They say Borderlines get better over time. I'm not sure they measure it right.

[Dave-41692]

I've seen article after article, I've talked to Doctors that insist there is evidence symptoms of BPD decrease over time. I would like to ask what data they use to make that determination. I have seen it said that they survey people with BPD over time and that shows lessening symptoms. I don't know how you can use the information that comes from people who don't have a handle on the truth as the basis for a conclusion.

Of course my opinion is informed by my personal situation. On the one hand I can say my BPD wife has mad improvements. The violence is mostly gone. But her insight about herself has not improved and actually gotten worse. In the past, she used to apologize once in a while. Now, she never does. She strongly holds the position that I ruined her life and I am the cause of how unhappy she is. Where she used to once think I was a good man and loved me, she now thinks I'm a bad man and doesn't love me. She says it more calmly (not always, she still has outburst of rage, both subtle and obvious), but saying something insane calmly makes it no less insane. Our ability to discuss sensitive topics has gotten worse. There has always been a different set of rules for her. In the past, she would be more fair, now, never. The improvements on our interactions when she's having an episode are largely changes I've made in responding to it.

I don't know if anyone else has these thoughts. Just to preempt someone missing my point, I have full understanding that this can't be cured and the medical community is going to measure any small gradation of improvement. Has anyone experience a partner's improvement where they actually gained insight about their behavior, that their pain isn't caused by their partner and how abusive their behavior is.

[Starboard Song]

I hate to say it, but I think this is one of those cases where you only get one swing at the bat, so the odds don't matter much: some will get worse, some will get better.

I so hope you get some positive feedback, here, from people who have seen strong recoveries or improvements in the people they love.

Good luck!

[Samuel S.]

While my wife has improved somewhat, she still has her moments in which she simply lashes out or manipulates to the max. Once, she told me: "I apologize for what I have done, and I apologize for what I will do." Well, this is like giving her a pass on everything in the past and in the future. So, I am supposed to accept that she isn't going to change.

I wish you the best, that your life with her can be stable and happy, although her improvements may be slight.

[GettingOOTF]

Some would say my BPDxH has "improved" as he's holding down a job now but in terms of how he treated me and others he remains the same.

For me it was a case of asking myself what I was prepared to settle for. "Improved" is relative and it still wasn't close to what I wanted and deserved. Only you can know what quality of relationship you are prepared to accept. You say you cannot discuss sensitive topics and she's open that she doesn't love you. Saying she doesn't love you calmly vs screaming it at you is the type of "improvement" I experienced. Yes, technically that is an improvement but it doesn't really change your situation.

I do know that I lost over a decade waiting for things to get better.

I found reading Codependent No More very helpful in helping me to figure out what I really wanted and why I was settling for the marriage I had. I ultimately chose to leave.

[Dave-41692]

Thank you all very much for those inputs (so far). Maybe someone will report something better. Since it's a illness that most reveals itself in close relationships, it makes sense that measuring improvement should give weight to the observations of those close to them.

I have read Codependence No More. Very helpful. I have consciously made the decision to stay weighing the consequences of staying and leaving. No one has forced me to stay. While the best thing for me is to detach when  I need to and not take things personally, I will still continue to strive to be treated better, with no expectation I will.

[1footouttadefog]

Perhaps if you being the root of her problems is her truth and you cannot change that.

She things you are a bad man and she a victim.

Perhaps accepting her truth is best for both of you and would free both of you.

If you leave her she can be the nest she can be without you holding her back from her potential.  Additionally you would ve giving her truth as she knows it dignity and honoring her in it.

You could go on to where you are not considered the ruiner of lives and find appreciation and acceptance.

With cluster B types it often turns out the love she had for you was actually about how she felt about herself having you in love with her.  Once you got to know the real her and not the projected onto the world mask/false persona, you became and extension of her and were devalued.  Seemingly very few partners are revalued once discarded.

I hope you find strength you come out the fog and can find a path forward to a happier life.

Symptoms are as you say self reported. The therapists are focusing on the feelings and welfare of the patient from their point of view, and don't appraise the ruin they leave in their wake while feeling better.

[Dave-41692]

Thank you 1footouttadefog. Lot's of good insight.

As I said I've made my assessment and have chosen to stays. I have the right at any point to change my mind. We do have a 9 month old.

I do find things go best when I accept her truth when we talk. That approach dove tails well with the concept of being a mirror instead of a sponge. I say things like "you seem very unhappy being married to me", "you feel like you would have been better off if you never met me". It disarms her a little, but It still ends up being conversation that is unproductive.

