BPD relationships and meth abuse

[Depression = 72% of members]

my DstbXBPDW and i are separated, thank GOD. i say that now, but several weeks ago i was devastated at the failure of my 5 year relationship/marriage even though i had done research and made myself clearly aware of what i was dealing with and why i had been mistreated and abused so badly for the latter half of the relationship while feeling seemingly loved for the first half. it finally ended by me showing up expectedly at my friend's house to find her there having been cheating on me with him for a week, which i had sort of suspected that week, but still didn't really believe as i was repeatedly lied to. i still trusted my wife would at least remain faithful even though it was in the face of increasingly infrequent and short interactions most of which either quickly headed towards or reached disaster level due to her intense instability of mood which was somehow ALWAYS entirely my fault.

i'm a meth addict, but i'm the only one i've met in the last 5 years who was in it for the long haul yet was still high functioning enough to do things like keep a job (let alone a career). i also learned, with a little help from my friend Lexapro (an SSRI) over the last several months, to curb  more intense negative emotions and feelings of paranoia that accompany long-term use of this lovely narcotic. this self-teaching followed some episodes of mine of suicidal thinking, depression, and smashing my fist into a door a few times, cutting it badly, probably fracturing part of my thumb, and now i cannot lift anything heavy with my right arm, my strong arm, without bad pain. looking back, even though i knew nothing of personality disorders at the time and was still completely bewildered at the attitude and behavior of my wife, i may have just found that i had become the non-BPD counter-borderline partner of a BPD, causing me to be self-defeating and inappropriately reactive, which wasn't me at all, and it had to stop. my point is, even though i'm a long-term meth addict, i was still able to recognize and effectively change my BPD-like thoughts and behavior quite significantly after experiencing some extreme consequences. but meth is powerful, and i remain an addict... .

back to my wife: even though my novice BPD/NPD internet diagnosis of her was obviously correct (and turned out to match two separate prior BPD diagnoses from actual licensed clinicians treating my wife when she was younger and getting into trouble, as disclosed to me by her mother after my own personal episode of cheaters had happened), accepting some psychological disorder as the cause of such a drastic change of feeling towards a devoted partner of nearly 5 years and such hurtful behavior that was not appropriate or warranted at all, still does not come easy to me. her older sister (by 1 year) is and always has been a perfectly functioning and whole person, graduated college and is now a loving, happily married mother of 4. their parents divorced when they were teenagers, no doubt a result of the stress caused by their one BPD daughter whose behavior was extreme and unstoppable.

as a non-BPD, i compare my BPD experience to a close loved one contracting a terminal disease, and you're sometimes given hope that they may live, but they slowly become worse and wither away no matter what you try to do to reverse it, until they commit the final act that leaves them symbolically dead to you. but she isn't really dead. she's still alive. it is so hard for me to wrap my mind around this.

that said, we did meth together the entire 5 years we knew each other and were living together, but neither of us had done it in years when we met, and while she used to cook it and do it a lot, i had only done it moderately in my past. having finally served some prison time following years of an unexplained turbulent childhood (age 13+) and adult criminal behavior background, my wife considered my upbringing and life experience as "pleasantville" because i got straight A's in high school and went to college, where i started smoking cigarettes and pot daily (still do, never stopped), and partied excessively yet still managed to graduate with a 3.0 GPA and a B.S. degree which got me a corporate job i've kept for 9 years now even through the recession and layoffs.

obviously she has BPD and has had it - her history and former diagnoses proves it, not to mention how she conducted herself in our relationship. but given that all i know of her and our relationship together has involved continuous meth abuse, what bothers me is thinking that maybe she only became extremely BPD due to the extreme amount and length of time we've been on meth, and if she/we had been able to stop doing it at some point and remained sober from it (or better yet, had never started), her symptoms may have been less intense and manageable by this age (30/31) along with being in a relationship with someone as kind, giving, able, supportive, honest, and stable as me. maybe she could have even obtained and kept a job for a long period of time, providing her with self-worth/esteem. maybe her affective lability would be more controlled such that she would maintain some of the intense emotional passion i'm unfortunately attracted to in BPD women, without it becoming so extreme and persistant it is intolerable. maybe her splitting would be more controlled such that she could eventually forgive me for things if i proved myself worthy of it, instead of remaining permanently stuck on hating me most of the time and treating me like sht no matter what i did or said.

