BPD and the concept of free will

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

Hello all.

I haven't posted in a while which I suppose is a good thing as it demonstrates that I am getting on with my life. But I've been reading a fair bit here and hope all are well. In short, I left my pwBPD wife just over a year ago because her behaviour was getting worse and worse, I had done my research, and she wouldn't listen to my advice or seek proper help, as seems to be the norm. The same old story.

She lives in a different country which made leaving easier for me, but I still feel dreadfully guilty about it as I did the one thing that is at the core of her disorder. It really is a self-fulfilling illness.

We have slowly lessened our communication over time although I was in a neighbouring country last month on holiday and I did entertain the possibility of meeting for a few days, just as an opportunity to say hello and perhaps a small, hesitant step to rebuild if she could ever accept my advice and requests and best judgment on how to resolve things. A last chance, maybe? Only if she could stick to a plan and not start the accusations and outbursts every 3 days which make planning anything like that involving international flights near-impossible. Perhaps inevitably it failed to materialise, because visiting for a few days was not good enough for her, the usual all or nothing thinking, and viewing my hobby as competition with her for my time. Perhaps best for all concerned, and this may have been the turning point for moving on.

I had previously sent some money to pay for divorce costs after it seemed at that time we had agreed it would be the best solution to the stalemate of me refusing to budge on my boundaries. She has almost certainly blown this money on other things. Again, perhaps inevitably. Perhaps I ought to blame her but I don't because I know how chaotic her thinking is and how it prevents her from getting a proper job.

She then complained that I could afford to go on holiday to a neighbouring country but wasn't willing to visit her country to sort out the divorce. True, I prioritised my holiday because I could rely on my own mental stability for it to actually happen rather than be a series of cancellations and rebookings based on extreme emotions. I also know that if I did visit her country specifically to sort out the divorce, the process would be longer than I can stay for, very stressful, possibly dangerous, highly volatile, and almost certainly unfair towards me as a foreigner (just the way the courts tend to work out there), especially one of a different religion (an issue which complicates things even further). Too risky.

Now I have been blocked for over 2 weeks, the longest so far, and I imagine she is dating new guys, something she was accusing me of a lot but which was not the case, unless you count working with a female colleague or two as 'dating' which a lot of pwBPDs seem to do!

Anyway, although I still care about her wellbeing and worry about the direction of her life and if she will simply go round in circles again and again and either end up in prison or worse, I also feel like I have mentally moved on recently. My emotions have finally caught up with my rationality, though it took them many months.

But the one thing that I think has altered me permanently is this idea that there is almost nothing I could have done to have prevented the outcome of our relationship and marriage. And that the odds of her overcoming her illness are minimal. It has really struck at the core of my concept of the idea of free will, about genuinely being able to make decisions in life. From this relationship. I have a newfound perspective on life which is very deterministic, with little room for the concept of free will, as we seem to be actors in a play with a script that we cannot edit very much if at all. We think 'there must be something we can do to fix this problem' and after much work find that there does not seem to be much we can do. We are powerless to improve the situation, aside from leaving the room and closing the door behind us.

And if this script cannot be edited much, it has massive implications for the justice systems of the world. If my ex ends up physically attacking some future partner in one of her 'seizures' how responsible is she for it? She is programmed like that.

When you face a problem in life, solving that problem is a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel like you have agency, that free will exists. But the BPD 'problem' seems to be one that is almost never fixed and therefore it emphasises how little control we have over the course of our lives. Perhaps we have the choice to leave or stay, but even that is probably determined by just how chaotic the relationship becomes and our predetermined tolerance for that chaos.

I would be interested to hear from others about how they got back that feeling that they did have some agency over their futures.

[silverberry]

Hello all.

I haven't posted in a while which I suppose is a good thing as it demonstrates that I am getting on with my life. But I've been reading a fair bit here and hope all are well. In short, I left my pwBPD wife just over a year ago because her behaviour was getting worse and worse, I had done my research, and she wouldn't listen to my advice or seek proper help, as seems to be the norm. The same old story.

She lives in a different country which made leaving easier for me, but I still feel dreadfully guilty about it as I did the one thing that is at the core of her disorder. It really is a self-fulfilling illness.

We have slowly lessened our communication over time although I was in a neighbouring country last month on holiday and I did entertain the possibility of meeting for a few days, just as an opportunity to say hello and perhaps a small, hesitant step to rebuild if she could ever accept my advice and requests and best judgment on how to resolve things. A last chance, maybe? Only if she could stick to a plan and not start the accusations and outbursts every 3 days which make planning anything like that involving international flights near-impossible. Perhaps inevitably it failed to materialise, because visiting for a few days was not good enough for her, the usual all or nothing thinking, and viewing my hobby as competition with her for my time. Perhaps best for all concerned, and this may have been the turning point for moving on.

I had previously sent some money to pay for divorce costs after it seemed at that time we had agreed it would be the best solution to the stalemate of me refusing to budge on my boundaries. She has almost certainly blown this money on other things. Again, perhaps inevitably. Perhaps I ought to blame her but I don't because I know how chaotic her thinking is and how it prevents her from getting a proper job.

She then complained that I could afford to go on holiday to a neighbouring country but wasn't willing to visit her country to sort out the divorce. True, I prioritised my holiday because I could rely on my own mental stability for it to actually happen rather than be a series of cancellations and rebookings based on extreme emotions. I also know that if I did visit her country specifically to sort out the divorce, the process would be longer than I can stay for, very stressful, possibly dangerous, highly volatile, and almost certainly unfair towards me as a foreigner (just the way the courts tend to work out there), especially one of a different religion (an issue which complicates things even further). Too risky.

Now I have been blocked for over 2 weeks, the longest so far, and I imagine she is dating new guys, something she was accusing me of a lot but which was not the case, unless you count working with a female colleague or two as 'dating' which a lot of pwBPDs seem to do!

Anyway, although I still care about her wellbeing and worry about the direction of her life and if she will simply go round in circles again and again and either end up in prison or worse, I also feel like I have mentally moved on recently. My emotions have finally caught up with my rationality, though it took them many months.

But the one thing that I think has altered me permanently is this idea that there is almost nothing I could have done to have prevented the outcome of our relationship and marriage. And that the odds of her overcoming her illness are minimal. It has really struck at the core of my concept of the idea of free will, about genuinely being able to make decisions in life. From this relationship. I have a newfound perspective on life which is very deterministic, with little room for the concept of free will, as we seem to be actors in a play with a script that we cannot edit very much if at all. We think 'there must be something we can do to fix this problem' and after much work find that there does not seem to be much we can do. We are powerless to improve the situation, aside from leaving the room and closing the door behind us.

And if this script cannot be edited much, it has massive implications for the justice systems of the world. If my ex ends up physically attacking some future partner in one of her 'seizures' how responsible is she for it? She is programmed like that.

When you face a problem in life, solving that problem is a wonderful feeling. It makes you feel like you have agency, that free will exists. But the BPD 'problem' seems to be one that is almost never fixed and therefore it emphasises how little control we have over the course of our lives. Perhaps we have the choice to leave or stay, but even that is probably determined by just how chaotic the relationship becomes and our predetermined tolerance for that chaos.

I would be interested to hear from others about how they got back that feeling that they did have some agency over their futures.