As far as the reasons she loved me in the beginning, i know there are many things that were not as they seemed, however, I do feel like there were very authentic and for the right reason feelings of intimacy. How real of a love was this is something I'll probably never know.

Thanks again for taking the time. That in itself gives me strength.

[1footouttadefog]

If you are staying, and I get that I too habe stsyed for my kids, and if you have not done so yet, I encourage you to read through the 100 traits list.

We can only ttuely work on ourselves, and merely attempt to make things better with a pd.  I took the 100 traits list early on in my coming out if the fog and marked it up.  I marked those I did, and those my pdh did.  I marked of it was habitually, or incidentally and whether or not it was typically in response to another trait on the list.

I then saw that there were many bad patterns in my relationship.  Since these traits are all abusive this meant it the relatuonship was very abusive. 

I set out to own my part of it even though proportionately much smaller than his.  I also worked in not using a nagative behavior to respond or cope with abuse when possible.

I set boundaries.  I exercised the boundaries and over time retrained my pdh to a large degree regarding how I could be treated.

An example was he likes to become outraged about current events and drag me into it and get a rise from me.  I no longer let him go on and on.  I say things like , yes that is bad, but I know enough about it now and have other things to do.  He will still try to drag me in but i resist by asking him if he wants a stamp and envelope to write his congressman. 

When he talks in circles and asks questions then does not let me answer,  I state, this is no longer a two way conversation so I will leave you with it.  And I leave.

If he is mad about something outside the house,  and yelling or ranting, I say, What did I do to ne yelled at, I dont like being yelled at so I will find something better to do like clean the bathroom.

Basically I am no longer the emotional dumping ground, he finds other ways to deal with his garbage. 

The relationship is livable in a roommate sense, but is not a marriage and has not been for a super long time.  I hope now the the youngest is in upper teens, I can make it through the next couple of years. 

I hope celibacy and being lonely for my kids, still seems worth it when I am too old for anyone to care. 

[Dave-41692]

Thanks for the inputs. You sound very similar to the way I have evolved my coping. I have developed a graduated level of detachment. Small abuses like mean looks for no reason or rude comments, I leave the room without saying anything. If it escalates and she follows me, I keep moving to other rooms in the house, if it escalates further, I go for a walk for a while and come back home. If that doesn't work I stay in a hotel (that can't happen right now with the baby).

One of the tangible improvements is when we are having conflict, a lot of that time is just staying away from each other. While it makes me sad that we can't be friendly, it does allow me to have some peace.

I agree that much of the time it's like having a "livable roommate".

[SparkStillLit]

Roommate. And weirdly, it seems like they're happier that way. I think it kind of sucks, but whatever, I'm not in for the rage or being the dump, either, right now. Here's where we are, today.
I have not seen any getting better. I think it's worsening with age, in that I think it's creeping "outside" if you will. Like getting obvious. I don't know if he's been catered to and gotten his way so long at home that he's lost perspective, and now he's like The King, or what. It's concerning, not gonna lie. Sooner or later one does imagine he'll get a job (I guess???) and I just can't imagine how that's going to go.

[Rose1]

years ago someone wisely wrote "they don't get better with age, they run out of victims". I concur

[GettingOOTF]

My marriage also settled into the "roommate situation". After I left I found out he'd been cheating throughout most of the marriage. He was far from a catch but could be charming enough when he wanted to. I still don't know how he found the time.

[LeighM]

Hi All - I am new here, but a little about my situation. I am divorced, and my boyfriend of 1.5 years has BPD.  He has been misdiagnosed over the years, but definitely fits the BPD diagnosis to a T.  Do they get better over time?  I will say he has shown improvement since we met, in that I would not tolerate some behaviors and he worked very hard to change them and the time between the cycles of his issues have lessened, from once a month to every 4 months. Yet, I have come to the conclusion that I do think he can ever truly change. Here are the things that bother him and it will never get better:

1. Everything is black and white/right or wrong. There is no in between, and if I am not complying with what he wants me to do about the "wrong" then I am the enemy.
2. He needs to feel like he is number one in my life, and I have two daughters (18 and 16)  and if he perceives them as coming first, he gets very upset
3. He lets so many things bother him that he perceives as wrong, yet they don't affect him, but he cannot let them go
4. In arguments, he is very mean and tries to hurt me with words/things he knows will bother me, even when I am trying to be calm and reflect what he is saying to me
5. Anytime I have a lot going on in my life (moving to a new place, my daughter going to college) where I am stressed, his needs escalate and he needs more attention, our lives can never be about me
6. He has very little empathy, for anyone, even his daughter.

