Ex displaying bpd traits

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

Hi all. I am new to the site. I have a marriage that has broken down and believe my ex has bpd traits. I’d like to write my story and listen to peoples opinion, as from what I have already read on the internet we are all in the same boat and suffer similar behaviour patterns in our relationships.

First a little bit about myself. I am a 50 year old male. I’m an introvert, I am quite shy, reserved and believe I have good morals and from what I am told by most people I meet, am a good person. I am however going through the process of a late diagnosis for adhd and autism. This would be on the lower end of the spectrum, I was very hyperactive as a kid but now am one of the most laid back people you are ever likely to meet. I value honesty and justice, which I believe the autism brings out in me, but accept that the autism can make me difficult to live with at times.

My wife, my ex although we are still married is 46. She is the opposite, extroverted and high energy. She is ambitious, hard working and confident in her approach to pretty much everything. A little about her background as it may be important. She is the eldest of three siblings. Her mother was very strict, and quite cold hearted. I believe she has never told her children she loves them or been one for giving them hugs and kisses. This stems from her own upbringing, her mother was from what I have been told, possibly into prostitution, would neglect her children and had been sectioned several times. One time she came out of institution and moved in with my wife’s family when she was a child. This had a traumatic effect on my wife’s sister, leading her to sleep at night with a knife under her pillow. My wife clashed with her grandmother and were quite alike. Her father was a long distance lorry driver and workaholic so not often around, but was a loving, if strict father.

So, what makes me believe my wife has bpd? For that I need to start before we were even together. One of my best friends I have known since we were 5 years old. His sister is the same age as my wife and they were and still are best friends. From the age of about 12 years old my wife fancied me. From the age of about 15 she actively tried forming a relationship with me, love bombed me, would buy me chocolate etc whenever she went in the local shop, would try and sabotage any relationships I tried to have with other girls. She was immature and prone to not telling the truth, or over inflating the truth, and came across as quite pushy and controlling. A couple of years went by and she went off and did her own thing for a bit, which included going off the rails somewhat, amphetamine addiction and promiscuity, a relationship with a heroin addict. She then had a relationship for a while with a lad her own age that seemed quite stable. He was actually the brother of my ex girlfriend.
After they split up we started hanging around and formed a bond, by this time she was 17 and had appeared to grow up a lot. After some months we started a relationship and she became very attached, even coming to work with me on her days off.

When she was 18 her parents made her move out, as she was a difficult child. She rented a flat with a friend of hers. I would stay the night, and for about a year only stayed at home one night. This was because I was given the guilt trip for wanting to go home and not spend all my time with her. During this time we would go to bed, and I would be bombarded with questions as to why I had slept with my girlfriend, if I was going to run off with my ex and leave her, because when we first got together and she stayed the night at my house she found an old letter that I had thrown in my desk drawer from my ex wanting to get back with me. I told her that was an old letter and I had told my ex I wasn’t interested but the fear of abandonment and the questioning carried on for about 2 hours ever night when we went to bed, for about 3 years!
Then, at the age of 18 she fell pregnant. We moved into our own house shortly after my wife gave birth, but the questions still continued.

I had been a courier since leaving college and my job would mean the hours were never set in stone, as I could be stuck in traffic. I would be given a hard time for going to work. I would be given a hard time for coming home late, even if it was just 10 minutes late. I would have her on the phone as soon as my official work hours were over, ranting at me until I got home, which could be an hour of verbal abuse. She even went to my place of work and ranted at my boss.
She asked me to quit my job so she could work full time and I look after the kids, so I did. However my boss wasn’t happy about it and asked if it would work for us if I worked part time, so I did that, worked part time and took my young children with me so I was doing the child care and working at the same time.

She then formed a friendship with someone at work, that became her new best friend. She was a toxic person, she had a lovely, hard working husband but was sleeping around behind his back. Their marriage broke down and my wife sided with the husband. She had been going round her new best friends house after work, and not coming home until 10:30-11pm, but now she would be out until around 12:30-1am and I started messaging to see where she had got to. When I cleaned my car out I started finding fuel receipts and parking tickets miles away from where she said she had been at various times. She suggested I went out for a drink with one of my mates, which she never did as she didn’t like me having any time to myself, so I thought that was odd. I even mentioned to my friend that something was off, and when I got home my wife was acting very strangely. That night I checked her phone and found messages from her friends husband about meeting at the usual place. I confronted my wife about this and she admitted to meeting up with him to discuss his marital problems, but she said nothing had gone on with them, which I am doubting is true. However, she did admit to sleeping with someone else behind my back. Her friend knew about it and had threatened to tell me if she didn’t leave her husband alone.

