How do they hide it for so long?

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

Isn't it also possible that if a pwBPD comes from a relatively healthy family, he/she is likely to fall out with all family members pretty quickly? I have read a few stories here about pwBPD who have no contact with their families and never mention them. After all, when you put adult expectations on them, they never forgive you.

[hergestridge]

Isn't it also possible that if a pwBPD comes from a relatively healthy family, he/she is likely to fall out with all family members pretty quickly? I have read a few stories here about pwBPD who have no contact with their families and never mention them. After all, when you put adult expectations on them, they never forgive you.

[captainp]

You're right about those shallow friendships and making me the a-hole to them.  My ex spread so many different stories about me, I couldn't keep up and I didn't waste my time trying.  I'm jealous you got out and surprised with getting out so quickly, you find yourself on this board.  How did you find yourself here?  So curious.

They have a lot of shallow friendships with people they don't see very often -- and they are always "normal" around these people.  It's also how it is so easy to make you look like the a-hole when you break up.

Mine had a pretty fast idealization/devaluation cycle when it came to relationships, which spanned 3 - 4 months -- so I got out fairly quickly. 

Mine couldn't keep the mask on for very long, and so I figured out she had serious emotional issues pretty quickly.  I started researching and suspected she had a Cluster B personality disorder a few weeks before we broke up.  Her behaviour after we broke up pretty much confirmed it, and I think I found this board around that time. 

We've been broken up for 2 months.  NC for a month and a half.  She is still posting negative things about me on social media.  I finally responded by posting something online basically saying that I wish her well, I hope she forgets all about me and finds someone who makes her happy. 

[Hope0807]

My god, you're so lucky.  My ex announced "his" pending divorce on social media and several family members and coworkers from a very LARGE occupation saw it and so much more.  I leaped off social media and have to find the right way back at some point.  Don't want to get stuck getting sick over what HE'S doing.

You're right about those shallow friendships and making me the a-hole to them.  My ex spread so many different stories about me, I couldn't keep up and I didn't waste my time trying.  I'm jealous you got out and surprised with getting out so quickly, you find yourself on this board.  How did you find yourself here?  So curious.

They have a lot of shallow friendships with people they don't see very often -- and they are always "normal" around these people.  It's also how it is so easy to make you look like the a-hole when you break up.

Mine had a pretty fast idealization/devaluation cycle when it came to relationships, which spanned 3 - 4 months -- so I got out fairly quickly. 

Mine couldn't keep the mask on for very long, and so I figured out she had serious emotional issues pretty quickly.  I started researching and suspected she had a Cluster B personality disorder a few weeks before we broke up.  Her behaviour after we broke up pretty much confirmed it, and I think I found this board around that time. 

We've been broken up for 2 months.  NC for a month and a half.  She is still posting negative things about me on social media.  I finally responded by posting something online basically saying that I wish her well, I hope she forgets all about me and finds someone who makes her happy. 

[songdog09]

Don't think I can one up that story and I won't try. I can completely sympathize with your situation, even the bizarre behavior after it's over and choosing to not engage, although I definitely feel some perverted side of me tugging, telling me it will probably be ok this time, she sounds normal now... .

These feelings, I feel, are just nostalgic but natural residue of normalcy. But the nostalgia is from something that is a phantom. I may have really, truly felt it back then. I may have believed that she felt what I did, but I'll never know for sure whether she truly felt the same as I did.

Just to add to the red flags, one that came later to me, maybe only a few months before our wedding went down like this:

I got an early morning distressed call from my fiancé that her sister in law was having a yard sale. Her sister in law was the widow of her late brother who had died about 18 months earlier. My fiancé and her sister in law were as close as any two sisters possibly could be. They were very close, spoke daily, my fiancé bought a house in her neighborhood just so she could be close to her.

Her sister in law was in fact having a yard sale and she was selling many of my fiances brothers things. These were things that the sister in law had asked the family to please come and get whatever they wanted.  She had hinted that she was getting close to a point in her healing and mourning that she needed to start to let some of these things go. But the family never asked to come and go through his belongings. So eventually the yard sale came.

