I was married to someone diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, although that diagnosis wasn’t given until after we separated. I had no idea the nightmare I was living through, all I knew was I wasn’t being treated fairly and I was miserable. One moment he would be sweet and loving, the next he was unimaginably cruel and telling me I was a horrible person. If I tried to confront him about anything ever he would tell me it was my fault, or lie and say it didn’t happen, or he would turn and walk out the door, get in his car and drive away without saying a word. If for some reason he couldn’t get away or couldn’t lie his way out of it he would flip out, which included suddenly screaming at the top of his lungs, throwing things, breaking things, wild accusations, getting in my face, towering over me and intimidating me with his size, just terrifying out of control behavior. Whenever he acted this way he would say I made him do it. It was my fault, for example: I tried to talk to him in the car and I should know to NEVER confront him in a car so it was my fault he freaked out. Or he had to lie because the truth would upset me. The lies were constant. He would lie about anything like a knee jerk reaction, things that didn’t even make sense to lie about. He would “future fake” which is when they promise to do better in the future but really are just stringing you along. He would say whatever I wanted to hear then turn around and do whatever he wanted without any regard to the promises he made. The splitting was the worst. It’s when they view you as all good or all bad, you can’t just be a good person who makes mistakes or made an offhanded comment that hurt their feelings. If you upset them, you are pure evil and doing everything to sabotage their life. Or you are their best friend and greatest most wonderful love. He would swing back and forth between greatest love and worst enemy, sometimes within minutes.

 

I learned that my mother has BPD (undiagnosed, untreated). It’s why I was willing to marry someone with it. He treated me the same way my mother did/does. Even as an adult, when I did something my mother didn’t like, she would go as far as to call my boss on her private cell phone and try to get me fired (this happened 6 months ago – I’m 39 years old and a single mother). She threatened to call my college and get me kicked out when I was 30 years old and paying for my own school because I disproved a point she was trying to make about evolution. Now that they are both out of my life I have learned how amazing life can be. People with BPD drain your soul and your energy. They don’t give AF about how they make others feel, all they care about is their own emotions, like a toddler who can’t comprehend the feelings of others and throws a fit when someone sets boundaries. They tell outrageous lies about the people they’re mad at as a way to justify treating them so badly. I don’t know if they believe the lies. But if they FEEL like you did something they accept it as a fact, whether or not you actually did that thing. I’ve had my mother and my ex acknowledge I didn’t do a thing and say, “But I FEEL like you did.” They will conjure something about you up in their own mind and treat you as if you did this thing that never happened, they will tell people you did something that never happened and even try to get others to treat you like shit for something that you didn’t do. It’s insane to witness. They keep you so energy drained and beaten down that you don’t know how to get back up, and you start to believe you are the terrible person they accuse you of being, and that no one else could possibly love such a person.

 

I’m team Johnny all the way. I know something of what he’s been through and I admire him for his bravery in telling his story to the world. I had no idea what BPD was until a therapist suggested my mother had it and I bought a book about it. It was like someone watched my childhood through a window and wrote it down in this book. My life would have been so much better if someone had shown me sooner.