Is he aware?

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Since becoming aware my husband may have BPD a few weeks ago, I’ve been staying “neutral” with him and documenting things every day. For me, being neutral means not reacting to hurtful or questionable things he says or does. An example is when on Father’s Day, he decided to drive two hours each way to spend the day with his narc family (who we’d previously agreed upon having limited contact with) leaving me and our two children at home. I didn’t react. I normally would have tried to steer him to see that he should probably spend Father’s Day with his kids (side note: not having to pull someone through life and urge them to make the right decisions regularly is freeing!).

He’s been in a disassociated state for weeks now but is showing signs that he’s going to rage soon. Last night, he was pacing around, and I asked him if there’s anything he wanted to talk about or tell me (I know I poked the bear by simply asking him this question, but I want to observe our interactions with a new lens of awareness). He instantly became extremely defensive (“why would you ask me that? What does that mean? What, you want to know about my day? Obviously that’s not what you mean” etc.). He went on a tangent about:
- how my moods are affecting him so negatively that he has trouble going to work everyday.
- he’s just waiting for our relationship to be done because this has been going on for years.
- he just cant figure out my love language.
- he can’t handle being attacked all the time.
- ever since he went to his parents’ on Father’s Day, I've been “off the rails.”

(During this “conversation”, he was pale, pupils dilated, biting nails frantically.)

I was (and still kind of am) somehow questioning if I did any of the things he said I did, but his accusation that I’ve been off the rails since he visited his parents is an anchor for me to know that he is gaslighting me, as I’ve never mentioned it once.

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?

[Ariel78]

Since becoming aware my husband may have BPD a few weeks ago, I’ve been staying “neutral” with him and documenting things every day. For me, being neutral means not reacting to hurtful or questionable things he says or does. An example is when on Father’s Day, he decided to drive two hours each way to spend the day with his narc family (who we’d previously agreed upon having limited contact with) leaving me and our two children at home. I didn’t react. I normally would have tried to steer him to see that he should probably spend Father’s Day with his kids (side note: not having to pull someone through life and urge them to make the right decisions regularly is freeing!).

He’s been in a disassociated state for weeks now but is showing signs that he’s going to rage soon. Last night, he was pacing around, and I asked him if there’s anything he wanted to talk about or tell me (I know I poked the bear by simply asking him this question, but I want to observe our interactions with a new lens of awareness). He instantly became extremely defensive (“why would you ask me that? What does that mean? What, you want to know about my day? Obviously that’s not what you mean” etc.). He went on a tangent about:
- how my moods are affecting him so negatively that he has trouble going to work everyday.
- he’s just waiting for our relationship to be done because this has been going on for years.
- he just cant figure out my love language.
- he can’t handle being attacked all the time.
- ever since he went to his parents’ on Father’s Day, I've been “off the rails.”

(During this “conversation”, he was pale, pupils dilated, biting nails frantically.)

I was (and still kind of am) somehow questioning if I did any of the things he said I did, but his accusation that I’ve been off the rails since he visited his parents is an anchor for me to know that he is gaslighting me, as I’ve never mentioned it once.

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?

[ChooseHappiness]

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?

My xwBPD has repeatedly accused me of behaviour that is actually hers (parental negligence, emotional abuse, etc.). So yes, gaslighting is a real thing with BPD, or maybe projecting their feelings/actions onto others to avoid acknowledging their own behaviour. I don't understand how people can deceive themselves like that, but they do. They seem to need someone else to be the problem, so they can blame them and relieve themselves of any responsibility for their actions.

The conversations during these times are likely not conversations from their point of view, but simply excuses/vehicles for them to project their distorted thoughts onto their partners and reaffirm to themselves their disassociated point of view. So don't expect to have an actual discussion based in reality and facts, because that is not their starting point in these talks or their end goal. It's simply to fix blame on an external target to make themselves feel better.

It's fine to examine your own past actions and behaviour. But trust yourself and remind yourself of reality and what actually happened when you're feeling gaslit. Set boundaries for yourself where you place the mental health of you and your children first, otherwise he will slowly erode that. And expect him to lash out when you stop indulging him and for the situation to possibly grow worse. (My own marriage ended when I finally stopped putting my ex's needs over my own, and I think that is fairly common.)

This is a difficult journey for you. Please remember to be compassionate toward yourself during it. All the best.

[kells76]

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things?

Good question, and one that I think all of us have asked at some point.

