How do I deal effectively with a borderline personality disorder

[Crsbttm]

My ex has been diagnosed by multiple therapist as a borderline personality disorder. She had a really rough childhood got beat up by her dad regularly was raped at one point just a nasty growing up. Well now she's taking all of her rage and anger for her father out on me and I can't see my kids and I can't do anything right and I don't know how to effectively deal with this type of mental health issue while keeping my cool. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[ElleAZ]

My sister is BPD and we have never been able to have a relationship. I am currently raising the child she kicked out because she was afraid her daughter would seduce her own father. That's how sick she is.

I would take this legal and cut to the chase. She's an ex for a reason.

Also there are some good books on Amazon on BPD. Helped me immensely to see the abuse clearer. I think if you want to work with her nicely, arm yourself with knowledge. I recall that flattery went a long way with my sister because it appeased her fear of rejection for a few fleeting seconds.

 

[Pucman]

The only thing I can tell you, my ex was Boderline PD and bi polar, At 38 I noticed the shit subsiding at 40 she is basically like the woman I fell in love with 20 years ago. Spent ten years putting up with it I couldn’t of done the other 8 though.

 

[Xorkoth]

I was married to someone with BPD for 12 years. Actually still married technically because she went increasingly crazy and is basically unable to deal with anything and breaks down every time I bring up the topic of divorce. It was horrible being with her, increasingly so, it was great at first other than the sudden, horrible rages where she almost became a different person that I hated. But the rages became more and more frequent, and worse and worse. At some point I was no longer dealing with a rational person. She was unable to see anything from anyone's perspective but her own, and she refused to admit she had a problem. Whenever she went into a rage, it was my fault (sometimes for things as stupid as stacking the mixing bowls wrong). I believe that she means to be a good person, and she could also be really sweet. But when angry she was absolutely horrible. Eventually I turned to opiates and was badly addicted for 10 years, I wanted to kill myself eventually. She almost killed me once when she was angry, too. It all got increasingly bad as time went on. Finally she left (I feel like I had stockholm syndrome, I could never convince myself to leave her, I always made excuses for her behavior), and within months I had quit opiates for good and now, 4 and a half years later, my life is completely different and amazing, and I have a wonderful partner who treats me well, we haven't even had a single fight in 3 and a half years.

To this day (actually, specifically today, just an hour ago) she is still fucking with my life... staying with my ex for so long and getting married to her is literally the worst decision I ever made. Of course, that's her, I don't know your person. My ex was completely unwilling to admit she had a problem or go to therapy or anything, so it just got worse and worse because she wouldn't even admit there was a problem.

How to deal with her? Whenever possible, just concede whatever point she is trying to argue. I had to constantly swallow my pride, because if I didn't it became an abusive fight. It was hard, impossiuble really but we were living together and romantically entangled/married still, it's much easier now because it's like, whatever, I'll tell her she's right, I know the truth.

Sorry man, I know how tough it is. Sorry she's keeping your kids from you in particular. I'm SO glad my ex and I didn't have kids.

 

[Pucman]

XOR, my ten years slipped up on me as I watched the person who I loved most turn into the devil. She was so fucking mean when we argued. Personal attacks she even told me she was sleeping with my friends. Wasn’t true but she had no filter between wrong and right. She was super sweet in front of others and most didn’t believe me. Until that filter got erased and her best gfs saw the insanity I had been dealing with. Then my friends and our friends saw her breakdown. We were to be married and I canceled the wedding with two months to go. She will never forgive me for that. But I had spent over twenty grand on therapies and hospital stays, suicide attempts and we had a child. She is better now, I think we are friends now and have been for the last couple years. She made me nuts for six years after we split, almost daily then it stopped.

 

[Xorkoth]

Sounds so similar to my experience. She was so evil when her anger switch got flipped, she'd say absolutely anything to hurt me. The only way to get it to stop was to basically grovel and tell her how horrible I was and how right she was. And then she'd give me scorn for being "weak" but would stop screaming at me. There was no winning. She's actually been overall quite nice since she moved back with her mom, but dealing with her is still really difficult. Currently, we are still legally married and she's on my house deed. Every time over the years I try to bring up the divorce, which we both agreed and still agree that we just keep our own stuff and I get the house since she never contributed a cent to it, she finds a reason why she can't deal with it right now. I'm getting a mortgage refinance and since she's on the deed she needs to sign some papers for it to go through. Myself and the mortgage company have spent, collectively, a couple thousand on appraisals, legal firm to draw up papers and do title work, etc. She's gone back and forth like 5 times about whether she'd sign them or not, claiming that it's so overwhelming to read and understand the papers. Yesterday she told me she'd sign them and return them immediately. Now today she says she's won't have any time whatsoever until September or October to sign the papers. Which means my mortgage deal will fall through and I'll owe them for the costs they have incurred, and I won't be able to fix my badly damaged roof. It's so immensely frustrating. I'm not even dealing with a fully rational person. I've never been able to understand how her brain works and she's difficult at every step. My biggest regret in life is getting involved with her, she's caused me so much pain and trouble.

