Jack Heald

About True Stories: This is my story, my experience of life with a woman who has borderline personality disorder. I tell my story because it is true and because many who will read this also live with a borderline. I want you to know you are not alone and you are not crazy.

The questions come from the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” by Randi Kreger.

Q. Do you feel as if the other person sees you as either all good or all bad, with nothing in between? Is there sometimes no rational reason for the switch? When you come home from work each day, do you wonder who will greet you at the door: the person who basks in your love or the petty tyrant whose energy supply seems to come from intense, violent, and irrational rages? Does no one believe you when you explain that this is going on?

A. Yes, this was an ongoing problem of great concern.

Man, when I first read this I thought, “I’m not the only one?” It used to drive me out of my mind the way she would think I was the most wonderful man on the planet one moment and the spawn of Satan the next. I can’t count the number of times she flipped between these two poles in the same conversation. (I know, it sounds insane, doesn’t it?)

I knew I wasn’t nearly as good as she seemed to think I was when she thought I was good, nor was I nearly as bad as she said when she said I was bad.

But the worst part was that she seemed to have no awareness that she had made the switch. If she thought I was evil at that particular moment, then she had no memory of ever thinking I was anything but evil. If she thought I was wonderful at that particular moment, she likewise had no memory of anything else.

Have I mentioned “House of Mirrors” before?

After about 20 years of this, (and about 2 years after my first affair), I began to think that perhaps the only way she could feel emotional intimacy was by creating emotional destruction. She seemed to crave emotional connection, (as I did) but she was incapable of it. She’d draw me in, then drive me away, then blame for making unwanted advances, then accuse me of withdrawing.

With her meteoric mood swings, bizarro “splitting” of me from evil to good and back again, and her general emotional volatility, I learned that the only safe relationship to her was at an emotional distance.

Ours was the very definition of a co-dependent relationship and I played the role of Master Enabler. I was the one who allowed her to behave like a spoiled 3 year old rather than holding her accountable for being such a whiny, self-absorbed brat. She’d suck me in with my hunger for connection, then suck my brain inside out with her whacked out emotional neediness and narcissistic inability to recognize that there were TWO people in the relationship.

God, I was such an idiot.  Hopefully, I am slightly less of an idiot now.  As Nietzsche observed, what didn’t kill me has perhaps made me stronger.

Nassim Taleb points out that one of the fundamental beliefs that built America was that if you worked hard, were smart with your resources and met the needs of the market, then you would likely succeed. This type of approach Taleb categorizes as “Robust”. Conversely, if you are lazy, stupid and don’t meet the needs of your market, you deserve to fail. Taleb calls this approach “Fragile”. Taleb believes intrinsic to “the American Way” is that whatever is “Fragile” should fail early.

I think he’s onto something, not just in business, but in personal relationships as well.

Rather than performing a bail-out of my ex-wife every time she had an emotional meltdown because the direction of the wind changed, I should have allowed her to “fail”, which in this context means “experience the consequences of her actions.”

Instead, I “bailed her out” and kept her from “failing early”. Preventing those small early failures led inexorably to the ultimate spectacular relationship failure: divorce.

About True Stories. This is my story, my experience of life with a woman who has borderline personality disorder. The Borderline will deny most or all of this, but that too is typical borderline behavior. I tell my story because it is true and because there are many who will read this who also live with a borderline. I want you to know you are not alone and you are not crazy.

The questions come from the book “Stop Walking on Eggshells” by Randi Kreger.

Q. After you try to explain yourself to the other person, does she use your own words and contort them to prove her own point (usually that you are “bad” or doing something wrong)? Does this person blame you for all the problems in her life (and your relationship) and refuse to acknowledge that her own actions cause problems for other people and herself?

The Stop Walking on Eggshells Workbook

 A. Yes, this was an ongoing problem.

One of the most maddening things about living with my ex was not that she never made a mistake, (she didn’t), not that she never did anything wrong, (she never did), but that she never ever took responsibility for her own emotions and her own life.

I lost count of the number of times she’d get out of bed in the middle of the night, stub her toe on the bed, (which hadn’t moved in years), and get angry with me – apparently because it was my responsibility to make sure her toe never got stubbed. I lost count of the times she woke up in the middle of the night angry with me because of something she’d dreamed about. Apparently my power and responsibility extended into the realm of her subconscious. I lost count of the number of times I’d leave the house in the morning with her happy, come home in the evening to find her angry and be blamed for it because of what happened to her during the day – while I was at the office!

When she was afraid, I was solely responsible for eliminating the source of her fears – even if her fear was completely irrational. When she was angry – which was often – then I had done something wrong or failed to do something right. When she was depressed – her second-favorite emotion behind anger – it was my fault. When she couldn’t sleep through the night – I was to blame. When she gained weight – I was to blame. When the kids misbehaved while I was at work – I was to blame. When the grass wouldn’t grow under the pecan tree in the front yard – and it wouldn’t – I was to blame.

It was a hellish way to live.

What makes it worse is that I agreed to her rules for the game: I accepted without question that I was responsible for her happiness. For some twisted, stupid reason, I believed it was my responsibility to make her life problem-free. Talk about a god-complex! What a moron. I freely admit that I share half the blame for the dysfunction in  the relationship. All I had to do was say, “you are responsible for you; I am responsible for me.” But the thought never even occurred to me. (Apparently this is a common experience of people in a relationship with a BPD.)

Had I been willing to continue being the scapegoat for every pain she experienced in life – real or imagined – I suppose the relationship would have continued. But after 24 years of this madness I reached the point where I was no longer willing. I finally understood that making her happy was her job, not mine. I had more than enough work to do on me.

When I realized that I was the only adult in the relationship; when she made it clear that she would continue to blame me for everything “wrong” in her life, I knew that the marriage was over.

Life with a borderline is not really living. It’s just a constant struggle to keep from drowning under the weight of her out-of-control emotions. I chose not to drown.