Likely neither you nor I nor many here ever had a realistic ability to stop the pattern of attacks (outbursts).

While that sinks in, we do have practical tools, communication skills, time-tested strategies, and more to help us address the other person's outbursts, rants and rages.  One approach may work for a while, until it doesn't.  Then other approaches can be included.  And so on.

Some of us have had people with BPD traits (pwBPD) that were relatively mild.  Perhaps described as quiet Borderlines.  They probably are more receptive and responsive to long term therapy.  Our better boundaries and communication skills may help, distance apart may help, meds may help, but the key is focused therapy.  And not just for the other, we too can benefit from therapy.  Partly it is us finding ways to address the issues better but in the final analysis it's in the other's hands as to whether they will face their core issues and truly seek recovery.  (And some therapists don't even try to name a disorder or name the therapy since even that can trigger denial and resistance.)

I hope that's the case because some who arrive here don't stay long enough or return to share their long term outcomes.

Just as all the members here can't be lumped into one neat category, the same goes for our loved ones, none of us have identical personalities.

My wife (stay at home mom) and I have been together for 23 years, and married for 15 year.  We have 2 kids (13 and 11 years old).
My wife has exhibited BPD traits for most of our relationship.  She has had pharma drug abuse/addiction issues in the first half of our togetherness (vicodin and suboxone).  She is no longer taking pharms (rehab), but now drinks regularly in the garage by herself.  She doesn't really have any friends (her last BFF died from a drug overdose ) and not a good relationship with her family - they have trouble being with her because of her BPD issues).
I was unfaithful to my wife with a co-worker in mid 2015 into 2017 (about 1.5 years).  My wife suspected the affair, but I lied and never admitted it.  That continued until fall 2023, when she started to have serious BPD/paranoia blowups every few days.  Yelling, screaming, spitting in my face, sometimes physically pushing or hitting me, sometimes destroying items around the house.  This caused me to leave the house in Nov. 2023, we lived separately for 6 months, and she filed for divorce.  During the separation, I admitted my affair to her, and fortunately (for me) we reconciled in April 2024. 
During our separation, I went to a lot of counseling, and my therapist informed me that my wife likely has BPD based on the symptoms I described.   The symptoms are:  at least since late 2023, she thinks I am stalking her, tracking her phone, controlling her car, the television, listening in on her phone calls, changing settings on her phone.  Alot of off-the-wall paranoid thoughts.  She splits, then verbally and physically lashes out at me, accusing me of doing those things, so that I know where she is at all of the time, so I can continue my affair(s).  The blowups are unprovoked by me (she gets triggered by all sorts of odd things). 
My wife is undiagnosed.  She refuses to seek therapy or treatment of any kind.  She says I made her this way, and that I'm the one who needs treatment.
I would appreciate any help or guidance on how to finally get my wife into treatment (for her, for us, for our kids).  Especially since she doesn't trust me because of my past infidelity, and no relationship/reliance on her family or friends.

You see now that her sexual orientation and her use of drugs are not in the past.

BPD affects all relationships. It's not a surprise that it impacts this new one too.

More importantly, you know how you feel about a third person in your relationship and can pay attention to that, because this actually is a third person in your relationship- whether it is male or female.

Take away the additional descriptors. These are not the main issue in the relationship.

At the core of this is monogomy. You can't control any one else. You can be empathetic to someone's gender confusion, and be an ally to someone who is LGBTQ and in addition, want to be in a monogomous romantic relationship. Regardless- if one person wants monogomy in a romantic relationship, and the other one doesn't- it's a problem whether it's a same sex orientation or not.

One difficult aspect of the kind of dynamics in your relationship is losing focus of your own feelings and thinking while buying into the pwBPD's emotional thinking. Your wife is not going to own her part in this situation. She will "rationalize"  it from her own victim perspective. ie, she isn't breaking the marital agreement- she will instead say you are forcing her to be monogomous and keeping her from discovering herself.

Fact is- she can do whatever she chooses, but there are consequences to actions. In a monogomous relationship, someone can stray- but the consequence may be the loss of the relationship. She wants the freedom and not the consequences. Why not? If people could do whatever they wanted with another attractive person and not have any consequences- maybe more people would do it? But that's not how a monogomous marriage usually works. There are consequences.

Truly- it's up to you to decide what your feelings are and what the consequences of your wife having outside relationships are going to be. That's a difficult situation.

SuperDaddy, something just occurred to me: he took a certain antidepressant for a few months. During that time, it was sometimes possible to catch him! He was in a completely different mood, with significantly less tension in his body. It was really noticeable.
Unfortunately, his doctor switched him to a different medication at some point because it allegedly caused abnormalities in his ECG. Since then, everything has been back to normal and he is impossible to catch when the dysregulation starts.