We split up for a few months, but by that time I had become trauma bonded. We got back together but in hindsight with little accountability from my wife’s side.
Life seemed to return to ‘normal’ after a while. I struggled to get over my wife’s infidelity until I became emotionally involved with someone that had been there for me throughout my wife’s infidelity, but after I snapped out of it realised we are all human and prone to making mistakes, to learn from it and not make them again.

My wife had opened a new business, which I supported her with. She then opened another branch of the business, again with my full support and even completely gutting the premises and re fitting it for her. She then opened yet another business, in a run down building next to her original one that I spent a year renovating as it was in such a derelict state and also lockdown happened a few months after signing the lease. During this time we had both started using drugs. I hated it, and had pleaded with her to stop. She had a new best friend, and her husband was selling it. My wife’s business were quite badly in debt, due to large overdraft, furlough payments, bounce back loans and credit cards. I was becoming more withdrawn and couldn’t function because of the drugs, and stopped giving my wife money for it in the hope it would stop enabling her, yet somehow she seemed to get more and more supply of it, and would start hiding it from me so I didn’t know how bad her addiction had got. 3 months before we split up, she had gone on holiday abroad with her best friend, (the first one at the beginning of my post, that she has known all her life) and her best friends mum. Every night she would phone me. Every day she would message me telling me that she loved me, she missed me so much, and that she hated going away without me and never wanted to do it again.

 While she was away her new best friend messaged her. She had been caught cheating behind her husbands back. We had literally just got a new puppy, so everything seemed fine. But then she did what she had done before, and became the shoulder for the husband, although this time saying she needed to be there for both of them as he hasn’t really got anyone. Now, there is a reason for that. There is a reason why his wife left him. He had been a drug addict for 30+ years, he was emotionally and physically abusive towards her, a compulsive liar, and didn’t even sleep in the same building as his wife. A lot of people I know that know him don’t like him, and my gut told me something was off with him the first time I met him, as it has with both our adult children. He would come round our house and I would listen to the toxic stuff he would come out with, with a feeling that he is quite narcissistic, but I tolerated it because I felt sorry for him. However, what was really going on I now believe, is my wife was grooming him, listening to all his financial situation and scheming to keep it all from his wife. He has a bit of money, and had sold his half of a building company.
My wife had been talking to all her wealthy clients about the hardship her business was going through and I know of at least 4 of them that had actually offered her money to help bail her out. She hasn’t accepted any yet, but has another wealthy client that is vulnerable as she lost her husband through covid and has developed a drink problem, and just before we split up my wife said she would have to move in with her and look after her. Then, her friends marriage breakup I believe provided an opportunity to monkey branch to someone that has money behind him, owns his own house (we rent and my wife has always been jealous of her friends that live in houses their husbands or partners have bought) and also the fact that they both like taking drugs, both have alcohol abuse problems, and both, I believe, have personality disorders.

Having lost her latest best friend by becoming embroiled with yet another husband going through marital problems (there was also a third one early on in our relationship before we had kids) she now has a new best friend, the wife of her new boyfriends best friend, who had a terrible first marriage so no doubt convinced my wife to leave our marriage.

So, we split up and she monkey branched straight into a relationship with her last best friends husband/drug dealer.
I told her to move out of our home and move in with him as it’s unfair I am sleeping on our sons couch while she carries on as if nothing happened. She agreed to move out, but not move in with him and got herself another property to rent. She stayed in this for a year. Every morning for that year she would message me first thing every morning. For that year she would manipulate me into going round her house and sleeping with her. She would tell me that she wasn’t on drugs, but every time I’ve seen her she sounds like she has been on drugs. She has admitted doing it once with him, only for me to catch her coming out of another drug dealers house weeks after admitting she had done it once. She was still drinking heavily although that has stopped.

