Personality Disorder - any success stories of living with them?

[feelingpositivemum]

Just that really, is there anyone out there who has successfully changed the way they are and react to someone with a PD (abusive) to make a success of the relationship?

(Really, could I have changed the way I reacted to my exH and forced him to change his behaviour. Did my lack of boundaries make it worse, and if I developed some would he have responded positively?)

He comes to the house about twice a week. He is charming and polite, can't do enough for me. He is the man that I first knew when I met him, however I have 17 years of experience since then, so I am wise to him.

Bloody good for you - in my own case it took me ages to actually walk away becuase i always felt so responsible - he told me it was me and i believed him... fucked up i know

genuinely admire you for keeping your distance - very sensible

Just sidestepping the raging debate going on here to say OP, I've got a very similar ex. He is being unnervingly pleasant and reasonable since the split, acting as though nothing has happened. No emotion has been shown at all.. It's as if I dreamt the whole of the past year when he's been a nasty piece of work..

How odd, Snowpoint, it's very strange isn't it. I do have to keep remembering what it was like before as he has become the perfect exhusband. I can now rage at him and have, mostly about the anger of the last 15 yrs and he just sits there. I almost wish he would get angry back, just to prove he can!

He has let himself down slightly by finding someone else 2 weeks after I left. That has helped me focus my mind on how 'devastated' he actually is.

Mine does this too - my daughter after a lot of help wrote to him and said how scared she had been when she saw him strangle me, he wrote back to her, thank you for your lovely picture...... he is also very calm now when approached by anyone about this and acts as if nothing has happened - very odd. He is outwardly passive almost to the point of being numb.

Mine found someone else quickly too.

Just please be careful when you start raging because he is always at liberty to change his mind in the way he reacts, so be cautious.

I think that's how many people who live with someone who abuses, possibly as an expression of a PD, feel they never know what end is up. They never know where they stand. They are constantly wondering what will happen next, how he will be behaving, when the other shoe will drop. All the behaviour is unnerving, in different ways, the niceness as much as the rages. It's like having a hurricane move constantly through your life -- you get the fierce wind, then the eye of the storm when all is calm, then the wind again, then it veers off in another direction, then back... You guess when. For survival, you have to constantly focus on and be aware of the individual who is doing the abusing. You become acutely aware of how the wind is blowing.

And it consumes your every thought, which I think is what he wants.

Reading another thread, it came to me that he is totally reliant on me to NOT tell everyone how he was. He would not want our community to know, he knows I've told some close friends and he's concerned about that. But he is maybe driven to behave because of this.

I have moved off raging, as it gets me nowhere, and I leave devastated and he remains apparently unmoved.

Yeah, that's unsettling, isn't it? After an unrelenting cycle of furies, silences & absences, he suddenly came over all distantly "reasonable". Of course, he already had his emotional claws into somebody else - and I was left, still (sadly) under his thumb, wondering who the hell I'd married.

I really liked Mathanxiety's hurricane analogy!

I think I was able to move on somewhat partly as a result of seeing how quickly exH found someone else to deceive and possibly abuse. It showed me I shouldn't have taken it as personally as I had over the years (hard when all the vitriol is directed right at you, though). It's now possible to see it as his problem, not mine. But back then, he was my problem.

A counsellor I saw for three fabulous sessions said he had probably seen me as a completely two dimensional being, and if it hadn't been me it would have been someone else. She also reassured me that I was fundamentally normal, with the same chance of future happiness any other normal person has, and that I didn't have a big sign on my rear end saying "Kick Me", just very unlucky plus an element of conscious deception on ex's part. I think that could go for a lot of people in this situation. There's nothing truly personal or specific to you or related to anything you say or do or anything about the way you are as a person that has anything to do with the abuse. You are a convenient punchbag.

I hope so, although I realised the other day that he met me only a couple of weeks after breaking up from his last girlfriend.

Horrible to think I was just part of a cycle, and he moves on to next.

It feels like a huge chunk of my life has been invalidated.

What a great counsellor!

I just came back to ask a very random question. Something on another thread reminded me that my ex said, several times, when we were splitting up: "You just don't get it, do you?" No explanation, though I obviously asked. Not long ago, Mum told me Dad's last words to her were "You just don't know, do you?"

Is this a common phenomenon with departing psycho husbands, does anyone know?? Or just a fluke

Your poor mum.

On the day I was moving out, my ex sat at the kitchen table weeping saying, that I just needed to understand, that I just hadn't got it. He often said, he just wished that if I understood where his behaviour came from, I would be able to live with him.