Hi SuperDaddy,

That's interesting. When you say that you said no clearly from the outset in your relationships, does that mean that your partners knew that about you from the start?

For a while, I had the theory that a ‘no’ from me became increasingly difficult for him to tolerate over the course of the relationship because I was so co-dependent at the beginning and really went out of my way to please him and avoid dysregulation at all costs, and only started to set boundaries over time – and this boundary setting was simply unfamiliar to him.

Just to mention it: trying to please him didn't help either. He still became dysregulated – because it could also have been the outside world that triggered him and I was only being used by him to regulate his emotions.

To answer your question: no, I never criticised him and I also made a conscious effort not to use ‘you’ messages.

But of course I had to say no from time to time. For example, when he wanted to meet up with me at a time when I simply couldn't because I had to be there for my son or had an important appointment, etc. That was enough to make him feel rejected. And no matter how lovingly and compassionately I told him that I knew it made him sad and that I myself thought it was a shame, but that it couldn't be changed and we would make up for it, it didn't help.

Weeks later, he often told me the exact wording of HOW I should have communicated my rejection or my ‘no’ to him, and every time I felt really cheated because I had said it almost exactly that way. BUT - in his dysregulated state, it clearly did not come across that way to him.

The situation in which I gave him the above answer was after he got drunk on New Year's Eve. Since he is a binge drinker and I have already experienced bad situations with him when he is drunk, I communicated to him a long time ago that I would have no contact with him as long as I could not be sure that he was sober. I need a clear, honest statement from him: ‘I'm sober again.’ He knows that.
Nevertheless, he contacted me drunk on New Year's Eve via text and tried to call me. I did not respond and stuck to my boundary.
After that, he sent me photos and jokes for days and wished me a happy new year. I replied to every message with my standard text saying that I cannot have any contact if I cannot be sure that he is sober. I wanted to signal to him that I am there, but that he has to position himself for any exchange.

This caused him to freak out and shift the blame: I had withdrawn over Christmas, he had had crises that I hadn't responded to (I didn't know anything about this because HE had withdrawn over Christmas), HE had contacted me on New Year's Eve, but I hadn't contacted him (of course not – he was drunk and my boundaries apply)...


I haven't yet had a situation where he left things at my place and wanted to use that as an excuse to come over to me. But I have had a situation where he wrote to me saying that he had gastroenteritis and was feeling sooo ill, and he wanted me to drive the 50 km to him IMMEDIATELY, even though he knew full well that I couldn't because of other commitments that day. I didn't have a car that day either because it was in the garage. I had already texted him early in the morning that I would cook him some soup and bring it to him first thing the next morning.

So he knew I was thinking of him and cared about him, and I told him that he could of course call me in an emergency and we would find a solution.

I wrote to him in an incredibly loving and empathetic way, saying that I could imagine he was feeling awful.

It didn't help. He insulted me, accused me, played the poor victim that nobody loves... He didn't want the soup anymore, and he didn't want me to visit him the next day either. Instead, he started drinking.

To be honest, I don't think you can counteract a dysregulated state if it was a strong trigger.

Maybe someone else has had different experiences. I'm curious to hear about them!

Triangulation - didn’t think of it that way.  Yes, this is what I feel is happening, and why I feel an open relationship would not work with a pwBPD.  The two romantic partners woild never be on equal footing.  One is always white, the other black.  If she got into an argument with me, she runs to her.  And vice versa.  I don’t see how there would not be constant drama. 

It’s already happened.  She got really upset that the woman she is interested in had a date with another woman.  In other words, upset that this woman did not want to be monogamous.  I knew W was somewhat bisexual when we got married, but she hd basically told me that was in her past (the drug use part of her past).  I was trying to be empathetic to W’s confusion here, but the jealousy and double standard toward her new romantic interest was a a real eye opener. 

Hi hiiumaa ,

Thanks for your response. So you have never criticized, rejected, or disapproved of anything about him? And you tried to avoid saying no?


I'm curious, what was he asking you? Did he want you to stay in your place or store something there so that he would have an excuse to go to your place frequently?

In all of my relationships, whenever I need to say NO and put limits, I do it firmly, even in the beginning of the relationship. I think that has been helpful in a way, but saying no when they are dysregulated is a problem. Maybe the problem is within the emotion we feel when we say it? Maybe saying no when feeling empathy would work? I know we can't just turn a switch and choose our emotions, but just saying.

Max, I think this comes down to you, your values, and boundaries.

