u/Individual-Cod9170

After surfing this sub and other spaces for people for are close to pwBPD for a while, I’m noticing some really interesting things.

The first is that people seem to fall into two categories, they either have empathy for and/or miss and love their pwBPD, or they absolutely despise them and have nothing but bitterness about them and pwBPD in general.

It also seems that there is a whole group of folks who seem to misunderstand bpd be either believing they are like other cluster b types in that they lack empathy and remorse, or that they seem to think it’s basically bipolar disorder by another name. I can see that there are definitely many overlapping features here, but I’m really disturbed by how much misinformation and lack of understanding there is.

Some of the most bitter folks seem to almost start to swing in the direction of at least presenting like a cluster b personality type themselves when they speak about pwBPD.

It makes me wonder if my pwBPD is misdiagnosed, because they absolutely have empathy and remorse, but they exist in constant flip flop between being spiteful/mean/selfish and being deeply ashamed and remorseful about their poor behavior. It’s their inability to manage their emotional intensity/instability that makes them do this though, not a lack of empathy or remorse. I interpret the diagnostic criteria as a perfect fit for exactly that, and his therapists, his psychiatrist, our couples therapist and my individual therapist all agree.
Is there something I am missing or are there a lot of people out there there are under informed and have simply grown to generalize pwBPD based on their personal experience? I’m just really curious to know if what I perceiving about this community is common or if I am just a little naive?

Is it also possible that my pwBPD is actually a psNPD or aspd and really has the therapy team and me fooled to that degree ? I really, really don’t think that is the case.

I have to at least attempt be a little vague just in case my post is found by said pwBPD. I left several weeks ago. We have children together. I knew my partner had some kind of issue with emotional regulation for many years. He had significant childhood trauma. He refused help or only saw a therapist for short periods of time when I insisted. Finally about a year ago I said I would leave if he didn’t immediately seek help. He entered a program and agreed to couples and individual therapy which we did and were both committed to. He was diagnosed with BPD early in that time period. Long story short, some changes occurred, but he couldn’t manage to do the work. He saw the therapists but didn’t go what they suggested, and never sought DBT from this therapist despite agreeing to several times. Medication helped some, but it didn’t solve the underlying issues of course. Things were better for half a year, and then the issues came back worse than ever before. His big thing was accusing me of infidelity. He literally couldn’t stop doing it. I was never unfaithful to him,not even a little, but my resentment grew and it drove a wedge between us. He could feel that and it made him even more insecure. The accusations became so intense and frequent that I start developing ptsd symptoms. Just thinking about makes my heart rate spike. I wound up on high blood pressure medication too. He would split on me so badly. As soon as would reach a certain point, his emotions became facts and there was nothing I could say or do to help him see the truth. Sometimes I could bring him out of it, but I grew to be so codependent that I no longer could discern what I wanted or felt as a human being, because I was constantly thinking and behaving however I thought wouldn’t trigger him. I was terrible at setting boundaries and keeping them. I truly believed I could love him enough to deal with it until he got better. Then during an argument in which he accused me of something I was not doing at all, he got pretty rough with me and called me a name I couldn’t forgive. It was something he called me once before, and I told him back then that he would only call me that once. When he said it this second time, something inside of me shifted and I knew I couldn’t tolerate any more so I left.

The paranoia about me cheating was the hardest thing for me to deal with. He split often, regarding me as the planet’s most precious human for a time, then suddenly reducing me and my character as a plague on his life and our family. He accused me of cheating on him with his family members, friends, and even my own male family members.

A few days after I left, he confessed to me that his accusations were projection. He had engaged in some behaviors that were unfaithful (he claims never having fully gone through with anything but common sense tells me otherwise - for example he created a dating site profile but said he didn’t meet anyone, yet he also recently got an std test and said it was because he thought I had given him an std. In the end it doesn’t matter because this is was the kicker for me. To have been accused by him so brutally, over and over for years after having been nothing but faithful to him every moment of our marriage, only to find out HE was doing it himself is a betrayal I cannot forget.

I am not going to go into details about all the occurrences at this point, I would be typing all night and probably still wouldn’t have told the whole story.

