u/Equivalent-Love-1676

It’s literally unbelievable how much they truly don’t care at all once they split and discard you for the final time. In the past, she was absolutely attached to me, cuddly, cute, always talking about all the things we had done together and plans for the future. When we would quarrel, she would run away, but always run back.

Then suddenly, she said that nothing had ever mattered, she didn’t love me, she was unrecognizable and gone. I had to see her walking around as a different person in her body. Then came the unbelievable rage and cruelty wherein she systematically destroyed my entire life.

18 years erased followed by 2 years of enduring trauma without respite, inflicted on me by the woman who yearned to marry me and couldn’t stand to be apart.

These people will break your faith in everything. It’s now impossible for me to believe that anything good can ever happen unless it will one day turn my life into a living hell to compensate.

It’s literally unbelievable how much they truly don’t care at all once they split and discard you for the final time. In the past, she was absolutely attached to me, cuddly, cute, always talking about all the things we had done together and plans for the future. When we would quarrel, she would run away, but always run back.

Then suddenly, she said that nothing had ever mattered, she didn’t love me, she was unrecognizable and gone. I had to see her walking around as a different person in her body. Then came the unbelievable rage and cruelty wherein she systematically destroyed my entire life.

18 years erased followed by 2 years of enduring trauma without respite, inflicted on me by the woman who yearned to marry me and couldn’t stand to be apart.

These people will break your faith in everything. It’s now impossible for me to believe that anything good can ever happen unless it will one day turn my life into a living hell to compensate.

I posted this as a comment under someone else’s post, but perhaps some will appreciate me headlining it. It’s a shining example of how my now ex wife with BPD would decide that everything I did was wrong, no matter how hard I tried try to do exactly what she asked:

Her tire was losing air because they failed to clean the rim and set the bead properly so I tried to teach her what to do until we had time to take it back. (There’s a free air pump between her job and our house; I gave her a 12v one for the car; the leak was fairly slow.) She called me an asshole for ‘assuming she was helpless.’

So I asked her what she would do to inflate her tires to the appropriate pressure with the tools and public services provided? She replied she would call me to come help her.

Soon, her tire was low again; we were both at work, many miles apart; she texted my friend, triangulating me: she said she had to find a ‘real man’ to help her, since I ‘didn’t care about her.’

Later, I tried to help her with her tires. She threw a screaming fit at me in our driveway, raging at me that she could do it herself.

If you think you need to leave, leave immediately—it will only get worse. The person with whom you’re in love doesn’t exist—they are a figment of both your imaginations. The longer it goes on, the more impossible it will be for them to keep pretending that’s their real self. They will never be able to integrate. The final split and discard will be unexpected, brutal, traumatizing, and permanent.

Save yourself.

If you think you need to leave, leave immediately—it will only get worse. The person with whom you’re in love doesn’t exist—they are a figment of both your imaginations. The longer it goes on, the more impossible it will be for them to keep pretending that’s their real self. They will never be able to integrate. The final split and discard will be unexpected, brutal, traumatizing, and permanent.

Save yourself.

We were married for 18 years; I was brutally discarded two years ago. Thinking back to when we first met: she appeared to be thoroughly checked out of reality, but as we got to know each other, she became sweet and adorable, fun loving, spontaneous, and shared many of my interests.

I wonder now if it all was just mirroring. I wondering if the period of time during which she appeared checked out was as she was developing a personality for me? I suspect something similar may have happened to someone on this sub?

Many years later, on the day of her final discard, she suddenly became a different person, and was unrecognizable to me after that. I still have nightmares.

…exactly the way they’ve already decided you will.

In hindsight, I should have found more of the little things alarming:

She was allowed to have her very strong, stubborn opinions, but if I so much as said I liked a song she didn’t like, I was “against her” or “mean” or ‘trying to control what she thinks.’

When she told me a story, I had to ask questions to figure out what was going on. When I had a different viewpoint on anything, I was against her.

She demanded total enmeshment, but it was a one way street and she also resented her need to be enmeshed. But if I had needs, or wanted to come somewhere she had carved out for just herself, she’d never tell me, she’d bitch about me being around nonstop to my friends behind my back. (I didn’t know this until after she was long gone.)

She demanded I invite her everywhere, but I found out later she didn’t want me at her after-work gatherings because I was friends with some of the guys. I was showing the lads our vacation pictures and she got really pissed off at me: “You only took me on vacation so you could show pictures and brag to your friends.” NO. Who the fuck even thinks like that?!

This sort of disordered reframe of wholesome sharing of anniversary photos is extremely damaging to a relationship. I doubt anything short of cheating makes a partner feel more shitty than constantly being told their genuine feelings and actions are for some self-serving, shallow purpose. It goes hand in hand with the BPD partner always accusing us of being a narcissist.