Other people may have experience with poly relationships but what can work for one person doesn't necessarily work with others. If someone else finds that manageable, that doesn't mean you have to. From what I have heard- (and I don't have experience with this) is that a poly relationship is agreeable to all involved. However, this isn't currently a poly relationship. Your wife has entered a romantic relationship outside the marriage without you knowing.

You and your wife have been married in a monogomous relationship. She went on a dating site and didn't tell you and  began a romantic relationship with someone else. That's not being poly, it's infidelity.

IMHO, this is also a triangulation.  Likely, she got attention and that felt good and now the new person is painted "white" for now.

It's good that you didn't just give in but IMHO, more importantly- are your boundaries on this. If your value is that your marriage is monogomous- then whatever sexual orientation your wife is- she married you. Now she wants to change the terms of the marriage. If she doesn't want to keep the marriage monogomous, it's your choice whether or not to continue in this relationship.

What she's asking is to have both- you as the supportive husband and her affair partner. You aren't trapping her in the marriage and forcing her to be monogomous. You married with the intention of a monogomous relationship. She could decide to leave the marriage too- but you've been a support to her- she wants to have both.

This is not about whether or not one has tolerance or acceptance for LGBTQ. It's about crossing the line from friendship to more when someone is married and this applies to same sex and heterosexual relationships too.

A dating site is a dating site. It's not where you find just friends. If someone is in a monogomous marriage and they go on a dating site for either men or women, and enters into another relationship, this is a violation of the marriage agreement.

If I could draw on my own experience with my BPD mother, something like this would have been one of her projected "solutions" to her internal emotional distress and a new "identity" due to her poor sense of self and friend group. She didn't consider LGBTQ at the time because in her era, people were more closeted. In her era the women's movement was beginning- and so she embraced that- but more as an identity than in actions, but in general, none of her external focuses were effective as a solution to her BPD.

Although BPD mother threatened divorce from time to time, she didn't actually follow through with that. I don't know if there was infidelity or not. As to my father- he may have gotten upset about her behavior but he too, didn't follow through with a divorce. I don't know all the reasons why but I think one aspect is the push pull nature of the dynamics. There'd be a situation that was distressing like yours is now, but then, when BPD mother sensed she may have pushed too far, her behavior would settle, things would be calm again for a while and the sense of needing to do something would would be less.

The decision is actually yours Max. Is this a deal breaker for you? Or is this going to be one more wave to ride out? My guess is that the luster of the new person isn't going to be the solution your wife is seeking. She's going to realize at one point that her new paramour is human too, like you are, like everyone else is, and that all relationships can get complicated. It doesn't seem like she wants to leave the marriage.

Your part is to decide what you want to do. There's no right or wrong answer. What you can't control are your wife's feelings or actions about it. In any marriage, over time, we encounter people who we may find attractive. Our decision is what we do about it. It can happen that someone realizes they are same sex attracted years into a heterosexual marriage. Some couples work this out and for some, it can't work out. Some people remain together when there's infidelity, some don't.

Your part is to figure out your feelings and what your boundaries are.

Hi SuperDaddy,

I would also like to know the answer to this question.

I can only tell you from my own experience that it wasn't enough to always be there for him.

I never used phrases like the ones you listed either. In the initial co-dependency phase, I tried to please him in every way and would not have spoken to him like that.

Later, when I'd really had enough, I had already read/heard so much about BPD and NPD that I knew validation and non-violent communication were the better options.

The fact was that this couldn't stop the outbursts.

In the last nine months of the relationship, I even asked artificial intelligence for help in critical situations when exchanging text messages, asking for the best possible, most empathetic and validating response, but one that was calm and clearly setting boundaries at the same time.

An example of a response I gave after distorted facts, blame shifting and accusations came up: ‘Xy, I have read what you wrote and I can see that you are very upset. At the same time, I stand by what I said: I cannot take responsibility for something that is not mine.’

This was followed by a complete break in contact after further accusations.

I have also added the following to such responses: ‘... We can now take a 30-minute break and continue writing when we have calmed down.’

That did not help either.

A therapist once said that in such moments, the old trauma is triggered too strongly and without the tools they would learn in therapy, they have no chance of calming themselves down.
Their nervous system is in survival mode and clear thinking is no longer possible. They feel like the helpless child again.

I am curious to hear what experiences others have had!

As somebody most likely on the spectrum, whose ex has uBPD, I relate to this. For me I think the appeal is that I like puzzles, and like fixing things, and my ex is quite the puzzle, and needs quite a bit of fixing. Add to that the single-mindedness that also comes with my autism, and I can see how I’ve gotten so stuck on the idea of being with and now mending the relationship with my ex.