Beware of your partners or previous partners lurking here. This is supposed to be a safe space to vent anonymously. I recently got burned and it could have really hurt my children who I need to protect the most.

I previously posted about ending a 3+ year relationship with someone I believed showed significant quiet BPD traits. I have since removed that post. It was entitled "Quiet BPD - The Final Boss" because this last relationship taught me I had more healing and more learning to do in regards to the toxic relationships I have found myself in.

After our breakup, my ex discovered my (anonymous) Reddit post. There was no identifying information, but obviously she recognized herself and was furious that I believed she had quiet BPD. I can understand why that would hurt or anger someone. What happened next is what devastated me.

While I was away with my children, she contacted my ex-wife!

My ex-wife has diagnosed BPD. Our marriage involved domestic violence, infidelity, emotional volatility, and years of chaos - your typical BPD marriage. We also have children together, so after our divorce we worked hard to establish a functional 50/50 co-parenting relationship. I have more compassion for my ex-wife now that I am removed emotionally.

My recent ex knew ALL of this.

More importantly, she knew what my kids had been through.

My children trusted her and had confided in her about difficulties with their mother. She knew that conflict between their mother and me could spill over into their lives.

She contacted her anyway.

They communicated about me for days and eventually met in person. My recent ex tried to get my ex-wife to read my Reddit post. Ironically, my ex-wife refused because she knew it would trigger her. My ex-wife used their conversations to rewrite parts of our marriage, saying she needed to feel “vindicated.” I'm not surprised and I don't really care about that because it's nothing new to me. I just want peace with her.

They also discussed whether I might actually have BPD, and some of those conversations contributed to a carefully prepared audio message my recent ex later sent me encouraging me to seek help!!!

She even invited my ex-wife to get wine sometime. This was so surreal to me! Eventually my ex-wife told me everything and showed me their messages.It absolutely fucking broke me. I was already grieving someone I deeply loved. Suddenly my breakup, traumatic marriage, co-parenting relationship, and children had all been smashed together.

The strangest part?

My ex-wife eventually realized how badly this had affected me and came over to console me.

Here's What I Learned

For several weeks I kept trying to understand this through BPD.

• Was my recent ex splitting?
• Was this retaliation?
• Projection?
• A smear campaign?
• Triangulation?

Was she trying to prove that I was actually the disordered one?

Eventually I realized:

It doesn't fucking matter.

• I don't need to diagnose her.
• I don't need to prove she has Quiet BPD or any BPD
• I don't even need to know why she did it.
• The behavior itself gives me the information I need. That is all.

My partner of 3+ years became angry with me after our breakup and chose to involve the mother of my children—a person she knew represented one of the most traumatic relationships of my life and one of the most delicate relationships I still have to maintain. That's enough!

• She had every right to be furious about my Reddit post.
• She had every right to believe my interpretation of her was completely wrong.
• She had every right to tell her friends I was an asshole.
• She had every right to never speak to me again.
• My children's mother should have been off-limits!!!!

Not because my ex-wife belongs to me but because our children depend upon their parents maintaining stability. For fucks sakes!

That's the boundary that matters most to me. Here's the part I really want other people recovering from these relationships to understand:

Stop believing you need the diagnosis before you're allowed to trust what happened to you.

I spent years studying BPD because I thought understanding the disorder would protect me. It helped but eventually the research itself became another way of trying to obtain certainty.

Was that splitting?

Was that projection?

Was that abandonment fear?

Was that manipulation?

Was that quiet BPD?

Sometimes the healthier question is much simpler:

“Regardless of why this person did it, am I willing to live with this behavior?”

For me, the answer is no. My biggest problem was never that I couldn't recognize dysfunctional people. My problem was that once I loved someone, I could explain almost anything.

• Trauma explained it.
• Childhood explained it.
• BPD explained it.
• Fear explained it.
• Attachment explained it.
• My empathy kept turning explanations into excuses.

That's the codependency I'm finally trying to break. I can understand why someone behaves the way they do and still walk away. I can love someone and refuse access to me and I can acknowledge my own mistakes without accepting responsibility for theirs.

I don't need someone else to agree with my reality before I'm allowed to protect myself.

My recent ex was not some evil mastermind. The final thing I needed to defeat wasn't another person with BPD. It was my belief that if I could just understand someone deeply enough, I could finally make what I felt was an unhealthy relationship safe.

I can't.

And neither can you. Do what is right for you and move on.