Advice on bordeline personality disorder, domestic violence & new relationships

[fairycake123]

Sorry - long! I've cut it down as much as poss.

I have 3 good friends (1 man, 2 women) who are involved in a sort of love triangle thing, and I am conflicted about it and worried about one of them.

We all met at university so we've known each other for 6/7 years.

R, my male friend, has borderline personality disorder. He used to be married to E, one of my female friends. It was a very turbulent relationship, and she ended it after he held her captive in their flat for several days. Prior to that he had been violent: pushing, hitting, throwing stuff, hair-pulling and throttling.

After he kept her in the flat against her will, she had him arrested and she moved out.

Some time after that, R was accepted into a treatment programme for people with personality disorders, consisting of meetings 5 days a week, 9am-3pm, for 9 months. It seemed to be working really well but he was asked to leave in June, 3 months before the treatment was supposed to end, because he was only attending sporadically.

In August, he and my other female friend, F, started seeing each other - and this is the problem. I think she is being an idiot. I really don't think she has any idea what she's getting into - but am I just being a massive hypocrite?

After all, I have carried on being good friends with him even after I found out what he'd done to E.

But I feel that being friends with him is different to having a relationship with him: I am not putting myself in danger by being friends with him, and I feel that F is putting herself in danger by having a sexual relationship with him.

I also feel that she is putting me in a position where eventually she is going to expect me to choose between them.

And I think she is being incredibly disrespectful to E: she has told me that R will never assault her, and that the reason he assaulted E was because "that was the dynamic of their relationship." She is very dismissive of the whole issue and that infuriates me.
She also argues that his borderline personality disorder is "cured" because he went to therapy - never mind that he was asked to leave, and never completed the course of therapy.

So basically, these are my questions:

• is it always a bad idea to have a relationship with someone who has previously been an abuser?

• is it possible that R is now a reformed character because his BPD has been diagnosed and (at least partially) treated?

Yes

and

Unlikely

He'll not have started the throttling and such with his first wife straight away - he will have built up to it as the relationship progressed, most likely, and he will, as like as not, end up doing similar to R.

You are right to be worried, however there is little you can do about it, F has been warned and if she chooses to take that risk it is her choice.

In answer to your first question, yes it's a bad idea. look at charlie sheen. he's just assaulted the second wife. his first wife said he was violent to her. some people didn't believe her. i guess they do now.

i don't think that a character like that is ever totally reformed. they may have moments of clarity where, rationally they can understand why a previous partner wasn't happy with their behaviour, but on an instinctive/personality level, it's still their reflex reaction to suit themselves or see things only their way (or whatever the problems caused by the disorder).

i gave my x who had npd so many chances to treat me as an equal. foolishly, at the time, i wasn't even expecting love. i just though if he could treat me as though he respected me and as though i were an equal, then i could tolerate the relationship. he just couldn't manage it. he tried in fits and starts but it went against his natural personality, which was to consider his own needs more important.

Thanks for reading that whole essay!

And yes, you're right: the abuse in R's relationship with E started as manipulation and controlling behaviour. For instance, she is very beautiful and gets a lot of male attention, and R got her to shave her head very early in their relationship... He was also very dismissive of her, verbally, in public.

R has already started to make comments about F's appearance that set all my alarm bells ringing, but you're right: it's her choice, I guess.

Thanks Maggie, that is really interesting. Life with a partner with NPD must have been incredibly hard - how did you reach the decision to leave? I know that for E it was extremely difficult and in fact she went to the extreme of moving to a different country.

I think the great difficulty, for her, was the fact that in so many ways, R is a really great person. But the BPD does make it impossible to have a functional relationship with him. I think she found that very difficult to accept.

i didn't realise it to start with!! at times he was very unreasonable, but that's all I understood it to be at the time. foolishly, i thought i could make him see reason by 'reasoning' with him.

i realised that i was making every single sacrifice for parenthood at one point. he had it set up like that and he couldn't wouldn't see any imbalance there. i put up with it for years but eventually left when i could no longer bear it.

i would really not advise anybody to even TRY and live with somebody with a personality disorder.

Jeez guys, talk about tarring everyone with the same brush. Not everyone with BPD is violent. Yes it is hard living with someone with a personality disorder but it is a disability just like anything else. Not everyone with BPD behaves as badly as the OP's friend.

Hoping, tell me more!

