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. Does this person seem to demand constant attention? Is everything always about her/him—say, even your personal medical decisions? 

A. Yes, this was an ongoing problem.

My buddy Brad Whittington used to jokingly say, “if it didn’t happen to me, it didn’t happen.” It was funny when he said it, because it was ironic. But when your spouse lives and acts and speaks as if she means it, then it’s not funny at all. This is how the Borderline experiences the world.

Most normal people — that is, most people without a personality disorder — are perfectly aware that the two-legged things walking around in front of them and making noises with the mouth-shaped orifices on the front of their faces are in fact other human beings.  But the Borderline doesn’t recognize any other humans besides herself. Every other person on the planet is merely a prop on the stage where the drama of her life is played out. As far as the Borderline is concerned, the props exist to make her look and feel good, can be jettisoned when they fail to do that, and cease to exist when not on stage.

If a dog bit me and I reported it to a normal person, the conversation would go something like this:

Me: A dog bit me.

Normal Person: Oh no! Are you all right? Does it hurt? Do you need me to take you the doctor?

But the same conversation with my Borderline ex-wife would go like this:

Me: A dog bit me.

Borderline: You’ll still be able to move those boxes for me, won’t you? I need to have those boxes moved.

For years, I tried to convince myself that she and I just had different communication styles, and that even though it seemed like her only concern in life was how anything and everything affected her safety, security and/or comfort, that was just because I was just misunderstanding her communication style.

But I wasn’t misunderstanding her communication style.

In fact, the Borderline never had a thought about what I might be experiencing because she was incapable of empathy. It never occurred to her that I felt pain too. I was a prop, a piece of the scenery, an expendable extra.

If her life were Star Trek, I’d be the guy on the Away Team who got stuck wearing the Red Shirt. No point in forming an emotional attachment with a character whose role is to move the plot forward by dying.

When I told her how much I hated my job, her concern was how that might affect the amount of money she had to spend. When I told her I was exhausted from all the travel, she was upset that I would stay home and upset her schedule. When I was sick, she was angry with me because I had disrupted her plans. When I was late because I’d had a flat tire, she’d be angry because I wasn’t home to take the kids off her hands.

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I’m write this series because life with a Borderline is impossible. Not “challenging”, or “difficult”, or “hard”. It is impossible, and if you live with a Borderline, you need to know that. I suffered through the abuse for 25 years. My hope is that my experience will help others who are living with a Borderline to save themselves. You cannot save the Borderline. Your life will get progressively worse because the Borderline is an emotional black hole who will suck every ounce of life out of you until you are completely empty.

Borderline Personality Disorder is real, and it is deadly to those who live with the person who has it. You must help yourself first because the Borderline will not help you and will not help herself.