It simply says that you tried your hardest and definitely went way beyond in your efforts to make the relationship work - as we all did. Had you been the most perfect human being to ever exist this would still not have been enough to satisfy someone with BPD.  If they can find a genuine fault they'll exploit it and if they can't.. they'll simply invent some way in which you 'failed' them. You have a moral rule set and you were up against someone who had absolutely no rules, moral or otherwise.

My exBPD would switch almost instantly from reason to reason why I'd 'hurt' her.. it's like she was running through the entire list to see if she could get one to stick and that I'd admit too.

It's vital that you don't compare yourself with her previous partners and especially not her next partner. She will find fault with them as she did with you once the idealisation wears off. Any new relationship will only last as long as the poor guy is prepared to endure it.

Stay fit, active and see friends to fill your new - and thankfully non-chaotic - life. Good things often happen when you least expect it, I've found this to happen a lot so be the best you can be and be ready.

Thank you

It set me off on a road of rumination for sure.

Probably not helped by being alone in a different city for a few days.

I'll work on it!

Yeah, you're right!

I struggle with that for sure.

In this case, I think it's probably something like:

"Gosh, if I gave that my best and it wasn't enough... and now she has that thing with someone else... what does that say about *me*??"

But that's the point I guess, isn't it?

I often process things through the lens of "What does it say about me?"

Sometimes it's other people.

Easy to say, harder to feel... but I guess that's where I need to be heading.

Your distress is often heard here.  Grandchildren are such astounding blessings but your daughter in law has weaponized the children as leverage in her control.

I suspect your son is walking a fine line trying to appease her demands.  Yet that's virtually impossible when one spouse is being dictatorial.  While she no doubt feel she must be in full control or else feel controlled, that perception is unhealthy and dysfunctional.

Over time you can share with your son some of the insights, experiences and time-tested strategies that you learn here.  The reality is that even then he may not be able - by himself - to shift the marriage back into team orientation and equal authority.

In my own past... I first sought help from others but my ex refused any thought of us seeking counseling or therapy.  She was increasingly insisting and demanding she she was in full control of our marriage and parenting.  She started saying  she would disappear with our toddler.  It reached the point where I could not see any way forward unless we separated and divorced.  (Actually, the first visit by the police ended up being the next phase of our marriage's end.)  What was surprising was that I found out that, despite my then-spouse's insistence that she was the Authority in our marriage, family court was The Real Authority.

Admittedly, family court was very reluctant to step up and resolve the core issues and it gifted the mother too much default preference.  But eventually the court order (court's word for Boundaries) became more specific to deal with the parenting conflict.

One distinct difference was that a court order specified separate parenting time for each parent.  I decided what happened during my parenting time , just as she decided for hers.  This meant that now,  on my scheduled parenting time, I could bring my child to see my parents who lived nearby but had been previously blacklisted by her.

It's possible that your son finds contemplating such an outcome - the end of his marriage - as too difficult and even premature to ponder.  That we can't know.  Meanwhile... He can certainly get educated about how to deal with these acting-out (harmful to others) personality disorders.  Even if she won't join him in meaningful therapy, he can seek it for himself... and as the children get older, play therapy for them too.

Often we feel time is our enemy.  We were designed to reach for a life without end.  Yet our lives are so short.

But in this matter time is your friend.  Time will allow eventual recovery.  Meanwhile, don't dwell on this overmuch, keep busy with other healthful activities and association.

My husband (undiagnosed but very likely BPD) is in a different state visiting his mom. He went there to help her move. On Monday he realized that what he had spent a lot of time doing is actually not helpful. He could have been spending time better. He tried to reach out to me about it but got caught up in something else he was annoyed at me about and got too upset to even share. We have been fighting since. He insists I am never there for him and I don’t care. He was supposed to come home on Wednesday and he didn’t. He wanted me to prove somehow I care in a new way but rejected all my attempts. He kept saying I have done nothing. On Friday he almost calmed down but then I was distracted with our kid and missed a chat from him and he perceived that as rejection. Now he is full of hate, he keeps blocking me and then saying I am ghosting him. He has mentioned suicide. It is Sunday and I am the villain because I am not treating this with enough urgency and spending time with our kids. I just don’t know what to do. I also feel like he is treating me bad but I am torn between being understanding of his pain and feeling totally rejected and mistreated.

