u/BusyBaseball7148

Knowing what you know now about the nature of bpd - and let's say you love that person with it more than anyone else, would you still sign up for a life of that just to be with them?

My gut says no. I've had a traumatic life of my own, and it may sound selfish but I spend the last 20 years trying to be there for other people in relationships who it turns out did not want my help anyway. I am tired. I am not about to sign away the rest of my life caring for someone who - perhaps through absolutely no fault of their own - lapses into a form of 'psychosis' or is immune to reality for periods of time that have severely destabilizing effects on me.

It is just not in me to be someone's caretaker that way. If they were normal and behaved normally I would be happy to do the 50% of what it takes to keep a relationship afloat and thriving. But I cannot be doing that plus another 40% of whatever when they lapse because they are incapable or unwilling to see the reality of what they do.

My wife called me selfish, and perhaps I am. But I never signed up to be something that was to be used up and thrown away like a paper towel. It does remind me very much of my relationship with one of my parents who would NEVER take accountability for the hell she created. Why would I put myself through a life sentence of more of that? Of having to live in her reality or else she'd going to rage or sulk like a 13 year old?

No.

I think I finally realized that I'm worth more than a life of this. being alone is better than being the floor of someone's taxi cab. That I should not have had to parent a parent, or act like a parent toward my own wife.

Sorry this will be long. I hope someone can take time to read it and advise me. Thank you if you do. I don't know what to do anymore and I feel very much all at sea. I don't really want to talk about my personal problems with anyone because the world has taught me nobody gives a shit, but I really don't know how else I can get an objective view of what I have been living in.

I have been married 1.5 years, mostly LDR due to living in different countries. The plan was to finish up working in SE Asia soon, while my US spouse visa was pending, and then go live with her and start a new life. It's been over a year that the visa was pending and we still don't have any movement on it as far as I know, the US government has slowed it down lately. Unfortunately, my job contract ended early and I had to return home to my country. It was a difficult situation. I had to stay at my friend's house on the couch. I have a long-time autoimmune illness that causes pain quite often, brain fog and I honestly haven't felt like I had a truly refreshing night of sleep in 20 years. The work situation left my money tied up in the country I was working in (I don't have a lot) and I'm still wrangling to get access to it from abroad, so I currently don't have money. I don't have a job to walk into when I got back so I am currently looking. My friend was kind enough to help me out when he didn't have to. I'm basically recalibrating my life due to the move situation. To top it off, my wife's constant anxieties and pressures about everything let to a situation where I broke down. Full nervous breakdown just before I was scheduled to fly back to my country. That was a couple of months ago and only now am I starting to heal, but it's proving slow and I feel incredibly depressed by the situation I am in.

There have been signs she has issues (never been diagnosed with anything officially) but no more so than back in June 2025 when I was still in Asia working. I'll come to that shortly.

She began the relationship investigating me on a site like this. She approached me to ask questions about someone she had previously been seeing, related to the MBTI. I am an INTJ, so she was asking me about this other INTJ she had some questions about. I was friendly and polite, I had no intentions of making any moves. We hit it off and began chatting as friends. She seemed very intelligent and articulate, and willing to talk about pretty much anything, which I thought at the time was fantastic. It's hard to find people to chat about a variety of topics with and who genuinely seem interested in you as a person and your views on life. She took notes on me. Literally. I didn't see it as a problem, maybe she was just quirky. She would ask me about everything. My likes, my dislikes, my thoughts on politics, religion, goals and dreams for the future. You know how it goes. You feel seen for the first time. She said she felt seen too. She was very secretive online, not leaving much of a trail, and after a year or so she deleted those early chats we had, claiming she had saved them somewhere. But she said she actually cherished those things as mementos of our meeting. She was very poetic, thoughtful, kind. Left me little love notes everywhere when she came to visit. Wanted to make me interesting new meals, make me a coffee in the morning, just seemed happy to be around me, fall asleep with me, go for walks with me. She would make me things, send them to me... and I am an artist so I made her things too, and sent them to her across the ocean. I would read to her as she was falling asleep, we watched movies together. She seemed to accept me fully for who I was, and I am certainly not perfect... I had kind of a rough childhood and not much luck in love. But I always tried to help those closest to me who I cared about. Our relationship seemed idyllic to begin with, although I noticed how 'intense' and full on it was, and I honestly found it left me little energy for anything else outside of work. 5 or 7 hour phone calls, day long chats while I was meant to be working, etc.

