Do marriage and divorce rates differ with pwBPD (diagnosed)?

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

From my own experience, I'm guessing that it will be difficult, or even impossible,  for my diagnosed exgfBPD to ever get married or have children... .she is 28 and has burned through dozens of relationships, many of them serious ones, including mine. She has had another serious guy on the hook for more than a year, but I know he is cautious about getting engaged as he wants children, but she continues to abuse alcohol, vape and act out in other impulsive ways... .behaviors that make for a poor wife and mother.

I'm just curious if people with BPD are more successful at initially getting married when the courtship is really short and the non is still being idolized? We lasted about 5 months, and I know I wanted to marry her, until she pushed me away and discarded me... .over a year ago.

anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this?

[AustenJ]

From my own experience, I'm guessing that it will be difficult, or even impossible,  for my diagnosed exgfBPD to ever get married or have children... .she is 28 and has burned through dozens of relationships, many of them serious ones, including mine. She has had another serious guy on the hook for more than a year, but I know he is cautious about getting engaged as he wants children, but she continues to abuse alcohol, vape and act out in other impulsive ways... .behaviors that make for a poor wife and mother.

I'm just curious if people with BPD are more successful at initially getting married when the courtship is really short and the non is still being idolized? We lasted about 5 months, and I know I wanted to marry her, until she pushed me away and discarded me... .over a year ago.

anyone have any thoughts or experiences with this?

[Insom]

Hi,  AustenJ! 

Interesting question!  I'm no expert, though, so can't provide stats.

How about you?  Married or single?  If single, is marriage something on your radar for yourself? 

[RolandOfEld]

Hi AustenJ, thanks for sharing your experience.

I don't know the stats on BPDs getting married. I'll just say that in the beginning with my wife I did feel very idolized, which made the decision of asking her to marry me make more sense. It's since been a long time since I felt in any way idolized and the occasional compliment feels amazing now.

[MeandThee29]

If someone wants someone totally into them, I can see them getting married. That's why mine was so attractive to me. He was high-functioning, so the flashes were frustrating, but workable at first. Over time his BPD/NPD became more of a driving force, and I became the scapegoat for his anger.

He's talked for years about finding another woman, and my therapist's prediction is that he will do that in 2018. His family is very religious and won't approve, but he may do it on the sly.

[once removed]

We lasted about 5 months, and I know I wanted to marry her, until she pushed me away and discarded me... .over a year ago.

this must have really hurt. i wanted to marry my ex too.

does part of you want to see them fail?

[AustenJ]

Since I work with her every day, I think initially my anger wanted to see her fail, but then that feeling morphed into I loved her so much and had so much compassion for BPD sufferers, that I wished for her happiness in life and hoped that this new guy was truly the "one" for her.

But now i know that there will never be "the one" for her. So the realization has sunk in for the past few months that she will never have successful relationships and more than likely will never marry or have children... .and if she does, it will eventually be a horrific experience for her spouse and children, ending in a train wreck of a divorce. If anything I may feel a little bad for the new guy she has roped in, but although I recognize her mental illness is tragic, I never had any influence over it... .it is not humanly fixable by anyone but her.

So I am now more ambivalent and even clinical in my feelings toward her. She is a clinical example of a diagnosed pwBPD... .I know this overly simplifies her disorder, but I feel a real indifference towards her... .gone is the longing to ever be with her again.

The only time I think about her is when I have gone days, or even weeks now, without having a single thought about her, and I'm like, wow, that's amazing... .so I am healing, finally.

[Zen606]

Hi Austen,
Great question. The bptrait ex, had dangled marriage in front of me only to have me tell him that I was not interested in marriage or living with anyone, I was happy as I was and wanted a companion. It was almost as if he thought that marriage to him was this big prize and that he would divorce his wife -- living in another state -- if the woman was the right one. He had said he was married for 28 years and adopted the children of his wife. He also wanted her to fulfill her dream to throw porcelain pottery.  Perhaps this was the hook, to keep her dependent on him. I can't imagine him being married to anyone for 28 years, if my 1 year with him raised all of the red flags it did for me.  Perhaps they had a short courtship, I never asked him.
Zen606

[Bo123]

I think it depends on who they might marry.  Another BPD, someone who doesn't recognize they have BPD, someone who has issues of their own and BPD makes them feel more comfortable with themselves.  Dating today is not like the old "courting" times, I think they do get intimate, engaged and married too fast and when the truth is finally clear, one or the other leaves.  BPD's are quick to engage in another relationship w/o any work on themselves and that doesn't give much time for their partner to figure out who they really are engaged or married to.

[AustenJ]

What's interesting is that like most borderlines, she overshares a lot of personal stuff way too quickly in the relationship. She had shared with me months ago that one of the first things she told her current live-in boyfriend who she expects to marry soon is that she was diagnosed with BPD. I have no reason to doubt her, as she told me the same thing within the first few weeks of our relationship... .

One would think that would be the single, biggest red flag that most significant others don't receive during the idolization phase... .she wore it like a warning label... .
WARNING: Emotional axe murderer; engage at your own risk."

So I guess I was warned and still pursued a relationship. Of course, it revealed as much about me as it did about her... .the attraction was undeniable in the idolization phase, even while she was holding that big shiny axe behind her back... .I never dreamed it was for me! Until it was. Live and learn.

