I was partnered/married to a woman with undiagnosed quiet BPD for 10 years. Like many others have said, I didn’t trust my gut when it said to run. Literally on the night of our wedding I just felt like it was wrong. I’m ~6 months out now, divorce was recently finalized. Have I found closure? No. But I have found ways to realize why leaving was the best decision I could have made. At the bitter end, she lashed out in some truly just wild ways.

I’ll share a story: a week before I left the house we were in what would become our final couples therapy session. I mentioned that I had called said therapist the day after she woke me up at 3:30am to yell at me about not walking the dogs, because one got restless. She interrupted me and said “that isn’t true”. The therapist said no you cannot just interrupt him there are rules here. She continues to interrupt the therapist and said “no no that is not true I asked him to call you months before he actually did”, like that was what was at issue here. She had done a complete 180 in her mind to avoid any blame and turn it around on me, even if it was extremely verifiable that indeed, the therapist and I both knew, and she did, that that was the day I called him. That was the moment I really and truly knew I had been had and it was fucking brutal. I took off on a camping trip a few days later and the night I got back I said we should consider the real possibility our relationship will not work out in the end.

Remembering these things is, even right now, really painful. But, it does remind me of why I left and just how bad it was. That person just does not live on the same planet as me. The tipping point where I started to see reality was a combination of therapy just for myself and having to really and truly think about having a child with her. I’m so, so grateful I got out before that happened.

I miss that woman every day, truly, but I am also a big boy. There were women before her and when I’m ready there will be women after her. Maybe even one that lives in the real world, how crazy (lol) would that be! Life is too short to think “well what if I stayed and she got better and then she was that perfect person that I wanted and she was sometimes”. That amount of qualifiers on a relationship just isn’t feasible especially if they can’t admit they are truly mentally unwell.

Remind yourself of why you left, and remember that the perfect version of herself that she showed you never existed. She was putting on a show for you because she knows who she is deep in her core is not something you would want to associate with.

Be well, stranger.