Trying to wrap my head around the fact she has a major mental illness

[kc sunshine]

Even after two and half years of knowing, it is still so hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that she has a major mental illness, one that has relational instability and dysfunction at it's core Here's a quick list to remind myself that she has it.

From what she and others have told me:

1) She told me she had BPD (though she would go back and forth on it).

2) She told others she did as well (in a big group email-- so brave of her!)

3) Her mother has it.

4) Her daughter probably has it-- so it seems as if it is genetic.

5) For her it is also mixed with depression (and perhaps sex addiction).

6) She told me it that BPD was the cause of all her broken relationships.

7) She has a history of very volatile relationships, including some violence with one ex-husband.

8) None of her relationships have lasted longer than 2 years.

9) Her daughter tells me she feels emotionally unsafe with her mom.

10) She missed most of her senior year of high school because she was so depressed-- slept around a lot, including with strangers much older than her.

My own experience of it:

1) At about 6 weeks in, I experienced her first rage.  

2) She mirrored me.

3) She idealized me (and I her!)

4) She devalued me.

5) She tested me.

6) She discarded me (so the full cycle)

7) We would average about 1 rage a week-- if it got more than that, it was a bad week.

8) She was extremely jealous.

9) When mad, she would use black/white logic in our arguments... ."you always"

10) At the end, things where getting a little crazy... .including one time when she wouldn't get out of my car.

There's more... .but just writing that has tired me out. It still seems a bit unreal to me, even though I've spent countless hours on this board! Do you all have the same struggle believe BPD is real and that your ex has it?

[tryingsome]

I use to write it off as hormones or menstrual.

Or anything that could be cause and effect.

Was I the cause; was it the environment; is it her... .how, why, when, what.

Then I would think we are all just on a spectrum and she is just on one side of a bell curve.

It is something concrete.

Nowadays, I just have the mindset, she is she.

This is who she is.

I don't try to label it as much. Labeling her to a list of items seems to do her an injustice.

I am not a therapist so pinning it to disorder doesn't help me.

It doesn't help her.

This is who she is; a person. I accept it. I don't need to name it anymore.

[GreenEyedMonster]

My ex used to say and do some pretty downright strange things.  Later in our relationship, he looked at me during an intimate moment, and with an entirely straight face, told me about how his ex-girlfriend was going to keep him prisoner as a sex slave before killing him.

I didn't believe that there was any possible way he could believe this.

People make remarks like that in passing all the time.  "My ex could have killed me in my sleep," or "My ex was abusive," or "I was afraid of him/her."  But most of the time, these are emotional statements without a whole lot of substance, and the person speaking them knows that they are more or less exaggerations.  Yes, a mentally ill person *could have* done those things, but most of us recognize events like that as being extremely rare and unlikely.

Now he looks at our friends with a straight face and tells them that I am stalking him.  (I haven't talked to him or had any sort of direct contact with him since October.)  He really believes it enough to say it to other people as fact.

This is, mind you, a middle-aged man with an advanced degree.  Highly intelligent.  Gifted, even.

Mental illness is very, VERY strange, and it's easy to be in denial about it.  Who could really think or believe these things?

[Driver]

I use to write it off as hormones or menstrual.

Or anything that could be cause and effect.

Was I the cause; was it the environment; is it her... .how, why, when, what.

Then I would think we are all just on a spectrum and she is just on one side of a bell curve.

It is something concrete.

Nowadays, I just have the mindset, she is she.

This is who she is.

I don't try to label it as much. Labeling her to a list of items seems to do her an injustice.

I am not a therapist so pinning it to disorder doesn't help me.

It doesn't help her.

This is who she is; a person. I accept it. I don't need to name it anymore.

I see what you mean. I am like you, I don't like labeling people. Nevertheless we can't deny that this is a serious disorder. So, yes, she is she, but she's a disordered she. And there are ways to get better with appropriate therapy. I think it's dangerous to deny the disorder and simply label it as if it was a normal thing. If we do such thing, then we are not helping the pwBPD either. The idea is not to try to fix her per se, but to be aware of the disorder which transforms her real she into someone who she is not when triggered.

@sunshine,

Yes, I have the same difficulty to accept that she has a disorder. Sigh.

[Ab123]

My ex was not diagnosed, but BPD is the only way to make sense of his behavior. His actions make no sense otherwise. I was finally able to accept the closure once it clicked that his reality is profoundly different from my own, and that he views letting me go a a grand sacrifice that allows him to focus on his family and protect me from further hurt by him. He has handled the cognitive dissonance caused by his shame by making himself out to be a tragic hero.