He meant that he had had such a terrible childhood and I hadn't been able to excuse his behaviour for that. He felt /feels terribly misunderstood.

The counsellor was brilliant, GraceAgain. I felt equipped for the rest of my life, IYKWIM.

Wrt the remarks of your H and your dad, my ex (who had a habit of pushing me out of his life, emotionally) once said to me, many years after the fact 'It's not easy being an unemployed father of two' he had been unemployed for a spell (after fighting with his boss and resigning in a fit of pique) and had been a nightmare to live with during that time, early in our marriage. I replied that it hadn't been easy being the wife of an unemployed father of two he was completely amazed that his demeanour at that time could have had any effect on me.

When we went to doomed marriage counselling, we did exercises designed to improve communication, exchanged letters, etc. I found little footnotes at the bottom of his letters to me, written in Greek.

I honestly think he lived completely alone, in an emotional sense, just him and the rocks in his head, and the sound of the wind whistling through. He often seemed startled at home and was very angry at being disturbed from his thoughts by the children's noise or by attempts by me to converse with him.

Ah, but DID he mean that??!?

Mum, bless her confused little socks, assumed that Dad meant "You just don't know how much I love you." Which would have been out of character, even though he was just off to top himself

I wonder if we're on to something here?

Math, I'm sure I shouldn't but am still laffing at the notes in Greek!

I do know Dad lived 'alone' as you say, in the very dark & horrible world inside his head. I have quite a bit of sympathy for him - but it's tempered by the fact I was required to "understand" all his bloody abuse, from the age of 0. Understanding my own depression has given me greater insight - and it's far, far easier to empathise now he's dead.

Ahhh, I think see what you both mean. As in: "I am such a tortured soul, you have never understood me"?

Could well be.

I think there's an element with my ex anyway, of feeling he was exceptional in every way, including the extent of his torturedness (dodgy made-up word, I know) hence the English language wasn't adequate for his thoughts, had to be something from Ovid, something perfect that someone else had said thousands of years ago. I know he considered himself to be a battleground between Good and Evil his behaviour was never a simple matter of deciding to be civil vs. obnoxious. He told me that himself in a rare moment when he opened up a bit. And he resisted the idea of marriage counselling for years and years, and then psychiatric treatment, because he thought he was too special for any counsellor or doctor, no-one would be so intelligent that they could possibly be expected to wrap their minds around him in all his multi-facetedness. When he eventually found himself under the care of a psychiatrist he couldn't say enough about the man's credentials and marvellousness -- only the best for my ex. There was a huge element of grandiosity in all of that separateness from others, imo.

mathanxiety - that is also very familiar to me - when my ex finally fell apart it was all about having been 'chosen' to be able to receive messgaes from those who had died..... he used to try to advise me spiritually after a beating or whatever on how I should heal myself. He really believes he is exceptional and above any kind of reproach or inspection. He has always been unable to just fit in and makes things quite difficult for himself in workplaces because he is pompous and lectures everyone. As I have mentioned, he has restyled himself as a healer/guru/psychic - a massive worry as he loves holding court and is really manipulative. The last phone call we had he told me that the only reason i stopped him from having contact with the children is that i knew he could cure them.... one child has diabetes and both have coeliacs.... he really believes this too.

tarty...your ex sounds like the scariest person I have ever heard of

lots of other scary stuff here too

my ex (thinking back) was a bit obsessed with death. his brother comitted suicide. i'd never met the brother,but the ex loved the reflected glory of it all.....the whole family had been estranged from this brother,but the ex really did bask in it all.....attention,attention.....i think this is why he has attempted suicide about 15 times himself,admitted to psych care each time

i'd love to ask him why he has never attempted to do it the same (successful) way his brother did...he knows which ways work,and which dont!!

Hello All

I have been debating whether or not to post on this thread. I have namechanged recently as I do not want to be put in a box, or stalked around the site and told that I 'see PDs everywhere, and so my view-point is not valid' - as I was told by one poster.

Anyway..for what it's worth...

Today I have been in a meeting at my DC's school to discuss whether or not DC2 is allowed back to school after an exclusion. I had to sit in the Head's office and listen to the Head telling DC2 all that I have said for the past 17 years. But when I said it I was ridiculed by my Ex-H and his family as being 'stupid', and 'over-reacting'. So, my DC2 has been Idealised and held up as a god on Earth by my ILs and exH, and we now have the final result of this at school.

In contrast to this my DC1 is devalued and ignored by this same family. So I have one DC who thinks they are worthless and the another who thinks they can do no wrong.

