this could be out there a little

[StartingHealing]

Greetings to all the brave souls here.

Upon many years of reflection I believe that my adoptive mother had some sort of PD.  She's dead now. 

Has anyone dealt with a situation like this?   If you have, please share how.

My thanks in advance.

[Poison Ivy]

Hi, StartingHealing. What do you mean by "a situation like this": only realizing after a person's death that the person had a PD? Or do you mean something else? I don't want to respond with irrelevant comments.

[moglow]

Why would that thought be "out there"? Not sure what "a situation like this" may entail, but it's entirely possible that on some level you sought out the familiar. Sick as some of our experiences may be, that's *our* normal and there's a comfort of sorts knowing what to expect, what to do or not, possibly even knowing it's completely out of our hands. Your adoptive mother could have come from a similar background as your ex. Or she may have been the black sheep [so to speak] of her own family and no one knows why she went hard the other direction.

I don't believe PDs are entirely nature or nurture, but a mixture of both. That said, thinking back to mother's siblings [all long gone now] there were a LOT of similarities among them and supposedly their mother did a lot of the same pitting one against the others.

[StartingHealing]

My apologies. I didn't provide enough detail.

Divorced from a bpd.  Over a year NC.  Still working through a ton of emotional stuff.  I've realized that my adoptive mother had some of the same patterns of behavior as the exwBpd.  Trying to process the tangled mess of emotions and the ties twixt the two, and maybe how that was where I had blinders on entering into the relationship with the exwBPD.

[Poison Ivy]

I'm divorced, my dad is deceased, and my mom is alive (age 95). I thought I was "marrying my dad" (i.e., I thought my husband had the good qualities that my dad had) but I discovered that my husband didn't have those qualities. This year, very belatedly (we were married for 31 years and have been divorced for 7 years), it occurred to me that I had "married my mom."   

[Hilltop]

I married thinking my husbands family was close and normal.  Years later, I see similar dysfunctional patterns between his family and mine.  I think it's normal to find this behaviour normal and we are comfortable as that's how we were raised.  It's not till years down the track the dysfunction becomes obvious.

I see traits in both DH and myself that aren't great and are most likely due to this dysfunction.

I see that my DH is emotionally closed just like my parents are. I get frustrated by this and he responds with blaming me.  The same pattern I had with my parents.  I've only recently realised this. 

[Leonor]

"I see that my DH is emotionally closed just like my parents are. I get frustrated by this and he responds with blaming me.  The same pattern I had with my parents."

Me too, and I'll add: "And that makes me feel afraid and abandoned, so I spend a lot of time and energy trying to make him more expressive and affectionate to 'secure' his love... The same pattern I had with my parents!"

It's not a failure of vision on your part, Starting. And it's not like this person did a switcheroo on you. These patterns of behavior and communication are subconscious. We call any breakthroughs into the conscious mind "gut feelings" or "red flags," and then beat ourselves up for not seeing them earlier.

But that's gaslighting ourselves. If we've been raised to mistrust what we see, or told that we are being loved, or threatened, even wordlessly, with abandonment, then mistrusting our gut or not seeing what is happening in front of us is the right thing to do!

There's a saying, "Don't believe everything you hear." Well, we're taught, "Don't believe everything you see." Well, that's hard to do. So we learn not to see. And if we can't help but see, we tell ourselves stories about it: "She really meant this," "Maybe I should have done that."

Seeing how the patterns of relationship between your adopted parent and your ex will eventually allow you to see your patterns of relationship with them, and then your patterns with you. That's where the real, lasting healing starts!

[StartingHealing]

My thanks to all the have replied. 

What a barrel of worms, you know?  I'm really working on treating myself with compassion and realizing that my feelings are real, instead of the crap that I used to be told " You don't feel that way" " you should feel X because of Y"

The adoptive mother, it got to a point where I couldn't remain in contact with her.  Her crap and the crap from the exwBPD was just to much, and since the ex was in my face, something had to go. 

I used to have feelings of guilt about that.  I realized that it was more of the same old sh-t that a-mom would do to get me to comply.

Wishing all here all the best