in other words, i'm afraid meth may have turned a mild case of BPD potentially showing natural recovery progress with age into an extreme case that even Jesus himself wouldn't be able to tolerate for long. still latched onto my friend today (but i hear and have even witnessed that it has already become somewhat stormy between them), they both quit meth for several days, unable to afford it together. my friend hasn't been doing it regularly for a long time like my wife and i and has only been dabbling for several months now (he has a past which involves cooking it, but he was incarcerated for 8 years after being caught). his goal has been to stop and to get her to stop completely, which i fully endorse, of course, for the well-being of any human addicted to this sht. i know she's taken time away from it, the most time at once within the past 5 years, but today she and another mutual tweeker friend of ours bought from our dealer, so she obviously still relapsed pretty quickly.

however, i still remain curious about the prospect of her remaining sober off meth permanently someday. not that i will ever allow myself to get closer to instead of further from her emotionally in any way in the future, so i know this is faulty of me and a result of recent emotional abuse and trauma, but i know at least for a while i will be thrust back into maximum emotional pain if she manages to remain clean off meth and as a result becomes more permanently like the loyal, passionate, helpful partner and sexual goddess i experienced much of and fell in love with during the first half of our relationship, except it would be for/with somebody else.

given any of your relationship experiences involving BPD, comorbid meth addiction, and/or recovery from either, could this outcome be possible and meth abuse primarily caused the demise of what could have been a fulfilling and relatively happy union with a very mildly BPD female?

or, having faced painful consequences, since i was still able to significantly change my emotional processing and behavior as a non-BPD counter-borderline on my own, even while maintaining a meth addiction and a difficult BPD relationship, am i just in denial of the fact that BPD is BPD and stays BPD without treatment specific to BPD, and i'm not BPD, but the extreme intolerable BPD symptoms of my wife like that which i've endured would still have manifested eventually even if comorbid meth addiction wasn't a factor?

i love and cherish this site and the support it brings to so many of us impacted by such a painful and confusing, yet still so much an undeniable and clearly identifiable illness with common traits. continued daily meth use is absolute misery i hope to end once and for all someday, but i think continued daily extreme BPD exposure in those we care most about is far superior to that in causing overall psychological damage. it's some serious sht i wish i had known about a long time ago, but am glad is now being exposed more and more each day. thank you so much for your thoughts and time spent on this topic. i look forward to the replies!

[mprector]

my DstbXBPDW and i are separated, thank GOD. i say that now, but several weeks ago i was devastated at the failure of my 5 year relationship/marriage even though i had done research and made myself clearly aware of what i was dealing with and why i had been mistreated and abused so badly for the latter half of the relationship while feeling seemingly loved for the first half. it finally ended by me showing up expectedly at my friend's house to find her there having been cheating on me with him for a week, which i had sort of suspected that week, but still didn't really believe as i was repeatedly lied to. i still trusted my wife would at least remain faithful even though it was in the face of increasingly infrequent and short interactions most of which either quickly headed towards or reached disaster level due to her intense instability of mood which was somehow ALWAYS entirely my fault.

i'm a meth addict, but i'm the only one i've met in the last 5 years who was in it for the long haul yet was still high functioning enough to do things like keep a job (let alone a career). i also learned, with a little help from my friend Lexapro (an SSRI) over the last several months, to curb  more intense negative emotions and feelings of paranoia that accompany long-term use of this lovely narcotic. this self-teaching followed some episodes of mine of suicidal thinking, depression, and smashing my fist into a door a few times, cutting it badly, probably fracturing part of my thumb, and now i cannot lift anything heavy with my right arm, my strong arm, without bad pain. looking back, even though i knew nothing of personality disorders at the time and was still completely bewildered at the attitude and behavior of my wife, i may have just found that i had become the non-BPD counter-borderline partner of a BPD, causing me to be self-defeating and inappropriately reactive, which wasn't me at all, and it had to stop. my point is, even though i'm a long-term meth addict, i was still able to recognize and effectively change my BPD-like thoughts and behavior quite significantly after experiencing some extreme consequences. but meth is powerful, and i remain an addict... .

back to my wife: even though my novice BPD/NPD internet diagnosis of her was obviously correct (and turned out to match two separate prior BPD diagnoses from actual licensed clinicians treating my wife when she was younger and getting into trouble, as disclosed to me by her mother after my own personal episode of cheaters had happened), accepting some psychological disorder as the cause of such a drastic change of feeling towards a devoted partner of nearly 5 years and such hurtful behavior that was not appropriate or warranted at all, still does not come easy to me. her older sister (by 1 year) is and always has been a perfectly functioning and whole person, graduated college and is now a loving, happily married mother of 4. their parents divorced when they were teenagers, no doubt a result of the stress caused by their one BPD daughter whose behavior was extreme and unstoppable.

