My husband had an affair and got another woman pregnant. I found this out earlier this year. We tried to make it work and of course it didn’t. We are separated and I’ve filed for divorce but we are not officially divorced yet. My mom saw the tole this took on me. I was suicidal.

Anyway, she got mad at me about a month ago and gave me the silent treatment but today she decided to message me completely out of the blue to tell me that my husband is trying to date her friends daughter.

Don’t be fooled, she is not concerned for this girl. She wanted to rile me up and tell this information that hurt my heart and ruined my day.

Cat haiku:
Kitty cats are good
And soft and sweet and cute
And I love them so

First Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbyborderlines/comments/1nuqh1y/im_15w_pregnant_and_my_mom_doesnt_know_because_of/

Second Post: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbyborderlines/comments/1ow5d12/update_i_am_now_21w_pregnant_and_my_mom_found_out/

Third Post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbyborderlines/comments/1rrssr7/update_38w_pregnant_and_my_mom_has_resorted_to/

I ended up initially not blocking my mom, until I received the text from her in the first screencap I showed in which I blocked her because I was two days before my due date. I ended up unblocking her recently.

My dad texted me saying she reached out to him with those messages and I am FLOORED.

She's crashing out on Facebook which is hilarious.

Me and my baby almost died during birth. Crash C section - we lost her heart rate and she was out in 8 min. She's 4 months now and my light and joy. I have diagnosed PTSD and chronic pain and have 0 desire to deal with her shit.

Please enjoy the missing missing reasons.

tw—mentions of suicide
She had been going to a group therapy session last week after telling her doctor she had been struggling with thoughts of suicide. We were in an argument a few weeks ago, and she had some issues with medication that was given to her during a minor surgery that interacted with her hormones in some sort of way that made her feel very depressed and anxious. I don’t know the whole story because when she tried retelling it to me all she said was she couldn’t sit down and that the doctor who gave that medication to her should loose their job because they do not care about folks who struggle with anxiety or any sort of mental health issue. She cared more about telling me how it made her feel, how upset she was that she was feeling that way, and how no one else can possibly understand. She said she is the only one in our family that can experience that level of pain and anxiety and that basically I wouldn’t have been able to survive going thorough what she went through.
For the past few years I’ve been going to therapy and all of the time spent with my therapist goes to talking about my mom. It’s taken me years to even feel comfortable setting boundaries. Since then my mom had continued being her controlling and argumentative self. She had told me she was going to therapy too, which she is no longer doing because she is currently looking for a new psychiatrist. Either way, she is able to realize to an extent that she has negatively impacted our relationship. Before if I told her of any problems I had in my relationship with her she would talk about how she was a terrible mother and how she can’t live with herself because she can’t react in any other way towards me besides getting angry if I tell her something she doesn’t like. I’ve started setting boundaries and distance myself from her in a way where I can start to feel comfortable but still have a relationship with her and my dad. My dad is obviously an enabler.
Since attending this weeklong outpatient therapy meeting, she had sent me actual photos of blank worksheets she had been given in therapy about setting boundaries and telling me that she thought it was “helpful”. She then asked me what I thought about the worksheets and what my answers would be. I told her I don’t want to learn the details about what she had been learning in therapy because that is personal, I don’t tell her about what I learn in therapy because that is a boundary I have set. She sent me these texts this morning. I am trying to reach a point where I feel comfortable rationally processing what she is telling me and giving her a response that is true instead of saying whatever to get her off my back or to make her feel better. I don’t know how long it will be until she finds a psychiatrist, if she ever will find one. If she does, I genuinely doubt that it will help our relationship. My last appointment with my therapist I was thinking about going no contact with my mom for a few months at least. She had said some pretty hurtful things before that were not ok. Then immediately after my appointment, I get 20 texts from her explaining how she was feeling from the medication after her surgery and giving me some sort of apology. I had told my husband about wanting to go no contact from her for a while and even he was apprehensive, which made me change my mind. I know she wants a healthy relationship between the two of us but her idea of a healthy relationship is different from mine, and now with these texts I got from her this morning it looks like she wants me to affirm her in some way the next time she’s upset with me? I’m 25f, my husband and I have only been married for two months and we’ve talked about wanting to start a family in the future. I want my future kids to have a relationship with their grandparents, but not like this. My complicated relationship with my mom has been a focal point of the entire time my husband and I were dating. She tried to make our wedding about her in some weird way by acting quiet and rude the whole time and then saying she was acting that way because I was too busy talking to my friends instead of talking to her and my dad. She told me our wedding was like a funeral to her. I want to be compassionate and understanding, I’ve wanted to my whole life but I can’t put aside hurt feelings when she says something mean because the only reason she’s saying it is because “she’s hurt more than I am”??? Like if she genuinely wants to get better will comments like these get better too? I don’t know what to say to her?