I am in psychotherapy, as a direct result of ex's family's treatment of me for the past 25 years. I left my exH 4 years ago. I was suicidal and severely clinically depressed.

Now I have done a great deal of research and I know that my ILs have PDs. At the same time as this penny dropped, I also realised that both my parents and my siblings also suffer from PDs. As do many members of my extended family on both parents' sides. One indeed fits the criteria for a psychopath, and I am sure he will go on to do someone major physical harm before too long.

So, sorry for the long ramble...the points I am trying to make are as follows...

I believe that PDs are genetically determined. I believe that people with PDs are all different, and manifest the symptoms of their PD in vastly differing ways. I believe that these people often have more than one PD and so symptoms and behaviours overlap. I believe that a child who is treated with loving, proportionate and consistent discipline has a good chance of escaping intact from their childhood.

I only know about the results of living with the PD that falls into the Narcissism band. This is what I grew up with and what I married into. This is what I am desperate to save my children from.

I greatly admire you skihorse for having the self-awareness to get help and recover from your PD. Sadly , for other PDs this is never going to happen as they are of the opinion that there is nothing wrong with them..it is their victims who are wrong. It is these victims who end up in therapy, not them.

Now on MN recently there has been a ridiculing of the victims of NPD , so much so that I have stopped posting as I could not deal with the devaluing of my life experience, and its effects on me. I am already of no value, I don't need someone who has no experience of life with Narcs telling me I am being ridiculous.

Narcs come in all shapes and sizes, and they behave in all sorts of different ways...BUT...in the end, it all comes down to the fact that it's ALL ABOUT THEM. There fore, it is impossible to have any sort of relationship with them, because you are NOT a person...you are an extension of them.

This is insane-making in the extreme, for the victim.

Now...well done if you are still with me...nearly finished...I have noticed a growing tendency to encourage victims to see their persecutors as vulnerable and to be pitied. On here and in RL. My CP wanted me to join a group of people with PDs to get over my depression and suicidal thoughts. That is utter non-sense on so many levels.

Knowing that my birth family and my marriage family have PDs has actually made it easier for me to leave behind the hatred and anger that I had for them. Now I know that it wasn't personal I can finally find some inner peace in my soul.

And yes, finally, the only way to save yourself and your children is to get the Hell out of there. And, yes, my exH had a new family/ victim within weeks of my leaving a very long marriage. And I did try to warn the woman, but I looked like a loon and she told me very firmly that 'it was none of her concern'.

I am not sure of this has made any sense at all. But this is my life here, and I know exactly how it has made me feel.

frankie....so your parents AND siblings all have pd's,how come you havent then?

Frankie, what you've said, above, about a combination of genetic predisposition and external influence, is in line with some schools of thought about Personality Disorders. There's still fierce debate about what PDs are and what causes them. Psychology is still a new discipline, and PDs a new region of discovery within it.

Wrt what Tiffany said: I can't swear that I'm not predisposed to PDs! I had schizophrenic episodes from 18-20, have semi-permanent depression and am "emotional". Those are the reasons why I'm so interested in psychology. Only 3 people have ever accused me of being abnormal, though - my psycho dad, my psycho boss and my very strange ex. Far greater numbers have described them as abnormal. So I conclude that I'm not especially disordered and they were wrong about me!

I do keep an eye on meself though ...

Genes. It's all about the genes. Genetic variation.

I do think that there has to be one person in a family who has a grip on real life for the family to function. Ns are removed from real life and have real cognitive difficulties, to a greater or lessor extent.

In some moments I wish that I had a PD and then I would be free of the responsibility that I feel for my elderly parents , and I would just go through life thinking about me and only me. The terror I feel for my children's mental health would be removed also. But of course that is only in odd moments, when it all gets too much to bear.

From my experience of Ns, they do have flashes of insight...they know that they are not normal...and they do things that they think 'a parent' or 'a husband' should be doing, but they get it wrong, and this insight does not last long. Some of them, like my father never have this at all.

It's a spectrum. But it's all in the genes. And actually, brain changes can be seen on scans of psycopath's brains which show actual physical differences to those of 'normal' people, and it is being postulated that Ns have these differences too.

dont we all have little quirks though? could all be classed as having pd's if we look closely enough!!

personality is so complex,i think the human race develops more 'quirks' as we go through the ages. or do we just get better at recognising disorders?

handling modern living is tough,where were all these personality disorders in earlier centuries? well hidden i guess...or non existent?

Jesus, they existed all right! Napoleon, Henry VIII, Queen Catherine, Rasputin ... wow, the list is endless.

NPs still run everything, of course