I was unaware of all this familial subtext going on. But I got this sobbing call early one Saturday morning and I was asked by my fiancé to please go over and get a few key things that she wanted of her brothers.

Of course I saddled up my white steed, put on my armour and did exactly as my weeping damsel requested. I remember telling the sister in law, "Hey, this will all be ok eventually. It has to be. It has to work out. This is family."

Wow! Uhhhhh maybe in a normal family's world but not in the world of my ex wife! That day was the last day that she had any interaction with her sister in law, this closest friend of hers the day before was now written off and I was wrong about it being ok eventually. It didn't have to be better at some point. In fact it can get worse. It can fester and all communication can forever cease between my ex and her former best friend.

This is the sister in law who cared for my fiancé's brother while he was dying of cancer at a young age!

She just wrote her off and erased her in one day. And then "controlled" the information about what happened. This includes with her parents and her son. None of these people ever got the story from the sister in law. They just got it directly from my fiancé and they believed her story.

Then the smear campaign began by writing disparaging letters to her employer and to the board of directors of her employer. Luckily none of these letters came to anything negative to the widow other than a great deal of stress. But as far as I know this was the end of my ex's smear campaign.

Now... .me... .a witness to all of this... .a few months before saying "I do"... .Where were my antennae at this point? Where was my good sense? Why didn't I understand that these exact things could happen to me if I made one innocent mistake? Or hey, what if after we were married I just really f'd up? I've been known to just sometimes f*** up at times.

Why did I think she would never do the same thing to me? But I did think that. Never to me! She would never do that. She loved me too much. She would never, not to me... .

Oh yes she would... .

I was friendly to my ex for a couple of years during a seasonal job situation, long before we dated. I did have the opportunity to see her cheat on the guy she was living with, with a married man and devalue her BF.

For some reason I thought that those things would not happen with us. I discussed it with her, and she showed remorse... .and I was very, very careful in the beginning. Fast forward 5 years of living together and I was treated similarly... .

The most disturbing part was that she turned into someone that I just did not know. Vindictive, abusive, dishonest, blaming and then would switch to victim... .and just told lie after lie after lie to me and everyone else that mattered in her life.

It's really difficult to have to grasp the change in this person and to cope with the abuse and the loss of what you "thought" that you had.

Of course... .she had shown me this person years before... .but I chose to ignore that, forgave and attached.

So... .you can put me on that list for sucker of the year, as well because all the signs were there to show me what lay ahead in my future! 

I have been absolute NC for a long time... .but I am still occasionally subjected to bizarre behavior.  I never engage... .but the whole experience troubles me deeply.

[rollercoaster24]

Hi everyone

It seems they hide it until they can't contain the act any longer and once we frequently see who they really are, they begin to hate us too, that's when we really cop it.

In my case, we met as friends at first, as BPex needed a 'temporary' place to crash whilst he apparently 'secured' his pending employment, (yea the employment never happened  ).

After a month or so of friendship we became involved intimately when he convinced me he wanted a relationship with me, and not long after his mask really came off.

It took me a long time to figure out what I was really dealing with, (by this time I was 2 years in), and it wasn't until the real end, (another 2 years later) that I found out there were lots of other things he had been hiding from me, (so my instincts were correct).

Somehow, (if its true of course) he has managed to pass on through his Sister Inlaw that he is now in another relationship, with a female Psychiatrist would you believe. I had a few laughs pondering about how they might have met with my own family, (whom BP hated right through our union).

I can bet she has been subjected to his 'fantasy dream man' act, and I wonder just how she will handle it when his mask finally comes off. I'm told she is 'keeping him in line' because he has 'met his match', but I wonder how long for?

Why should I care anyway?

To hell with his craziness!

[letmeout]

Why did I think she would never do the same thing to me? But I did think that. Never to me! She would never do that. She loved me too much. She would never, not to me... .

Oh yes she would... .

Truer words were never spoken, by anyone involved with a BPD.