It's important to remember that if we're here because we think the person in our life has BPD, we need to remember that BPD is a real, impairing, and serious mental illness. It doesn't "go away when he's acting normally" and "come back when he's acting weird" -- it's always in play at a wiring level (unless and until the pwBPD engages in meaningful treatment, because improvement and healing are possible!). It affects the pwBPD's self-awareness, feelings, thoughts, perceptions, and beliefs; basically, the entire worldview and approach to relationships. It isn't necessarily some kind of psychopathic or sociopathic chosen behavior: "He plotted ahead of time to make me feel like the crazy one". In fact, it may be helpful to remember that at some level, BPD behaviors probably have less to do with us, and more to do with the pwBPD's overwhelming and out of control inner experience. The core goal isn't manipulating others (even if we feel manipulated); it's probably a lot more egocentric than that.

It's likely that if BPD is in play, he really isn't experiencing self-awareness the way we conceptualize it. We tell ourselves "if I were doing that, I'd know I was doing that!" but we can't apply our own experience of awareness to someone with a mental illness. Kind of like how if we saw a guy on the side of the road arguing with the sky, we wouldn't say "Gee, if that were me, I'd know I was being crazy".

In terms of him throwing accusations at you, we have a thread with a good discussion of projection -- take a look when you have a second. A couple of thoughts that stood out to me there were:

In general, emotionally healthy people base their perceptions on facts.  Projection is basing your perception of reality on feelings.

Projection is a defense mechanism, operating unconsciously, in which what is emotionally unacceptable in the self is unconsciously rejected and attributed (projected) to others.  Projection is denying one's own unpleasant traits, behaviors, or feelings by attributing them, often in an accusing way,  to someone else.

Projection is a form of defense in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person, where they then appear as a threat from the external world. A common form of projection occurs when an individual, threatened by his own angry feelings, accuses another of harbouring hostile thoughts.

Based on your experience, does any of that seem to fit?

[jaded7]

Since becoming aware my husband may have BPD a few weeks ago, I’ve been staying “neutral” with him and documenting things every day. For me, being neutral means not reacting to hurtful or questionable things he says or does. An example is when on Father’s Day, he decided to drive two hours each way to spend the day with his narc family (who we’d previously agreed upon having limited contact with) leaving me and our two children at home. I didn’t react. I normally would have tried to steer him to see that he should probably spend Father’s Day with his kids (side note: not having to pull someone through life and urge them to make the right decisions regularly is freeing!).

He’s been in a disassociated state for weeks now but is showing signs that he’s going to rage soon. Last night, he was pacing around, and I asked him if there’s anything he wanted to talk about or tell me (I know I poked the bear by simply asking him this question, but I want to observe our interactions with a new lens of awareness). He instantly became extremely defensive (“why would you ask me that? What does that mean? What, you want to know about my day? Obviously that’s not what you mean” etc.). He went on a tangent about:
- how my moods are affecting him so negatively that he has trouble going to work everyday.
- he’s just waiting for our relationship to be done because this has been going on for years.
- he just cant figure out my love language.
- he can’t handle being attacked all the time.
- ever since he went to his parents’ on Father’s Day, I've been “off the rails.”

(During this “conversation”, he was pale, pupils dilated, biting nails frantically.)

I was (and still kind of am) somehow questioning if I did any of the things he said I did, but his accusation that I’ve been off the rails since he visited his parents is an anchor for me to know that he is gaslighting me, as I’ve never mentioned it once.

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?

All of these will sound very familiar to us here Ariel.

He left you alone with the kids on Father's Day. Very painful, and hard to understand since it sounds like you two had discussed the toxicity of his family. My ex ditched me over the Christmas holiday, left town to go to her family's, where I had spent the previous Christmas and Thanksgiving. She didn't even ask me about my plans for Christmas, and evaded and avoided me for a couple weeks before she left without a word. I now realized it was because she didn't want to find herself in a conversation about the holidays. On Christmas Eve, when she hadn't communicated with me in 3-4 days, I got a text that said 'tired. going to take some time to recalibrate'. While at sat alone, at home, with the beautiful gift I had gone to her favorite store to buy her.

I mention this because I noticed the avoiding me, the distance, the not returning calls and texts for days, the short, cold texts if she did communicate. We had an event with her family 4 days before Christmas, that had been on the calendar for a long time, and she was very cold, mean, snapping at me in front of her family, walking away from me. It was humiliating.

I now realize that she knew for at least two weeks she was going to ditch me (I later learned it was because of the "shi**y gift I gave her" the previous Christmas that embarrassed her and made her "not want to cover up for me again in front of her family". This planning and evasion made HER very anxious and stressed inside, knowing that it would hurt me. That is what came out at me when we were together with her family a few days before Christmas.

I sense some of this dynamic in your husband ditching the family over Fathers Day. I'm guessing he was feeling the same kind of interior angst knowing that it would upset you and the kids. Ever since that trip, when you didn't even react, he's now been in a dissociated state. It seems really similar to my ex and how she was angry and short with ME when she was living with knowing that she was going to ditch me over the holidays, knowing she was evading me.

