Hi everybody, I am a survivor of having lived a childhood in which my mother had BPD. I am also a social worker with 38 years of experience in the fields of mental health and addictions, and child welfare. During my training in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Dialectical Behavioural Therapy and Systematic Training for Emotional Predictability and Problem Solving and in my role as a therapist, I provided treatment for individuals over many years who had BPD. I could not help my mother as she would not accept help. Even with my years of training, my main insights about BPD came from the suffering I felt from my family situation. After my mother died, our dysfunctional family dynamics played out, and the chaos and division my mother had always sewn had broken sibling bonds. I have written a book about my story and shared insights I learned as a family member. It is on Amazon now and is called "Fractured Bonds: An Insider's Guide To Living In The Orbit Of An Individual With Borderline Personality Disorder" by Cynthia Stevens. I hope this book helps those in my  situation as it helped me. Take care everyone!

Hola
Gracias por los consejos.

Mi relación con ella , solo funciona en una dirección yo doy y ella pide todo el rato.

Esto me ha llevado a un malestar emocional que nunca antes había sentido. Estoy derrotada,  hoy no,he ido a trabajar por este malestar alrededor del corazón,  una mezcla entre nerviosismo,  tristeza y cansancio mental.

No puedo establecer rutinas con ella, ni hábitos saludables porque esto se convierte que reproches, gritos y enfados hacia mi persona.

Cuando va a clase , nos manda mensaje alarmandonos de que la mirar mal, que le han llamado fea, que no soporta a los de su clase.

Gracias por escucharme

Hello and welcome to the family.  I'm so sorry you're going through this and we're all heartbroken for you...because we know exactly what it feels like.  We've all been there with a puzzled look on our faces.

I believe your therapist is wrong- BPDs love deeply.  But they're also so afraid of rejection or abandonment, they're quick to seek new relationships instead of actually digging down and working through things.  Your story could be my story, even though I was married for 23 years.  The same patterns emerged.  Over time, I have realized that my BPD ex wife loved me, but at the same time she was incapable of being the constant in my life.

Please continue to ask hard questions and we will give you hard answers.  There's no template for healing after a relationship like this; everyone is different and it could take months, years, or decades before you're truly "over it".  I'm going to give you the long-term answers up front though, the stuff it would take you years to realize on your own.

Are you ready?

1)  This is not your fault.  You husband is mentally ill and that's where all his dysfunction comes from.  No matter who he married, or what they did together, they'd probably end up exactly where you are right now.  So hear me here, this is not about you...it's about mental illness and a person doing anything they possibly can to feel normal.

2)  This is not completely your husband's fault either.  His brain is wired differently and he's constantly seeking praise to feel like he fits in.  But he doesn't fit in, he's mentally ill and people can't relate to him, so he's always seeking the next thing to fill the voids.  And that creates a destructive pattern that shows up over and over again as he burns bridges and believes the other person is always at fault.

3)  If we combine #'s 1 and 2, this is not your fault and it's not his either.  He needs therapy, medications, and a complete lifestyle change, but he'd have to admit his problems first and actively work to change.  That's literally the hardest thing in the world for him to do, so he suffers in silence (or sometimes rage, as you said).  He's sick and that deserves compassion.

Now, you're not ready for any of those yet; they'll come in different seasons of your life as you lean to cope and move on from this.  But please read them once more and try to prove me right or wrong over time.

I wish you luck and again, I'm so sorry.  Please feel free to ask questions, vent, or whatever you need.

I echo Under the Bridge's welcome- I'm so glad you found us!

Take your time and let things begin to sink in; it's definitely overwhelming at first and healing is a process...you can't get there overnight.  You'll discover things in a month from now that suddenly click, and you'll make those discoveries a year from now as well.  But it's not all pain and confusion; that passes over time as you begin to grasp what you were actually facing.

Please ask lots of questions and let us know how we can help you TODAY.  Because that's all that this is about, getting through today for now.   Tomorrow's questions can come tomorrow.