This is just a small list, and I have realized more and more that even though he makes some progress, he will never be a partner that I need, and it is sad because I do love him, but it is not a healthy relationship.

Leigh

[Dave-41692]

@Rose1: I love that quote.

@LeighM: Your description is the most optimistic one yet. That would be a dream for me.

Reading through the traits you list, I see a lot of similarity with my wife. Especially the black and white thinking and making me the enemy when I don't agree. What I've discovered is she often talks about how things make her feel, but really she's looking for my obedience. She acts like a bully when she's upset. Often when we're fighting she acts with the presumption that I will follow her commands.

The weird thing is she can be very empathic at times and complete unempathetic at other times. My joke is she is a part-time sociopath.

Personally, I think the "progress" she has made maps to the course of our relationship. It's common in relationships for it to be intense in the beginning and then it mellows out as time passes. I think that is a normal pattern. It seems like the intensity of her episodes maps closely to the intensity in our relationship. In the first 2-3 years, the episodes would include violence and the days after the episode would be intense making up and closeness. It gradually progressed to milder episodes. The spirit of those episodes and the model of how she talks to me is almost identical. She loves to say how the thing she's upset about now is worst then anything else that's happened before and this time it different and this time she's really upset. Meanwhile, from the outside, it sounds like every other time she gets upset. It's all very confusing. The only common thread in her madness is avoiding responsibility. When I think of it that way, her behavior makes sense. Focusing on what's making her angry now allows her not to see the pattern of her behavior, blaming me takes the focus off her, changing the subject and on and on. Anyway, I guess I'm just venting.

[Samuel S.]

All of your examples of their behavior truly are heart breaking and unnerving! The world has to revolve around them, as if nothing else and no one else matters! Just last night, my sister-in-law came over and commented that she had worked 8 days in a row in a hospital. My wife, her sister, just said: "welcome to what I have been experiencing". Well, my wife has never worked 8 days in a row. In fact, very few times, it has been 6 days in a row.

While we all deal with their atrocious behavior, how do you cope? Sure, you say leaving the room, changing how you react, etc. All that is good, but it is a temporary fix. It reminds me of a song in which the lyric was something to the effect that the bandaid only covers the wound and doesn't fix the wound. Our wounds are given without justification! It hurts so very much! It can't be taken back! Sure, you can say to forgive, but that's easier said than done.

Do you folks have ways to forgive, or do you just bottle it up? For me, it's hard to forgive something that is so very unjustifiable and intended to hurt and to divide!

[tragedy or hope]

Samuel S
hmmm...
forgive maybe forgive for my own well-being. If my unpdh had an illness, I would not continue to hang on to it to fix.

I would take precautions to keep myself healthy.
forgiving is not everything is okay. for me it is realizing, I am not going to get the other person to acknowledge and take care of my hurt. I can deal with that. It can happen with others also. I have friends and faith.

Sometimes i think I expect too much. undph's are limited. I usually get hurt when I expect normal.
we can't get ice cream from a hardware store so why look for it there. we all have the "ideal" in our heads and hearts but life rarely turns out that way.

whatever i need to do to make myself feel better is what I do. It is hard to do sometimes, but I have learned not to waste my energy and emotions. I have lived with PD's behavior for decades unaware what the real glitch was.

As I got older, more aware, things are better for me. I don't worry about him being better, it is a lost cause. retirement gave me more of him, and more PD experiences. it drove me to this site... I am grateful.

Life is not ideal, but I am much better because I have tools to cope.

[Dave-41692]

How do you cope? It's very difficult. It relies on basic happiness life principles, it's just much more challenging with a PD person. The idea is to not make their happiness a condition of your happiness. It's extraordinarily challenging because you want to be invested in the happiness of a person you are close to. Part of what I think you are grappling with is whether they are evil or crazy. I haven't figured it out. I have a certain codependence that way. I want to figure it out. I want to solve her problem. I want her to see the truth. All noble, but not my problem and they undermine my focus on helping myself.

What I'm trying to do is be disciplined in not rewarding her bad behavior. The best way to do that is to not engage when it happens in any form. It's far more important what I do than what I say. It's better to say nothing and walk away than tell her I'm going to walk away. It has a double positive: 1) I don't reward her by engaging in her madness and worse yelling. The only hurtful, angry words lingering in the air are hers. It leaves her to deal with her inner storm which her madness is designed to avoid. 2) It rewards me by allowing me to stay peaceful and not acting in a way I won't be proud of. In the short-term, it's not rewarding because I don't get any immediate feedback it's working.