And then he tells you that YOU have been off the rails since the trip! That would be exactly what my ex would say, it's projection. He's been off the rails, and he accuses you of being that. It's textbook.

When I pointed out to my ex that she "stopped communicating, was angry and snapping at me at the show in front of her family, and then left for Christmas without saying a word", her response was and angry "you knew where I was!!". No I did not, you hadn't been communicating and had ignored my texts and calls and lunch invitations, and we never spoke about Christmas.

"I was (and still kind of am) somehow questioning if I did any of the things he said I did, but his accusation that I’ve been off the rails since he visited his parents is an anchor for me to know that he is gaslighting me, as I’ve never mentioned it once."

As we all do. The many things I was accused of thinking, doing. It gets so confusing. You do the very same thing I did, find one thing that I KNOW, absolutely know, to be true, then compare it to what she/he is saying about it. That's the anchor.

"He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?"

Yes, in my experience this is extremely common. It was a hallmark of my relationship. As I described above, I think deep down they 'sense' what they are doing in the form of shame or guilt, but it's below the conscious level.....but it does produce discomfort and agitation, which then they project onto you/us. My ex was 'mad' at me when she did things that hurt ME. It got to the point that I could tell she was planning or doing something that she thought would hurt me by her mood.

They need us to be the problem, because otherwise they'd have to face their behavior, which feels, again below the conscious level I would guess, shameful and bad. Think of it this way...if you described their behavior and treatment of us to them as if it were a stranger doing to another stranger (when they aren't dysregulated), in a clinical way, they most likely would agree it's hurtful. They would recognize that.

Yes, in my experience it was not only common, but absolutely standard, that if I brought up something she did that was unkind or hurtful- always in a kind and loving way- she would explode at me with defensiveness, denial, gaslighting about what happened, and anger. Even just bizarre explanations and shifting stories that were mutually incompatible.

In our last conversation, I told her verbatim "honey, you accuse me of and yell at me for things you actually do". She was very angry and demanded I tell her what these were. So off the top of my head I came up with two very clear examples of things she yelled at me for, that I didn't do, but that she did. I could have come up with 7 more, but she got more angry and lied and gaslighted to make it seem like what I was saying was somehow untrue. Just denied it all.

I hope that this at least validates your experience a bit. It just rang so true to me.

[Gerda]

Wow, this sounds a lot like my husband! The projection. Ruining holidays.

Have you read Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline or Narcissistic Parent by McBride and Fjelstad? I really recommend that book.

I remember during the first 2 or 3 years of our daughter's life I used to try to encourage my husband to spend more time with her, just like how you said you'd normally try to steer your husband towards spending Father's Day with his kids.

I gave up trying to do that sort of thing after reading that book. Turns out it's actually better that we don't do that. Kids in this situation need to spend as much time as possible with the non-disordered parent and as little time as possible with the disordered parent. So my strategy now is to let him spend time with our daughter when he feels like it, but if he doesn't, don't try to make him.

For example, it's almost the 4th of July. Last year I wanted to take D4 to see the fireworks for the first time in her life (before that it had always been cancelled because of COVID or inclement weather or something). I'd been telling her about it for a while ahead of time and we had gotten all excited about it. We had been assuming that Dada was going to come with us, but at the very last minute (literally, as I was packing up our picnic to head to the park), he decided he didn't want to go.

So I just took D4 to see the fireworks without him. He threw a fit saying that we should just watch the fireworks on TV at home (which is just not the same), and he hates it when I take D4 anywhere without his approval, but I just took her anyway, and she had a fun time (except for me having to explain to her that Dada doesn't want to go).

I have more examples. He does that sort of thing a lot, ruining holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions. He often has this freak out about it at the last minute. A few days ago he said he wanted to go on a vacation to the beach next week, so I've been preparing for that. Took D4 to buy a new swimsuit since her old one doesn't fit anymore, been researching hotels, etc. Now he's acting all stressed out about it, like it's going to be this huge amount of trouble for him, even though it was his idea in the first place! So I'm kind of mentally preparing myself for the possibility he'll decide at the last minute he doesn't want to go to this either, and possibly having to just take D4 without him again (because now she's all excited about going and I'm not going to disappoint her). If I threaten to just take her without him he'll probably then go ahead and go, but probably with lots of complaining.

This is almost the exact opposite of what you should do in a family where both parents are mentally healthy. In that situation both parents are supposed to spend holidays, vacations, and other special occasions together. But if your spouse has a personality disorder and ditches you on Father's Day or Christmas or whatever, just let them and try to have fun with the kids without them, or at least try to make sure the kids have fun.