She came to visit me 3 times in 3 years, we talked a lot online when we were not in person. LDR is difficult, but I think it might also have been why I didn't see some of the issues sooner. The circular arguments, the word salad, the pivoting to the words I used or the tone, or just exiting the conversation whenever I was close to getting the answer I wanted. Stupid arguments that started over nothing, and then 3 days of emotional hangover and having to untangle them. I started to notice the asymmetry in things. She wanted full access to my thoughts and my soul, but she was hoarding her own. I gave her pretty much unrestricted access to my thoughts and my past, my vulnerabilities. I was happy to give that and expected her to reciprocate. At one point I was told 'a gift is freely given,' meaning if you give something you should not expect anything back - no strings attached for her. She didn't seem to understand or play by the basic social contract of these things. If she asked me a question and I answered it, her attitude was that she didn't owe me anything in kind. We had one of our first big arguments over this. She asked me to read something aloud for fun; I wasn't really feeling it but I went ahead for the good humor of the situation. Then I said 'your turn...' and she flat out refused to do it and got irritated. It kind of threw me for a loop she would behave this way... and early sign we lived on different planets, I suppose.

Things went on okay for the first year or two, with occasional problems and occasional big verbal arguments. She would act like it was a courtroom and deploy the semantics to evade me, and when that failed she would just flat out 'run away'. As someone who values consistency, fairness and logic, let me tell you... in those moments it felt like hell. Listening to her want to force me to see her perspective, to 'respect her voice' as she would begin to lay into my character (sometimes just making things up like it was a literary novel) felt like what she actually wanted from me was to hold my head in a vice grip and force me to swallow her reality. For me, with my kind of brain, when the reality you are being made to swallow makes no sense and seems to have no relation whatever to objective facts, or is being constantly rewritten and overwritten this is torturous. I even got out of her once that she didn't really care about resolution: being respected to her meant listening to a tirade of my faults and her opinions about those faults.

She made a lot of 'ground rules' in the beginning about emotional infidelity, talking to strangers online, no cheating an so on which I fully agreed to. I stopped chatting with people online for the most part - I never chat to get sex or emotional connection anyway - but I withdrew from those spaces a lot more and even from my friends to spend more time with her. Meanwhile she began frustrated with her own rules and the guilt associated with wanting to make connections online. She told me she wanted to get to know the souls of others, or to 'be of value' to them, and she wanted someone to pursue (or try to pursue, I later discovered she had no intention of letting anyone in) her soul and try to enter the 'locked room' inside of her. I figure this was her need to feel wanted; despite giving as much energy as I could to her curiosities about me, talking with her in depth for vast amounts of time about anything she wanted, she felt 'unpursued' and still wanted to cultivate online connections, possibly with other men.

One occasion we were visiting a city in Japan together... on the way back she said she didn't feel great. She didn't talk much the whole journey back to my home. I understood she just wanted to get back and not talk so I began walking at a certain pace... she lagged behind. Then she blew up and yelled at me that I was leaving her behind. This kind of behavior is not acceptable to me when a person has a mouth and language to use instead of acting like a toddler. She's 36, not 3; I also have C-PTSD from a childhood spent around angry alcoholics, so my first response isn't to come and fawn all over someone who is reacting aggressively to me. Even so, I realized she was not well, so I came and held her hand all the way back to my place. Once there she didn't say a word to me and went to bed. It wasn't until later I heard her whimpering in pain that I came over and I told her she shouldn't have blown up like that. It wasn't the best time to do that, but I had no idea the amount of pain she was in because she refused to tell me until much later. Ofc had I known I would have taken her to a hospital. Years on, she holds this incident over my head as some sort of 'proof' I'm callous and cold.

Another time she got me so agitated during an argument I followed her around my apartment because she told me to stop doing that. It's my apartment, I can go where I want, I said. She exaggerated this ever after into an incident where I 'chased' her around, claiming she felt terrified and at risk. She decided that the only reason I left her alone was because I thought she was calling the cops. The real reason was that she was acting like a child and I realized it was completely useless to engage any more, even though she had run out into the apartment stairwell in her pyjamas or something and I was telling her to get back in for obvious reasons - people coming up the stairs would probably stare at her and upset her even more. Afterward I apologized and agreed with her that was not good behavior on my part and I never did it again. Years on she holds this incident over my head as some sort of proof I am aggressive and dangerous.

Anyway, June last year arrived and since my living with her in the US was nearing as a reality, she chose to write me a letter that claimed until then she felt she had been 'editing' herself... and she needed to be clear. So the letter demanded total freedom to associate with whoever she wanted online, if I lied about anything she would divorce, if i pulled away she would divorce, if I was not respectful she would divorce, and so on. It read like a poetic ultimatum list and seemed rather out of the blue. This year she wanted to go back and 'annotate' it saying it was all a misunderstanding on my part, but basically this letter caused me a lot of concern, because it seemed like she was wanting not only the impossible in a fair relationship, but also some of the mini-ultimatums contradicted each other. I don't sit well with unfairness, and it seemed like that is exactly what she wanted, total freedom for herself, full accountability for everything from me.

