But I love her! I know I should leave her, but I’m afraid she won’t be able to survive without me. I just want to help her. She can’t help it, she had such a bad childhood. Yes, she’s abusing the children and me, but there’s just got to be a way to get through to her.
She broke it off with me and won’t speak to me. She’s back with her ex who she told me abused her. I can’t stop thinking about her. How could she just discard me like that? How could she go back to someone who was so horrible to her?
I receive emails from men expressing the above sentiments on a regular basis. These men are in pain, jonesing for a hit on the BPD crack pipe. Despite all sound judgment, intelligence and common sense, they are either staying with a BPD girlfriend or wife who is emotionally and/or physically abusing them or in withdrawal from from a BPD woman who was emotionally and/or physically abusing them. They put the “dependent” in codependent.
The addiction these men have to their abusers is every bit as toxic and potentially lethal as an addiction to heroin, alcohol, meth, cocaine or any other drug of choice. Some yearn for the early honeymoon-love bombing stage. Some are on a suicide mission to “save” a woman who will drag them down like a drowning victim — except she will climb to safety on his dead back once she’s destroyed him. In hearing these men’s declarations of self-destructive “love,” you want to comfort them and shake some sense into them all at once.
[youtube ViLlPf_cioo]
Counseling with Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD
Dr. Tara J. Palmatier, PsyD helps individuals work through their relationship and codependency issues via telephone or Skype. She specializes in helping men and women trying to break free of an abusive relationship, cope with the stress of an abusive relationship or heal from an abusive relationship. Coaching individuals through high-conflict divorce and custody cases is also an area of expertise. She combines practical advice, emotional support and goal-oriented outcomes. Please visit the Schedule a Session page for more information.
Want to Say Goodbye to Crazy? Buy it HERE.
I’m really looking forward to this one. As you’ve both asked for feedback in the past, all I can offer is that I hope that the concept of guilt is addressed. It’s a powerful tool that Cluster-B women aren’t always fully conscious of employing to keep men from escaping.
It’s been a couple of years since I grew a pair and left my Verbally and Emotionally Abusive Borderline (TM), but because she was so good at eliciting sympathy for her chronic backache, the self-esteem that her mother obliterated by telling her horrible things about herself when she’d been a child, “working on it” with therapists and yet unable to fully trust anyone who had the nerve to love her, etc., the trained white knight in me still feels guilty for breaking it off.
The remorse is illogical and unfounded, but I picture her all alone and in pain, and that ol’ pathetic “I’ll be the one to accept her, out of all the bad men of the past” voice has intruded upon my glorious solitude so often that I’m wondering if I’ll ever shake it.
A buddy of mine is also struggling with guilt for having “abandoned” his Emotionally Blackmailing Narcissist (Ltd.). That’s the phrase they use when they detect that you’re getting fed up: “Please don’t abandon me. Everyone I love leaves me.” Well, perhaps if everything you said weren’t designed to make your man feel as if he’s doing something wrong at all times, even by saying “Have a good day at work” (“I don’t need your permission to have a good day! Why do you condescend to me?”)……
Thanks for reading this, and for continuing to make these vital, reassuring films. I don’t know what I would have done without them, as well as your older episodes on Voice for Men Radio.
Hi Chris,
I addressed the topic of guilt. I hoped to go into more depth, but it was hard to fit everything into 60 minutes. This is a very heavy and multifaceted subject. I hope it provided you some information, however.
It was a wonderful hour, as usual, Doctor — thanks so much! Every little bit helps us recovering White Knights.
Thanks so much for these videos. Each week they’re fantastic and cover a lot. I feel I am slowly getting better as a result and moving towards making the change of cutting ties with my ex gf once and for all.
I fall into the category knowing for some time that I am addicted to my borderline/narcissist ex girlfriend. I totally get the point that at some point I need to buck up, take the pain of complete detachment from her. Your videos reinforce that and it’s precisely what I need to hear. I have made several attempts at no contact but always ended up doing limited contact until she came around again. We’ve had numerous painful breakups over 5 years time and I’m exhausted. At least we don’t have kids or a marriage. BUT, and the big thing is that I left my marriage to be with her thinking it was the best solution for everyone involved. A chance for us all to be with people who we could love and find happiness with. How naive I was.