Hello and welcome to the family!  I'm very sorry you're going through this and my experience was similar.  I had a daughter diagnosed with BPD as a teen, only to figure out years later that my ex-wife likely suffered from it as well.  It's much more common than people realize and it's a heartbreaking mental health condition.

What are some of the things you've seen that make you think BPD?  And have you found any help in the archives? 

A lot of the time, we can't do anything about a loved one with BPD- they'll get treatment when they realize that they actually want it.  We can't push though because it only makes things worse (sometimes, much worse).  But we can change how we communicate and show empathy...which can also make a huge difference in turning the relationship around.

So please, ask questions, rant away, or do whatever you need to get to a better place.  We're here for you regardless and there is hope!

This is my first post.  I just discovered this board, and hope it will provide some personal help in coping. After years of bewilderment and frustration, I'm coming to the realization that she my have BPD.  I just stumbled onto this, but when I looked at the list of symptoms, it all lined up with high-functioning BPD.

We have cycles of highs and lows in our relationship, but never seem to be able to stay in a happy, sustained place.   

I'm so exhausted and frustrated, but persevering.  As I begin to read more of the archived material on this site, I hope something will be helpful.

Hello and welcome

You're in very good company here as we've all been through the same experiences, some with a mercifully short BPD relationship, some like myself with a few years and some who spent a lifetime with their partner.

When I first read about BPD I too was amazed how accurately it described my situation and just how script-like the illness is; it's very predictable for the most part once you've experienced it for a while.  It was also good to realise that I wasn't the villain - as we can be made to feel by our partner's actions - and that BPD's can be skilled manipulators who can turn every innocent and kind thing we do against us, making themselves the 'victim'.

Though our BPD partner can exert quite a hold on us and make it very difficult to end things, once we've seen the futility of continuing the relationship then things atart to improve, though very slowly.

There is life out there - you had a life before you met your BPD partner and you'll have a life again. This time you'll hopefully be experienced enough to see the red flags in future -  and avoid any repetition.

You'll also have read that many ex-BPD partners try to re-engage after a while, either due to not wanting to be alone or just to know that you're still there and possibly still interested, so if you're definitely decided on the break it's important to stay strong and not be drawn back onto the roundabout again, which is all too easy to do.

I'll quote again the 'Three C's' which you may have already seen in posts; you didn't Cause it, you can't Cure it and you can't Control it. If you did your best then you could have done no more.

Write more if you want to or just plain rant to get things off your chest - that's what the site is for and we're all here to support each other.

Best wishes.

Hi all,

Just making a first post, I found this site through the book The Essential Family Guide to BPD. After one amazing, and then several confusing and chaotic, years, I have separated from my life partner who exhibits nearly all of the borderline characteristics in books and websites I've started to read. I stumbled on the borderline term online kind of by accident and was shocked to read people giving such accurate descriptions of how my partner acts - particularly defensiveness and lashing out when there is a percieved threat. I feel like my head is spinning from all the new info and from the fact that I'm actually not crazy for all the feelings I have from my varied and (de-)evolving experiences with my ex-partner. I've already got some tools to use from the book on keeping boundaries as we navigate a separation and they continue to act in bewildering ways. Glad to be here and looking forward to learning more and maybe finding more peace in my future life.

Good for you.  Sorry you went through all this; it's awful.  Hope you can move on and recover, and experience some relief and joy for having survived it. 

I think it's important to learn from this; don't let it get you too down though.  You had the misfortune to meet a serial user, and didn't have the experience you needed to protect yourself from him.  Hopefully, going forward, you do. 

Why are mentally sane people mean and toxic in relationships?  It's likely the same list.  For BPDs, they just get there a different way by not being able to trust and self-sabotaging relationships.

In my experience, you can rebuild the trust and mend broken fences to some extent.  But it takes two to tango and the other person has to meet you at least part of the way.  For my BPD daughter, she actively met me halfway and our relationship changed drastically.  For my BPD ex, she was manipulative, hurtful, and secretly in another relationship...there was no way to mend that.  But we did at least find common ground to be able to communicate about the kids.