Whenever I catch myself wondering way he didn't/doesn't try to get me back, I remind myself of this "fact."  I fed into it by thanking him for letting me go in my last text to him (14 days ago), emphasizing that I needed to be with a man I could always count on, and that I appreciated him setting me free to find him.

I didn't exactly plan to make the closure so clean, because I hadn't fully thought it through, but I think that by reinforcing that he was being noble I made it impossible for him to circle back with attempts at a zombie relationship.  

But, it's all illogical and totally nuts.  He's really just completely self centered and he let us end because he can't deal with facing his own demons/shame. His micromanagement of his family is just a cover for control / gratification. I'm sure he uses his "sacrifice" of his relationship with me as a basis to guilt/bind them.

So, I think the way to accept that it is a severe mental illness is to realize that it MUST be, and that in turn helps stop the constant analysis/need to understand.

[tryingsome]

I see what you mean. I am like you, I don't like labeling people. Nevertheless we can't deny that this is a serious disorder. So, yes, she is she, but she's a disordered she. And there are ways to get better with appropriate therapy. I think it's dangerous to deny the disorder and simply label it as if it was a normal thing. If we do such thing, then we are not helping the pwBPD either. The idea is not to try to fix her per se, but to be aware of the disorder which transforms her real she into someone who she is not when triggered.

@sunshine,

Yes, I have the same difficulty to accept that she has a disorder. Sigh.

See, I am not a therapist. It doesn't make it better for me to harp on it.

Unless someone is actually trying to work it out with a pwBPD, then the diagnosis doesn't matter.

Yes, I can say she is disordered/it's a real mental illness. It doesn't do anything for me; I am not trying to fix her. I am not trying to fix BPD.

It is just a label. (now this is all based on the detaching board). I am not denying it. She is who she is.  

I guess another way of saying it; she could have 5000 criteria and match every single one.

And I can be yep, yep, yep to all those check boxes. But it doesn't matter. I have no intention of ever going back.

I think those on the detaching board need to really look at themselves, see the part they played.

Really, those are the things we should be listing out. We should be listing out our flaws.


Now if you are trying to work it out; then maybe you want/need to label it.

[Anez]

It's hard to wrap your head around it but when you are able to things get a lot lighter for you and your recovery.

She said she has it. It runs in her family. She definitely suffers from it. And what does a future with somebody with BPD look like? Terrible, right? Full of pain, lack of trust, etc. the odds are incredibly in favor of all that.

There's nothing we can do for these people. But there's stuff we can do for us. And that's putting them in our rearview mirror, working on ourselves, and eventually finding someone else to share our lives with.

They are unfixable. Heck, even a lot of therapists turn them down as patients because they can't be fixed. So how can we even think we can fix or help them? We can't.

Work on accepting the fact they are BPDs, imagine your future with them - the real version, not the fantasy one - and keep pushing forward without them.

It's hard, but it's the way to go.

[Driver]

I see what you mean. I am like you, I don't like labeling people. Nevertheless we can't deny that this is a serious disorder. So, yes, she is she, but she's a disordered she. And there are ways to get better with appropriate therapy. I think it's dangerous to deny the disorder and simply label it as if it was a normal thing. If we do such thing, then we are not helping the pwBPD either. The idea is not to try to fix her per se, but to be aware of the disorder which transforms her real she into someone who she is not when triggered.

@sunshine,

Yes, I have the same difficulty to accept that she has a disorder. Sigh.

See, I am not a therapist. It doesn't make it better for me to harp on it.

Unless someone is actually trying to work it out with a pwBPD, then the diagnosis doesn't matter.

Yes, I can say she is disordered/it's a real mental illness. It doesn't do anything for me; I am not trying to fix her. I am not trying to fix BPD.

It is just a label. (now this is all based on the detaching board). I am not denying it. She is who she is.  

I guess another way of saying it; she could have 5000 criteria and match every single one.

And I can be yep, yep, yep to all those check boxes. But it doesn't matter. I have no intention of ever going back.

I think those on the detaching board need to really look at themselves, see the part they played.

Really, those are the things we should be listing out. We should be listing out our flaws.


Now if you are trying to work it out; then maybe you want/need to label it.

I know what you mean. But it's not a question of labeling, but simply of understanding. Many of us on this board hadn't even known that something like BPD existed nor what it really was. And that's precisely because, I guess and hope, none of us had labeled our ex. Nonetheless we all have practically the same story with our exBPDgf/bf relationshipwise. Labeling doesn't help, but trying to understand what happened in our relationship can't be done without talking about BPD.