It helps the kids attach more strongly to the non-disordered parent too, which is a good thing in our situation. I know it sounds like turning the kids against the BPD parent, but that's a fine line we have to walk. When I had to tell my D that Dada wasn't coming to see the fireworks, she was disappointed, but I was just telling her the plain truth. I didn't tell her Dada was bad or anything. And he's now done these kinds of things often enough that D doesn't even expect him to come with us to stuff like that, and is actually surprised when he does (though she's happy when he does, because she still loves her Daddy).

Eventually the kids learn that one of their parents is the reliable one that they can count on to be there with them for these things, and the other one isn't.

[PeteWitsend]

...

He basically described himself while throwing these accusations at me. Is this common? Does it mean that deep down he knows what he’s doing? Or does he actually think I’m “the problem” and doing all of those things? Is it common for people with BPD to be extremely defensive and gaslight?

Yes.
Maybe.
Probably.
and Yes. 

As others have noted, projection is a real thing, and frequently used by pwBPD. 

I say "maybe" to the question of whether he knows what he's doing, because it's impossible to know.  They're often so disordered mentally that they believe the lies they're saying.  Perhaps that explains sometimes how they can get so emotional... they've actually managed to convince themselves that their partner did something they didn't. 

So he very probably does think you're the problem, and would tell that to everyone else around.

[ChooseHappiness]

Have you read Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline or Narcissistic Parent by McBride and Fjelstad? I really recommend that book.

I remember during the first 2 or 3 years of our daughter's life I used to try to encourage my husband to spend more time with her, just like how you said you'd normally try to steer your husband towards spending Father's Day with his kids.

I gave up trying to do that sort of thing after reading that book. Turns out it's actually better that we don't do that. Kids in this situation need to spend as much time as possible with the non-disordered parent and as little time as possible with the disordered parent. So my strategy now is to let him spend time with our daughter when he feels like it, but if he doesn't, don't try to make him.

I agree that encouraging kids to spend time with a BPD parent likely doesn't help them. I tried to get my ex to spend more time with our children for years before I realized it was doing more harm to them than good. (This was before I realized she was BPD.) More often than not she would provoke conflict with them. Which then left me trying to heal the damage. I eventually learned it was best just to solo parent within the relationship to keep the peace and support the children in their development and needs. So they now have safe and secure bonds with me while the oldest is essentially alienated from her and the younger child is on the same path.

I think Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline is a very useful book. It really helped me to understand the importance of having the children interact with other adults in healthy relationships. So I make a real effort to include them in outings with my friends, etc., so they can see what healthy relationships and interactions look like. It's really important the kids are exposed to functional, non-disordered relationships as much as possible so they can come to realize that the behaviour of the disordered parent is not the norm. That's important both for their own development as social beings and to help prevent internalizing the abuse from the disordered parent.

[Gerda]

Basically, if your spouse has BPD, you can't co-parent with them. That would suggest that you have some kind of partnership with another adult to work together to take care of the kid(s).

Instead, you have to take care of the kids, who actually do need you to take care of them because they are kids, and a seriously mentally ill adult who thinks it is also your job to take care of them, even though they are an adult, and also are terrible at taking care of anyone else.

And my husband is always going on about what a terrible parent I am, and how I'm the crazy one who needs therapy (I think he maybe forgot that I am in therapy), and how I'm the cause of all our relationship problems, not him. So yes lots and lots of projection.

The reason is because people with BPD see everything as black and white, even themselves. So they can't admit that they're anything other than perfect, or else that would make them pure evil. They can't handle that, so they have to blame everyone else for everything that goes wrong in their lives.

On some level your husband probably knows it was bad for him to not spend Father's Day with his children, because that's what normal fathers are supposed to do. So that would mean he did something wrong that he should feel guilty about, but then in his mind that would make him the worst father who ever lived, and he can't handle feeling that way, so really YOU must have done something wrong, not him, and it will make him feel better to get into a rage at you instead of feeling guilty about anything he did.

At least, that's how I think it works.

[jaded7]

The reason is because people with BPD see everything as black and white, even themselves. So they can't admit that they're anything other than perfect, or else that would make them pure evil. They can't handle that, so they have to blame everyone else for everything that goes wrong in their lives.

On some level your husband probably knows it was bad for him to not spend Father's Day with his children, because that's what normal fathers are supposed to do. So that would mean he did something wrong that he should feel guilty about, but then in his mind that would make him the worst father who ever lived, and he can't handle feeling that way, so really YOU must have done something wrong, not him, and it will make him feel better to get into a rage at you instead of feeling guilty about anything he did.

At least, that's how I think it works.

Very similar to what I wrote above Gerda, and that's what I think as well. It's very hard to wrap the mind around.