I will get triggered when she messages  me and tell her some home truths which always leads her to block me, only to unblock me again within a matter of days. It’s two years since she left, but a few weeks ago I sent her a random message early one morning that went straight onto read, which leads me to believe she was sitting there early in the morning staring at messages between us on her phone when my message was sent. Her sister tells me she is still miserable, moans about his kids, moans about him taking her on holiday (she used to moan at me for not taking her on holiday but I could never book anything because of her business commitments) and I get the feeling she is only with him for financial gain, and maybe the lack of fear of abandonment because she isn’t really that invested in him. She did say when we split up that she doesn’t want to destroy me but it doesn’t matter if she destroys him.

There are many other things that make me question if she has bpd. The double standards. Ghosting her boyfriend after they have been abroad on holiday and text bombing me instead (possibly due to lack of drug availability while on holiday) Rage, she suggested I go on a dating site then assaulted me after I went on a date, insecurity if I didn’t answer the phone or text her back immediately. Devaluation, being told I am horrible, or selfish when I had done nothing to deserve it and so on.

If you have got this far, well done and thank you. I’m sorry it’s such a long post, but I’ve tried to condense some of the 27 years into what I have written. I have been in a relationship for the last 6 months with someone that appears normal, and to be honest it feels a little alien to me, which is another reason that makes me question if my wife is borderline. If it sounds like I’m likely to have to deal with her devaluing and discarding her boyfriend and trying to put me through it all again.

[Rowdy]

Hi all. I am new to the site. I have a marriage that has broken down and believe my ex has bpd traits. I’d like to write my story and listen to peoples opinion, as from what I have already read on the internet we are all in the same boat and suffer similar behaviour patterns in our relationships.

First a little bit about myself. I am a 50 year old male. I’m an introvert, I am quite shy, reserved and believe I have good morals and from what I am told by most people I meet, am a good person. I am however going through the process of a late diagnosis for adhd and autism. This would be on the lower end of the spectrum, I was very hyperactive as a kid but now am one of the most laid back people you are ever likely to meet. I value honesty and justice, which I believe the autism brings out in me, but accept that the autism can make me difficult to live with at times.

My wife, my ex although we are still married is 46. She is the opposite, extroverted and high energy. She is ambitious, hard working and confident in her approach to pretty much everything. A little about her background as it may be important. She is the eldest of three siblings. Her mother was very strict, and quite cold hearted. I believe she has never told her children she loves them or been one for giving them hugs and kisses. This stems from her own upbringing, her mother was from what I have been told, possibly into prostitution, would neglect her children and had been sectioned several times. One time she came out of institution and moved in with my wife’s family when she was a child. This had a traumatic effect on my wife’s sister, leading her to sleep at night with a knife under her pillow. My wife clashed with her grandmother and were quite alike. Her father was a long distance lorry driver and workaholic so not often around, but was a loving, if strict father.

So, what makes me believe my wife has bpd? For that I need to start before we were even together. One of my best friends I have known since we were 5 years old. His sister is the same age as my wife and they were and still are best friends. From the age of about 12 years old my wife fancied me. From the age of about 15 she actively tried forming a relationship with me, love bombed me, would buy me chocolate etc whenever she went in the local shop, would try and sabotage any relationships I tried to have with other girls. She was immature and prone to not telling the truth, or over inflating the truth, and came across as quite pushy and controlling. A couple of years went by and she went off and did her own thing for a bit, which included going off the rails somewhat, amphetamine addiction and promiscuity, a relationship with a heroin addict. She then had a relationship for a while with a lad her own age that seemed quite stable. He was actually the brother of my ex girlfriend.
After they split up we started hanging around and formed a bond, by this time she was 17 and had appeared to grow up a lot. After some months we started a relationship and she became very attached, even coming to work with me on her days off.

When she was 18 her parents made her move out, as she was a difficult child. She rented a flat with a friend of hers. I would stay the night, and for about a year only stayed at home one night. This was because I was given the guilt trip for wanting to go home and not spend all my time with her. During this time we would go to bed, and I would be bombarded with questions as to why I had slept with my girlfriend, if I was going to run off with my ex and leave her, because when we first got together and she stayed the night at my house she found an old letter that I had thrown in my desk drawer from my ex wanting to get back with me. I told her that was an old letter and I had told my ex I wasn’t interested but the fear of abandonment and the questioning carried on for about 2 hours ever night when we went to bed, for about 3 years!
Then, at the age of 18 she fell pregnant. We moved into our own house shortly after my wife gave birth, but the questions still continued.