Now I realize what a huge mistake that was, and I could have repaired my marriage had I never gotten involved with her. My marriage wasn’t working at all at one time because of issues my wife and I were having, I couldn’t persuade her to go to counseling with me. Sadly it took the affair for her to realize how serious our issues were and then she absolutely needed it. My ex wife and I learned very well how to communicate after a lot of sessions. We have a pretty good understanding of each other and a sincerity and kindness for each other. And yet I couldn’t pull it together because of my addiction to the borderline who treated me so badly. Yes, I did want that corrective step. The validation and love and making the promise of our happy future all work out. Things just cannot end naturally like a normal relationship. You have to deal with the toxicity and the pain almost like a cancer before you purge it.
Lately I have been seeing her some and waiting for her based partly on her saying she “wants a future.” She’s been saying that for five years!!! I’m not an idiot but yet I keep lining up for her. Once I give her what she says she wants, which is what I really want – that’s when all of the borderline behaviors come out again and we’re back to square one.
You mentioned there is an endless well for some people. I don’t want there to be. I just don’t know what to do. I seriously would consider going away to treatment for a month if there were a program that could help with this very issue. It’s addiction to a person – not sex or anything else.
And, there’s something about some of the just slightly off ones, like the one in the Pretender’s song, “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” that makes you think that if you can bring them around, there’s got to be one hell of a prize in that Cracker Jack Box.
“I might be great tomorrow
But hopeless yesterday”
It can take awhile before you can make yourself believe they’re going to be hopeless tomorrow, too.
I think the Crazy version of “Don’t Get Me Wrong” would be “You’re Always Wrong.”
They hate it just as much when you’re right, maybe more.
I told her once, “You’d rather jump off the Tacoma Narrows Bridge than admit I was right about anything,”
She looked me square in the eye and said, “You got THAT right.”
I had same kind of experience with a bipolar girl. They can also be very manipulative and seductive. And they will always save their own neck, no matter what it takes.
What this article touches on is a huge issue that I am dealing with still.
Co-dependency……This problem runs the gambit from drugs,gambling, sex adicts, drinking etc. We think we are helping them, but they can`t be helped!! In this case, we, the guys are really the victims and suffering more than the ones on the receiving end of the so called “help.” They sit back and in truth are nothing but major “drama queens.”
And yes….during my lifeguard training years ago, we were taught that one good swift kick to the mid section to a “drowning victim” that has your arm locked with a death grip with two hands is the only way you are going to survive.If you don`t do it, your are on a one-way trip to the bottom and oblivion,
It was with that attitude that I slammed the door on my abuser, ran and have not looked back since.
The problem is that the emotional damage that BPD`s or NPD`s cause takes alot of time to recover from. It has been almost a year and I just went out and bought a dictionary for myself. For years I was tormented and abused, called stupid for lookinig up words I could not understand.
What a joy it is to now look up words in peace and serinity.
Dr T is the lifeline for all you men out there living in a “non-reletionship” where you are really putting youself in the position of being a caregiver/co-dependant /victim. She will help open you eyes to the truth.
Keep up the great work Dr. T. Thank you for continuing with your articles and I regularly watch your youtube channel, its all full of great information.
That video was really good.
I made the mistake of being with a BPD woman for four years. Its been three years since I broke up with her and I am only now starting to feel “normal” again. That was seven years of insanity that I can’t get back. I didn’t realize she was a BPD until eight months AFTER I broke up with her but she CONSISTENTLY matches eight out of nine of the traits and characteristics for what the DSM says are for BPD’s.
Anyway, you talked about how BPD’s will try to provoke you into raging because by me losing it they feel in control. Wow, this is exactly what that nutcase did. I never raged in my life before I met her and haven’t since bailing out of that freaky relationship, but she used to ask me the same question over and over again and I was stupid enough to take the bait and keep answering her (honestly). Finally, out of sheer frustration for not being heard the million times before when I answered the same frikkin question, I would go into a screaming rage.
Thanks for making sense of some of the insanity I was going through!