Regarding getting over our r/s, everyone has their own method. And it is true, that for some of us, knowing that ou ex is BPD or not doesn't help at all on the emotional level, but it does help on the intellectual level. it help us rationalize and overall confirm that there is nothing we could do to save our r/s just because our ex is a pwBPD. No matter how hard we try not to label, in the end, the disorder has the last word. Otherwise we wouldn't be here talking about it.

[Ab123]

Anez & Driver are right on.

I catch myself remembering good times and doubting myself, though less often now than a few weeks ago. I've moved on quite a bit, but I'm still here because reading these posts reminds me that his behavior does make sense, if I accept that his reality is very different from mine. Seeing the same patterns of behavior in the posts of others reinforces my conclusions and validates my feelings.

The "label" helps me remember that I can't fix it, and helps keep me from destroying myself by trying. I have a mantra: "he has BPD, I didn't cause it, I can't fix it, he really wanted to be with me, it was all real, he loved me and thought I was a great girlfriend, and he views giving me up as a sacrifice.  I am very lucky to have closure, and it would be really bad to give up that closure by contacting him for any reason." 

[anothercasualty]

I know what you mean. But it's not a question of labeling, but simply of understanding. Many of us on this board hadn't even known that something like BPD existed nor what it really was. And that's precisely because, I guess and hope, none of us had labeled our ex. Nonetheless we all have practically the same story with our exBPDgf/bf relationshipwise. Labeling doesn't help, but trying to understand what happened in our relationship can't be done without talking about BPD.

Regarding getting over our r/s, everyone has their own method. And it is true, that for some of us, knowing that ou ex is BPD or not doesn't help at all on the emotional level, but it does help on the intellectual level. it help us rationalize and overall confirm that there is nothing we could do to save our r/s just because our ex is a pwBPD. No matter how hard we try not to label, in the end, the disorder has the last word. Otherwise we wouldn't be here talking about it.

Yes, I am an educated middle aged man and I had never heard about BPD until recently. I for one am glad to have a label to place on it. It helps make sense of a situation that made no sense. A situation that made my brain just spin in cycles trying to understand what the heck just happened. My pwBPD is very rational and highly functional otherwise and I have never experienced someone who was that rational in other areas of life, but just nonsensical in relationships. Hot/cold, hot/cold, come here/go away, come here/go away. Made no sense to me. Once I came here, I was able to see that I am not the only one. I also know better what to watch out for next time.

I agree that I need to look inside of me and see what part of me attracted and allowed this person to treat me the way they did. Why did I not run the first time the hot/cold push/pull dynamic began? Why did I not recognize how she used sex for control? Why did I practically fall all over myself to treat her well and then get left in the dust? Pathetic. Working on it.

[kc sunshine]

I think perhaps my not believing it might in part be the "denial" phase of grief about the breakup. Because this is the weird thing-- I totally wasn't in denial about BPD during the relationship. Well, actually, maybe I denied the severity of the problem or had stubborn, wishful thinking that we could manage it  :'(

Anyway, I totally agree with all these wise words below.

"Trying to understand what happened in our relationship can't be done without talking about BPD."

"No matter how hard we try not to label, in the end, the disorder has the last word. Otherwise we wouldn't be here talking about it."

"I agree that I need to look inside of me and see what part of me attracted and allowed this person to treat me the way they did. Why did I not run the first time the hot/cold push/pull dynamic began? Why did I not recognize how she used sex for control? Why did I practically fall all over myself to treat her well and then get left in the dust? Pathetic. Working on it."

"There's nothing we can do for these people. But there's stuff we can do for us. And that's putting them in our rearview mirror, working on ourselves, and eventually finding someone else to share our lives with."

[tryingsome]

I just want to clarify on label part.

I know my ex has BPD.

Sometime though when we label we are actually vilanizing the person.

This is part of the healing process. 

But what I am trying to say is it doesn't matter if she has BPD, or if is NPD, or ausbergers.

It doesn't matter. 

I got to this place irregardless.

Perhaps I might be further along in the healing.

I don't feel the need to contact her.

I don't wait for that message to appear.

I am forced to contact her because of the kids.

and it makes my eyes roll.

but I know now. no matter what I would done I would have ended here.

it is her fault just as it is mine.

all my energy is on myself and it fells great.   I don't sugarcoat who she is.

but I didn't give her BPD.

for me ,part of the healing is knowing I would end up here.

that I let myself end up here.