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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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.  I don’t know what my agenda is.  I don’t think there is much to do to help out narcissists except call them out on an anonymous public forum.

Like I said, the OP isn’t going to go to therapy or admit that they had a role in any of their own problems.  But maybe someone else reading this will realize that the OP doesn’t seem to have any empathy for their spouse.  [/quote]

Ok, where are you getting this idea that OP is a narcissist?[/quote]

Because their spouse got a really difficult diagnosis, and the OP has still made themselves the main character in this story.  
 [/quote]

I think you should reread the OP[/quote]

[quote=Anonymous]Therapist thinks spouse may have it. Has anyone survived a marriage with this? We have been together 15+ years so even though it explains a lot it’s still a shock. My mind is whirling.[/quote]

I’m reading this.   The OP’s spouse is in therapy and was told they have BPD.  There is no mention of how the person with the diagnosis feels about this, only how the OP feels.

Am I missing something?
[/quote]

It’s pretty obvious from the context that OP’s therapist is speculating that her DH has borderline. And there’s zero in OP’s posts otherwise to suggest she is narcissistic. [/quote]

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