[xyz-Girl]

What's interesting is that like most borderlines, she overshares a lot of personal stuff way too quickly in the relationship. She had shared with me months ago that one of the first things she told her current live-in boyfriend who she expects to marry soon is that she was diagnosed with BPD. I have no reason to doubt her, as she told me the same thing within the first few weeks of our relationship... .

One would think that would be the single, biggest red flag that most significant others don't receive during the idolization phase... .she wore it like a warning label... .
WARNING: Emotional axe murderer; engage at your own risk."

So I guess I was warned and still pursued a relationship. Of course, it revealed as much about me as it did about her... .the attraction was undeniable in the idolization phase, even while she was holding that big shiny axe behind her back... .I never dreamed it was for me! Until it was. Live and learn.

My exBPDbf also revealed his conditions after days of talking to each other. I also continued to be interested in him. What do you think this revealed about yourself?

[BeagleGirl]

I can't imagine him being married to anyone for 28 years, if my 1 year with him raised all of the red flags it did for me.  Perhaps they had a short courtship, I never asked him.

By the time our divorce is final (T minus 86 days and counting) I will have been married to my dBPDstbxh for 22 years and 9 months.  We will have been together for 27 years and 7 months.  So I can imagine. 

If you do the math, it wasn't a quick courtship.  I had close to 5 years to get out.  I DEFINITELY knew that his family was screwed up and, looking back, I can see indications of the BPD throughout even the early years.  I cut myself A LOT of slack on not recognizing and getting out before marriage because I was only 14 when we started dating and he was my only boyfriend.  We married when I was 19.  I have a S14 and S19, and when I look at them and think "is this child capable of making a good decision about who they should marry?" the answer is a resounding "NO!". 

How did I stay so long?  There's definitely a degree of brokenness in myself that kept me in the relationship, but I would say that the primary reason I stayed was my faith and hope.  When I say "faith" I mean both the personal kind of faith and the corporate faith of my church.  I believed that if I just loved him enough I could cover all the hurts and he would eventually become the man I knew he could become.  That was the message that family, church, and friends reinforced.  Death before divorce.  Sanctity of marriage above personal comfort or desires.  Only selfish people divorce.  Staying together for the sake of the kids.  And after I had an affair I definitely felt that I owed it to him to stay and make up for the incredible pain I caused.  So there were a million reasons for me to stay, even when he was treating me like crap and threatening to leave me.

So maybe your ex will find someone young enough to not recognize the red flags, broken enough to have a compulsive need to fix her, and a support system that will send the message that anything is better than divorce.  And maybe they will be better at radical acceptance, SET, not JADEing, etc. than I was.  And hopefully she will decide to accept any help that is offered and find healing.

So that's my experience and those are my thoughts. 

BeagleGirl

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What does this tell us (what do the numbers suggest)?

Borderline Personality Marriage: Statistics

Studies of marital status in people with BPD have found that about 60 percent are married (these studies were done in people with average ages around 40 years old). This suggests that people with BPD are less likely to be married than those in the general population—in the United States, about 85 percent of people are married by age 40.

Unexpectedly, people with BPD do not have higher divorce rates than the general population. By an average age of about 40, the divorce rate for people with BPD is around 35 percent, and this is comparable to the divorce rate for the average U.S. citizen. However, people with BPD are far less likely to remarry after a divorce. In fact, only about 10 percent of people with BPD get remarried by around age 40 which is nearly half the national rate of remarriage.

On an interesting note, research suggests that people with borderline personality disorder who develop a substantial reduction in their symptoms (defined as recovering from BPD) are more likely than non-recovered people with BPD to marry and become a parent and less likely to divorce or lose custody of a child.

Implications of long-term outcome research for the management of patients with borderline personality disorder. Paris J, Harvard Review of Psychiatry . 2002 Nov-Dec;10(6):315-23

[BeagleGirl]

What does this tell us (what do the numbers suggest)?

That my dBPDstbxh (age 42) is unlikely to find another Mrs. dBPDstbxh unless he takes the steps he wasn't able/willing to take to reduce the impact of his BPD for the sake of our marriage.  

But as a "pure" scientist I also have to add {tongue in cheek} that I can make statistics say anything I want them to. 

[randomuser94]

I think it depends on the person they find. I've got engaged with my ex after 2 years and right after we got engaged i got splited black horribly. Since I'm codependet it was easy for me to rush blindly towards marriage. She had lots of relations until me, I was just too stupid to look closer. She made me feel like we were soulmates so I've ignored every red flag.
  They are able to trick you that they are 'wife material' but the moment they notice you are in love with them things quickly fall apart.
  I think a smart guy can notice the red flags and avoid those mistakes. But the problem is that the sea is full of fish, and those with a low esteem/codependet will always bite.

[Seenowayout]

My ex is getting married for the fifth time to her fourth husband, after only 9 months of courtship.  When she and I had our thing, she told me that in all  her previous relationships she was married after three months of dating.  So ... .in her case, it seems the play book was hook them early during the idolization phase, and then play the victim when they run away screaming a year or two later.  Odd she can't see a pattern.