I had been a courier since leaving college and my job would mean the hours were never set in stone, as I could be stuck in traffic. I would be given a hard time for going to work. I would be given a hard time for coming home late, even if it was just 10 minutes late. I would have her on the phone as soon as my official work hours were over, ranting at me until I got home, which could be an hour of verbal abuse. She even went to my place of work and ranted at my boss.
She asked me to quit my job so she could work full time and I look after the kids, so I did. However my boss wasn’t happy about it and asked if it would work for us if I worked part time, so I did that, worked part time and took my young children with me so I was doing the child care and working at the same time.

She then formed a friendship with someone at work, that became her new best friend. She was a toxic person, she had a lovely, hard working husband but was sleeping around behind his back. Their marriage broke down and my wife sided with the husband. She had been going round her new best friends house after work, and not coming home until 10:30-11pm, but now she would be out until around 12:30-1am and I started messaging to see where she had got to. When I cleaned my car out I started finding fuel receipts and parking tickets miles away from where she said she had been at various times. She suggested I went out for a drink with one of my mates, which she never did as she didn’t like me having any time to myself, so I thought that was odd. I even mentioned to my friend that something was off, and when I got home my wife was acting very strangely. That night I checked her phone and found messages from her friends husband about meeting at the usual place. I confronted my wife about this and she admitted to meeting up with him to discuss his marital problems, but she said nothing had gone on with them, which I am doubting is true. However, she did admit to sleeping with someone else behind my back. Her friend knew about it and had threatened to tell me if she didn’t leave her husband alone.

We split up for a few months, but by that time I had become trauma bonded. We got back together but in hindsight with little accountability from my wife’s side.
Life seemed to return to ‘normal’ after a while. I struggled to get over my wife’s infidelity until I became emotionally involved with someone that had been there for me throughout my wife’s infidelity, but after I snapped out of it realised we are all human and prone to making mistakes, to learn from it and not make them again.

My wife had opened a new business, which I supported her with. She then opened another branch of the business, again with my full support and even completely gutting the premises and re fitting it for her. She then opened yet another business, in a run down building next to her original one that I spent a year renovating as it was in such a derelict state and also lockdown happened a few months after signing the lease. During this time we had both started using drugs. I hated it, and had pleaded with her to stop. She had a new best friend, and her husband was selling it. My wife’s business were quite badly in debt, due to large overdraft, furlough payments, bounce back loans and credit cards. I was becoming more withdrawn and couldn’t function because of the drugs, and stopped giving my wife money for it in the hope it would stop enabling her, yet somehow she seemed to get more and more supply of it, and would start hiding it from me so I didn’t know how bad her addiction had got. 3 months before we split up, she had gone on holiday abroad with her best friend, (the first one at the beginning of my post, that she has known all her life) and her best friends mum. Every night she would phone me. Every day she would message me telling me that she loved me, she missed me so much, and that she hated going away without me and never wanted to do it again.

 While she was away her new best friend messaged her. She had been caught cheating behind her husbands back. We had literally just got a new puppy, so everything seemed fine. But then she did what she had done before, and became the shoulder for the husband, although this time saying she needed to be there for both of them as he hasn’t really got anyone. Now, there is a reason for that. There is a reason why his wife left him. He had been a drug addict for 30+ years, he was emotionally and physically abusive towards her, a compulsive liar, and didn’t even sleep in the same building as his wife. A lot of people I know that know him don’t like him, and my gut told me something was off with him the first time I met him, as it has with both our adult children. He would come round our house and I would listen to the toxic stuff he would come out with, with a feeling that he is quite narcissistic, but I tolerated it because I felt sorry for him. However, what was really going on I now believe, is my wife was grooming him, listening to all his financial situation and scheming to keep it all from his wife. He has a bit of money, and had sold his half of a building company.
My wife had been talking to all her wealthy clients about the hardship her business was going through and I know of at least 4 of them that had actually offered her money to help bail her out. She hasn’t accepted any yet, but has another wealthy client that is vulnerable as she lost her husband through covid and has developed a drink problem, and just before we split up my wife said she would have to move in with her and look after her. Then, her friends marriage breakup I believe provided an opportunity to monkey branch to someone that has money behind him, owns his own house (we rent and my wife has always been jealous of her friends that live in houses their husbands or partners have bought) and also the fact that they both like taking drugs, both have alcohol abuse problems, and both, I believe, have personality disorders.