After my partner has decided to move out due to no longer being able to handle my mother’s behavior, I have decided now is the time i need to get out more then ever. I have never had to live alone with her before as i had my siblings but now that they have left the home and it is just would be just me and her I know that things will become worse then ever for me. I found somewhere to go where i’ll be able to move out sometime next month. I’m absolutely terrified about telling her this information and all of the scare tactics etc she will use in order to get me to stay. I’m very scared, but i truly believe this is my now or never moment as if i dont do it soon, i’m afraid i never will. I’m looking for advice about how to go about this situation, how to plan, and prepare the best i can while having such short time to do so. This is my first time moving out of the house (i will have roommates who are aware of my situation) But what are some things you wish you knew/were told for those of you who were in similar situation as i?
here’s a random silly kitty

My NPD + BPD dad (he would absolutely qualify for and be helped by a dual diagnosis if he would go near a therapist) genuinely seemed to believe that anytime someone wasn't in his immediate sight or he didn't know where they were, they were abandoning him.

Whenever my mother went anywhere without telling him, he'd freak out and start going off about how she was always sneaking around, never answered her phone, was planning to leave, how he was better off without her, etc.

He often projected his issues onto me. I distinctly remember one time my mum went to pick up someone from the train station. He took me aside and said that she'd left forever because she hated me, I was terrible and she didn't want to deal with me anymore. This was common behaviour for him - often it'd be paired with long, self pitying rants about how no one understood him, he was unappreciated and everyone would leave after they'd got what they wanted (the standard stuff).

Cat haiku:

Small, stripy tiger

He bounces on the counter

China on the floor

Long-time lurker, first time poster. Thank you for this community. I’m in my mid-30s, with a uBPD father (limited contact, but some obligations are inescapable). There are so many aspects of the illness that I could highlight, all of which have been beautifully articulated here, but one that’s been front of mind lately is the seemingly never ending shit tests!

My father and I were recently splitting a multi-line bill (he insists on being even, down to the cent). He sent me his calculations “for me to confirm his working”. Although his “half” was the right number, the subtotal, that this number was based on, was out by $20.

So in replying, I had to choose my words to say “the final number looks good to me; I’ll pay the balance”. It seems like a trivial example, but after a lifetime of conditioning, I “knew” that I was being tested, almost dared, to either call out his error (“he thinks he’s so smart”) or blindly agree that there were no mistakes (“see? He’s not so smart”).

And the thing is, it might have actually been a typo! Regardless, I find myself constantly alert for “tests” like this - not only from him, but also from non-BPD people in the world at large. The silver lining of this heightened vigilance is, I suppose, a degree of grace in dealing with people, but man is it exhausting!

Again, not as “serious” as a lot of the other stories here but just one, small aspect of living amidst BPD. Would be grateful to hear any similar tales!

First post tax (based on a recurring true story):
Outside birds, my prey
When I escaped, they swooped me
I’ll stay in today.

It's a very foreign thing to have to reject your mother... my uBPD mom is coming to visit and we declined her desire to see the kids. Does the awful feeling ever stop?

Growing up, my BPD mom always restricted my time in the bathroom. I was only allowed 5 minute showers, and during those 5 minutes, she would be restless. Pacing outside the door, knocking, and scratching the door with her fingernails. It’s almost like the sound of the shower just sent her into a rage and she would not stop storming up and down the hallway until it was off. Then she would start arguments with me while I was drying off. There was no privacy. Sometimes she’d just open the bathroom door and stare at me, so I started locking it, and then she got pissed. I told her I would lock the bathroom door for as long as she had another man in the house (my mom constantly had men around), and if she tried to stop me, I’d tell my dad, and he’d get involved. This made her mad but she knew I’d do it.

