My name is Emma and I have started this site to gain and share any information or advice relating to borderline personality disorder.  My husband has recently been diagnosed with BPD and I am trying to find out as much as I can about it.  There seems to be a real lack of support and information for people and families with bpd in the UK so I am going to try and build a support network myself!  Believe me, I need one and I really do agree with the saying knowledge is power.

I will endeavour to put any information that may be useful forward and I hope others will do the same, creating something really useful for sufferers of this devastating condition and their relatives/friends.  Please keep visiting and contributing to the site and we can all help each other.  I hope I can put some interesting material on here that’s not too long winded, easy to understand, up to date and maybe even inject a bit of humour to lighten up our sometimes very dark times.

In Oct 06 I met a wonderful man whom I fell in love with.  Clever, witty, charming, kind and handsome, all you could ask for and we had a whirlwind romance which led to our wedding on Valentine’s day 2007.  Shortly after, it all went horribly wrong.  His behaviour started to change.  He became depressed, anxious, paranoid, unreasonable, spiteful, abusive and suicidal.  He took several overdoses in a short space of time, spiralled completely out of control and ended up in and out of psych care for the next five months.  I can honestly say, these have been five of the worst months of my life. 

 What had I done!  Who had I married?  I didn’t know the answers to these questions and it took a while to work it out.  I knew he had had a breakdown, I knew he was suffering from severe depression, but this didn’t explain why he was so horrible to me.  I thought that once the breakdown was over, he would revert back to his former pleasant self.  But he didn’t.  All my dreams were shattered and I started to believe that he was just a `nasty piece of work` , he was never going to change and I just had to accept that I’d been a terrible judge of character and made the biggest mistake of my life.  He was an obnoxious, self-absorbed selfish pig.

 Then something happened.  I was looking at his hospital discharge sheet and scribbled on it under the space for diagnosis were the words borderline personality disorder.  No-one had spoken to either of us about this at any time.  My heart sank.  I’d studied psychology during my degree and I knew this didn’t sound good.  Still, that was twelve years ago and I only had a very rough idea about what it was.  So, I surfed the web and started finding out some information.  Needless to say, this was quite difficult, at least in the UK as most sites were American.  As I read, I recognised all the traits.  My husband was a classic borderliner, I had absolutely no doubt.  I suddenly realised that he wasn’t a bad person, he had a serious mental illness.  The more I read, the more I realised the sheer torture he was living every day.  I felt guilty, all those bad things I’d thought about him. 

 But what to do now?  How was I going to cope? Would he ever get any better?  I’d spent the last 19 years coping with my son’s mental illness, could I handle any more?  Yes of course I could, I loved him and this wasn’t his fault.  Also, though it was really painful to admit to myself, in the past I’d displayed some of these behaviours myself, (but that’s another story!) So I made my decision, I’d give it a go.  I’d do my best, thats all I could do and see what happened.  Next, I had to break the news to him!  I actually expected him to go berserk and go straight into denial, but he didn’t, he seemed relieved.  In fact we both were, we finally had an explanation of what was going on.  The relief didn’t last long though, he was soon back on his rollercoaster of emotions. 

 He wasn’t really getting the right treatment, his meds weren’t right, still waiting for counselling and so on.  He was continuing to make my life hell, accusing me of things I hadn’t done, flying off the handle at absolutely anything, worshipping me one minute and hating me with a passion the next.  I hated him too, I mean really hated him, illness or not.  I became scared of him too.  I began to twist things in my mind just like he did.  I would look over at him sometimes and convince myself he was evil and that he would end up murdering me if I didn’t escape.  I reached the depths of despair, I hated myself, I became really depressed.  I woke up in the night crying, I isolated myself, not wanting to talk to anyone, go anywhere, do anything. 

 I was trying so hard to keep it together for my son but I was being torn apart.  They both made so many unreasonable demands on me, both competing for attention, both resenting the other.  If one of them wasn’t hurling abuse at me, the other was.  There was literally no escape and I genuinely wanted to die.  I did, at one point, end up taking an overdose myself.  I felt I’d lost all sense of myself.  I really didn’t know who I was any more.  I used to be a strong, no-nonsense type of woman.  I was meant to be the cocky one, the one that always got her own way, knew what she wanted, always independent, never scared of anybody and certainly not willing to put up with any crap, yet I’d turned into a mouse.  A yes person, a doormat, willing to tolerate abuse because I was scared and I didn’t want to rock the boat.  This wasn’t me.  I didn’t recognise myself when I looked in the mirror and I didn’t want to face the future. 

Those months finally took their toll and I left him.  We kept in some contact and it was only for a short time, but it was long enough for us both to calm down and think.  The meds and therapy had started to kick in for him so we decided I should move back in.  Things have been great for a while now and I’ve set some firm boundaries but I’m still waiting for the next storm.    I’m frightened of being happy in case everything crashes down around me again and he’s frightened he’s going to lose it at any time.  I think I’ll cope better now though because I’ve started reading more and educating myself with coping strategies and he’s now taken on full responsibility and openness for his illness.   When he’s great, he’s perfect. 

Well that’s my story so far.  I’m right at the beginning of what I know is going to be a very long journey and I know very little about this awful illness.  I have been really disappointed with the lack of information and awareness I have found in the UK so I thought I’d better do something about it, start a website in fact!  As time goes on, I hope to gather information and ideas and keep adding to it.  I hope to meet other people in the same predicament and other people with this illness.  As they say, knowledge is power and I just think it helps so much when you are in a dark place, scratching around for advice and information, trying to find someone who understands etc to have something to look at.  Its for this reason I want to develop this site, for me, for my husband and for anyone else out there experiencing the same pain.  Please share your story with us.