Up till this point I had been relatively cordial and accommodating. But not long after this she dropped the baby bomb: she wanted kids and she's 36. Not much time left. By now I had realized there were some stability problems in our relationship and I began to feel like I would not be pressured to go forward with kids if they were not sorted out first. So I dug my heels in. I wanted to see some behavioral changes from her - no more moving goalposts, no more rewriting the definitions of things or how they happened. I was fully prepared to go forward IF those things were fixed. This seemed to be the beginning of the end. We had more arguments more often, and they seemed to get worse and last longer afterwards. We took a 3 day break, and within that time I decided to finally run our chat logs through AI. I don't like AI, but since I had agreed with her not to take any of our private stuff back then to relatives or strangers, I wasn't left with much option to try to figure out if i was going crazy or not.

The results were terrible. Not only did it identify her manipulation tactics, the amount of lowkey contempt she was throwing at me, but her double standards, gaslighting, rewriting and semantic gymnastics she was doing. I realized I was in deep with someone who was a master at this shit, and I do not manipulate nor know all the tricks of it. Like when you go diving alone and spot a shark in the water but you don't know what type it is yet, it's a not dissimilar feeling. I didn't know what to do from there on out - keep it hidden and try to take the advice of psych books on 'managing' the situation (being manipulative and dishonest in a sense, from my view) or go for broke and try to reach her so she might see the behaviors and agree to work on them. She's intelligent and generally rational, right? That's what I thought. I didn't want to live in a relationship I thought I had to manage invisibly behind the scenes because my own wife couldn't take the reality of it.

As you can guess, it didn't go well. She freaked out that I used AI. Not long after she took all our private situations to friends, family, strangers online and her therapists who all validated her, so she had no problem rewriting those old ground rules. She gave ultimatums about the AI - and these were not the first ultimatums. She had been giving them since the start... and threatening in one form or another the end of our relationship. Before the AI ultimatum had been a few weeks earlier an ultimatum about not interrupting her during arguments - something she routinely does herself. And after the AI came another one - from me this time. I said we needed Gottman counselling, or I was out.

It was the first ultimatum I had ever really given compared to hers I lost count of. But I knew something had to change or we were going to be destroyed. She had said we should do therapy as soon as I made it to the US, back when I think she thought I was the problem. Now that it was clear I thought she was the problem, she didn't feel very keen. I was approaching the end of my work contract in Japan and had to come back to my home country, and I couldn't go to hers yet due to the visa, so now we come to the current situation.

The dynamic between us has really begun to erode confidence and trust. I had the breakdown. I couldn't deal with her anxieties and threats of ending any more. I got back to my friend's place and guess what was waiting for me? Another ultimatum. She wasn't pleased where I was staying, she wanted me there with her in person on a tourist visa using ESTA waiver. I told her I just didn't feel safe enough emotionally anymore. I tried to get us a therapist who could diagnose the issues online via a zoom meeting, but none of the ones we found were willing to do it while I was not in the US. So she wanted me to up and go to her, while sick, with no money, no job, on a 90 day tourist visa to do therapy with her while being totally dependent on her and under her roof.... while the promises of no more ultimatums and no more threats and arguments keep coming and keep being broken.

I'm at a loss. She will not hear my side at all. She claims for the marriage to be a marriage I need to be there in person, I'm not doing the work, I'm not making the commitment, I'm being juvenile and abdicating responsibility... meanwhile I try to get her to answer me a simple question: is she willing to look at the behaviors which drove me to this point? I get static. She avoids the question. What's the use of going to her if she cannot even answer me that, I ask myself.

Last week, she sent me a message that she would be cancelling the visa because I am 'no longer the person she knew'. She told me not to contact her at all in future except to arrange for my belonging to be sent from her place to mine. This was ofc the devastating finale to a long and painful spiral, and I spent the week feeling awful. I contacted her brother as an emergency contact in case she blocked me on messenger apps, and she responded angrily that I had no business contacting my in-laws about anything. But then a 3 hour long phone call ensued of the same old and by the end she said 'are you going to come over yes or no, I need an answer by tonight.' I was livid she thought she could just rewrite the past once again after putting my mind through the wringer like that, as if it never happened. The response? 'You're so ungrateful to be given another chance.' Another ultimatum, another sword hanging over my head. It's clear she's already moved on mentally and is just dragging his out for some reason, not wanting to push the button herself.