When she's not being bad, I give her little compliments so that she has some good feeling around me.

This is what I try to do, it's very challenging to not engage. I'm a problem solver so not taking the bait is very hard for me.

I feel my best when I give up on her being different and focusing on the things I'm grateful for. But it does make me sad when I think of what we had and what we could have if she'd be willing. The healthiest choice would have been to leave her a long time ago. There were reasons I didn't but they are mine and I own them as I own my reasons for staying now. The hard part, and this is going to sound ignorant and harsh, is never forgetting she is crazy. When she's reasonable and fair, it makes the bad times seem worse and I have to reacclimate myself to dealing with her madness. In a way, I can never turn off. I must always be ready.

As for forgiveness, I agree that it's about whether forgiveness helps you. That's what matters.

[losingmyself]

IDM, your experience sounds a lot like mine. H has episodes where he's frustrated, or feeling jealous of my  kids, where he just goes off. My kids are adults now, youngest moving out on her own, so that part should get better. He still doesn't know how to handle being frustrated, and if I'm there, it's my fault, and he used to think he could just say anything, but since I have started walking away when he starts acting like that, he has been 'trained' not to do that. As much. I see it like training a dog, or a child. And he has gotten much better, since, like you said, he's left alone with no audience for his anger. The last time I walked away, he got so angry that he threw the fluorescent light bulbs he was trying to install. They stayed there until he cleaned them up. The old me would have gotten in there and cleaned them up. I just kept telling him " I can't go in there, because there's broken glass all over the floor", or when he would just ignore it and walk on it, I would say "Oh, that's nice, just grind the glass into the carpet." Anyhoo...
It is sad. That I have to consider every word or subject that I talk about. It gets easier, but not less sad. I try to ignore the nasty comments about my DD, and other people, I have decided that He's not going to control who I talk to. My thing is, even though things have been good for a while now, I don't trust him. I may forgive him, but I don't think I'll ever trust him to not return to his old ways, and frankly I think the damage is too much for me to come back from. I have lost so much because I wasn't strong enough to leave him.

[Dave-41692]

losingmyself: thanks for the comments. Hearing your experience makes me feel supported. I like what you said about training a child or dog. It's hard to come to grips with that reality. I've been trying very hard to speak with my actions which is my only power I have is to walk away or remain silent.

I think not responding is so critical to the possibility of my life being better. I recently realized that any response to crazy comments gives credibility to something she says. She is now trying to say she is going to not let me spend time with our 9 month old. To respond to that or argue means that in some small way I've considered she has the power to keep my child from me (by the way, we are married and live in the same house) which she doesn't. If I argue, it's almost like I'm implying that I need to get her agreement to see my child. It reinforces to her that she has that power. Silence does not. That may seem obvious but that was a breakthrough for me to see it that way.

It is very hard to do. She is very good at continuing to prod in various ways to get me to respond. I know my silence is the most powerful tool i have, but I feel powerless when I do it.

It's so sad because it's clear her behavior is the result of childhood trauma: She had bad parents who created a bad environment. Her mom left for a drug dealer and didn't take her. She stayed with the dad who was physically and emotionally abuse. She left him to stay with another family, the father of whom sexually abused her. I know that is the real root of why she doesn't trust me. It's so sad because if she could work to realize the problem is not my trustworthiness, but with her ability to trust. It's not that I think I'm so wonderful, but I really have very little to do with it. But the more she tells herself I'm the problem the more she stays imprisoned in the cycle of pain. It's sad to watch her put all of her efforts to stay in denial. There's one thing that makes her chaotic behavior make sense. When I see the primary motive of her behavior as protecting her ability to behave in the way that helped her survive trauma, it doesn't seem as chaotic. With that in mind, all her actions support that goal. I'm not trying to minimize her suffering or how difficult change it, it's just sad to watch.

Thanks for listening!

[losingmyself]

Yes, walking away and not responding feels so much like giving up, it's human nature to try and make the other person understand your point, but BPDs just don't get it. All they hear is "I'm telling you how this is your fault" When that's not it at all.
Keep ignoring the statements about not seeing your baby. Treat it like the ridiculous idea that it is, by continuing to spend time with her as if she hadn't said anything. She'll get bored with it eventually.
I see the effect my H's childhood has had on him, I know exactly how he got to be how he is. I just don't know what to do about it. Like, "hey you had a really messed up childhood, and I think you should talk to someone about it" Thing is, he thinks it was normal. It most certainly was not normal.
Good luck to you, and God bless