She was very selfish with certain things: I bought her a fancy, fully automatic espresso machine which she loved, but if I used it, especially if I offered anyone else coffee from it, she became irrationally angry. Like I had betrayed her. When its motor failed, she blamed me for breaking it, even though the motor ceased up while we were in Europe for three weeks. (The company replaced it for free, obviously.)

They treat us like objects. We must act like they’ve decided we will like dolls in a playhouse or they get really, really mad, and do terrible, awful things.

No matter how sweet it feels when they’re enmeshed, once the engulfment anxiety kicks into high gear, they will push you away with shocking hatred and disappear.

I’m trying to understand this pattern:

Often we’d be in the car. I can’t be sure but I think she only start fights when were headed somewhere where she expected I would have more fun than she would. She often accused me of ‘hating visiting’ her family which was classic projection. I loved going with her everywhere. I never left her behind, ever.

She’d suddenly start a fight over something that made no sense. She’d escalate really fast. I would ask her, “What’s going on, why are you upset?” That would enrage her so I stopped asking. A couple times she got so out of hand that I yelled back. Then she would cry. I feel horrible about that. I never wanted to make her cry. She accused me of liking to make her cry, seemingly without any recognition that she’s been screaming bloody murder at me. How much screaming should/can one absorb before reacting badly? Are we meant to just accept it like a human punching bag?

To calm my reactions I would go silent, sometimes for up to 15 minutes, she would eventually calm down. We’d start to talk again, I’d hold her hand and tell her I loved her more than anything, let’s not fight.

When she escalated at home I would tell her, “I’ll never abandon you, I’m just gonna go in the guest room until we talk without you yelling over me.” Soon she’d come get me and we’d be ok.

I was fine with this method of handling her rage. I wish so much she was still my wife, no matter how difficult her tantrums were. But she drove herself into unbearable resentment. I came to realize that I could calm down and let go, but for her it was cumulative. There was never repair in her mind.

When she did her final split and destroyed our marriage, she screamed about 18 years of tiny grievances, as small as that time she didn’t want to share an entrée 15 years ago.

Does it just build up inside them continuously until they snap or what? Why can’t they let anything go, ever?!

My ex used to escalate tiny things into screaming fits. Her favorite place to scream at me was in the car while I was driving in dense traffic because she knew I couldn’t escape. She would gas herself up yelling without a break until I raised my voice then she’d cry and say I was the meanest husband in the world. She never had any memory of screaming bloody murder at me, only that I had raised my voice.

One of the last I remember, we were headed somewhere when we drove past the exit where a younger male colleague lived. It reminded me that he had been a rock during COVID when things were so difficult at work. I offhand mentioned that he was a great employee. Two sentences. Small talk. She knew him too, I never predicted that complimenting an employee would send her into a rage but we never know do we? She spent the next hour yelling at me in the car. Like a moron, I tried to reason with her:

“I’m not gay, obviously, why are you upset that he did a good job and I’m happy he works with us?”

“You only care about everyone else, you don’t care about me, you hate me.” And on and on like that. Plus tears, and screaming.

When we arrived at our destination, she abruptly stopped like nothing had happened and acted adorable for the rest of the day. I later saw texts to one of my friends saying that I had yelled at her the entire time in the car that I was obsessed with my employee whom I had talked about ‘nonstop for the whole ride.’

The distortions, altered memories, false accusations, and crazy-making are exhausting. Like, why can’t we just chit chat in the car like a normal couple?

As bad as that was, when, in our 18th year, I finally gained the strength to absorb her frequent, irrational outbursts without escalating, she determined I was ‘emotionally unavailable,’ ‘narcissistic,’ and many other therapy words she read online. She used my growing calm to convince herself I didn’t care about her. She filed for divorce, moved money, smeared me, and destroyed my life behind my back before I had any idea what was happening, lived with me another 3 months, then left without saying goodbye.

These people are so dangerous and disordered, I wish there was a blood test or brain scan for their condition after which they had to be tattooed with a dire warning.

She’ll appear perfect until you marry her, after which all hell will break loose against which you’ll be completely helpless.’

The shock that causes long term Complex PTSD is their secondary psychopathy. The person who cuddled you every day for nearly two decades had the capacity all along to turn off all empathy and love for you as easily as you or I might flick off the basement light. It’s not an act—the love and care you thought you had is gone like you never existed except also now she loathes you for all the ways her mother failed her and blames you for every negative emotion she’s felt for 40 years. She has a giant list of trivial things which she hurls at you as if they justify this wretched behavior.