as a non-BPD, i compare my BPD experience to a close loved one contracting a terminal disease, and you're sometimes given hope that they may live, but they slowly become worse and wither away no matter what you try to do to reverse it, until they commit the final act that leaves them symbolically dead to you. but she isn't really dead. she's still alive. it is so hard for me to wrap my mind around this.

that said, we did meth together the entire 5 years we knew each other and were living together, but neither of us had done it in years when we met, and while she used to cook it and do it a lot, i had only done it moderately in my past. having finally served some prison time following years of an unexplained turbulent childhood (age 13+) and adult criminal behavior background, my wife considered my upbringing and life experience as "pleasantville" because i got straight A's in high school and went to college, where i started smoking cigarettes and pot daily (still do, never stopped), and partied excessively yet still managed to graduate with a 3.0 GPA and a B.S. degree which got me a corporate job i've kept for 9 years now even through the recession and layoffs.

obviously she has BPD and has had it - her history and former diagnoses proves it, not to mention how she conducted herself in our relationship. but given that all i know of her and our relationship together has involved continuous meth abuse, what bothers me is thinking that maybe she only became extremely BPD due to the extreme amount and length of time we've been on meth, and if she/we had been able to stop doing it at some point and remained sober from it (or better yet, had never started), her symptoms may have been less intense and manageable by this age (30/31) along with being in a relationship with someone as kind, giving, able, supportive, honest, and stable as me. maybe she could have even obtained and kept a job for a long period of time, providing her with self-worth/esteem. maybe her affective lability would be more controlled such that she would maintain some of the intense emotional passion i'm unfortunately attracted to in BPD women, without it becoming so extreme and persistant it is intolerable. maybe her splitting would be more controlled such that she could eventually forgive me for things if i proved myself worthy of it, instead of remaining permanently stuck on hating me most of the time and treating me like sht no matter what i did or said.

in other words, i'm afraid meth may have turned a mild case of BPD potentially showing natural recovery progress with age into an extreme case that even Jesus himself wouldn't be able to tolerate for long. still latched onto my friend today (but i hear and have even witnessed that it has already become somewhat stormy between them), they both quit meth for several days, unable to afford it together. my friend hasn't been doing it regularly for a long time like my wife and i and has only been dabbling for several months now (he has a past which involves cooking it, but he was incarcerated for 8 years after being caught). his goal has been to stop and to get her to stop completely, which i fully endorse, of course, for the well-being of any human addicted to this sht. i know she's taken time away from it, the most time at once within the past 5 years, but today she and another mutual tweeker friend of ours bought from our dealer, so she obviously still relapsed pretty quickly.

however, i still remain curious about the prospect of her remaining sober off meth permanently someday. not that i will ever allow myself to get closer to instead of further from her emotionally in any way in the future, so i know this is faulty of me and a result of recent emotional abuse and trauma, but i know at least for a while i will be thrust back into maximum emotional pain if she manages to remain clean off meth and as a result becomes more permanently like the loyal, passionate, helpful partner and sexual goddess i experienced much of and fell in love with during the first half of our relationship, except it would be for/with somebody else.

given any of your relationship experiences involving BPD, comorbid meth addiction, and/or recovery from either, could this outcome be possible and meth abuse primarily caused the demise of what could have been a fulfilling and relatively happy union with a very mildly BPD female?

or, having faced painful consequences, since i was still able to significantly change my emotional processing and behavior as a non-BPD counter-borderline on my own, even while maintaining a meth addiction and a difficult BPD relationship, am i just in denial of the fact that BPD is BPD and stays BPD without treatment specific to BPD, and i'm not BPD, but the extreme intolerable BPD symptoms of my wife like that which i've endured would still have manifested eventually even if comorbid meth addiction wasn't a factor?

i love and cherish this site and the support it brings to so many of us impacted by such a painful and confusing, yet still so much an undeniable and clearly identifiable illness with common traits. continued daily meth use is absolute misery i hope to end once and for all someday, but i think continued daily extreme BPD exposure in those we care most about is far superior to that in causing overall psychological damage. it's some serious sht i wish i had known about a long time ago, but am glad is now being exposed more and more each day. thank you so much for your thoughts and time spent on this topic. i look forward to the replies!

