What to Do if Your Spouse Has Borderline Personality Disorder

Living with someone who has borderline personality disorder (BPD) can feel confusing and cause anxiety. It often leads to rifts in personal relationships and even poses problems maintaining employment, leading to further turbulence due to financial woes.

Understanding BPD will go a long way in determining whether your marriage can go the distance and help you focus on whether you each have what it will take to last. If you’re leaning toward ending your marriage but are still unsure, you may benefit from divorce planning. This tool helps you determine which issues are most important to you so that you can make decisions to help the process go more smoothly should you choose divorce.

What are the signs of borderline personality disorder?

People with BPD come with a tsunami of emotions and few to no coping mechanisms. Because it’s a form of mental illness that comes with stigma, people with BPD may be reticent to admit they need help. This makes it even more difficult for them to maintain intimate relationships such as a marriage. The ups and downs can be severe and last for days, leaving a partner feeling chaotic and hopeless. Those in these relationships know all too well what they experience when their partner or spouse begins an episode and know that riding the wave gets more exhausting with each one.

Symptoms of BPD can include:

• Feelings hurt for reasons apparent only to the spouse with BPD.
• Intense, unstable relationships that range from extremely loving to completely abandoning a marriage
• Feelings of being bad and worthless
• Risky or impulsive behavior such as drug abuse, unsafe sex, reckless spending, or gambling
• Emotionally instability
• Suicidal thoughts or attempts
• Paranoia or loss of reality brought on by stress.
• Lack of direction and constantly changing goals.
• Increased clinginess or needy behavior
• Increased lying and deceptive behaviors

Is divorce more common among those who have BPD?

Those with severe BPD symptoms may find it difficult to maintain a healthy relationship.

However, the divorce rate for those with BPD is not higher than the average divorce rate. While they might not get divorced more often, this could be because “people with BPD may be less likely to remarry after a divorce and tend to have more romantic relationships in general than those without BPD.” The impact on relationships can depend on the severity of their symptoms. Those with less severe symptoms are more likely to “marry and become a parent and less likely to divorce or lose custody of a child.”

Can a marriage survive borderline personality disorder?

Outsiders may not understand why anyone would remain in a marriage with someone who is diagnosed with BPD. Life is complicated and tough enough without adding to it the unpredictability of your partner’s behavior. The truth of the matter is that suffering from BPD doesn’t equate to being a bad person.

Often, the spouse seemingly throwing a tantrum is incredibly caring, compassionate, and affectionate when they are not experiencing an episode.

While a marriage can potentially survive BPD, it takes a lot of trust, patience, understanding, and willingness to work together through the issues. An article published in Verywell Mind explains that just because the divorce rate among those with BPD is comparable to the national average does not mean that these marriages are successful or that the quality of their marriages isn’t low. Instead, most marriages with BPD-related issues have a lot of distress, violence, poor communication, lack of problem-solving, and overall unhappiness, which can be extremely difficult to overcome.

Managing triggers can be the key to a successful marriage

Making an effort to understand what your BPD spouse is experiencing and where those feelings come from can help you avoid triggering episodes. Triggers can be:

• Relationship-driven, where BPD can cause someone to react to events that make them feel negative about the situation. An example could be one spouse planning a night out with friends where the other spouse wouldn’t be invited. While it probably seems reasonable that your spouse wouldn’t be invited by default, it can cause feelings of rejection that set an emotional hurricane in motion.
• Cognitive, when internal, overanalyzing feelings or words, can cause a spiral. To you, it may seem like your spouse has an overactive imagination or is being overly dramatic, but the reaction is based on a memory or image of past events and is very real to your spouse.

Successful management of triggers requires work by both you and your spouse with BPD. Communication during calmer moments after an outburst or event can help pinpoint what caused the feeling or thought that brought on the episode. Additionally, counseling for both of you may offer further support in helping you both cope with this illness.

What if I want to divorce my spouse with borderline personality disorder?

Divorcing a spouse who has been diagnosed with BPD can be challenging. While divorces are already complex legal matters, adding a mental illness can pile on another stressful layer to the situation.

Initiating the divorce may trigger a strong reaction and certain behaviors in the partner with BPD. For instance, they might become volatile, violent, or aggressive because of their feelings of abandonment. They may seek attention in inappropriate ways, make grand gestures to win you back, or text relentlessly. The behaviors can cause the divorce to become more hostile, leading to high conflict disputes about everything from asset distribution to custody.

It’s important to seek out a Bethesda divorce attorney early to protect yourself and learn how to respond to some of these behaviors in a way that will protect you throughout the legal process.

How to communicate with a spouse with borderline personality disorder during divorce

Be sure to let your attorney know about the history of mental illness, past episodes, and your concerns moving forward. Communication could become extremely challenging throughout the process, so it’s best to keep any contact to a minimum and only communicate regarding essential information, such as pickup times or doctor appointments for minor children. You may also want to have these conversations in writing or texting instead of face-to-face or over the phone to preserve the record and avoid reacting if things become more heated.

Sometimes, your best course of action may be to avoid one-on-one conversations altogether. Instead, much of your contact can go through your attorney if direct communication becomes too difficult or volatile. You should set clear communication rules and boundaries right away with the help of your Bethesda divorce attorney to avoid escalation of conflict.

Preparing for your new life in Bethesda after divorce from a spouse with BPD

Divorces are often incredibly stressful, even without complicating factors. It’s important to remember that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You will have an opportunity to move forward once the legal matter concludes. However, if you share children with your spouse with BPD, you will need to continue to communicate with that person and find a way to co-parent if you share custody. For this reason, you and your attorney must work toward an agreement that sets boundaries and expectations for future contact and responsibilities.

Even once the divorce is over, your attorney may advise you to continue to document your communications and avoid being in one-on-one environments with your former spouse so that there are witnesses to any inappropriate behavior. Also, this may help to protect you from false accusations. In some cases, you may have to return to court to resolve matters if your former spouse violates the agreement or continues to create conflicts regarding the children. There are ways to modify orders when circumstances change or become untenable. If you have concerns over this, express them to your lawyer and discuss whether there are ways to protect yourself and your children from ongoing stressful situations.

The compassionate Bethesda family law attorneys at McCabe Russell, PA, understand that deciding to end your marriage is an emotional one. Even when you know it may be the right thing for you and your children, that doesn’t make it simple or easy. We are here to help support you while providing you with all of the information you need to choose the best path to bring you the peace your family deserves. Schedule your no-obligation consultation with a member of our legal team by calling our office, or we invite you to reach out to us through our contact form. We also maintain offices in Fulton, Columbia, and Rockville.