[peiper]

In a lot of ways I was seeing what I wanted to see. At the beginning of the relationship there were red flags that I ignored. After awhile my eyesight got a little better and that's when her mask completely fell off. She could hide it as long as I was willing to overlook things and let her hide behind lies and a facade.

[Infared]

Why did I think she would never do the same thing to me? But I did think that. Never to me! She would never do that. She loved me too much. She would never, not to me... .

Oh yes she would... .

Truer words were never spoken, by anyone involved with a BPD.

+++1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000!

[letmeout]

LOL!

[Hope0807]

This is the truth and elaborated upon by the researchers who have worked for decades with these personality disorders.  On one side I HATE that lost SEVEN years of my life to this creep, not only to mourn and heal, but to realize that OUR past is virtually NONEXISTENT to the person I shared it with.  When the "discard" phase compares persons to being "tossed out with the trash" - that's EXACTLY how it is.  No one thinks twice once they tie the bag and the garbage man takes it out of sight.  That's how our ex's treated us and beyond comprehensible.

On the other side - I am a detective at heart.  I cannot let things rest when I want to more or seem unsure.  He was BRILLIANT, like a world-class magician, covering up everything that seemed not right.  But his negativity, neediness, parasitic lifestyle, increasingly overt displays narcissism (from someone who constantly put himself down in one form or another), and little and big lies - I WAS CALLING HIM OUT ON A DAILY BASIS AND HE COULDN'T STAND IT ANYMORE. 

I wanted to leave him for YEARS.  Each time I tried he cried, groveled, promised and said the most amazing things to me.  It seemed heartless for me to not give him a chance…AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN.  I hate that I was so screwed up in the mind that I actually begged and apologized in the fallout.  He flipped the tables on me literally between the time I went for a drive (saying I was really leaving this time) and came back home.  I WISH I had the gumption to simply say, "FINALLY, you agree we don't belong together." and never looked back.  He blamed me for everything, made it out to be someone I wasn't and it was horrible beyond words.  I hate that I groveled.  Sometimes I wish I could go back to the fallout and redeem myself with my inner strength.  I always knew there was something very wrong with him.  My wasn't just a BPD, he was a Psychopath.

It seems they hide it until they can't contain the act any longer and once we frequently see who they really are, they begin to hate us too, that's when we really cop it.

[hope2727]

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

[peiper]

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

I agree completely

[drummerboy]

Yep, that was totally my experience too. My ex played the cute, vulnerable victim role perfectly. I defy anyone to not think she was the most adorable person on the planet after meeting her. The few "friends" she had did not seem what I would call mentally healthy. And I do agree with your comments about what happens to anyone who calls them on their bs. Once she realised that I wasn't going to be another of her enablers I was gone. Their enablers are like oxygen to a BPD. Her mum was the worst enabler. They cannot have anyone in their life who has seen through the mask,seen through the act. Those people have to be utterly removed from their life.

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

[Infared]

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

I think that you might just have something there.

[Hope0807]

Agree wholeheartedly with this!  Experienced EXACTLY the same.  Sickening.

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

I agree completely

[Hope0807]

I agree with you drummerboy…which became a huge problem for me because a large part of me stayed emotionally invested because of his wonderful family.  Then in the fallout I found out that SEVERAL family members did indeed see "through the mask, through the act" in earlier years long before he met me.  When the family members admitted this after the breakup, I became angry (noted in a separate post by me), but ultimately I have to believe that they simply thought he turned a corner and was righting his life, and investing in me to do so.  Even today, there's no convincing my ex's family of what only I know to be the real truth…he was investing in me…but to steal my soul and then discard me when I was no longer of use and opposed his nonsense so greatly that it became a power struggle to him that his mask was blowing off at warped speed.  

They cannot have anyone in their life who has seen through the mask,seen through the act. Those people have to be utterly removed from their life.

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

[clydegriffith]

I think they hide it by playing the victim. I also think the hide it by walking away and cutting ties with anyone who could call them out on their BS. This is just an opinion but it seems to bee what I witnessed. My ex would cut off and never speak again about really nice healthy type people he had friendships with but he hung onto enabler types who bought his victimhood.

Thissss.