I look at this behavior through victim perspective and projection. I think in the moment, they feel as if someone or someone else is causing their distress, and they then feel justified in their defense or relaliation. So they have a sense of right or wrong but in the moment, they feel attacked.

I think most people who do have a sense of right/wrong would not deliberately do hurftul things but if they felt attacked- they may "fight back" in that context. The difference with a pwBPD is the situation and how it affects the other person. With my BPD mother, the smallest slight might trigger her and so her response would be out of proportion, and excessively punitive.

She was very exact in her requests. If you went to the store to get a can of soup and it was the wrong brand by mistake- she'd feel you did it on purpose to upset you and she'd rage at you. Sometimes one didn't know what it was that she was angry at.

Whatever her motive was, being raged at for something minor - that was experienced as abusive, whether or not she intended it to be, but in her disordered thinking she felt in the moment that we were abusing her.

Hi all,
I’m a newer Grandma who is missing the connection with my son’s children.  He is married to a girl that appears to have borderline personality disorder.  We have to jump through so many hoops in order to see our precious grandchildren.  It has been like walking on eggshells in order to not day or do anything to upset her. It’s been so emotional and I can’t believe I have grandchildren that don’t even know us.  There are so many disrespectful texts and behaviors that she does, I can’t even begin.  I try to communicate just with our son, but she rules every thing he does.

I guess I’m just venting and heartbroken.  Thanks for listening.

In my daughter's case, what she was saying/doing was hurting her far more than it was hurting me.  The more she rambled, the more distraught she became and there was actually very little about me in all her talking.  It was just a jumbled mess.

In your situation, I can understand how someone thinking in a disordered way would try blame-shifting to avoid talking about the larger issue.  You and I both know the real problem- it was disordered thinking and not being able to control responses. 

I had a similar incident with my BPD ex wife.  After we were separated for 3-4 months, she asked me to meet her at Olive Garden after church to talk.  I thought, okay...progress.  Maybe something is starting to change.  But once we were there, we talked a bit and when I told her that I still thought about her daily, she began to scream at me in the restaurant at the top of her lung.  People were startled and stared, my wife was embarrassed.  But anytime I said anything about us, she'd lose it all over again and the whole restaurant would freeze in shock.  I'm surprised that we weren't kicked out, to be honest.

My ex wasn't doing that for dramatic effect, she literally couldn't help herself when she heard me say something that her disordered mind didn't agree with.

Later that day, my wife told me in the car that she had feelings for another man and wanted to pursue that relationship.  It was just a few short sentences amidst hours of disordered dialogue, and I realize now that it's the only reason she met with me that day.  That's why she didn't storm off after screaming in the restaurant, and why she asked me to take her shopping afterwards.  It was all for that singular goal, but it took her almost three hours to get there.  The "calculated" part was two sentences; the disordered part was three hours of nonsense that prevented her from saying those two sentences.

For your situation with the therapist, I can't say how much was calculated and how much was just emotion flowing.  Maybe we can't know for sure.  But when I look back at the worst moments with my BPD ex and my BPD kid, their pain was real in the moment and they weren't benefiting from it.  Other people also saw what only the closest typically see...the true nature of BPD and how ugly it makes them in those moments.  I don't think that's intentional either, to let others realize how messed up they are.

That's just my opinion though from closely observing two people who displayed BPD in completely different ways.  My wife was the quiet type while my daughter was traditional explosive anger all the time. 

Good. 

Now you need to get to a place mentally where seeing someone happy, or happier than you, or who has more than you do (or at least looks that way outwardly) doesn't bother you. 

Like I said, you never know what's truly going on behind the scenes, and things change constantly.  Today's happy couple can become tomorrow's divorced couple. 

realize that your life is your own, and what other people do and don't do doesn't change who you are.