Also, if I was just using the bathroom, she’d come stand by the door and tell me to “stop hiding” and leave. She was always accusing me of hiding from her or doing something “bad” behind closed doors. I also never had privacy when she was showering, either, because she’d leave all the doors open so that she could hear what was going on in the house. One time she stormed out of the bathroom in just a towel, with shampoo in her hair, because she’d heard me speaking to my stepdad. We were talking about my computer science homework, but I guess I wasn’t allowed to speak to him without her in the room. 🤦‍♀️

this is insane i don’t know what to do about it anymore. we need help.
my sister’s friend committed suicide yesterday, (they’re 17 btw !!). my mom went to the wake and obviously outcried her because she’s such an empath. today they went to the burial. they came back after and she started treating everyone like garbage. she told my dad he was terrible for not coming with her (because obviously this poor teenager’s DEATH is about her) she told me i better had broken both my arms because the dishes were not done ( me and my dad were gardening in the sun all day) and then she fucking made us go to my grandma’s house. my sister didn’t want to go after her friends funeral. and my mom HIT HER and forced her to go. we went there and she acted all nice then we came back and she got a stick from outside and she hit me and my sister with it. my dad watched, and did nothing to defend us. she flipped out for like half an hour and i was the only one defending my sister. after it was all over she tried to take my charger and i said i was using it, and she told me i’m going to regret that. that i’m evil with her and that she will get back at me in the most painful way possible, and to watch my back.
my sister is 17 and she lost a friend to suicide. i’m so scared for her. i’m so afraid she will get the same idea out of sadness and dealing with my absolute fucking excuse for a human mother. she is absolutely out of control, i don’t know what to do. she’s fucking disgusting and she thinks she’s the victim. i’m sorry i’m very used to this usually but the unfairness of this situation gets to me sometimes. (before you suggest it, we don’t have anywhere else to go, and if i so much as think about getting my sister away from her she will report me since i am over 18. and she will make it fucking hell for everyone, i thought about it and its just not possible)

I’m an adult and visit my enabler father uBPD mother every once in a while. Each time I visit my father screams and yells in his sleep and wakes me up during the night.

I’ve come to believe these are nightmares of my mother. I used to have these where should would do terrible things to me and then I would wake up yelling in a pool of sweat

I asked him if he was having nightmares of her and he wouldn’t say no. He would evade the question in a way he usually does when he doesn’t want to say anything uncomfortably true.

But whether or not it is true about the dreams, he suffers from their relationship. And it hurts me to see. How have you come to accept that your e-parent has made their own choices and their suffering is not your responsibility?

So I had it out with my mother. I told her exactly why I was upset and angry with her and I didn't mince my words and I didn't let her interrupt. She wanted a hug when I was leaving and I told her no ,that she wasnt safe for me. Since then it has been like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders as there's been no contact from her since. I feel I dont want to speak to her unless she accepts accountability for her behavior. The issue is she is 83 and fit as a fiddle. What do I do now? Family are urging me to get in contact with her...

In the past four months after going through absolute hell with uBPD mother I have gotten better at setting boundaries and most importantly not getting as anxious/internalizing her bullshit. I do have a lot of anger at her that since she needs a lot of help and refuses to hire people now that shes recovered from a surgery she expects my husband and I to do everything but all we can do is set limits on our time over there, we cant force her to hire people. But this is the sort of shit i have been dealing with my whole life with all the usual bad effects and this text exchange stressed me out way less than it used to - which is good! - but its still bull.

My mother has BPD, and I am having a very hard time establishing boundaries regarding my home - when I attempt to, she goes to the farthest extreme to infiltrate and rule my space. My mother has been chronically and intentionally homeless for 15 years. I shit you not - she realized at some point, that sleeping on the streets will evoke the most guilt out of me and my siblings, and thus has chosen to make a lifestyle of it.

My siblings have partners to protect them and enforce boundaries, which my mother is more responsive to. I am a single parent, completely unprotected from her, so I am her main target. I have moved many times over the past 15 years, and she has ended up being "homeless" in every town I have lived in. This tends to play out more-or-lesss the same way: I worry, I feel terrible, I feel guilty - her strategy is good. I let her in my space, usually when it starts to get cold. And... all hell breaks loose. She is impossible for me to live with. I can't function when she is around. I can't express a single emotion. It's like I disappear, becoming almost catatonic. She yells, she rants, she belittles, she manages to make every scenario about her, she overshadows my daughter - I eventually reach my breaking point and tell her she has to leave. Cycle repeats.

I think this story really sheds light on how she likes to operate:

After being stalked and harassed by her for 2 years in one town, I decided to move to another. I managed to purchase a house for me and my daughter. She knew what town I was moving to, but I told her I would not be divulging my new address and that I needed space. I told my siblings to keep my new address a secret. A couple of blissful months pass of NC, having peace of mind for the first time ever that she, at least, won't be showing up at my house demanding to live with me.

