others' perspective on your exPBD

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

last night, i caught up with a mutual friend ("J" of mine and my exBPD's. my ex is a personal trainer and J was my ex's client. i hadn't spoken to J since my breakup and he very obviously didn't know the details. i was surprised to find they aren't friends any longer. J's words: "hell no, we weren't buddies... .he always seemed like he wasn't interested in anything i would talk about. like it was boring talking to me." he said he felt my ex never really cared about him as a client or friend and that while my ex is still hounding him to begin personal training again, J said he knows my ex just wants his money (which i know is 100% true).

it was a very eye-opening conversation. my ex is relatively high-functioning and portrays himself in public as this kind, motivational, inspirational fitness person. it makes me sick - if only anyone knew how he acted behind closed doors! anyhow, this was the first time i realized that maybe others can see chinks in his armor (so to speak), too.

has anyone else experienced this?

[pieceofme]

last night, i caught up with a mutual friend ("J" of mine and my exBPD's. my ex is a personal trainer and J was my ex's client. i hadn't spoken to J since my breakup and he very obviously didn't know the details. i was surprised to find they aren't friends any longer. J's words: "hell no, we weren't buddies... .he always seemed like he wasn't interested in anything i would talk about. like it was boring talking to me." he said he felt my ex never really cared about him as a client or friend and that while my ex is still hounding him to begin personal training again, J said he knows my ex just wants his money (which i know is 100% true).

it was a very eye-opening conversation. my ex is relatively high-functioning and portrays himself in public as this kind, motivational, inspirational fitness person. it makes me sick - if only anyone knew how he acted behind closed doors! anyhow, this was the first time i realized that maybe others can see chinks in his armor (so to speak), too.

has anyone else experienced this?

[tim_tom]

Yes and no... .I spoke with someone she worked with who she claimed to be great friends with, he trashed her pretty good.

But my family and friends were shocked. She was very outgoing and charming, also kept strict control on the flow of information about bad things. I faced dire repercussions if anything negative came out. I still think some of my family doesn't believe me about her.

I think when there is something in it for them, there external persona can be quite good

[Bak86]

Since we work together i know what other colleagues think of her. They used to think she was a normal girl. Now we're broken up she's gone bad. They all think she's nuts now and needs help. I think she will quit her job pretty soon.

[Pingo]

I have one good friend who we spent a lot of time with as we'd go visit her (10 hrs away) for days at a time.  She was able to see through it.  She witness the abuse and many ST over the different times we were up at her place.  But for my other friends who would see us just for an evening at a time, no, they had no idea anything was wrong.  So I am not sure if it was the duration of the time we spent with the friend or the fact we were so far from home that brought out the 'real' him.  His family is split.  Half think he is a 'victim' and the other half think he is totally at fault for the mess he's in.  Again, it's the family that he spends long periods of time with (the ones in another province) that see through his tales of being the victim.  

[Springle]

There were loads of stories about my personwBPD, loads.

She was generally not liked but she pushed and pulled a lot. You get people away from her and they would rip into her until the cows came home but she still somehow got them to hang out with her; it's like they could not escape either.

I actually recall her exh brother being particularly brutal about her, and yet, despite his fierce dislike of her, she managed to get in bed with him some months before she and my non-ex got together! There's a chance it could be a terrible lie but apparently a few ppl had heard this story... .though I think all from her. Was weird.

[maternal]

Thus far, I've only encountered one other person who saw the snake in my ex.  He saw it right away, actually.  He's my mentor and the two of them met just before I met my mentor, and on one of my first visits with said mentor, he mentioned that he'd never turn his back to my ex for fear of having his throat slit.  He tried to like him, to trust him, maybe out of care for me, but he never could muster the energy to actually want my ex in his life.  

[Bak86]

Actually my former team manager, who has adhd and probably a disorder as well(not sure which), always disliked my ex from the get go, he was kind of scared of her. Actually tried to get her fired, but because she was my girlfriend, he didn't. Maybe he saw right through her, because he can relate to her behavior?