The person you adored, the person you thought you knew best now bears only physical resemblance to your spouse and there’s nothing you can do about it. She doesn’t even speak the same way or with the same words now.

God forbid it should happen, but to recover from the sudden, tragic death of a loved one is far easier and less likely to lead to serious health consequences for the survivors.

For there’s nothing more traumatic than seeing the person who kissed on the altar and shared your life suddenly turn into a raging, inhuman demon and never change back. Where did she go? Was she ever real? Where did most of my life go? Who the hell was she, if she was anyone at all? Who is that in 10,000 beautiful pictures together for 18 years?

No one deserves to have the entire foundation of relational reality destroyed by the one they love. I know that’s why we’re all here. I offer the rest of you my sincere prayer for healing, as best you can muster.

As radically dependent social animals, the fear of being alone was hardwired into humans for millions of years—for without our communities, we died nearly 100% of the time.

Extremely recent modern society has for the first time in all human history distanced the ‘fortunate’ from that fate economically, but cannot supplant the terror trauma psycho-physiologically. Togetherness remains a primitive biologically imperative, that’s why their discard feels like dying: it’s like being suddenly cast into the outer darkness; excommunicated; left to die alone in the wilderness.

The sickest part of all is that they know this for it’s what they fear the most. Their final discard is engineered in full knowledge that it will cause the victim (you, me, us on this sub) the most suffering possible. It’s 100% deliberate, premeditated cruelty.

Contemplate this, especially if you’re being hoovered and considering taking them back.

I only recognized the signs in hindsight; I only began to understand after studying BPD for a year after her discard. We could save people a lot of suffering by teaching people to recognize the signs before they—God forbid—marry one of these ticking time bombs.

The earliest thing I remember dismissing as trivial (because I was much younger and deeply in love) was that she seemed to become a different person when she was angry. I had no idea that was ‘splitting’ and certainly no idea that it would manifest 18 years later in a terrifying, destructive rage from which there was no escape.

I remember becoming increasingly concerned that other people didn’t seem to fly into a screaming fit over small things. I remember growing concerned that she had trained me to be maximally reactive: no matter how hard I tried to be calm, she would escalate small quarrels into screaming fits just before bed, then sleep like a baby in my arms while I shook like I had Parkinson’s and failed to sleep from the monumental anxiety her irrational rages induced in me.

I remember begging her to tell me why this was happening. What was really going on? (Of course I knew her family history, can’t we help process this together with love and understanding? Can we include professional help? Recognized therapeutic techniques?) But trying to help, or trying to engage the possibility of root causes that could be faced made her more angry and confused and frustrated me all the more. Besides, most of the time we were having such a glorious life together!

But now I remember my own panic attacks in the last two years of our marriage. I had them on Tuesdays and Thursdays while I was working on my computer at home alone for my short and long term job planning. I thought it was job related anxiety and put myself in therapy. But it wasn’t me. In February of 2023, I had a terrifying panic attack in public while shopping and had to run back to my car to hide until I could function. I realized she had driven me to the brink. I begged her to stop taking gummies, begged her to stop trying to fix me and just talk to me about her issues inside.

Mid 2023 to early 2024, things had stabilized and we were having so much fun together…or so I thought. I learned that when they get calm, you’re in the most danger ever.

We have adorable pictures of us together from mere days before her split and discard. Then came the screaming, the outpouring of hatred, the rewriting of history, the false accusations, and the blind rage over nothing. It was like being trapped in my house with all the demons of hell. She was suddenly obsessed with two things: money and hurting me. She had snapped into a Satanic creature. Her eyes, her voice, her words were all gone, replaced by someone else’s.

We never know the warning signs until it’s too late. The only people who understand how traumatic this is are those who’ve lived it. Every other blissfully naïve boob thinks you’re being dramatic over a routine breakup. But as for me, once upon a time in perfect health…I lost 30 pounds in the first 45 days after her split and was subsequently hospitalized several times in the last two years.

Everyone needs to heed this: we cannot fix them. They are wired in such a way as to ensure that everything we do will backfire. They cannot endure a loving relationship. You might not survive at all.

In the beginning she was the answer to every prayer you’ve ever prayed. The perfect wife in every possible way. If you had any sense, it would seem too good to be true. But you’re in love with a goddess who adores you. Your lives fall in place like they’ve been ordered by the stars.

It will not survive.

It could be either parent, but BPD most often stems back to a deep mother wound. Profound rejection from mom. A mom who is checked out, a cheater who broke up the family, a liar, a mom without any core substance, one who can’t fully love. A mom who overcompensated for her shallow character with performative love.

The pwBPD now has two core terrors: the fear of abandonment and the fear of engulfment. As the partner, you will watch in horror as these two core fears compete to destroy your relationship but you won’t understand what’s happening and she’ll never explain.

