Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have bpd traiits (never dx and my therapist said he believed I didn’t have all the traits, but I certainly had a number of them) and I married a narcissist. I do think is not an uncommon pairing. I’ve been divorced for years now and my bpd traits are much better managed through therapy, meds and mostly just self acceptance. I know what triggers me and how irrational I can become but I have learned to let myself cool off and reset without taking any action.

Me too. And worse divorce EVER still ongoing dealing with his need to destroy me 8 years later. It’s horrific.

Oh I wish I could give you a hug. Same here. 12 years divorced and my ex is still obsessed with destroying me. I’m sorry for both of us.

Anonymous wrote:You would be wise to consider divorcing now.

This

Anonymous wrote:I have bpd traiits (never dx and my therapist said he believed I didn’t have all the traits, but I certainly had a number of them) and I married a narcissist. I do think is not an uncommon pairing. I’ve been divorced for years now and my bpd traits are much better managed through therapy, meds and mostly just self acceptance. I know what triggers me and how irrational I can become but I have learned to let myself cool off and reset without taking any action.

Me too. And worse divorce EVER still ongoing dealing with his need to destroy me 8 years later. It’s horrific.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

I was in a BPD support group for awhile and a number of people were managing. A few things I’ll mention - I personally think a calming medication to take the edge off BPD emotional reactivity is very very important. Once the nervous system is calmer, it is easier for thoughts to align. Two, please have sympathy for your BPD spouse. The emotions are extremely extremely painful. I know they often present as anger, but this is really just a mirror of sadness. I’m not telling you to be a doormat, but when he is triggered, affirming your love for your spouse and walking away but letting him know you’ll be back soon to talk may help.

Good luck

so basically, be a doormat and endure the abuse, instead of the abuser being accountable for their behavior?

Anonymous wrote: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.

I was in a BPD support group for awhile and a number of people were managing. A few things I’ll mention - I personally think a calming medication to take the edge off BPD emotional reactivity is very very important. Once the nervous system is calmer, it is easier for thoughts to align. Two, please have sympathy for your BPD spouse. The emotions are extremely extremely painful. I know they often present as anger, but this is really just a mirror of sadness. I’m not telling you to be a doormat, but when he is triggered, affirming your love for your spouse and walking away but letting him know you’ll be back soon to talk may help.

Good luck

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Your therapist shouldn't be giving a remote diagnosis. They should be explaining to you how the behaviors work and how to take care of yourself.

The best book to read is "Stop Walking on Eggshells". There is no hope for a BPD or NPD spouse. I divorced mine and it was like I got a new life.

Agree. Instant red flag. I would like to know what credential this person has-I doubt MD or PHD.

Oh please. It’s not like the therapist is sending the dx to the dhs work. But a therapist can certainly try to help a patient understand their lives, including important relationships. I’m sure the therapist caveated their statement.

I have bpd traiits (never dx and my therapist said he believed I didn’t have all the traits, but I certainly had a number of them) and I married a narcissist. I do think is not an uncommon pairing. I’ve been divorced for years now and my bpd traits are much better managed through therapy, meds and mostly just self acceptance. I know what triggers me and how irrational I can become but I have learned to let myself cool off and reset without taking any action.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: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.

?? 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.)

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.

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.

I agree with this. The class BPD/NPD marriage is a boomer or older gen X couple where the woman has martyred herself for her spouse and children, while the man maintains control over the household and is the only family member likely to get his needs fully met. My parents are definitely like this.

I could absolutely see myself winding up BPD in a situation where I had little if any agency, and I've definitely struggled in my life in getting drawn into relationships with narcissists who I think see in me someone who has been trained to accommodate the whims of a more dominant relationship partner (because of my experience with my parents). However I've been in therapy since my 20s and recognized those relationship dynamics as dysfunctional and wound up marrying someone without those issues. So even though I do think I share some traits with someone with BPD (most significantly the desire for external validation and fear of abandonment, not unreasonable given how I was raised) I don't think I'd meet the clinical definitions and my spouse is definitely not a narcissist.

So I almost wonder if the BPD/NPD pairing is not so much a true clinical diagnosis of how people with these disorders interact, but rather a cultural construct we have since started to dismantle by empowering women and also raising the social expectations of men as husbands and fathers. I think a man who behaved the way husbands/fathers behaved in my dad's generation would get a lot of social criticism, whereas it was considered normal when I was a child.