[Infern0]

Mine was a low functioning waif.

General opinion of her amongst my friends and colleagues was very low.

"She's an attention seeker"

"I know what girls like her are like"

"Be careful with her"

"You could do so much better"

"She's crazy"

"She looks like someone who is going to snap one day and murder someone"

These were all comments from before anything even went wrong. She does her best but it appears that the vast majority do not fall for her act. She came across to me as just being very shy and quiet but most other people seemed to figure her out easily haha.

I was somewhat lucky because when ___ hit the fan and she started it with the accusations she was pretty much laughed at by all our mutual aquaintances and settled down pretty quick.

[JB8888]

There were high fives all round once I announced to my mates and family re. my breakup with my BPDexgf. Of course they knew I was in pain and were kind and sensitive but they all said "I never liked her. I never understood what you saw in her". Quite nice now not having to justify her crappy behaviour or not discuss our arguments because I knew my mates would say what the heck?

[hope2727]

My friends mostly went with him. Particularly my best friend. They see me as the manipulative one and him as the victim. Sigh. the smear campaign continues. Luckily I have reconnected with a few friends from long ago and they support me as eel as a few who knew us both and always felt he was "trying to hard".

[ReluctantSurvivor]

Short story, everone just sees my ex's behavior as a little bit of history repeating.  The things I hear now that we are separated are not positive things about her.  I guess folks kept quiet about it when were together because they knew my heart was in it.

Just last night a friend whe knows both of us (and her new source) told me I was welcome at his home, he didn't offer before because he couldn't stand my ex's personality.  He also told me he told my replacement, "Really dude, her?  You can do way better."

  To my knowledge she has not engaged in a mear campaign.  I am not out telling everyone the gory details either but it seems I don't have to.  She has done this all before.  Not really a bad girl, just a deeply disturbed girl.

[Blimblam]

Everyone likes my ex.

She went to a rehab for a while and everyone that worked their went out of their way to tell me she was their favorite patient. My family loved her. Everyone loves her. The severity of her borderline is low but she is very borderline. She's a waif that rarely rages I've never seen her rage. She does dysregulate though.

She's the quiet waif dominant type.

[findingmyselfagain]

I managed to get in touch with a few of her friends while I was tryign to figure out the sudden ending of our r/s. They recognized that she had a really horrible history of relationships and never heard her take any responsibility. They thought she and her family were a little off. They wondered how she fell so quickly for me, and were equally surprised at how fast things ended... .after she pretty much had everyone thinking that she thought I was wonderful. It's really mind-boggling. All the more reason to forget and move on to better things. IMO others can see the red flags easier than we could because we are deep in the honeymoon and who doesn't want to be in love/adored? But how much is too much?

[Mr Hollande]

My former boss never met her but he saw the effects on me when she was in my life. I met him after the break up and he said I looked younger and healthier now that I "had lost the baggage". His words spoke volumes.

[Lion Fire]

I spoke to a friend of mine last week who was once her employer, years ago.

We haven't been in contact over the last 6 months or so. It was a catch up. He asked me what happened between myself and my ex, I gave him a brief overview.

He knowingly chuckled... .His exact words were "she's cooked man, loaded up with Borderline Personality Disorder". He is the only person, apart from her therapist (who i met in a sit in session with my ex) to classify her as BPD. He said it was common knowledge in the workplace that she was BPD. He runs 12 Step Rehab Centres abroad. She was employed there for a few months but left abruptly in sketchy circumstances. He did not divulge the reasons apart from saying "she rubbed up against another BPD female employee and left" while he was out of the country.

Interesting. It blows away any doubt for me that she may not be BPD.

[camuse]

Some people saw through mine, but most were stunned when we broke up. They thought we were soulmates - she was very very plausible in public. I'm sure they still think I was the one at fault.

But the odd person admits they knew she wasn't quite right in some way.

She never had friends of her own. She said she had friends, in another city. But she never saw them or seemed to speak to the much. She wasn't nice about them. She left to live with them, and hadn't spent much time with them before. I wonder if they have seen through her yet.

