I’m really struggling. Not for the now which is just bad because of my udxBPDH.  The after is not so bad but I have immense fear of unknown.  It is the through I am terrified of.

We have been married 30+ years, 4 kids. One at college, one in high school, other two have ft jobs, but one is still at home. My H has always been difficult, and mean on occasion, needs attention but as the years have progressed, he just seems to go more and more off the rails.

He is a legal professional which is some of the fear of the through (from married to divorced is what I call the through).

He makes a lot of money, I do not about 1/3 of what he does maybe a bit less.    He likes vacations a lot like 3-4 a year.  He buys nice cars (they look nicer than they are bc he buys used and gets a better deal but it has to be high end), etc.  Our bills are high bc he runs up CCs but never remembers and it’s hard to pay down. There are other large expenses and debts.  It causes me a great deal of stress.

I am responsible for the admin of paying the bills.  My check is always assigned some duty — right now college.  He often withholds his paycheck. He’ll hold it for the weekend and then come Monday or Tuesday it’s a pretend, hey did I forget?  Once or twice maybe, but multiple times in a row? 

He won’t talk about it. The last time I asked him via text about it so I could pay bills, he rage texted me back. We were dropping my son at college the next day and I just ignored and went to sleep and let all the bills be late.

There are some things going on at his office that have caused some delay so I understand but the expectation that I am responsible but not entitled to the information. He won’t discuss on the weekend but I told him that’s fine, but the weekend is when I have time and energy to pay bills so just lmk what’s going on so I can plan accordingly.

I’ve told him finances cause me stress.  Everything he knows he know weaponizes against me.

So about 10 days ago, he left some dishes in our family room. I don’t love it but I usually do a sweep in the morning to load the dishwasher of anything left before I run it. I didn’t this morning for some reason. TBH I might have been annoyed bc he leaves apple cores and fruit stickers and I find that particularly disrespectful that he feels someone else (me) should clean that up. But it may have been the day I had an appointment out of the house (I work from home) and just didn’t get to it.

Anyway, usually collapse after work so didn’t grab and he stays up hours later than I do so I expected (idk why) that the next morning he would have at least moved it to the kitchen (a lot of weaponized incompetence that can’t tell if dw is clean or dirty).  Instead it was still there but he had added to it.  I stuck to it and would not pick up. We would generally chat at night but just ignore the mess.  I want to avoid a fight and don’t want to play into his game. I simply do not have it in me anymore.

This goes on for over a week to the point he amassed something like 14 moldy glasses, 6 moldy coffee mugs, bowls with food remnants, open tin cans, garbage on the floor.

My oldest was coming for the weekend so I thought he would pick it up. Nope he instead tore apart my daughter’s room to replace the carpet and only half put things back and left the rest blocking the stairs and into the kitchen.

We spent the weekend walking around and with smelly dishes.

I feel absolutely absurd, childish and ridiculous typing this.

Come work week and he is off and I cleaned everything up til the house was pristine and bought some flowers for myself and split in a few rooms.

While I cleaned, I threw out some that was not salvageable, but the rest is thrown out as far as he knows bc I did not put any back.

He didn’t say a word last night but did not make a mess. 

He’s withholding his paycheck since last week and the general account is in arrears.  He used some money from my son’s college account to buy gas.  The check is dated last week and he will neither give to me (usual) or deposit.

It’s not even a joke as we have major expenses coming up and not even covering basics.

10 days of smelly dishes.  I videoed each day to show the increase and disgust really.

I feel completely off my rocker, it is distracting at work and I feel like I’m going to explode (physically implode really). If I didn’t still have kids to consider I would walk years ago.

He rages mostly at me and I’ve been afraid that if I wasn’t there, he would turn on kids. I’m so close but feel so uncertain and yet just can’t continue.

I don’t know my next step and I’m really afraid of taking it. Oh and like most BPD, I am completely isolated from family and have zero support system.

How can I get to through?  Why do I worry about his response and if he’ll be okay?  Especially when I don’t know if I will.

I’d like to get him to file first (I think he won’t and tries to push me so I’ll be the bad guy and the kids will blame me) but I’d like to really just offer a fair settlement and try to leverage his ego, his desire to keep our mess private, not open the firm books especially as they are tying to merge with another firm. But I’m afraid of walking away with nothing but a huge fight and a big bill.

I would really appreciate any thoughts or suggestions.

Hi again,

My humble opinion is that if you weren't empathetic, you wouldn't be here at all.  I think it's the opposite:  you care very much, almost too much.  You can't stand to see your daughter struggle, and not being able to fix her life for her, to ease her burdens, to have a normal mother-daughter relationship, makes you incredibly sad.  Here's some proof:  your screenname is Sad.  While it's true that you're struggling with the emotional turmoil your daughter puts you through, and it hurts to be her punching bag, I think that if you didn't have as much empathy, your username might be Mad, Resentful, Desperate or Just Done.  At any rate, you're not alone in feeling all these things.

