Dear reddit - help! Or maybe at least someone has experienced the same thing.
Middle aged male together with female 5 plus years. I strongly suspect BPD (personally I'm convinced) but she doesn't want to know about it. All i know is that something way beyond normal is wrong in that head.
The relationship has been crazy and we are due to be imminently married. I am scared and probably need to leave but so confused. One minute she's my best friend the next minute she hates the world and me - for seemingly no reason. Often fine when plain sailing but always splitting when stressed. After years i just feel so weak and exhausted and that makes me need to stay.
The rest of the world thinks she's amazing but they've never seen the splitting. She love bombs everyone but most annoyingly her friends then splits when with me to deal with the energy loss from keeping up appearances in the rest of her life.
When i try to explain her to my closest people they minimize it because they have never seen the bpd world. She plays the victim and slowly makes her people think I'm doing something to make her act out.
I'm a very easy going person and afraid of conflict. She is from a very emotionally fractious family. Alcoholism, suicide, conflict, countless mental health problems but largely un acknowledged and not diagnosed.
She over idolises romance and tells me how things should be if i was a real man. But then on other occassions tells me how amazing i am.
Does lots of splitting, and is obviously angry or agitated a lot of the time. But then just when I've had enough she starts being perfect. Right now she's had a few hours of being perfect and I've completely forgotten how bad she was earlier. Its like my brain is programmed to ignore the bad stuff and then soak up the good. This is fine, but somewhere in the back of my mind i know its only a matter of time until the next episode. Could be a day... could be a week - but its coming. And knowing its coming completely ruins me. I can never be calm. Fight or flight.
Social events are the biggest trigger. I always seem to do something that makes her go crazy. Perhaps i smiled at her wrong, didnt want to hold her hand for long enough, laughed at something she said, didn't want to stay out long enough. Little things that suddenly go turbo and she'll split into an agitated state for hours or more. Often finishing with tears and an unbelievably lengthy discussion where it goes in circles for hours and comes back to it being my fault. And oh my god her driving is terrifying.
The cumulative effect of this is massive, it feels like its a death of a thousand paper cuts to me.
Right now she is being lovely, and its not as clear cut as some situations (its not like she's hitting me). So i minimize it and start thinking everything is ok. And yet i spend lots of time googling personality disorders and abusive relationships. There have been about 60 plus occassions where shes done something so severe that I've assumed the relationship is over. But then the next day somehow we've made up and everything is great.
So confused. And of course i deeply care for her. She's said she would want to leave the world if i left. And has had more than a few depressive turns which have really scared me and belittled our relationship.
Really i just want someone to say that I'm not imagining all this. Her friends and aquintaces all think she's lovely and that I'm the luckiest guy alive and that i should be doing everything to make things work (which by the way i have been to a large extent). I've lost my own self trying to keep her happy.
I'd love to leave, i know thats what i should do. But i can't help but love her and though I'm sure of my stance my will power just crumbles when anything approaching a breakup happens. This of course leads to lack of commitment on my part which in turn makes everything worse and of course partly my own stupid fault. I'm running out of time before this becomes forever. Worried, conflicted.
Anyways - thanks for letting me talk reddit. Peace.