Apparently she has a new sucker, er ah dude, in her life now that she’s been with for about six months. I heard from someone else that he is a really nice guy with a nice kid and a paid off house that his mom left him, etc. The thing is that even though I don’t know this guy, and never will, I really feel sorry for him and the hell that he is and will go through being with her. She is a beautiful, passionate and exciting woman to be with which was why I was dumb enough to hang around for so long, but this poor bastard has no idea what he’s getting into here. What do you think about warning this guy?
Pay it forward & warn the poor guy. You can do it anonymously or whatnot…but could save his life.
It’s probably best to leave it alone.
Stevo- Ditto every thing you said, even the 7 years. Real damn surprising how long it took “getting back to normal”. These really are toxic people. The raging thing- I suspected was related to my ex’s/their Victim Identity. Meaning, they need to provoke you so that you will “victimize” them by becoming enraged. Then they get to play The Victim and everything feels normal to them, it’s what they understand. You may start out as the “rescuer”…. but they will make you the “victimizer” eventually. It’s who they are.
My advice… don’t waste your time, energy, breath, or words on her & the New Fool. You/I don’t know what his background was/is. He might have a Completely Compatible Kind Of Crazy. And he will -definitely- think you/I are just a “sore loser” and he’s somehow a “winner” in getting the…. uh…. “Prize”. Lessons will be learned, or not. The reason BP’s didn’t work for us… is that we’re not crazy & codependent.
I got with my recent ex two years ago. Very abusive woman. moved out four time before we were married, but always came back. She is a flight attendant for a major Airline. We got back from Hawaii in June and she set me up for a bogus reason for her to leave and get a divorce, called the police and filed a restraining order, then filed divorce. After she was gone I found pictures or her with another guy at the races in Phx just five weeks after our wedding. Turns out he is a pilot for the same company. I just can’t wrap my head around it. She had just remodeled our kitchen with my from the equity from her house, plus she left a new range, new top of the line washer and dryer, fridg, range, two big screen TV’s and all of her new furniture. My councilor at the VA said she planned to come back is why she left everything. Another weird thing if I received six friend requests in a week from women that had just opened their account, didn’t have any friends, no posts. I kinda think it was her as I blocked her. I refused all of them and I haven’t received any more since that week in July. Weird !
Thank you so much for putting this info out there. It is life changing for some of us, and I do not say that lightly.
I feel compelled to comment, because I suddenly feel there are others that might understand and relate to the nightmare I have been living. Just the act of writing this off-the-cuff comment is offering me healing and compassion around my life situation, enlightened by the video.
This one hour video just summed up my 14 year confusion about my relationship and marriage to a Ivy educated Family Doctor, a relationship which I could never fix, though my efforts were heroic. I have never heard of “Borderline” before today, but obliviously my doctor wife has. The interview w/ Dr. T and the man from Advise4men, enlightened me to a dynamic I did not know was common. It shone a light into 10 years of darkness and shame in my life I did not understand. The interview literally seemed custom made for me and totally changed my view of what I was living through. Thank you. Thank you.
I knew my wife was controlling and dominate when I married her, but I thought I could hold my own. She also made me very aware of the abuse/neglect she suffered as a 2 year old when an older sister died unexpectedly and her mother disappearance in her darken room until she was 7 years old, 5 years later. She told me that she was “still a very angry girl on the inside” and that I needed to offer compassion around that, which I did until this day. She was also highly sexual in private, and provocative and always projecting sensuality in public to both men and women (lot of juicy hugs and kisses all around). I had always found it strange who she would use her dynamic personality to “hook” complete strangers she would never see again into intimate conversations, while we never were able to talk about anything of subsistence.
On our wedding night she refused to use to let me use the contraception that was discussed and absolutely agreed to, and we were gifted with a beautiful boy, 2 years ahead of the schedule I needed to transition to the new state, where she lived. On our honeymoon, we took a canoe ride and a storm blew up, with 25mph winds and 3 foot waves. I was steering in back (even though she wanted to) but the wind keep overtaking the bow. I have paddled canoe most my life, and spent all my life in and around boats. She got very scared (I was not at all) and started yelling at me about I was doing wrong. Her criticism of me increased, finally stated “I wish you would have told me you couldn’t paddle before I married you” I responded by saying I wish you have told me you could be such a bitch when you got scared. I guess that honeymoon paddle summed our whole next 13 years up. I am not proud of my reactive comment, or the ones over the years, but the notion that she would not have married me because I couldn’t control a rented canoe the way she expected in a storm totally threw me for a loop, but offered an insight into her controlling nature. This was also the day after she burst out in laughter at the marriage alter (in front of 200 people) when the priest got to the part where she was to repeat “I accept you Walt, just as you are.” The stage was set right there in front of God, friends, and family, I just did not know.