My guess is that the therapist probably only listened to your daughter's version of events.  Based on my experience with BPD, the pwBPD's narrative tends to be distorted, often wildly so.  Your daughter might try to extract apologies and retribution from you for ruining her childhood, but it's never enough.  Her objective isn't to forgive, learn and move on; it's to unleash her inner turmoil onto you and hurt you in the process, to let you know what pain she's in.

Based on your short post, I'm convinced you can't be blamed for everything.  You stated your daughter quit her job because her boss was making her suicidal.  And then, the prospect of looking for another job makes your daughter depressed.  As you can see, these things have NOTHING to do with you or her childhood, and everything to do with your daughter's emotional instability, her negative attitude and struggles with handling daily stresses and disappointments.  Her go-to coping strategy is BLAMING.  She thinks the world is "making" her depressed and suicidal, which is easier to face than the truth:  it's mostly in her head.  That's why DBT and CBT can help with BPD, as opposed to traditional talk therapy or medications.

One of the mantras about BPD on this site is the three Cs:  you didn't cause it, you can't control it and you can't cure it.  You are NOT responsible for another person's mental health struggle.  You can't force someone else to change or fix their choices, no matter how much you'd like to.  At the end of the day, your daughter is the one with the problem, but she's also the one with the solution.  If she's getting therapy and working on herself, that's a positive sign.

My daughter is almost 25 and has been diagnosed with BPD.  Everytime she calls me and she's having a hard time, it hits me so hard.  Sometimes I wonder if I will ever feel ok.  I feel guilty that this is somehow my fault, whether because I didn't do what I needed to do to help her when she was young (even though I really tried) or whether it's because I had kids with mental illness in my family (although I was not consciously aware of that at the time).  It crushes me that she feels so sad.  She tries to get help for it.  And nothing seems to be working.  She is miserable and so therefore so am I.  Is there a future where I get to be ok?

Any words of encouragement out there?

You are not alone in being excluded from a family vacation spot, feeling both angry and hurt. It can be more helpful to focus on the hurt underlying the anger. My large extended family with many disordered family members including some with BPD have ostracized me from family gathering for several years now. When this happens, I often find myself thinking of the past when I was included. What does it say about us when we are no longer included? Oftentimes it means, our awareness and boundaries of the family dysfunction can not be hidden any longer and the disordered family members are extremely threatened by any challenges to their hurtful behaviors so  they prefer to not have us around.

 I need help repairing the harm I have caused in my chaotic relationship with my boyfriend. I’m trying to understand where I went wrong and if it’s possible to move forward.

Here’s the nitty -I’m pretty well versed on bpd (have read so much!) and still learning
-he’s not currently in treatment, and retreats in and out from self awareness
-4 years on again off again long distance relationship (I know, I know)
-usually very close, talking almost every day, multiple visits to see each other
-major bpd behaviours were meltdowns (splitting on me and getting into horrible circular arguments about how I’ve hurt him), shutdowns (going cold and dismissive, taking big chunks of space), and sensitivity to rejection (worst possible interpretations of my words, behaviours, possible thoughts).

I understand that I’m not perfect. And that my reactions and actions make sense because his behaviour can be confusion, hurtful, and frustrating. But I’m trying to figure out where I’ve gone wrong and to try to do better.

I’ve tried to “fix”  things instead of listening to his feelings Now I realize this made him feel invalidated and weak. I’ve tried to stay calm and ended up shut down and cold when he’s been overwhelmed. Now I realize this made him feel invalidated and ignored, and he read my calm as dismissal and threat.I’ve been needy and desperate for repair and reassurance when he’s needed space to calm down.Now I realize this made him feel pressured and smothered.

Worst of all, I had a meltdown. During a disaster of a holiday together, where he kept picking at me and making passive aggressive comments out of the blue, I lost my cool. I didn’t yell. And I wasn’t intentionally cruel. Just exhausted and desperate and not in control. I couldn’t stop crying. And I couldn’t stop talking. I did not filter or mince my words. I talked about my love for him.And I talked about my frustration and hurt too.

This scared him. After he told me he thought I was going to physically hurt him. Which horrifies me.

I apologized for scaring him, for losing control, for not taking space to calm myself down. But the damage is done.

The petulant child in me says “but he’s had some many meltdowns and acted terribly to you, and yet YOU try to understand where he was coming from and  forgive and move on! Why can’t HE give me that grace?!” But that doesn’t actually help anything. I can give myself grace and understanding here (I was overwhelmed, he was being _____ty) but that’s just not something he is capable of. Just have to accept that.

Which is kind of the aha moment. For so long I have wanted grace and understanding from him. Wanting him to understand why things hurt me, wanting him to understand why I react a certain way to his behaviours. But he’s not capable of that!