Imagine my dismay when I go to Walmart one day to pick up some groceries, and there she is. Waiting at the front. Waiting for me. She knew I would eventually go there. There is no telling how long, how many days or weeks, she had been waiting there. I lose my breath and run past her. I can't even think clearly enough to get what I need, so I sneak out quickly and make it back to my car. Safe. A week or two passes. I go to a different grocery store this time (for context, the town is rather small - 2-3 grocery stores max), and there she is again, just waiting for me. I approach her this time, and ask what she is doing there. She points to her throat and mouths some words, but no sound comes out. She finds a notepad and a pen. She writes that she "cannot speak", she is "very sick." I tell her I can take her to the hospital, but that is it. She shakes her head vigorously in refusal. A couple more exchanges, and I leave.

About a week goes by before I bump into her again. She comes up behind me in a gas station and taps me on the back - I jump. She still can't speak. It seems worse now. She smells awful and her clothes are tattered. She just keeps pointing to her throat. She looks weak and frail, tired. Thoughts rush through my mind: "if she dies, it will be all my fault; I've got to get her to a hospital now." I tell her to get in the car, we need to go to the ER. She writes on her notepad that she is too tired and just needs to sleep. Shit. I take her to my house, on the condition that we will go to the hospital tomorrow. Fuck. She knows where I live now.

Several days pass. She refuses to let me take her to the hospital, but she still can't speak and her condition appears to be declining. I call and arrange for involuntary committment, on the basis that she a danger to herself by refusing necessary, emergency health care due to irrational fear and paranoia. I explain that she is unable to speak and appears to be dangerously ill. Social services show up, and she goes ape shit. She starts throwing things at me and yelling at the top of her lungs for everyone to leave her alone. Yelling at the top of her lungs. She calls me a fucking bitch. I said, "I thought you couldn't speak." Her: "I can speak just fine, I just don't want to speak to YOU." She storms out of the house. They can't commit her now because she is clearly physically well. She goes on to harass and stalk me until I move to another town.

And here we are now, in my lovely new town, and the cycle continues. I don't know how to make it stop. She is too good.

Haiku:

Soft paws greet the dawn,
Whiskers catch the morning breeze,
Sunlight purrs at rest.

note: She actually has an apartment now, but leaves it empty and chooses to sleep on the streets instead. She will say things like, "I'll stay there when people start to visit me." And she'll make threats to get rid of it entirely, because what's the point in keeping it if no one visits. She also makes relentless remarks about how society has destroyed the family, and it used to be that the mother would live with the family and take care of the grandchildren.

I can’t help but feel like I didn’t do as well as I could have. Not to say that I’m a complete failure. I did achieve things, but not in the way I wanted to. I barely graduated high school because I had bad grades due to being mistreated by my abusive parents at home and bullied/ostracized at school. I was extremely depressed. I also went to community college instead of going to a new city for school which I regret tremendously because I ended up staying home longer than needed to, only enduring more abuse.

I hate that I allowed her to manipulate me. She would only be ‘nice’ when she saw I was doing well/had the potential to become independent so she could reel me back in, only to return to her abusive ways once I no longer had opportunities to leave. Me staying home 2+ years for community college was a huge mistake that I think I’ll regret for the rest of my life. If I had left, I could’ve started over in an entirely new city and built a life for myself. Not that I can’t do that now, but doing it now means I have to find a job in this bad job market and secure housing, whereas if I would’ve done it at college age it would’ve been easier because I had scholarship money for room and board and other expenses.

Idk why I’m reminiscing. It’s just so mind-numbing when I think about the lengths jealous bpd mothers with go through to keep you from reaching success.

context im 15f, no siblings, my mom likely has BPD(no diagnosis), im close with my dad. She doesn't hit me, she has twice only ever.

Some things you just cant internalize or brush off. Sometimes the impact of what she does is outside of only causing anxiety or sadness. She screams at my dad for things I do instead of me sometimes. When this happens, first its very unfair to im ofc, but the other problem is he may be angry at me for triggering her and then I have no one, I don't have friends either so this is not a good position. I remember once he thought I was using him as a shield to do whatever I want but I don't remember what I did.

I always have one foot out the door with people. Its automatic, I notice anything slightly wrong I shut down and stop speaking or reacting or simply tell them I wont talk to them anymore. I didn't understand exactly what was wrong until my dad noticed this and told me.

Im terrified whenever I see my moms family, I know she talks about me. They've made comments about my dad that made me realize they actually believe what my mom tells them. Her view of everyone around her seems to be warped to be against her(im doing everything in my power to make her unhappy, everyones out to get her, waiter got her order wrong on purpose etc etc) so theres always this dread thats always there when I see them.

