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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Who your spouse is hasn’t changed.  They are just now diagnosed and can learn a little more about themselves and receive treatment.

Whether or not your marriage survives kind of depends.  Borderlines typically marry narcissists. It’s likely that as your spouse gets more mentally healthy and their self esteem improves, they won’t put up with your crap anymore.  You will both have to change for the arraign to work.  
[/quote]

?? what? no, borderlines marry people who will tolerate their sh*t. the opposite of a narcissist. a partner to a borderline is much more likely to be passive and codependent, taken in by the borderline’s strong personality when it’s a positive, and then willing to subsume themselves to avoid triggering the borderline’s bad side. another pairing that works is a very emotionally obtuse man who just doesn’t care about the borderline’s antics (and lets the borderline wreak havoc on kids/stepkids/ILs.)

[/quote]

Borderlines do often marry narcissists.  I’ve seen it in my own family.  30 year marriage that ended in a grey divorce.   It is a known classic pairing.  [/quote]

I think this might be a generational thing, because while I can see this in my own parents marriage (boomers, now late 70s) I think it's far less likely to happen to people who are marrying now or have gotten married in the last 10-20 years, because of shifts in opportunities for women and expected relationship dynamics. I think in the "classic" pairing, the man is a narcissist and the woman is the borderline enabler who subsumes her identity to her partner (and before that likely to abusive parents).

People get married later now and women have more options, including to get more education, to work at higher levels, and to postpone marriage and kids, so I think it's more rare for a woman to become an enabler in this "classic" sense. I think this is also why you see more people actually raising these issues in the way OP is -- rather than creating these dysfunctional, codependent marriages that last 40 years unhappily, people who might have become codependent in prior generations are instead saying "no, this is not acceptable to me -- we need therapy and to address these dysfunctional behaviors."

The fact that OP and spouse are in therapy, with a diagnosis, and figuring out how to proceed kind of knocks them out of the "classic narc/borderline" pairing you are talking about. OP might have some codependent tendencies, but the very fact that they are in therapy and working on it indicates that some boundaries have been set and there is self-awareness of issues and a desire to improve. All of that goes against the dynamic you are talking about.[/quote]

The OP isn’t in therapy, just the spouse.  And it seems obvious to me that the OP isn’t using this diagnosis to work on themselves, but to blame their partner for all of the problems in the relationship.  That way they DONT have to work on themselves.

I mean, the classic narcissist has low self esteem and is terrified that everyone is going to find out that they aren’t that great.  So, they go around preening and telling everyone who will listen how great they are and devalue anyone who says anything different.  See Andrew Tate.

Now, the spouse has been diagnosed with BPD, so anything negative they have ever said about the narcissist can be negated, AND they can be blamed for all of the problems in the marriage.  Score!

The OP isn’t planning to work on him/herself at all.  [/quote]

weird agenda you have there[/quote]

Yeah, DP here and the projection here is strong. To the PP -- I'm sorry if that was your experience but be careful about assuming that anytime someone was diagnosed with BPD, it will mirror your experience exactly. You are making a ton of assumption based on your experience and it's really unproductive for you and for OP.

The one thing I will say is that this PP does accurately describe how sometimes accusations of narcissism, borderline, bipolar, and other issues can be used as weapons in a dysfunctional relationship. Abusive partners often use DARVO to absolve themselves of responsibility for a dynamic, and it's especially effective on people who are codependent due to growing up with abusive parents.[/quote]

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