[2010]

Start with the tip of the iceberg first, then you can work your way down to the core. What's below the surface cannot be seen because of reaction formations that have been built up over the years. Substance abuse is your way of blocking the reaction to your pain. Our partners (and their problems) can also block pain as we focus away from ourselves and on to them.

Until you begin the process of letting go of both substances that block that pain- (people or drugs) you wont be able to reach the real feelings to address them. Meth is a highly addictive substance that fools the brain into thinking it needs Meth and addicts the mind after one use- it's pull on the mind/body needs to be confronted before anything else is considered. This is your moment. It's time to begin to plan ahead for your own safety and future. Your "person" depends on it. Until you realize the danger of your present situation, you are in trouble of going downhill. This isn't the time to stop and help others.  You must help yourself.

Begin your own journey and let go of hers. At this point, you need to focus on yourself and plan a way to get off Meth.  If both of you enter rehab, you would be separated anyway. Perhaps it's time to see what people in treatment have known all along: that you are in no position to walk her journey or fight her battles for her. It's time for you to fight your own battles with addiction. It would be a good idea to get somebody to help you in substance treatment, so you're well taken care of.  We'll be here for you.

[canucky]

I would heed the words of 2010 as they are very wise and profound. You really do need to begin to take the steps to worry about yourself. If you wife did get off meth she more than likely will either blame you for her meth use or be advised that she would need to be away from you as her enabler and a trigger as you use yourself.

Please take care of yourself first... .possibly show her the way out of your addiction would be any chance at hell for a future together and even then would take moving mountains for a happy outcome.

I say this as I dated my exBPDgf for four years. First 2 1\2 years she was addcited to oxy and coke together. I was not aware she was addicted and to be honest not being a drug user myself I got an eduction so much so that I felt I was practically an addict myself since I was that close to her throughout the ordeal. «i stayed the entire time and she in the end when clean said I was screwed up for staying... .maybe i was. I know all about it, the lifestyle the pain that accompanies it, the triggers all of it. I can tell you we both together got her clean but i had to wait till she wanted it... .I can also tell you I left her 3 months ago while she was clean for over a year and half. She never recieved any therapy even though she did get clean from her addiction... .she had to or she would have died in my eyes. In the end I still had to leave as I couldn`t deal with her illness anymore and my energy was drained. Leaving her was the hardest thing I ever had to do and think it will be the rest of my life. Almost like i went into a concentration camp to save her got her out and she didn`t know anything different so she just went back in. Truly sad endings.

I can tell you the drugs do heighten the BPD traits to a point it was an never ending spiral of sht where every day got worse and it almost destroyed my life to a point I wouldn't come back from. I can also tell you I was one strong guy mentally and emotionally before I met her and went through this... .if I had been on drugs i know the outcome would not be pretty. It took everything i had to just get her clean and I knew the BPD was going to be a hell of a lot worse to deal with after she was clean. I still tried and don`t regret my effort in seeing if I could support her through her own personal torment.

They do get better when not using but you have to remember they are using as the BPD illness is the core of why your wife is using to dampen her emotion. Till she is off meth there is no hope whatsoever in her recieving help or any realization she may have serious internal emotional problems that need to be addressed.

Whwn clean her BPD did lessen but not to a point either of us felt healthy nor in a relationship. I took care of her and she did whatever she wanted, said whatever she wanted and acted any way she wanted. Unless she wants to remove her illness I would tell you to work on yourself, get yourself clean. You have your own battle to triump over and will need your strength to do it. Show her an example that you love yourself enough that life is worth living for and maybe just maybe she might tag along. You aren`t abandoning someone if you are doing it to help yourself and possibly your marriage. She may be even waiting for you to do it.

I can tell you this as bad as drug addiction is and I have seen it from front line view it is not as hard as BPD. I would encourage you if you value your life to fix what you have internally, get clean yourself and live the life with or without her you are suppose to. You will be loving her more if you do and she maybe is waiting for you to do it. The choice is still hers and not yours what she does afterward for herself but i can tell you it truly is something not to take lightly in dealing with this two stage process. Not only are the numbers not on your side but netiher is she.

May you have God`s strength amd love see you through

Canucky

[mprector]

thanks canucky. days ago i wrote a long-ass reply but lost it forever. don't have it in me to re-familiarize myself with the plots of our own novels. cliffs notes, anyone?

still want people dealing with comorbid meth abuse in these relationship situations to provide any shared experience or insight if they've got it... .