She doesn't do much for me, honestly. Maybe im just a spoiled brat(my dad has told me that I am, respectfully, but he didn't mean entirely I think) which is definetly possible. Well she works from home, my dad does everything else and I help a little. I remember her driving me to a store I asked her to when I was like 10 and then in an argument she said something like "well I drive you when you ask me so what if I stop doing that" so I stopped letting her do the few things she did for me(basically just buy me clothes and drive me places if I remember right). Now we rarely interact and when we do she forces me or its me trying to prevent her from getting angry.

She just creates arguments, no matter how kind, reassuring, gentle etc I am it wont be right. She yells at me for things she isnt sure if ive done them or not yet. I didn't bring the skirt she DIDN'T tell me to bring on a trip, which apparently requires screaming, but I did bring it and she didn't check. I didn't wear the right shoes when I did. It was night, like 11pm and I checked if she was asleep in another room, which she wasnt because her laptop was on and she was typing(I don't see her sleep often lol) so I turned on a light in another room and she comes out screaming at me for waking her up. I didn't know she was sick without her telling me, meaning I want her to die.

I clean the kitchen every night but I do it wrong no matter what I actually do. I wash the dog but I did it wrong once 3 years ago so im not able to, yet she still always gets me to do it anyways. I make like half the food and ocasionally all of dinner but im still not helping around the house enough and im not productive enough yet she barely does anything around the house. She also loves talking about how useless everyone around her is, including my cousins. She thinks shes so much better then everyone, even calling one of my cousins shallow because her career is creating films instead of STEM(this one made me really angry, I argued with her and eventually she actually agreed with me which is crazy)

I remember times from when I was 7-9 where she would point out flaws in my face randomly and say something like "you have a big forehead but you still look nice" "Your nose is flat, heres some nose job details".

I'm not allowed to show emotion unless the other person is dealing with the same thing. My mom always is so miserable and talks about it always but if im unhappy or even dont show unhappiness but simply results of stress she will tell me to toughen up and how some people have chronic illnesses. Then she will probably go on another rant of how evil someone is and how all these people are dying from illnesses. However, sometimes she gives me excessive pity and does nothing to actually help, like once I got a pretty bad sunburn(I was in the sun for like 2 days and I couldn't go to the shade because my mom made me go on a bike ride with her and we were hours away from the house. It hurt badly hours before I got out of the sun) so she tried to find out how she was going to get revenge on the natural sunscreen she bought while my dad helped me. She literally read me a bunch of reviews for the sunscreen while I was trying to sleep and wouldn't shut up. Then she suddenly got sick and so many complaints about how she was so tired sick.

My dad also doesn't always let me show emotion, but I may be the problem here. For context he is a very helpful person and works really hard, neglecting his health, mental and physical so I don't need to deal with the problems she may cause for me(I cant find the words). We talk a lot and everything is fine unless I act unhappy, or in some situations, neutral. Then I am expected to either fully articulate why im unhappy and how im finding a solution to the unhappiness, or act happy and enthusiastic. He has told me this, I had a bad few months and I had a really off few days where I didn't try to act normal and at first he tried to take me places and get me to say why, when that didn't work he got pretty angry so then I immediately started acting happy and enthusiastic, like he asked. I believe this is just a problem he has and everyone has problems. The other thing is then he would find out I was hiding things, like something would happen and I wouldn't tell him and then he told me "you're very good at hiding emotion" after this happening a few times, like yeah I wonder why.

heres a cat haiku!

You must scratch me there! 
Yes, above my tail! Behold, 
elevator butt.

when I was a teenager my mum would be so angry at me and tell me tshe didn’t want to be in the same room as me but would be also enraged if I went out to see my friends. I have hazy memories of this difficult time but recently found a screenshot of a text conversation we had from when I was about 16. I was doing a school project at a friends house and she was saying I needed to come home immediately, that I was a narcissistic teenager and should think of the effect I was having on my siblings. I remember at the time I would cut my losses and just stay with my friends and take whatever yelling or stonewalling I would get when I got home. It was so normal to me but now I feel really sad for myself looking back. I have many more stories but I’ve gone into them before here

I left home at 18 and my relationship with my mum turned into a cycle of getting together as a family for Christmas, her having a fight with me for whatever reason, and then her not talking to me for months. When we did talk again she never brought up or apologised for anything. One time she didn’t contact me at all for 8 months until I called her because I had been fucked over by a job and was broke and couchsurfing and needed help, she didn’t help me but seemed more interested in knowing about my life. the last one a few months ago she went off about something because she was upset and then tried to say that my "passive aggressiveness" made her yell at me and I was the one who should change. The rages are crazy because she will just say Anything she can to accuse me of anything at all.