I can barely make sense of what I have been through these last three years. Meanwhile she tells me how together she is, how dishevelled I am, oh she's planning a nice trip for herself, everything's just fine on her end. Shaming me for not being up to some kind of standard or other, not stepping up to something or other, oh how I need to 'grow'. She even sent me an sample of her talking to her therapist where he asks her 'why would he not want to come to you, what have you done to make him so afraid of you?' and she answers, vaguely that she had 'sort of said a few things here and there' that hurt my confidence that our relationship wasn't really safe and secure. Followed of course by him saying that if I don't go to her clearly I don't want the marriage.

Does anyone find themselves in situations like this? Does any of this sound familiar with bpd - especially quiet bpd? I haven't even scratched the surface of it here but it goes so much deeper and there has been so much strain trying to get her to even answer a simple logical question.

Why won't I go? because she isn't seeing me or hearing me at all... I ask her to stop threatening me because that is the behavior that is ruining my mental health and the question is ignored while I am called 'selfish to the end', ungrateful, a fool and just about anything else you can crowbar a covert insult into without seeming overtly massively insulting. She doesn't care that I'm sick right now, she doesn't care to answer my questions, she cares about 'the marriage' - for what? What's the point of a marriage if you don't care that you're running the other person's health into the ground? and you don't even want to talk to or listen to them?

It's control. Just pure control - I either accept and go do things her way (and have us deemed incompatible by a therapist anyway, I think she wants this but she also wants to look like the one who 'tried' and the martyr here) or I don't and I stand my ground and she just acts like that was my answer anyway. And she's done this with other things too... the issue of kids, and other stuff. And if all else fails? Just shoot an ultimatum and walk away because you're just 'standing up for your boundaries'. Or it could be because I have seen under the mask... and I have... that now she just wants a graceful exit that makes her look good.

I need clarity. I think my mind has been eroded by this. Does anyone have some clarity...?

there are a lot of stories about people saying their pwbpd in the beginning seemed very authentic and caring, so obviously they would seem to have empathy, right? but over time i've noticed the empathy seems pretty fake. even in the moment when everything is fine.

i got very very sick recently, and I noticed, the last few months whenever I've said that I was sick she has kind of brushed it off. but this time I was extremely sick and couldn't take any more pressure. I told her so. Her response was to just give me more pressure. or else divorce. it seems the empathy is for show. i'm dealing with chronic daily pain and chronic stress, mostly from her. but all she thinks about is the fact i'm not under her roof it seems. until i agree to be under it, none of my suffering really matters at all.

one time we were talking about empathy and she said something like 'my empathy isn't what you think' but never elaborated much on, in hindsight I wish I had asked more

described herself as caring about the various lost souls of the world but on one occasion she described how the family had abandoned pets on the roadside just matter of factly... my family nor me would never abandon animals dependent on us like that, they are seen as part of our family. it seemed off to me and she asked me 'does it disturb you?' then later when I said I wanted pets like dogs or cats she said something like animals don't matter, a child is what matters.... I felt there was something there, like the empathy she had was fake because she seemed to have none for animals at all (even though she had expressed wanting a cat) but seems obssessed with wanting kids. makes me wonder if she would even love the kids for what they are, or just as an extension of a fantasy

another time we were having a conversation about prison. it's always been a primal fear of mine to be locked up with dangerous people. not to mention the stuff that goes on inside a prison. she laughed it off like 'you'd be fine if it happened to you.' yeah... no. being someone's prison bitch or getting shanked or a beatdown would not be fun. it found it weird she seemed to just gloss over the actual horribleness of what i was talking about, like I was just describing a tv drama or something. like it wouldn't actually leave me traumatically scarred

i am curious to hear if anyone else has noticed things like this and what they were like? anything that made you feel the hair raising on your neck because it seemed so off compared to the usual vibe they claim to give out?

I just realized looking back at some of the conversations between me and my significant other that she confuses my boundaries with demands. but a boundary is what a person does for themselves, for example when I say I'm not going to answer that very personal question, or I'm not going to just up and go somewhere on command when sick, or if i say I don't want to talk to her about something personal while she's having a personal conversation with someone else online at the same time, those are boundaries not demands on her, but she immediately labelled them as bullying, manipulation or 'harm' I was doing to her.

on the other hand she always maintains the right not to answer something, not to be made to do something, to have the freedom to talk to whoever and so on

So my question is - do we all have experience of this with our pwbpd and do they always confuse another's boundaries for some violation of them while always pushing their own boundaries on us very hard?

they do not seem to understand what a boundary is except when they are making one for themselves.