Her fear of abandonment will cause her to cling to you, to adore you, idealize you. You will feel chosen. But then you will be responsible for every emotion, positive and negative, in her entire life. You will save her from the bad parent. Later she will make you into the bad parent and blame you for everything wrong in her life since ever.

Her engulfment fear will cause her to push you away. To ignore your pain. She will have zero empathy for anything you deal with in real life. She’ll be angry with you when you’re sick. She’ll belittle you, emasculate you in front of people, complete for control, then accuse you of failing to lead. Your entire world must revolve around her and her mostly imaginary or at least greatly exaggerated problems. The problems will loop and amplify without resolution. You will be subject to episodes of profound rage for tiny things.

You’ll not see the final split coming because she entered a period of relative calm while she planned her escape from you. You no doubt thought things were finally getting better, the best they’d ever been. But now that you’re the bad object, the rejecting mother, everything that you’ve ever done together must be devalued and destroyed. She has a giant list she’s been keeping for years. Positive experiences mean nothing or are now weaponized as being the worst things ever. “I hated walking around Europe with you!”

She’s raging, unrecognizable. She bombards you, screaming with false accusations, hostile attribution bias, “You didn’t pick up the phone last November because you hate being with me! We’re just going our separate ways!” Insane histrionics: “If I was bleeding to death in the road, you’d step over me to talk to a stranger.”

Then she reverts to a teenager: “I’ve moved on. Give yourself a few days, you’ll be fine.” She’s giggling with her family and friends on the phone like nothing is happening while you’re throwing up, unable to eat. She’s murdered your soul, destroyed your family, your career, your friend group.

You’ll realize you never knew her or anything that was going on. You were managing reality: jobs, homes, cars, family; she was in a war with you inside her mind. The sweet cuddly one was an act to keep you there to soothe her. You were her pet, her slave, her possession.

The mask fell, you now face an angry demon full of more hatred than you’ve ever seen and it breaks your soul. You’ve come face to face with pure evil. You’ll never be the same person again.

Together for eighteen; she’s been gone for two; twenty years of your life is gone, replaced by wreckage. You made the happiest memories of your life with her. They’re now poisoned by trauma from which you’ll never fully recover. She doesn’t care, nor even think about you.

Excuse me for finding it difficult to go from elation to screaming to crying multiple times per day, every day, for years, while having no idea what’s caused it, while you blame me, then cling to me for comfort, then push me away, refuse to communicate, or lie about it while calling me “emotionally unavailable” and using all manner of therapy speak on me.

All I wanted was to love you, make you happy, take you with me, and occasionally receive a compliment, or receive a modicum of emotional support for the myriad problems I must solve each day at my job and in our lives in the real world.

(It also would have been nice if you treated my family with any degree of love or respect after 18 years of marriage…but I digress.)

When I met my now ex wife and we fell in love, everything in our lives fell in place in spectacular fashion. A match made in heaven; affectionate love, common interests, fun in any situation, cuteness, camping, swimming, cuddling, hiking, games, long talks, tons of laughter. Career success, house, cars, boat, international travel—the material bonus things neither of us had ever expected, having both grown up in meager circumstances. I knew she had a temper, and that she seemed ‘different’ when she was mad, but I had no idea what BPD was.

I found out the hardest way possible after 18 years when she suddenly ended our marriage without any warning, when things had been going the best they had ever gone for both of us, our relationship, our careers, and our future was bright. The gaslighting, the screaming, the splitting, rewriting history, the unrecognizable new person she suddenly became (who acted about 13 years old, though she was physically 41), the false accusations. She said she never loved me, she said the vows never mattered, she said all the pictures were fake (“Anyone can smile for a camera.”) Then she succeeded in destroying my entire life: my career; my social support, then I found out she had been triangulating me for at least a decade behind my back to one of my ‘best’ friends (2,716 pages of texts between them in the last ten years, 40% of which were shit-talking me.) There was a very long time where I truly believed I was married to the greatest person I had ever known. The brutally of the reality I discovered is something from which I’ll never recover. Every day for the last two years, I have begged God for a merciful death.

I’m glad to see support for victims of BPD spouses. Especially since men’s suffering is so often dismissed. They should teach the warning signs to people at a young age. Looking back to our first quarrel early on in our relationship, if I had known then what I know now, I would have understood that becoming a completely different person when angry is splitting, and a sign of serious mental illness. When I was younger and head over heals in love, I thought, ‘women can display bad tempers because they rarely face physical consequences; I can remain strong, calm, and logical; I can protect us both from her temper with logic, love, and grace.’

I could not. There was no saving her from the monster within. Nor can I save myself from the consequences.