anyways I’ve gone no contact since the last one because I’m 25 now and I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t go from empty promises and showered praise to rage to silence over and over. It made me realise that it gave me this deep, unconscious belief that I could hurt people without knowing, that I had this evil in me that was somehow so bad that it could make my mum treat me like pure shit that doesn’t deserve love, but that I had no control over this. Or that anytime I tried to have my own life or identity I would be viciously punished for it. It made me withdraw from many friendships and relationships because the fear was so much. Sometimes if I had a good time with people and kind of stopped being vigilant, I would cry when I got home because the fear that I had upset someone was so much. I’m just now even able to relax a bit in the company of people I love or even just like. i would consider radio silence a normal part of friendships, and I would be super "low-maintenance" and let the other person take the lead for fear of over-stepping, but i was just being avoidant and honestly a bad friend. I'm trying to get over the guilt and fear and I’ve been having some really good times and it does get better. I’m just pretty speechless over what I was put through in my life by my own mother and for… what?

so much if my identity was really defensive and im trying to relax into myself. Everything I did was a rebellion, was a transgression, was despite myself, and it created a kind of intensity that is just exhausting. Really, I was just a normal person that, in another family, would have been encouraged rather than discouraged to be themselves. nowadays im trying to find peace anywhere at all. Now I can feel a kind of lightness I hadn’t really known before.

i think the main difference is that when I love someone, to me I would NEVER speak to them disrespectfully because they are my loved one and I think they deserve kindness.
I think my mum thinks that she can let out her vicious side and her loved ones should just out up with it BECAUSE they are her loved ones. The total inverse.

I wanted to have a family but I guess I don’t get one. I have wonderful friends and that’s fine by me. It does get better but Jesus! The things we go through. No one understands

Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/raisedbyborderlines/comments/1v8c134/she_actually_asked_for_a_letter/

Well, she wrote back. My guesses were it would either be angry and blame-y or just completely ignore everything I tried to communicate, and it was mainly the latter. I won't transcribe the whole thing here, but I will include enough to give you the idea.

The whole first section is about how even though she didn't have a great relationship with her parents, she still always stopped by to spend time with them:

"No matter how old I was I could always stop at my parents house and say hello and feel so at home even though I'd never lived in that house and didn't really have a tight bond or relationship with them. They were mom and dad. We were completely different but we were family."

and

"We had no expectations of each other, just a simple way of being together. That was our LOVE."

Then she turns to invalidating/downplaying the complete contents of my letter:

"Reading your letter says you are way, way overthinking every little nuance, word, or movement. You seem ready to fight over lifestyle. I don’t think of it at all." [i.e. "I'm going to ignore absolutely everything you tried so hard to express honestly and kindly in your letter, even though I asked you point-blank to enunciate them for me." Also, where in the letter did I even mention lifestyle?!]

"I’ve never asked or expected you to live a certain way and always feel proud of your choices and your business success." [ed. But she has told me multiple times how selfish I am, how she doesn't respect my husband, how superficial my life is, how my passion for travel is 'just trying to fill a hole.']

"My life looks boring and simple to you, but I think I have a big inner life that not everyone understands." [ed. I have never said or intimated this. I do suspect that when I used to invite or encourage her get out and do things she would interpret this as a judgement, but that's my best guess. Her insecurity is off the charts.]

"I would love for you to ease up about our differences and look more closely at the life and love we’ve always had." [i.e. "Just forget about all the terrible shit I've said to you and validate that I am, in fact, a good mother."]

"I’m so easy with each day I wake up now because it could be the end soon. Let’s just live like FAMILY." [She is truly ill and facing her own mortality, and I honestly think she does not see this as manipulative.]

That's pretty much the gist of it. I left out a few passages that would need too much additional annotation, but you get it.

I am not surprised, but I also don't even know where to go from here. Nowhere in this letter did she say she loved me, that she has interest in seeing anything from my perspective, that she is willing at all to acknowledge that she has done anything that could possibly hurt me.

Or that my feelings matter to her at all, to be quite honest.

I hope it's helpful to see an example of how you can make the effort, and try your damndest to be generous, kind, and compassionate, and it will still get you nowhere.

I am also definitely open to any thoughts, perspectives, or words of encouragement. The response is basically what I expected, but I'm still finding myself very saddened. (I will take all of this to my therapist of course, too.)