Having lost her latest best friend by becoming embroiled with yet another husband going through marital problems (there was also a third one early on in our relationship before we had kids) she now has a new best friend, the wife of her new boyfriends best friend, who had a terrible first marriage so no doubt convinced my wife to leave our marriage.

So, we split up and she monkey branched straight into a relationship with her last best friends husband/drug dealer.
I told her to move out of our home and move in with him as it’s unfair I am sleeping on our sons couch while she carries on as if nothing happened. She agreed to move out, but not move in with him and got herself another property to rent. She stayed in this for a year. Every morning for that year she would message me first thing every morning. For that year she would manipulate me into going round her house and sleeping with her. She would tell me that she wasn’t on drugs, but every time I’ve seen her she sounds like she has been on drugs. She has admitted doing it once with him, only for me to catch her coming out of another drug dealers house weeks after admitting she had done it once. She was still drinking heavily although that has stopped.

I will get triggered when she messages  me and tell her some home truths which always leads her to block me, only to unblock me again within a matter of days. It’s two years since she left, but a few weeks ago I sent her a random message early one morning that went straight onto read, which leads me to believe she was sitting there early in the morning staring at messages between us on her phone when my message was sent. Her sister tells me she is still miserable, moans about his kids, moans about him taking her on holiday (she used to moan at me for not taking her on holiday but I could never book anything because of her business commitments) and I get the feeling she is only with him for financial gain, and maybe the lack of fear of abandonment because she isn’t really that invested in him. She did say when we split up that she doesn’t want to destroy me but it doesn’t matter if she destroys him.

There are many other things that make me question if she has bpd. The double standards. Ghosting her boyfriend after they have been abroad on holiday and text bombing me instead (possibly due to lack of drug availability while on holiday) Rage, she suggested I go on a dating site then assaulted me after I went on a date, insecurity if I didn’t answer the phone or text her back immediately. Devaluation, being told I am horrible, or selfish when I had done nothing to deserve it and so on.

If you have got this far, well done and thank you. I’m sorry it’s such a long post, but I’ve tried to condense some of the 27 years into what I have written. I have been in a relationship for the last 6 months with someone that appears normal, and to be honest it feels a little alien to me, which is another reason that makes me question if my wife is borderline. If it sounds like I’m likely to have to deal with her devaluing and discarding her boyfriend and trying to put me through it all again.

[Gemsforeyes]

Hi Rowdy -
Welcome to the site.  I’m very sorry for what you and your family have endured over the years…very painful and confusing experiences.  A whole lot of silently “forgiving and forgetting” and attempts at burying of hurtful behavior.  And I have to wonder how these things were explained to your kids.

What is kind of clear is that she viewed you as so loyal that no matter what she did, you’d be there as a pretty soft landing spot.  Is that still true?  A good question to ask yourself…maybe in therapy?

At this point, after 27 years, I’m not sure whether a diagnosis of BPD, NPD or any other combination of personality disorders really matters… the damage and fallout is pretty evident in your words. And it’s doubtful your exW will seek therapy for her actions anyway.  Correct?

On the bright side though, seeking help for *her* is not what this ought to be about anymore, no matter what.  I believe we ultimately have to look deeply at ourselves in the mirror and ask “WHY”?  To all of it. 

-Why did we accept what we accepted - over and over and over.
-Why did we *follow* partners into destructive actions we knew would lead to nothing good?  Was it to avoid the end of our lives as we knew them?
-Why did we behave as if we had no control or agency over our own lives? 
-Was it “love”?  Codependency?  Fear?
-What can we do for ourselves so that this REALLY is *IT*.  The end.  So that we can let it be.  Meaning there is nothing more we need to do for that past relationship.  So that we can let it BE over.

I don’t know about your situation, but I have thoughts about my own.

You say you’ve entered into a new relationship and she “appears normal”.  I’m obviously in no position to assume anything about that; however it seems you continue to struggle with certain thoughts.  Maybe, just maybe you have some areas to work through before your heart is healed.

My friend, you’ve been through a lot.  27 years of chaotic and painful love doesn’t stop just because your wife leaves the house and says the love is done. 

I will say what I learned after 26.5 years of disordered romantic relationships is that I could not love someone to wellness.  The rest was on me to fix myself.

I hope you truly take care of yourself.  And your kids…how are they?

Your thoughts?