She controlled the finances, what we did on the weekends, where we went on vacation, and mostly importantly, what the mood of the house was at any given time. She dictated the mood, and we all (children now 10 and 12) adjusted. She also physically hit me repeatedly, and often stood over me daring her to hit her back. In one particular incident, she was screaming “Fuck you” at me with both of he middle fingers right in my face. She screamed, “You want to hit me don’t you?”, and I walked out of the room, but she chased me. In the laundry room she caught up with me and ask me why I left. I said because I won’t get treated like that, she asked what I meant, and I raised my middle fingers to her face and whispered, “you were yelling “fuck you” to me with your fingers right in my face. As I showed her, one middle finger accidentally brushed (barely) her nose, and she slugged me with all she had. She is 5-6, 155 (I am 5-11) 155, and very strong. I staggered back, and without the ability to process, hit her in the chest as she had hit me, but nowhere near as hard as I could. We stopped there and fell into each others arms crying, saddened and scared that we had just done that. We agreed it would never happen again (it did) and be our secret.
The next day she started wearing strapless clothes all the time, which show a light mark, but fist sized. My wife bruises very east and most often has bruises she doesn’t know where come from. She must have gained much attention as she paraded the mark, and before I knew it, I found an email of a photo of the mark sent to her sister. The next week, a neighbor, also a doctor, call me at work and told me I should find another place to spend the night and that he was going to be at our house “to keep the peace”. In time it cooled off, and she promised to tell the all 6 people she showed the mark to that she, in fact, she chased me down the hall after screaming “fuck you” to me, then punched me when I explained why I walked away from her. She never corrected the story to anyone, although for years it was an issue for me until I gave up.
I have mostly lived without any intimacy since we got married. I was not allowed to initiate sex, at all, for the last 7 years. If we had sex (very rare) she without warning or warm up, would start tugging at me, mount me, and roll off once she orgasmed, not even concerned with where I was in the act. This would happen once or twice a year, then it stopped all together about 5 years ago, even though I made myself available constantly. Always, the better our sex was, the longer she would wait to initiate again. What is up with that? She always suggested I knew she had a “trust issue” but it was my job to work around it.
Over the next years, the domestic culture became, “what did Dad do wrong today”. we even joked about it, but the joke became, myth, which became her story. She started framing me as abusive to all the women in our close small village existence. She talked to the priest, most the neighbors, all my family, and most of my closest friend, telling them that I was emotional, physical, and verbally abusive. However, no one told me she was saying these things until after she surprised me by filing for divorce. We were planning on separating, and took 120K equity out of our house to purchase a second house as a “nesting” place. One morning she got up and went and closed on the house in her own name only, buying it with the equity that came from our house, and claiming she did it for speed ans ease of transaction. I would soon learn she was preparing to gather our assets in her name.
Our children call her “Miss Fake” because of how different she acts outside the house and in. The is really a shallow connection predator, constantly drawing new people into her circle, with touches and deep eye contact. She is very attractive, very intelligent, and very socially able, so she usually gets her way. She is also call Miss Fake by our children, in how she can be telling them how much she loves them, and then the next second, be berating them.
I have been stuck, try to fix the problem. we went to 2 long counseling session with people she had professional referring relationships with (that’s all she would agree to). Both time we looked at me for months, turned me inside out, asked not react to the constant criticism, breath, walkaway, etc. However, both times, and in a subsequent effort, once the looking glass turned to her, she blew up the effort, and stormed out. After the their time of this happening, the therapist, took compassion on me seeing my confusion, and helped me understand that the pattern indicated pathology around her childhood trauma, and the reason she was asked to reveal, after I made it “safe” was because she was the “Identified patient”, a term I have never heard.
