Fourteen years is probably the record for staying with a spouse in our group, so you deserve a lot of credit for lasting this long. There are a lot of flavors of BPD. It would help if you could tell us about the situations and behaviors which are most detrimental to your relationship and personal well-being.

There is another message board and a lot more information available at bpdfamily.com. Of course, there are several recommended books you could read, if you haven't already found them. Here are a few key topics from this group:

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/sobs-significant-others-of-borderlines/discussions/messages/9747012

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/sobs-significant-others-of-borderlines/discussions/messages/9746974

http://www.dailystrength.org/groups/sobs-significant-others-of-borderlines/discussions/messages/12326486

Welcome to SOBs.

BPD is usually diagnosed in the post-adolescent and with maturity often reduces in severity. Personality changes that occur later in life are often the result of degenerative processes in the brain that occur due to substance abuse and/or medical conditions. If your spouse seems to be getting worse, I strongly recommend a consultation with the family physician.

Escaping will always a good method of dealing with intolerable situations. My counselor recommended that when I had to walk away, offer these gestures of love and committment:

1) Explain why you have to go away. use "I" language to express your own feelings and needs, rather than blaming your SO for your decision.

2) Provide a time-frame in which you intend to return. Will you be gone for a minute, an hour, a day, or longer?

3) Re-assure your SO that you love them and that you will return in the intended time-frame.

sthe latest is him going to his cousins house and hanging out late or not coming home at all. i've told him that it is hurting me and that it is not acceptable behavior. did i mention his cousin is in a rock band and that i've heard girls in the background while talking to him on the phone? he acts like he is doing nothing wrong. and i don't know where the guy lives. but anyways to answer your question about his behavior. it feels like one day he loves me and the next he hates me. he never communicates. not even basic info or stuff like his mom is scheduled to have surgery a couple of weeks from now. the only way he shows affection is through sex and after he has his fill of it then he pushes me away and distances himself from me for days. when we are around other people in a social setting he's fine for a while but then he has to exit rhe room or the setting and be alone for a while. he is incapable of making decisions for himself. he stays in denial of his bad actions and behavior. if things seem tobe going well between us he always seems to do something to ruin it. he's self destructive. we've split up twice now because of his behavior or cheating, yet i'm te bad guy for leaving. he fails to find fault in himself. even if he knows what he is doing is wrong. he never plans anything. he acts on impluse. and he does alot of things or says alot of things before he even thinks about what he's doing. he has a bad temper. he will get mad over the simplest things and stew about it for days when most peple would have gotton over it in hours. he often feels like he's entitled to behave acertain way or have certain things. he manipulates me and other people in order to get his way or to get what he wants. there's a lot more than this but maybe it will give you some idea of what i'm dealing with here.

Sorry that you are having to deal with this. IMO, you are living with an immature, selfish child-adult who, after 14 years of marriage, takes you for granted. The major symptom of this is his infidelities. You mention some BPD-type traits, specifically impulsiveness, emotional dys-regulation, and splitting, but they don't seem to dominate the picture, which seems more fundamentally narcissistic, especially his shutting down (emotional withdrawal/silent hostility) and the rages. In my experience, most pwBPD are quite verbally abusive and will not hesitate to tell you that they hate you, when they feel that way.

The sexual issue is problematic; it seems that he can't tolerate much intimacy. This is sometimes the basis of unsatisfactory communications between spouses, as well. Naturally I must suggest couples' counseling, where your style of interaction could be analysed for clues about how the two of you might better connect. I suspect that he has already refused to go, on more than one occasion.

Because the two of you do not communicate effectively, you are left in the dark about his thoughts. The questions he needs to answer for you are "How much resentment is he carrying around?" and "What does he want from the marriage?". A lot of his behavior might be a passive-aggressive expression of reprisal, much of the rest just plain insensitivity from someone lacking empathy. I suggest reading some of the books by Dr. Harriet Lerner, including "The Dance of Anger," while remembering that anger cuts both ways. Because he seems to be running from the marriage, the work of patching it up will be mostly on you, at least in the beginning.