The worst part is I love him. Very much. I miss him desperately. However, I was so codependent that I don’t trust that those feelings are entirely real. They feel real, but I don’t know yet, and am going to need a long time to find out. The right thing to do would be to go no contact, but we have children so it’s out of the question. He can’t seem to wrap his head around the idea that I can love him without acting on that feeling because it’s too painful. He thinks that if we love each other then he will always have a chance. Ive been honest with him, because after all that I will be damned if I compromise the integrity I have fought so hard to maintain by lying to him for his benefit. I don’t see us ever being able to have a healthy relationship, but I do love him, and its always possible that in 5 years he is truly healed and in control of management of his symptoms and there could be a world where we try again, but at this point I have to operate on the idea that we cannot be together, or neither of us will grow out of the things that got us here.

He is trying desperately to prove he get well, and he is doing every single thing he promised he would do but couldn’t bring himself to do until I actually left for real. He doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t get another chance now that he is doing those things. I have told him because knowing he was hurting me and our kids wasn’t enough to call him to action before, it was only when the consequences hurt HIM that he could change. He claims his addictions and diagnoses make him act in a way he can’t control, but the truth is he can control them, or he wouldn’t have been able to do these things after I left. As much as he says he loves me, it’s not about us, it’s about what he gets from me. It’s because I have been relentlessly filling up his cup with my own water and he has just let it run out of the bottom of that cup. He always needed more from me. More attention, more touching, more sex, more sexual acts or sexual scenarios that he would ask for even though I didn’t feel comfortable and expressed as much repeatedly. more communication, more reassurance, more caretaking etc etc etc. He takes the blame for all of it in one breath, but in the next will say he needed me to push him harder.

He constantly wants to reassure him during our separation that I am not seeing anyone or trying to find another partner. I have expressed repeatedly that
I don’t even know if I can ever HAVE another partner, because I truly don’t know if I can overcome my codependency issues. I am working on it, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to give another partner even an iota of energy that I feel I need to reserve for myself indefinitely. I don’t ever want to have to share myself, my energy or my prerogative again. In addition, the promise of faithfulness means something to me even though he wasn’t faithful in our marriage, I am not going just get under someone else to feel better. That promise meant everything to me and I would never disrespect our union (despite it no longer existing) in such a thoughtless manner. I even swore I would tell him if I changed my mind about that.

It’s torture. No matter how many time I tell him we are not getting back together probably ever he keeps trying. He keeps trying to convince me. He keeps doing things for me to prove he can be better. He is doing a great job. We are sharing time with the kids, swapping back and forth in the house so the kids don’t have to be uprooted for now. In a few weeks time he has painted the house, decluttered, fixed everything that he put off for years, all of these things, over and over. He created a wall dedicated to our wedding in our living room. He enrolled in an outpatient DBT program that is nearly every day. He stopped his addictive behaviors cold turkey (weed, gaming, social media somewhat) and he got a job. All in the span of 3 weeks he did everything he has been promising to do for years. So he was capable. I am sure adding a medication helped a little and therapy, but he’s barely dipped his toe into the program or the new medication, so I can’t attribute a whole lot to that.

He wants us to move back in together but just live as friends - as if that would be possible. If I did, and then we eventually had to go our separate ways again, it would be so hard for the kids I am at my wits end. He claims he is doing all this with full knowledge it may not be enough, but that at lest he will know he did everything he could. I am just afraid he will be deeply resentful that he went to such lengths and it doesn’t have the desired outcome. I don’t want to discourage him though because he is making great progress, and it doesn’t only benefit me. It benefits him and our children, and it benefits his future partner, whoever that is. (Whomever? I forget, don’t come for me)

It’s really hard to keep contact to a minimum because he is my best friend. Ideally I would like us to be close forever, but just not romantically. I know that might be too much to ask especially if he pursues a new parter, but I accept that possibility. I do believe he is my soulmate, and the love of my life, but I am like an addict when it comes to him in the sense that he is something I love dearly but must abstain from for my own good and the good of our family.

Well, I’ve been far too specific anyway. If he sees this, he sees it. I don’t think I have misrepresented anything.

I don’t know what to do. Most of the time he is nice to me, but every few days he splits and berates me for leaving him, for breaking the vow of sickness and health, claims I never loved him, and that no one will love me like he does. He has said many worse horrible things in recent splits but it doesn’t matter. Does anyone coparent with a pwBPD? I am just lost. I isolated myself from every friend I ever had (except his friends and their wives but were not close at all) because he didn’t like anyone else getting my attention and I perceived it as hurting him, so I stopped talking to anyone outside of our circle. Thankfully I have my family of origin for support or I would be totally lost.

That’s my story in a nutshell , if you made it this far you deserve a round of applause and a Nobel peace prize. Thank you.

Any other FPs want to be alone all the time post separation?