Warmly,
Gemsforeyes

[Rowdy]

Hello Gemsforeyes, thanks for your warm welcome.

I would say that definitely co dependant. I did love her with all my heart, but it was never enough. I think some of that is because someone that has bpd sees themselves with little self worth and maybe didn’t allow herself to believe I really did love her. She did actually say words to that effect post break up.

There is much I haven’t written, much I have forgotten. I don’t know if she viewed me as loyal, as her jealousy and accusations would be pretty extreme. She has a business partner and women that work for her, and if they ever asked me to go and do some work at their houses I would be given the guilt trip, or made to feel as though she didn’t trust me to go round their house. When we split up the first time because of her infidelity, she accused me, or questioned me if I was the father of one of our friends children, that was born a little while after our separation, even though I hadn’t even seen or spoken to the friend for a few years.

I think she knows deep down that is nonsense though, but I know she definitely viewed me as her safety blanket. Even to this day, two years later, she will not admit to anything having gone on with the guy she monkey branched with two weeks after our relationship ended. She will not admit to having had any feelings for him whatsoever until weeks after we split up which is nonsense.

The break up was initiated because he took his kids to Monaco after his marriage breakup. A couple of days after he flew out, my wife was acting strange one night. The following day my wife was out and rang me asking to find her passport, that her newest best friend wanted her to go to Monaco and would pay for it because their ‘friend’ was having a break down and needed help. I didn’t want her to go but felt I couldn’t stop her as that would make things worse. She rang one night she was there and I wasn’t happy, and said would talk about it when she got home, but she kept pushing for me to explain why I wasn’t happy. When she got back we had an argument which ended up in where we are now.

She then sent his wife, one of her best friends up to that point, a really snide provocative message saying how she had gone to Monaco with her husband and felt guilty for spending time with her kids, and they are such lovely children. Her exact words to me when she arrived home from Monaco was “that [insert child’s name] is a little c**t”. These are the children that I mentioned in my first post “do her head in” according to her sister.

A couple of weeks after we split up I saw my wife blind drunk driving up the road to pick him up and smuggle him into our house. This was before she moved out of it so I could move back in, and our youngest son that absolutely hates the bloke was out. I went to go round and saw them having sex through the window. I then rang her and asked her what she was doing, to which she replied she was doing some washing. At this point she was still claiming she had no interest in him. I asked to come round for a chat, and explained I had seen her having sex with him so she can stop the BS.

After I left, she immediately messaged his wife telling her that she had sex with her husband and I had caught them so it didn’t go too well. What she hadn’t  realised is her iPhone was connected to our iPad and all these messages, photos etc that she would delete would go into the deleted folder on the iPad, and I was able to see exactly what she had been doing. For some reason she would screen shot the messages and then delete them.

The kids, well they are ok….. now. My eldest lives just up the road from me, and when we split up I spent a few months sleeping on his sofa. He is pretty screwed on, and can see the behaviour his mother has displayed is “disgusting” in his own words. He had recently split up with his girlfriend of 5 years, after she started cheating on him, taking drugs and drinking heavily, so similar behaviour to my wife. Now, my wife was always very vocal about the fact she didn’t like her and she wasn’t good enough for our son, but do you know what she did when she moved out of our home into another place…. She offered the girl that had messed her son up in the same way she did me a place to stay! He loves his mum, but after meeting my new girlfriend for the first time he turned round to me and said that she is a much better person than his mum. My youngest lives with me. He is also pretty savvy too but last year he nearly tried to kill himself by driving into a tree. He swerved out of the way at the last minute although damaged his car in the process, then just stopped at the side of the road and rang me broken down in tears. I had some months previously nearly jumped off beachy head but was stopped by the police before I did.

I know having a label for it is not going to help anything, it would just bring a little clarity and put my mind at ease that I am not insane, that there is a reason for her behaviour, that it isnt all in my head, that it wasn’t all my fault, and that she isn’t just an inherently toxic person and there is a neurological reason for it all.

I know she wouldn’t accept a diagnosis, I have mentioned to her the possibility that she has a disorder which she dismissed and told me to stick her traits and insecurities up my a**e sideways.

I am far better, far more stable than I was. Yes, there are still issues and insecurities that I now have, having been very secure in myself up until the marriage failed. My new girlfriend has been there from a couple of months after my breakup. She has listened to what I’ve been through and she has been there for me, for around 18 months. About 3 months after getting to know each other it was kind of obvious between the two of us that something was going to happen, but we both knew I wasn’t in the right place. So, we both waited for another year, until the timing was right, until I healed enough to start a new relationship.