Anonymous wrote:Many people diagnosed with “borderline personality disorder” actually have complex PTSD from profound childhood abuse and/or neglect.

There was a big fight about diagnostic categories in the last DSM revision and it hasn’t all been fully canonized yet but if you have a spouse with “BPD” and a high ACE score, trauma treatment may change your lives.

Can’t neglect, especially emotionally, come from mentally ill or disordered parents?

There’s also neglect from busy self absorbed parents, even ones with very high incomes.

The above can happen with no physical abuse around. Emotional and basic developmental needs neglect. Not the shelter, clothes, food stuff.

[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]

I don’t know what to tell you. Borderline/narcissist is a classic pairing.

This is a good description of why:
https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2007/01/borderline.html
[/quote]

Checks out for me -- my mother had BPD and married a narcissist (my stepdad). It was a pretty horrible situation to grow up in. [/quote]

I actually dug up some research on this. Compared to controls, male partners of BPD women had higher neuroticism levels and lower testosterone. Narcissistic trait differences were apparently not statistically significant.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10045094/[/quote]

It's the stress and lack of sleep from living with a BPD/NPD. My doctor was amazed at how much my numbers improved after I got divorced. [/quote]

Agree: for family living with someone BPD or really anyone unstable it’s like ongoing trauma or PTSD or Cassandra syndrome. All. The. Time.

You can believe or trust them. You want to. So you try it again. You expect normal behavior but rarely get it. Then you reprogram yourself to be hyper vigilant and Uber independent. And to put up with verbal and emotional abuse. If kids are involved you stay too long. [/quote]

So true.

I have a diagnosed asd I / bipolar II spouse and to exist I have to set up everyone’s lives as if I were the only adult and parent in the household. And still have to fix all the constant mishaps, mistakes, setbacks and “misunderstandings”. There are less now that all responsibilities are delegated out to long term help and myself plus now older, more independent kids.

Yes DBT was recommended by our former asd psychologist and therapist. But spouse’s day job work zaps them of energy and they still denial their neuropysch Dx and symptoms. Lots of DARVO repossess to anything. I work as well, frankly it keeps me sane.

Hang out with as many normal people as possible.

Anonymous wrote:Bumping this. Does anyone have recommendations for a skilled DBT therapist in DC/close-in MD?

There’s a good one for adults in Arlington canton by a professor. My HFA spouse refused to go, “too busy” yet managers to watch Netflix from 7-10 pm nightly.
DBT meets 1-2x a week for a year, if you don’t do the work and pass each module (new habit), it can take longer.

Children have more options, ask Chesapeake.

You would be wise to consider divorcing now.

Bumping this. Does anyone have recommendations for a skilled DBT therapist in DC/close-in MD?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well my bpd parent did not have abusive parents. She did become one though.

She’s never tried to commit suicide, just threatened it to get me to come rescue her only to then act like I was crazy for ever thinking she’d actually do something like that. But keeps doing it periodically because she knows I can’t let myself not take it seriously just in case.

Intellectually I’m aware that it is good that clinicians try to get to the bottom of this and try to find treatment. But I just can’t really get on board with equating this to altruism. When my mom has systemically sh$t talked everyone I’ve ever loved to anyone who will listen (including implying that my husband abused our daughter, among many other blatant falsehoods about him), there is a part of her that knows what she’s doing. A vindictive and vicious part of her. And feeling bad about running someone over with your car doesn’t really make a difference when you keep getting back in the car to run over the body a few more times.

Autistic people don’t feel the same way others feel, they functionally cannot understand. It is not the same.

I can tell you what I do as a DBT therapist when a patient threatens suicide…
I either do nothing, or I call the police to do a well check.
I also explicitly tell people that if they harm themselves or threaten suicide in my voicemail, then I go no contact for 24 hours. The reason for that is that going over there, calling, etc is a positive reinforcement.

Oh, and I want to say that I really feel for you. You don’t have to do all of this. You aren’t your mother’s therapist or her protector.
You have your own life and your own family, and those things are your responsibility. Your mother is an adult and needs to be responsible for herself instead of relying on you to make her feel better when she is overwhelmed. She needs to find other ways to deal with painful emotions. You can’t be her one and only coping skill!

I wish you the best.