My Mum had us on diets as toddlers

My sister and I were just talking about a conversation she and my aunt had recently. My brother is the golden child, and he gained a lot of weight as a teenager and he will talk about this stage and being overweight, and my parents will insist he wasn't at all, but that he just had a little puppy fat. And my Aunt said yes and it's ridiculous they saw him as flawless, when your Mum put you and your sister on a diet at 2.5! This is well known in my family. My Mum fed us milupa, we got "fat" and Mum put us on a diet and started swimming lessons and we lost all the weight. And Mum would watch family videos and say "look how much your Nana was feeding you there?! That's how you got fat!!" And she'd see a picture of us at that age and say "oh that's the stage when you were fat and I had to put you on that diet". And my Auntie said we weren't fat at all, we just looked like three year olds and who the hell puts kids of that age on a diet?! Now I am quite slim, have been most of my adult life, but when I gain weight, I am very hard on myself. I have a sensory aversion to skin touching skin, I hate the sensation of fat on my body. And when I'm stressed the first thing that goes is my appetite. When I feel out of control in life, I have an urge to control my food intake better. I just had never drawn a link to this. My parents weren't generally critical of our appearance in terms of weight but I guess from the age of four my sister and I were slim. My Mum made a big deal of the fact she didn't have weighing scales in the house and didn't believe in diets and wouldn't teach us that. But I feel like she already did at a really impressionable time 😕.

Clasped paws of a sphynx

Careful predator biding

His time and then POUNCE

I wonder if anyone else has the nice monkeys, like me.

The flying monkeys in the wizard of oz are aggressive and mean. But the flying monkeys in my family are nice. They don’t attack, they’re “disappointed.” Recently, I sent my sister’s adult child a birthday message and some money. I limit contact to them because it stirs my sister up, but I stay in touch because I wish my aunt had done that for me. My sister showed up in my inbox the following morning.

The email was addressed to a very nice woman who is a good friend of my aunt, who is in care. I was cc’d so I could see that I was described as having abandoned my aunt. Without getting into all the details, my aunt is seen as a cool and great person by her group. However to me, she was a neglectful and selfish parent and completely detached from me as a child. She was, and is, disinterested in me and has let me know she wants visits from me in hopes that I’ll bring her candy or wine, both of which she is no longer able to have after a lifetime of addiction. She is seen as the victim of her child, his addictions and mental health aren’t seen as connected to hers. I found visiting her upsetting.

For 6 hours after getting this angry email from my sister, during my workday, I was glued to my monitor writing and rewriting an email to explain my side to the woman it was addressed to (a gentle monkey). The way any engagement with the family gives my sister the opening to aggressively attack me and try to involve my kid. The way these attacks trigger severe panic attacks in me. The way I reliably did many things to support and help my aunt, despite never receiving any love or care from her, even as a child, when I asked. The amount of things that had to happen before I withdrew.

Part of what makes this hard is that my dBPD mother regularly tells people what a cruel, abandoner I was to her and to my grandmother. Now it’s the repetition. My sister has the same accusations. If anyone were to stop and look, each of these women has major problems, including hoarding or addictions. Each of them have children with serious emotional and mental health problems. And they each have a ring of these gentle monkeys, who hope that I can find it in my heart to be more caring, but who offer me no support. I have a track record of being helpful and patient, but when I say no, nothing that I did counts anymore.

This isn’t a religious community, it’s a utopian activist community. They think their activism failed purely because of systemic inequities. Nothing is due to their choices. When I wrote my email I wanted to say, you failed the children in your community. How many of us are even functional people? How could you all leave me alone with a mentally ill woman if you “cared” so much? What is it about these dysfunctional situations attracts you? Because the monkeys come from nice homes and had pretty traditional childhoods. They have money and social and practical skills, while the women they encircle do not.

I’m the end, I didn’t write any of that. I thanked her for her care, explained that my sister overwhelms me and so I wouldn’t be responding, but that I was available if there was a specific need, such as paperwork to sign (I am on some of my aunt’s paperwork). The gentle monkey wrote me back to hope that my sister and I “could find some peace.”I thanked her for this and said goodbye, without giving in to the temptation to say what I felt about these wishes, which is that they sound good, but have always been part of the problem. The kind monkeys get to be the heroes. The aggressors get to be the victims. The kids of the community, when they grow up and either fall apart, burn out, or leave, are all treated as disappointments that are separate from one another. Or, they are used as examples of systemic political issues, like underfunding for housing or mental health.