 

[CfZrx]

I know from experience that you need lots of patience and lots of room between your homes.

 

[MrRoot]

My fiancee has BPD and when she is awry I try to think that this isn't as stressing as trying to keep peace in Afghanistan.

As I am retired peacekeeper I mostly have nerves of steel and can push away those direct verbal hostilities from my mind.

We have been together for over a year now and at first it was just lovely being with her as those ragings didn't occur at all but after we built more trust to eachother she started to get very bad issues as at one time I was the best man who has ever walked the earth but it suddenly changed to opposite and and all she could see was the worst things she could imagine a guy doing although I haven't been guilty to none of the things she accused me doing.

We had on-off phase for a while but she agreed to get help as in a form of DBT and to discontinue using some drugs such as speed, Lyrica and benzos which she finally quitted this spring and luckily things have been much better especially since that.

She still has her quirks and even starts the verbal or physical abuse every now and then but it is not close to the worst times we have had.

She has some co-dependency issues too as she sometimes thinks for example that everytime I am using my phone I actually am writing to some whore and when I am late from meeting my friends or such I have been seeing some slut instead which I wouldn't do as I have really bad experience of being cheated and fucked all over my first marriage.

But things are progressing to be better each day and although I don't even hope that symptoms of BPD disappear completely but atleast with all the help she is getting those symptoms aren't that bad as they have been constantly been less severe and happen less frequent now. I haven't even been physically attacked for over six months.

It still needs some weird kind of mentality to live with a person who has BPD as you just need to be able to differentiate the person with acute symptoms from a person she is when she's at her best and doesn't suit everybody especially if they have weak nerves or let everything go "under the skin".

Hard but rewarding as she is the love of my life.

 

[Xorkoth]

My fiancee has BPD and when she is awry I try to think that this isn't as stressing as trying to keep peace in Afghanistan.

As I am retired peacekeeper I mostly have nerves of steel and can push away those direct verbal hostilities from my mind.

We have been together for over a year now and at first it was just lovely being with her as those ragings didn't occur at all but after we built more trust to eachother she started to get very bad issues as at one time I was the best man who has ever walked the earth but it suddenly changed to opposite and and all she could see was the worst things she could imagine a guy doing although I haven't been guilty to none of the things she accused me doing.

We had on-off phase for a while but she agreed to get help as in a form of DBT and to discontinue using some drugs such as speed, Lyrica and benzos which she finally quitted this spring and luckily things have been much better especially since that.

She still has her quirks and even starts the verbal or physical abuse every now and then but it is not close to the worst times we have had.

She has some co-dependency issues too as she sometimes thinks for example that everytime I am using my phone I actually am writing to some whore and when I am late from meeting my friends or such I have been seeing some slut instead which I wouldn't do as I have really bad experience of being cheated and fucked all over my first marriage.

But things are progressing to be better each day and although I don't even hope that symptoms of BPD disappear completely but atleast with all the help she is getting those symptoms aren't that bad as they have been constantly been less severe and happen less frequent now. I haven't even been physically attacked for over six months.

It still needs some weird kind of mentality to live with a person who has BPD as you just need to be able to differentiate the person with acute symptoms from a person she is when she's at her best and doesn't suit everybody especially if they have weak nerves or let everything go "under the skin".

Hard but rewarding as she is the love of my life.

Sounds extremely familiar. My ex used to tell me I was like Jesus one minute and then the next I was the most pathetic worthless piece of scum she's ever met, immensely selfish, mean, etc. After 10 years I couldn't shake it off anymore, nor did I want to. In the first years I shook it off easily but it got much harder with time. We had some periods with virtually no strife, too. At first I only saw the good parts except during the rages, because she was great aside from those, mostly... by the end, I could only see the bad, every moment was tainted by feelings of betrayal and fear and loathing, for her and for myself. Also as she entered late twenties/thirty, she became increasingly unstable and had a nervous breakdown because of her unwillingness to address her issues, which made everything a lot worse.

I hope yours works out better. The fact that she's willing to get help says a lot. I do sympathize with people who have it because clearly they are suffering, but there is really no excuse to traumatize, control, and abuse the one you love.

Sorry, I'm having to deal with my ex a lot this week and it's stirring up old stuff... one thing is for sure, I will never, ever allow myself to be treated that way by anyone again. I don't mean to suggest yours will turn out the same way.

Anyway I feel like I might be derailing this thread, sorry if so...