I don't want to write him off - he is my friend and I love him a lot. Besides, I have bipolar disorder and I know from experience how much is hurts to have people withdraw from you on the grounds that you have a mental illness/disorder; and how stupid and unfounded that reaction often is.

What is your take - do you think it's possible that the violence was not necessarily caused by the BPD? Do you think there's a good chance that he could go on to have successful relationships?
I want it to happen. But I am afraid to believe it can, if you see what I mean, because I know I will have to pick up the pieces if it all goes wrong.

While mental health problems are a very messy area anyway (there are not that many hard and fast rules and not all labels are helpful) this bloke doesn't sound like a good bet for a partner at all. Has F ever been competitive with or jealous of E, I wonder? Or is she just a bit of a numbnuts romantic who believes that Love Conquers All?
There's bugger all you can do to help her though, women who have decide that they are In Love with an abuser won't listen (until the abuse gets really bad) partly because there is so much cultural bullshit to the effect that the perfect 'right' woman can 'cure' an abuser of abusive behaviour.

Mind you OP, I'm not sure how friendly I'd want to be with someone who imprisoned and half strangled one of my other friends. I am aacquainted with a very unpleasant abuser, who I occasionally encounter at social events - while I am civil, I don't care to hang out with the man.

you are F aren't you??

Otherwise, I don't know why you would leap on Hoping's post, like a hyena at a buffalo carcass !!

sorry if i am wrong. but you "don't want to write him off"? unless you're about to get in to a relationship with him, you don't need to nail your colours to the mast, any more than you did when he was with 'e'

if you're not f, then how is the situation different now he's with F, than when he was with E?

SolidGold, this - "is she just a bit of a numbnuts romantic who believes that Love Conquers All?" hits the fecking nail right on the head, as far as I can see.

And I am fairly convinced that she does indeed believe that she has the skills to keep his behaviour under control and "cure" him of his abusive tendencies.

This is what truly makes me feel sick, both with fear and with anger: the fact that she seems to believe that E was somehow defective, and caused the violence in some way. I am afraid that she is sleepwalking into a potentially dangerous situation.

And I take your point about the questionable morality of maintaining a friendship with an abuser. I did stop having anything to do with R for a good year or so after I found out about the abuse. But after he was accepted into the treatment programme, we gradually started talking again, with E's blessing.

I don't think she is angry with him any more. She is desperately sad that someone she was very much in love with is impossible to live with, but she's accepted it for what it is, and she doesn't resent my being friends with him.

sorry fairycake, i take it back.

Maggie - no! Shit! NO! I am not F - she is my best friend, she is not me!

When I say I don't want to write him off, what I mean is that I don't want to condemn him to a life with no romantic relationships ever again, if you see what I mean. And at the moment, as much as I love him, it instantly makes me very uneasy when I hear that he is seeing someone, because I know his history.

I am 5 years older than F and I have been put through the wringer by previous partners, and I am a lot warier and less romantic than she is. I'm hardened, I guess, and she is not. I think that she is very much inclined to believe that "love conquers all," as SolidGold pointed out. I, on the other hand, barely believe in love any more, and I certainly would not even consider getting involved with someone with a history of abuse.

yes, i could 'hear' that you weren't F when i read your most recent post.. sorry!

Fairycake: to be fair, I would also want to believe in the possibility of a person who has done a bad thing being capable of redeeming him/herself (up to a point, utter sociopaths are not capable of remorse/amends/not doing it again if they feel like it). Has R ever expressed any remorse/understanding that it wasn't right, and that what he did waas beyond jusitifiable even if E was annoying?
WRT the abuser I am acquainted with, the fucker shows no remorse and is still denying he did it and blaming his XP.

SolidGold: yes, I agree that insight and remorse are very important, and that does worry me. R is extremely intelligent and he can talk the talk, but he is also still very contemptuous of E.

When she filed for divorce this summer, for instance, he made a very strange post on his Facebook wall - it was a series of chords. His friends were trying to identify the song they came from and in the end, it turned out that they were from a traditional Irish song called "I Buried My Wife and Danced On Her Grave."

I mean, seriously? Fuck. He took it down within about half an hour but I was so angry that I couldn't speak to him. I told F and she shrugged it off. I also know that he has lied to F on a number of occasions about significant events in his relationship with E. So I am not overly optimistic that he has turned the corner, to be honest.