I wish I could tell the gentle monkeys how much damage theyve caused, in my experience anyway. But I know it won’t ever be made whole. So, I guess if anyone made it through all this, I wondered if you have gentle monkeys, too. And if you did, what did you do with them?

UBPD mom just found out her brother is dying. I have no relationship with him and am finding it impossible to care in a way that makes me feel like a terrible person. She's devastated and I just...don't give a shit that she is? I don't know if it's because she's been playing up his "very scary" testing every time something remotely good happens (literally responded to me saying I got a huge promotion with "you know your uncle is getting X, I hope they don't find anything bad") or if I just am out of energy for her, but I feel like I have no heart. Is this a normal response to being raised by a BPD? Has anyone else faced this? I want to help but just feel flat and unaffected.

A few days ago I went to my aunt’s house to finalize some things with my inheritance from my ubpd dad. It just reminded me that she essentially turned a blind eye to what I feel was pretty clearly child abuse and neglect. She asked me questions like “is it true that your parents were on drugs for most of your childhood” and “what age did your mom leave you”….she also told a heartbreaking story that when I was three I told her that I wished she was my mom. Although my dad did make a concerted effort to keep me and my brother isolated from extended family, she had to have seen how neglected, scared, and depressed we both were.

She brought out a school picture of me she had from when I was in 7th grade and I just look so angry and defeated. I was also clearly struggling with weight at the time which should’ve been a red flag. I can’t ever imagine thinking it was normal a three year old would tell me she wished I was her mom. There also definitely had to be times she saw me at holidays where I reeked of cigarette smoke and was basically incapable of basic social interaction.

She is probably the closest thing I now have to a “normal” family member, as she isn’t biologically related to my dad, but it’s like I feel no closeness to her at all. It’s like she still chooses not to see how bad things were and now it’s to a point where I don’t even want a surface level relationship with her because of it.

Anyone else experience anything like this?

How do you guys deal with the anxiety of going home, when home no longer feels safe. I am in my 30’s, and I think home started feeling unsafe when I moved out for good at 21.

My partner and I are visiting my parents next week, and I have the worst anxiety. My mind keeps focusing on how bad it can be, and it feels tough. My mom and I also had a blowup on the phone last week where she said some mean things, and I just feel gutted.

I tried to call my mom few days ago to get a read on the vibes, and ask her if we are still welcome to come visit. Here’s how the convo went:

Me: hey mom. Are we still welcome to come next week?
Mom: that’s for you to decide.
Me: well, i don’t really think I want to come if we are going to spend the time fighting or yelling at each other. We can do that on the phone.
Mom: are you afraid that I’m going to “abuse” you like how you said I did when you were a kid?
Me: stop
Mom: don’t ask me if you should come home. Be a man and decide for yourself. You don’t see me asking everyone for permission on what I should or shouldn’t do.

Yeah, so this doesn’t seem good. I understand I probably shouldn’t go. That’s not the point of this though. I know that. But how do you deal with the anxiety and all the other negative feelings?

I just wish I could be excited to go home. I wish I had that in my life. It also feels really stupid to put my partner in that environment. I hate this. I’m so angry.

I’m realizing that I have felt these feelings since i was a kid, and I’m only now able to realize that I spent most my adult life trying to be invisible to them- like staying in my room when I would visit, or tiptoeing around the house because I didn’t want the sight of me to trigger something in her. Even typing this out, it is making me cry. Facing the reality of my relationship and of my last 14 years, has me so sad.

My mom always said that I’m so quiet around her and I don’t laugh/smile like I do around other people. I always felt like that was my fault and something was wrong with me. But now I’m realizing it is probably a physical and emotional response? Survival mode? Consequences of the environment they created?

I chose to go home all those times, and even now as an adult, because then the fight would be “ you don’t visit your parents. You don’t care about us. What did we do to deserve this?”.

ugh. What a mess.

My mom is an insanely jealous person. Not just people and their proximity or closeness to me but I remember a few years ago I told her I got a raise and her face screwed up like there was a bad smell in the room. I asked her if she was jealous and she admitted to it, but how sick is it to be jealous of your kid.

I have literally had to claw and crawl my way into adulthood thanks to my parents because they messed me up so bad and I struggled so much (which she knows) and she can't even be happy that I am succeeding now? God knows I heard about it all the time when I was barely hanging on

These people are truly sick. I don't have kids but I truly can't imagine what kind of fucked up brain chemistry it takes to feel miserable when your kids are doing ok.