While the things I’ve done that hurt him are understandable, I still hurt him. So how do I move forward from that? How do I repair my relationship with him without throwing myself under the bus (“you’re right I’m a monster”) or slipping into trying to explain to someone who doesn’t hear/understand explanations?

How do I repair something so broken?

yes!  @Awiseone88, you need to record and track everything he says and does period, especially everything threatening or violent.  If you sit on things, it makes it harder to claim later that you were scared and felt threatened.  The obvious question would be "why didn't you call the police?"

So you need to make a report ASAP when this stuff happens.

If he doesn't put threats and violent statements in writing (texts, or emails), you should try to record interactions.  In most states, as long as one person in a recording consents to it, you can record it. 

If you have an extra phone, set it to record a voice memo, and put him on speaker phone to record the conversation.   There are also apps you can download to record conversations directly from your phone. 

Whatever method you decide to use, practice using it and get comfortable with it so in the heat of the moment you can take action and get a recording.

If he's threatening you in person, bring your phone and set it to record.  You can also use a voice recorder, or a hidden microphone.  I bought one of these: Philips DVT1600 VoiceTracer Audio Recorder Pen; you can find it on various sites for ($75-$100).  It's discreet and is an ordinary pen with a sensitive microphone in the tip.  It can record audio well. 

Hello,
My BPD sister sent me a text out of the blue with a picture of herself, my BPD mom, niece and grand- niece on a trip to our childhood vacation spot, which I was not invited to.
I am now left with feeling anger, hurt and being excluded.
I responded with kindness and took the high road, but I am now left with emotional flashbacks.
Anybody have any thoughts and support for me?

Thank you, Innerpeace2026

Thanks for understanding.  The thing about her current therapist saying I wasn't very mothering or empathetic really bothers me.  A friend said that that probably wasn't exactly what the therapist said; it was what my daughter heard.  Early on, she was in treatment and one of the therapists did say in front of her, that if we weren't more validating, she wouldn't get better and it was our fault.  She used that as a stick to beat us up for years. 

Why do these people never learn.
Last week she wrote our sons car off.

I had paid half of the cost of that car and hundreds, if not thousands, in maintenance costs all the time my son had it. She didn’t even tell him what she had done, I saw it parked up with half the front missing and the rest of it smashed in. He got hold of her and she said she hit a pothole and it bounced her off the road into a post. The following day he told me a car came round a bend and forced her off the road, so her story changed in 24hrs. She asked our other son for a lift to work the following morning, but didn’t tell him why she needed a lift either.
If it wasn’t her fault I don’t understand the secrecy, and not telling the person who actually owns the car she smashed up.

The day after we split up, her car wouldn’t start so she rang me ranting at me about it. Couple months later it failed it’s MOT on rot, and has sat at the garage for the last 2 and a half years waiting to be welded. It’s a high powered fast car and the garage owner knows she is a liability and is probably reluctant to put it back on the road for her.
So she borrowed our youngest sons car, smashed his wheels to bits and blew the tyres out so it was unusable.
Her bf then buys her a flash and expensive looking Range Rover. In reality, it was a cheap, high mileage piece of sh… that I told her would fail. A year later it failed, to the point of being written off.
She then gets a loan car through the insurance, and someone smashes the back window out of it within a week, carries on driving it about for another 3 weeks with the back window smashed out of it.
Then uses our eldest sons car and writes that off as explained above.

I’ve mentioned some of the reasons why she ran off with the guy she has run off with (drugs) but half, a lot, of the reason why was her massive debt and her thinking he had plenty of money. She even told our kids he can support her better than I can, he ‘sold’ his half of a small building company to his business partner and apparently had loads of money.

A friend of mine knows his business partner, so I know the reality of the situation. The building company was dissolved, and had a large sum of money, couple hundred k, in the account and the two of them were drawing a monthly wage until the money ran out. His business partner set up a new company and carried on while the ex’s bf sat on his arse doing nothing until very recently started going back out to do some work. His former employees were asked by his business partner to keep an eye on him while the business was still in operation, because he would turn up in the morning and then just disappear down the pub and taking cocaine.

All I can see is chaos, and someone trying to give the impression of wealth (the Range Rover) while in reality she has spent half the time running around in vehicles I’ve paid half for just to keep her on the road. She also appears to be ignoring her declining health, has skin cancer that according to our son is spreading all over her head neck and shoulders, probably due to the drug use and avoiding the situation.

This does indeed like a nasty, manipulative, deliberate ploy to hurt you. No one can say for sure why he wrote this 'journal' and left it there, but genuine journal entries are typically written over time, whether regularly or sporadically, and show some fluctuation in mood, approach and subject, since our state of mind fluctuates over time - doubly so for an emotionally unstable person. It might be that he uses this journal specifically as an outlet for negative feelings about the relationship, but if that is the case, it is certainly not a fair or true picture of the last 12 years.