only focus on his emotions.  No matter what he says or does, do not let it affect your mood and be there for him for emotional support whenever possible.  If he's sad, try to cheer him up.  If he's angry, try to help him calm down.  Whatever he's sad or angry about, it doesn't matter one bit.  Ignore his "facts" and only focus on his feelings.

Why no arguing or defending?  Because it's like arguing with a goat.  How can you verbally defeat a goat when it doesn't understand English?  Both of you are only going to get frustrated.  Let your husband say whatever he wants and if it's ugly, walk away.  No matter what you say when he's disordered, it won't make a bit of good in your life...but it could make things much worse.  So don't argue, don't defend.  You're there to live only and his opinions no longer matter.

When my BPD ex and I separated, she also got very excited about the future and all the possibilities.  She was already being unfaithful though (without me knowing), so the relationship was officially doomed.  There was a part of her that did want to come back and fix things though; I just think she was too mentally weak to actually do it.  She wanted that shiny new thing so badly and because I fought for the marriage, it led to severe backlash and heartbreak.

So don't fight, don't argue, don't defend.  If it's over, then treat it like it's over.  Be kind when you can, stay away from him when you can't.  That will make things signifigantly better immediately.

Hello:
My wife and I are dealing with our 19 year old daughter who has suffered all of her life with mental illness.  We have been involved with several counselors, therapists, and psychologists.  Most of her life we have treated her for ADHD & depression but just recently it was brought to our attention that she maybe bipolar or dealing with borderline personality disorder.  A lot of her actions, moods, and symptoms point in this direction but she refuses to see a psychiatrist for meds and therapy.  We were wondering if anyone knew of support groups for teens where they discuss their feelings and actions as a group?  We attended a grief therapy session that was structured this way and she opened up and talked a lot with the other teens.  Thank you

Hello and welcome to the family!  My journey is so much like yours- looking back, I'm pretty sure my mom had BPD as well.  I came from a good household, lots of daily ranting from my mom, but my dad knew how to handle/avoid it and their marriage somehow worked.  My first wife was also BPD and I didn't realize how unnormal things were between us.  I went through the same patterns and slowly discarded my hobbies, my friends, my sanity in order to appease my wife.  Meanwhile, she was always on the run and I was always at home waiting on her.

We separated maybe 5 years ago and eventually divorced.  She was having an active affair so there was no coming back from it.  Yet, we saved the relationship so we could be mom/dad by learning how to communicate once again.  I learned to validate her feelings (not her "facts", just her feelings) and show empathy when she was sturggling.  She learned that I wasn't the enemy and it wasn't okay to take her frustrations out on me.  Slowly, over time, we found a balance that worked and we are actual friends once again.

Looking back, I realize now that if I would have found this site maybe a year earlier and recognized what was going on, I could have saved the marriage.  And you're already starting to walk that path- sticking to boundaries in a compassionate way, learning to communicate, learning to work through therapy to find middle ground.  It's a lot, I know, and you'll continue to get it wrong at times.  It is entirely possible to turn things around though and have a strong relationship once again.

I also have a BPD daughter, which is a big reason why I had to find a middle ground with my BPD ex.  We had to work together as mom and dad whenever our kid is in crisis...I refused to have it any other way.  The kid bad mouths me frequently to mom, mom bad mouths me frequently to the kid, but that's okay.  My relationship is good with both of them and it was worth the fight to get there.

I'm sure you have many questions, so I'll hold off on adding more.  I just wanted to let you know that you're not alone here and there are some that have dealt with BPD their entire lives just like you.