TBH I would suggest walking away because I don't think there is anything you can do that will make any difference.
He's undoubtedly fed F all this bullshit about him being some misunderstood tortured soul and she's swallowed it. This isn't to say she's going to be to blame when he locks her in and beats her up and strangles her, it will be his fault and his disgraceful behaviour, but she in't going to believe that he's a danger to her until he has hurt her. And I do think that the whole longstanding ongoing myth about the redeeming power of female self-sacrifice is to blame rather more than your poor silly friend.

This is something which is out of your control.

However, for my 2 cents worth - you friend is not cured. I am a cured BPD, that was ¬4 years of weekly therapy (Schema Therapy) and I finished my treatment. The success rate is often quite low - not because treatment programmes don't work, but because it's "easier" to drop out than to battle your demons. As an aside, it's extremely rare for a man to be diagnosed BPD, men are generally Antisocial PD. If you want to be cured of BPD it (research shows) helps if you are female, white, literate, educated, "middle-class", intelligent and pretty. Thems the breaks.

Oh and to echo what hopingforchristmassex said, it's pretty fucking disgusting the way "you lot" around here tend to label people with PDs. I was never, ever violent towards others - I was far too busy torturing myself!

oh dear, yes I am sure he is BPD, I think that most serial abusers have a PD sorts, no normal person behaves like that!

FWIW, I also think that a lot of BPD/PD's male wonderful FRIENDS, but rubbish partners!

My XH actually has some lovely friends, quite hard to explain to people, he can be very charming, life and soul, go the extra mile etc etc, just for everyone else, not his P

I think F is being foolish in the extreme, but having been F, and then E, I understand!
A BPD will be very charming and mainpulative to start with, the abuse is subtle and escalates so gradually, it becomes hard to know when normal ends

Is she in danger, oh yes no doubt, emotionally and physically, can you stop it, I very much doubt it! I never listended to anyone, even when my XH best friend (a woman) said she loved him to pieces but would never be married to him!
My advice would be to back off, the more you push, the mor eit will be her and him against the world!
Just be there to pick up the inevitable pieces

I believe my ex has BPD but he was never violent towards me. He was extremely plausible and manipulative - for our legal settlement, I had a lawyer who specialised in DV and he still sided with him. Luckily my 'junior' lawyer got it.

My question is why is it upsetting you so much? I completely get that these people are your friends and you care for them, but it is their lives. It sounds like you are genuinely anguished by this situation - why do you think it is affecting you so much?

Do you want to believe that R is 'cured' and can have a happy romantic life, so that you too believe it can happen to you? You deserve to be happy regardless of your past, your friends or your diagnosis.

I think there are two separate parts to this. First his diagnosis of BPD. That implies that any close relationship with him will likely be extremely turbulent in a push-you-away, pull-you-back style. There's a pretty good book called Stop Walking on Eggshells that is written for people who have friends/family diagnosed with BPD.

The second part is his history of violence. A BPD diagnosis doesn't imply violent behaviour. As others have said, the best you'll likely be able to do with that is to back off the subject while letting her know that if/when she does need some help and support, you'll be there for her.

Skihorse - thank you for that. I recognise what you say about the temptation to abandon therapy being the main reason why treatment "fails." R dropped out because he was on the brink of starting a new relationship.

One of the elements of the treatment he was having was that everyone in the group was required to "bring their relationships to the group," ie they had to be willng to disclose and discuss the details of any relationships they were engaged in. R didn't want to do that, either because he didn't want to "ruin" it by subjecting it to minute analysis, or because the thought he was better and it wasn't necessary.

Before he dropped out, though, he was making progress and he was a lot more optimistic about the future. He was committed to making it work. I really wish he'd stuck with it. I wonder whether he'd be willing to try Schema therapy in the future.

And I know what you mean about people with PDs torturing themselves. I've seen R do it and it's very distressing to watch.

Queen - that's a good question! I'm not sure why I'm so agitated about it.

I think it's partly because I feel like she is putting R at risk of having an episode. She knew he had BPD when they got together but she knew nothing about it and I don't think she understood - or understands - what it entails.

I also think it's partly because the received wisdom is that if a man had abused one pertner, he will abuse future partners; and I love her and don't want to watch that happening to her.

And because she had barely emerged from a long-term relationship with a horrible bully before she got together with R, and I think she should have taken more time out to get her head together.

And because I don't like drama.

And possibly, I suppose, because maybe I am jealous? When things are going well between them she is deliriously happy - and I'm, er, not!