I lived with severe BPD partner for 31 years. It was so obvious and extreme that at the end all three different unassociated marriage psychologists made the exact same diagnosis and pulled me to the side and told me point blank a “healthy” person would not have stayed with the BPD. The last one asked to meet with me privately, looked me in the eyes and told me she rarely used these words but to get through to me she felt she needed to say to me, “do you understand your wife is crazy?”. We had two kids early in the marriage and I felt a responsibility to kids and also a neurotic guilt that divorce was a sinful wrong. When I finally left after the kids were grown she attempted attention getting suicide so many times the state put her in a state mental lockup facility.

That’s 15 years in the past now. We have no contact but I am fortunate enough financially to have supported her all these years as she cannot work.

You’d think I’d be headed toward concluding this response with a tidy advice to avoid relationship with mentally disturbed. It’s not that simple. One, we are all neurotic and some degree mentally and emotionally ill. That is why relationships are hard work (also why relationship can be a wonderful teacher). Two, some people are better suited to adapting and coping with extreme mental illness than others. If one happens to be an anxious, fear based and more self-centered person as I am the combination is more toxic and a disaster. Three, at this point in human evolution we are nearly completely ignorant and in the dark about mental illness and to a large extent are not dealing with it, researching it, investigating it or objectively and humanely responding to it. At this point, who wouldn’t rather go into history as the person who cured cancer?

I will say this. Ask any public employed county social worker. The chances are pretty good they will say that nothing is more frustrating and difficult than working with Borderline Personality Disorder (whatever that actually is).