You seem to want to have more quality time together. How would you feel about spending some evenings at his cousin's place? It would be a great concession from all of you to make peace in this way. If you think that it would make you too uncomfortable, remember how your SO sometimes tries to escape early from your planned events in order to spend time alone. At this stage of the marital breakdown, getting invited at all might be an insurmountable challenge for you.

I recently read the book "5 Love Languages" by Gary Chapman. It is an optimistic guide to getting and keeping marriages on-track. The book is loaded with ideas and real cases of couples who learned to love each other again. One thing the book makes clear is that criticism doesn't work very well. The principles from the book are widely discussed on the web, for example, here:

http://www.5lovelanguages.com/learn-the-languages/the-five-love-languages/

and here:

http://users.trytel.com/~jfalt/Oth-art/five-love-languages.html

The author is insightful and provocative; I really enjoyed reading the book.

Something that most of us in this group have learned is that, when caught in an unsatisfying relationship, you must find your own life, and hold onto it. That is, discover what really makes you happy and strive to obtain it, putting the relationship in a secondary, supporting role. Trying to live in a world organized around a personality disorder just makes normal people crazy. The failure of a relationship in which you are blindly and completely invested is a shattering experience. We need a cushion of self-esteem onto which we can fall back.

If you can't take anymore, you might want to check out the book "Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone With Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder" by Randi Kreger, who co-authored "Stop Walking On Eggshells."

hi pjreeses! welcome to the group, but what a bummer to have to join...

your situation sounds very similar to mine. feel free to look at some of my journal entries from the past few months (there are tons!). you will see you are not alone.

i'm not sure why we put up with this kind of behavior. it sounds like things are so dark right now that it might do you some good to sit down with yourself and figure out the reasons why you do love you partner, why you are with him, and why you want to stay (if, ultimately, you do). that may help to lighten your spirits.

i don't know if it helps or not, but i'll share some of the things that i have learned in my 2 years of being with an un(and refusal to be)diagnosed partner with bpd. i've read or am reading many of the books that johnnycake recommends. i've joined sites like out of the fog, and talked to other people who are diagnosed with bpd for support and insight. i think i got pretty obsessive for a while there. all i could think about was his disorder and how i could learn to work with it. suddenly i realized that i wan't thinking about myself anymore. that even after reading books like "dance of anger" (which is really excellent, by the way, and very helpful for many situations), i was making these changes to try and alleviate his outbursts, to minimize the possibilities of his bpd behaviors hurting me. and i wasn't doing the things that made me happy anymore, i was catering to his illness, and in this way, even enabling his vicious behavior.

finally, the straw that broke the camel's back came when he flipped out because a gay man put his arm around my shoulder at a gay bar (we're bf&gf but the vibe there was awesome and the pool table was always available), and he isolated for a couple days after a barrage of insults. i realized i didn't want to be afraid of him anymore. so i moved out. and it hurt like hell!!! but i wasn't in that space with him anymore, the one charged with negative energy, the one that i emotionally cowered in thinking he was always going to come home spitting fire and hatred.

we had plans to move north together. well, he got his head start. i'll be up soon, but i won't be living with him, just near him. and at least now i don't have to worry every time he threatens to leave what i am going to do about my living situation. and i don't have to be exposed to his moments of pure insanity that start making me feel like i'm insane, too. we'll see how it works out in the long run. (it drives me crazy that he is still unable to accept that his behavior drove me away, that he is still unwilling to take responsibility.)

i'm not saying that this is a solution for you, but i do know that i can never change this man, and that i can never get him to seek treatment of any kind, so it's up to me how much i want to let his behavior affect me. when it comes down to it, my happiness and sanity are more important that living that classic "normal" relationship life with him. he's not normal! and neither am i, for that matter. so it's like trying to fit the square box into the round hole when neither the box nor the hole want to change...

getting away has really helped me to stop internalizing his insults and anger. i may trigger him, but his emotional reactions are not my fault. it was really hard to understand this when his reactions were ten feet away, really intense and hateful, and then to have him suddenly gone for days at a time to the point where i needed to threaten to call the police if he didn't respond to me. it was pretty hellish. but i still love the shit outta him. life's pretty crazy, isn't it.

i hope you find peace and moments of clarity in your situation. keep posting. we're all here to listen. :)