New Member - Partner just diagnosed with BPD after 13 years together.

[LittleMissQuirky]

Hello all,

As per the subject of this post, I am new here.  I found the site after looking for support for spouses of those with BPD.  I'm hoping that I can seek support/information/advice here to help me with the challenges of sharing my life with a person with BPD.  I'd also like to be able to help and support others where I can.  So, I guess a little background is in order:

I am female, my partner is male.  We are both in our 30s.  We have been together for almost 13 years and were friends for about 6 years beforehand.  We have an 11 year old daughter together.  We have been engaged in the past a number of times but after multiple instances of my partner 'un-proposing' (likely linked to his BPD in hindsight), I no longer wear my ring as he stopped wearing his and I felt somewhat foolish continuing to wear it as he has made it clear that he doesn't want to marry me and is unable to make such a commitment in his current state of mind.  I myself have diagnoses of Autism and ADHD so feel I have reasonably good understanding of how it feels to live with conditions which impact your way of looking at the world, how you regulate your emotions and coping with day-to-day life.

I feel that I have been very consistent in the relationship throughout from an emotional standpoint.  I'm by no means perfect but have always taken the perspective that growing together and understanding each other can make things better.  My partner has never had to doubt that I wanted to be with him and was willing to work on things.  However, I feel he has often been the opposite.  I won't go into too much detail here as the post will then become very long very quickly.  Basically, he has left on multiple occasions but always come back.  There have also been instances where he has gotten himself into awkward situations with other women, not necessarily looking for an affair but creating emotional intimacy due to his need for approval.  Some of these instances I perceive as being an emotional affair but he does not see it that way as he says he had no intention to act on it romantically.  It has created trust issues and frustration on my part recently as I feel he has been on the same road to making the same mistakes but is very defensive if I try to bring the subject up.  He seems to take a black-and-white, all-or-nothing approach where when I try to discuss boundaries with female friends he says he is "just not allowed to talk to anyone", which isn't what I'm saying at all.  We also seem to be perpetually in a cycle of him needing *something* to just be happy; a different job, to move house, to distance himself from particular people.  But when we make the adjustments he is still just as unhappy and seems to either move on to another target as the thing which will help him or start blaming me/the relationship again and leave.

After a long road and another instance of him leaving and returning, at a recent appointment we were pretty much told that he has all the hallmarks of BPD and possibly PTSD as well.  We are still awaiting appointment for official diagnosis due to the Covid-19 situation but everything we have read fits and the lady at the appointment seemed quite certain.

I should add that my partner is also a very caring, funny, intelligent man who I love dearly and have a lot in common with.  I enjoy his company a great deal but feel that what I now understand to be his BPD gets in the way as massive issues seem to spring from nowhere periodically.  This makes me feel I am on a rollercoaster over which I have no control at times.  I feel things are going well and suddenly he will withdraw or explode.

I hope this provides some context and that I can share experiences with others on here.  At the moment I am really struggling to be the one who has to be strong in the face of a lot of turmoil and am pretty exhausted.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[SunshineLife4Me]

I'm new here too, but your post resonates with me. (Married 15 years, two kids, roller coaster the last two or three years in particular.) My husband has a definitive diagnosis, but only after 2+ years of misdiagnosis and ineffective treatment. He has worked really hard on mood regulation and redeveloping integrity and has done inpatient for mood regulation with a good bit of success, but something still wasn't clicking. He's still "off." He ticks about 7 of the 9 traits for BPD, but is probably considered high-functioning as he has no issue maintaining steady employment, has ok family relationships, no threats of self-harm.

He did engage in some clearly inappropriate behavior with other women (emotional and physical affairs) and I also got a lot of push back on boundary setting along the lines of "I guess I'm not ever allowed to talk to a woman again." And, like your partner, I feel like my husband is always chasing some elusive sense of satisfaction  (work, relationships, etc.). It wasn't always like this for us. I feel like he held it together reasonably well for the first half of our marriage and then slowly the wheels came off the bus. More so after his sexual acting out stopped. Apparently that offered some soothing to him that kept other BPD-related behaviors at bay.

I don't have answers, but I hear you and understand and can relate. I want off the roller coaster too, and I also want to stay in my marriage. When it's good, it's great, but we've got to get the BPD addressed in a more comprehensive way.

Stay strong.

[LittleMissQuirky]

I want off the roller coaster too, and I also want to stay in my marriage.

This. So much this. Thanks for your response. Though I feel bad that you have had to endure so much hurt, it's also reassuring to hear that someone has had similar circumstances.

The pushback on female 'friends' really bothers me a lot lately. He is super intense with his contact with these women despite knowing them for a very short space of time and bends over backwards to compliment them, be attentive to their needs and make himself available as emotional support.  He will also give them gifts and refuses to acknowledge the message that all these things send to a woman you just met. He claims he is just friendly and would do these things for anyone but I don't see any of this behaviour with male friends. They are lucky to even get a text back from him half the time. In fact, he often avoids talking to them deliberately by not answering calls or messages but never when it is a woman. He has admitted on occasion that even though he doesn't intend to act it boosts his ego that these women may have feelings for him but then backtracks later when it is convenient. He says that he shouldn't need to change who he is and that he wants to just behave however he wants and then if they say or do anything inappropriate he will 'deal with the situation'.

No matter how hard I try to explain, he doesn't seem to understand that creating this emotional intimacy and taking so much energy and effort from our relationship to seek approval from these women hurts me. Or that him 'dealing with a situation if it happens' isn't enough. I'm fine with him having regular, normal intensity friendships with women but him still going out of his way to do this hurts me as I feel he he isn't trying hard enough to avoid repeats of the drama we've had previously for what I can see only as his own selfish reasons.

And aside from my feelings on this, what about these other women? He is sending them all the signals that he is interested and possibly encouraging them to fall for him to get a feeling for himself, knowing he will never act on it. I have less sympathy knowing that they are aware he is with me and still soak up all the attention but can see it must be somewhat confusing for them too.

We are having some relationship counselling soon so I'm going to try to bring it up there and see if we can set some boundaries with which we are both comfortable. Although the counsellor has said she feels his thinking is the main issue and that until he has had individual help she thinks it will be difficult to change a lot of things so I guess we are in limbo a bit with it all.

Anyway, it is good to have support from someone who can relate so thank you!

[SunshineLife4Me]

Based on my own experience, your counselor is completely correct. Unless or until your partner pursues individual therapy you are largely going to be spinning your wheels in marriage counseling. While I think almost any marriage can improve with some good counseling, the root of the problem isn't you, it's your partner's mental illness. Until that elephant in the room is being addressed you might feel yourself having to compromise boundaries and other things that are important to you for the sake of "getting along" in marriage counseling. Or your partner may promise you things in counseling that they have no intention or ability to actually do. (I had both experiences.) That's not really sustainable in the long term. At least for me, nothing improved in my marriage until my husband landed with a good therapist and was honest with that therapist. Only after that did I feel like we made some progress in marriage counseling.