[shellbent]

Since we work together i know what other colleagues think of her. They used to think she was a normal girl. Now we're broken up she's gone bad. They all think she's nuts now and needs help. I think she will quit her job pretty soon.

Interesting my ex was pretty down for a couple weeks, but honestly I can barely remember now. I was dying inside, but in only a month she was already looking much better, and honestly she became really popular at work. I mean she had no friends when we started going out, but now she is always hanging with people and she is getting so much attention. These coworkers are not people you could really consider serious friends. They are all much younger than my ex and she enjoys being around "younger" people. Something about her just changed all of the sudden and it makes me wonder how much of a BPD she really is. I guess when her life stabilizes a bit, she gets a lot of people to surround her and she starts chasing some guy. That is when they might feel some kind of peace. That is the feeling that I long for, that peace when nothing else exists in the world and you are just laying there happier than you've ever been.

But I guess it would take a large trigger, like getting too attached to someone and being afraid that they will abandon you.

So based on how serious the condition is, the more often these thoughts come out? Or a great question would be if someone is BPD, does that mean every single thought that they have is based on some confabulated image. In most cases hypersensitive response to something completely mundane.

Then idealization would have to happen to one to be exempt or free of fault and in this phase the fear of abandonment would not exist for the BPD?

Or do they go about there lives and pick it up where they last left off? Do they forget every problem that they had in the past? Or does it keep eating away at their minds like a twitch or a bug that you can't quite fumigate from their minds? And self-doubt arises around every corner.

[Turkish]

A few of my friends really liked her, but they are Rescuer types like me. A few others didn't at all, and barely kept their dislike in check for my sake. After we ended, they were more honest. My buddy's wife didn't like her within 5 mins of meeting, saying "she seemed fake." I attributed that all to the social anxiety and nervousness I picked up on from her within minutes of meeting her, too. I was more lenient for the obvious reasons, but I think I saw more through to the real hurt "girl" than others did. I usually try to look through the facade of people. My Ex doesn't, which is why she gets fooled by narcissists.

My ex made a comment to me in the beginning that her in first LTR before me, that her Ex's friends never liked her. It never occurred to me to ask the obvious: "Why didn't they like you?"

It's not something blatant, I don't think, but a gut instinct. She has a strong personality when it suits her, but is also shy and withdrawn sometimes. I think more people overall like her than don't, but there are not many who are really that close to her. She's even not that close to her siblings, especially after The Abandonment.

Adding: My mom tried to like her, but she and my mom didn't really get along. My Ex was pretty mean to my mom as well, but my mom has her own issues, being BPD and also being diagnosed with depression. My Ex has only been diagnosed with depression. Her BPD traits are my armchair dX.

When I shared my "diagnosis" with my mom, she replied, "of course she's BPD!" So my mom knew, but didn't say anything out of respect for me. My mom admitted to her BPD many months later, which made her earlier reply sensical, because it seemed odd to me that she was so sure.

[iluminati]

My friends and family didn't like my ex.  Then again, my ex managed to antagonize ALL of my close friends and family.  She saw them as threats telling me to get away from them.  While they weren't crazy about her, they also left me alone when it came to the relationship stuff.  It's like she thought if she didn't have me to herself, I would abandon her.  Also, she managed to screw over a lot of my family members good just to prove a point that she was in charge. 

Her family is generally clueless about her issues.  Then again, she left her hometown for college and made it a point to barely keep in touch.  They only know about the superficial stuff.  As far as they know, she still has custody of our daughter, which I just happen to have.  LOL

[Climbmountains91]

Me and his friend have become best friends in recent months (not in that way) and he said I've opened up his eyes about his behavior, after all that i told him about how i was treated etc... he could relate in some way and that he's friend has said "he's been his sheep for years" And so has his other friends that are a couple, they've said things to me about him and his behavior.

His other friends haven't seen the light yet because there still his sheep and because his got a ton of new supply at the moment there still in the baby stages, being idealized and mirrored, hopefully one day when they stop being immature like him they'll see through his clown show.