She also called 911 many, many times. Often hanging up, but never filing a complaint, but controlling the story, and getting recorded. In one incident, she had changed some rules around the children which I held exception to. She started yelling, and I yelled back. I one point she said “I’m calling 911” and I offer my usual response, “Go ahead. What are you going to tell them, we are yelling at each other?” With the exception of the onetime noted, I never touched her. The children started freaking out. “Mom you can’t call the police on dad, he didn’t do anything”. She ran out of the house dialing the phone and they chased her while I stayed out of it. She was holding the phone over her head as they are jumping up to get it screaming and crying hysterically saying “You can call the police on Dad” as she responded, screaming back at them “Tell me one reason I should call the police on him”. It was a scene as horrific of any slasher movie
Now it is all becoming clear. She secretly filed for divorce after we agreed to find a separation “nesting house”, which I was working on in my time. We agreed if separation did not work we would agree to file. Directly after a series of conversations and discoveries lead me to realize I indicated to her that I could no longer trust her. Her ambush divorce filing act actually bought an ease of tension to our house, because I have given up trying to fix the marriage, and given up being frustrated as to why my wife could offer me nothing (in the words of our second therapist). No appreciation, no attention, no forgiveness, no conversation, no empathy, no intimacy, no complete truth, just nothing. In time I learned that while she told me the filing was spontaneous, she had be crafted the idea with a wide number of friend for a very long time. She even help the divorce papers for 2 weeks, while she had at least 6 friends advice and collectively decided on how and when she should do it. She had a friend I don’t know walk up and down the street as she served me to watch the procedure, then went and met her for coffee in town after some heated discussion concerning the change in plans.
This all seemed so confusing, but now it just seems sick, or at least “borderline”. Hearing that interview has changed my world view. I was made to believe the problem was mine and telling the world, by my doctor wife, as I sat by and told nobody anything out of respect and privacy. This is the most I have ever been able to speak of my situation, even in private therapy. It is also hard to believe that I spent all this time with professional healers and disorder trained specialist, and no one, except my final day of couple therapy.
I live in a state where woman rights/entitlement are at the peak of anywhere, and there is very little, as in none, support for these issues. I will follow-up by reading all I can on my new favorite subject, and hopefully have a session with Dr. T to add her human touch.
I hope there are other men out there that have been given the information on the dynamic in time for some healing.
Thank you all.
Hi
I would like to share why I believe I got married to a borderline to resonate with some of the reasons shared in the video:
– I was raised to be God-fearing & that strong belief & my marital vows hard-wired me that divorce is bad & I should be married to one person for life
– I was in denial that I was being abused & I believed that I could take anything that was dished out to me & it wouldn’t be forever
– I did not recognize that I was in trouble; I thought the experiences were making me a stronger person
– I have an aversion to failure & did not want to concede that my marriage is a failure because that would go against my successful persona
– I believed that my wife’s problems were my cross to bear & part of marriage was fixing your wife or helping to fix your wife
– I recognise how I have been brainwashed by this mantra & am a shell of the man I am capable of being & indeed need to change this to be a better role model for my children
– I have made the mistake of fitting right into the fixing role in order to obtain love from my wife
– I felt that I would be letting my children down by leaving their mother
I was an easy mark for my wife who has recognised & exploited these traits & I have enabled her by being weak on boundaries which she has tested & I have caved in on countless times the last 15 years
“A healthy woman does not need any fixing from me” is what has woken me from my reverie.
As it stands, she has threatened that she will be moving out next week & is ignoring me completely; I will not stand in her way this time but I recognise it as an empty threat.
I have drawn up boundaries which I will present to her to encourage her decision to leave:
– if she has any further contact with her male friends with whom she has had physical or emotional affairs during her marriage to me, she has no place in my life & I expect her to call them in front of me & tell them directly
– if she does not start paying her share of the household expenses she is not welcome to stay under my roof
– if she doesn’t seek professional help for her violent & abusive behaviour I am going to tell her to get out of my life
I suspect she will pretend to, but not comply with, any of the above & attack me for being insecure & interfering.
I have the knowledge now that I don’t have to take this abuse anymore & I know that the chances of this working out are close to zero so I will be recording everything .
This time I don’t have blinkers on.