I have actually had my first session with a therapist this morning. I have been trauma bonded and want to get the last remnants of it out of my system. I was doing well up until a few weeks ago, when I did a few jobs for a couple of my wife’s old clients. These clients have expressed concerns about her behaviour and have stopped seeing her, and they are people she was very close to. They have also offered her money, which has kind of made me see things in a perspective that it’s spiralling for my wife, and all this mess has been caused by her addiction problems and debt, even my kids have called her a gold digging ******* and that she is just mugging her new boyfriend.

So that is why I have been to see a therapist. To try and gain some clarity. And that is why I have joined this forum, as the therapist suggested I write down and journal everything to try and break it down.

[Rowdy]

I know it doesn’t change anything, but I am interested in peoples thoughts and opinions, having looked at the DSM-5 and how my ex fits in with the criteria being:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid abandonment: as mentioned above, in the beginning fear of me going home. Fear of me running off with an ex girlfriend. Throughout the relationship a fear of not returning text messages or answering the phone, being paranoid I’m messaging other women etc fear of me going to work, fear of being alone.

2. Unstable relationships: aside from our turbulent 27 year relationship where I could go from being her rock one minute to being called mean or horrible for no apparent reason the next, she has a history of cycling through new best friends to discarding them and calling them every name under the sun. It is always the other persons fault.

3. Identity disturbance: difficult one because on the outside she appears very confident, ambitious and very self assured, yet internally is quite insecure, going from being a control freak to wanting me to take control. Believed I didn’t love her because she is not the perfect woman I am looking for, even though I wasn’t looking for anyone else, or asked her to change anything about her (aside from the drink/drug taking)

4. Impulsivity: ticks most of the boxes suggested as impulsive behaviours. She will binge eat and struggles with her weight. She spends money like the world is going to end tomorrow. She drinks far too much. She has cocaine addiction problem. She has cheated, not really certain how many times. She has got a fast car, drives it recklessly, and has even confessed since our breakup that she would get in it at 2am while blind drunk and go for a drive.

5. Recurrent suicidal behaviour: as above, drink driving. Otherwise difficult to say again what her thoughts on this are, but after I went on my first date 3 months after our separation, she made my son pick her up and bring her to my house to ‘look after the dogs while I was out’ for me to return home at 12:30am to a blazing row between her and our son, and then turned on me repeatedly punching me, clawing at my face and trying to strangle me. I went to my sons house and she blew up my phone asking me to come back suggesting she might commit suicide if I didn’t. Has since hinted going to the beach with me and committing double suicide (doing a Reggie Perrin)

6. Affective instability: Mood swings, yep often. Would go from crying melt down in the morning to completely fine when she got home. Anxiety, would quite often start shaking for no reason, started to have panic attacks. Highly irritable for no real reason.

7. Chronic feelings of emptiness: has mentioned feeling numb. Never happy, enough is never enough.

8. Inappropriate intense anger: Mentioned above, physical attacks although fairly uncommon. Would get angry over small insignificant things, I would often worry she would throw the glass she was drinking out of at my head, she never did but would leave me feeling unsafe at times. Could get angry or start argument about anything, even a dog walk could turn into an argument and angry outburst.

9. Transient paranoid ideation or dissociation: not really sure what this means. She would believe a thought in her head was going to happen, for example she thought I was going to run off with another woman, and despite me telling her its not going to happen, still believes it would so sabotages the relationship. Was going to leave her boyfriend and return home but then changed her mind because she was paranoid I would only take her back for revenge and dump her and run off with someone else. Always hears voices in her head. She says they are not voices telling her to do something, more like radio interference constantly there and she can just hear many voices.

The thing I guess I am struggling with the most, is thinking that she ticks most of the boxes on that list, certainly 5 of the 9 required for a diagnosis. But does her behaviour, or is the fact that she could well qualify for a bpd diagnosis, only show up because of me. Does she behave completely different with the new boyfriend. Was it me that made her ‘sick’ and is she cured now she is no longer with me!

And it is difficult because I do care about her, she is the mother of my children. She has ended up in hospital 3 times since we split up, once because of her heavy drinking, and twice because of breathing and other issues that are probably down to drug abuse.