[ganbatekudasai]

Honestly, that sounds a lot different from BPD, like a separate disorder altogether.

Sorry, I don't mean to belittle what you go through, it sounds terrible. But I have to "defend" people with BPD against it, because I have people close to me with that affliction. What you describe sounds more like a very narcissistic person instead.

[willcipriano]

Its quiet type BPD to be specific: https://psychcentral.com/disorders/borderline-personality-di...

[ganbatekudasai]

I am familiar with the symptoms. I still think you deal with an actual narcissist, not with someone with BPD. The symptoms may have some overlap, but it's different.

For example, where in that article do you see that people with BPD can be so straight up delusional that they think they "own the town"? Notice that the words "lie" or "lying" do not even appear in the article.

In my experience, presenting a BPD-afflicted person with definitive truth is actually calming them down, because it disperses the worries and fears they have about things that could be (however unlikely).

Again, I don't mean to belittle your experience. What you're going through sucks, regardless of what disorder your wife has.

[willcipriano]

She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible.

However, you kinda have to be there but she didn't arrive at owning the town all at once but a series of escalations over years.

It all started a few years after we moved in. She started claiming the property line was further back and I corrected her. Unable to admit she was wrong she started going off on me, I let it go because it didn't matter. Then a few years after that the neighbors redo their backyard, cutting down a few old, mostly dead trees. This set her off. Those were "her trees" and they housed a cornucopia of wildlife (they didn't).

First it was the property line claim from before, so she hired a survey company, the neighbors property line is actually a few feet in from where I thought it was. So she was way off.

She then spent six months looking at pixalated maps and essentially having pareidolia. None of her claims about the maps made any sense but she argues they prove she is right and "Since in 1900 when this was built they forgot to add a line here so we own all of our town". She only has made that claim a few times and I think understands others find it odd, but I'm pretty sure she believes it.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> She then spent six months looking at pixalated maps and essentially having pareidolia. None of her claims about the maps made any sense but she argues they prove she is right and "Since in 1900 when this was built they forgot to add a line here so we own all of our town". She only has made that claim a few times and I think understands others find it odd, but I'm pretty sure she believes it.

You might win here. Mine didn't have this kind of focus. Early on, maybe but her symptoms were much less pronounced in her 20s. In her 30s, psychosis started showing up along with the rest and with that came some persistent loopiness - which was a bit of a blessing.

[ganbatekudasai]

That is bad. But again: From the people I know, from the papers I read (yes really), from the videos I watched, it does not sound like BPD to me.

BPD-afflicted people are terrified to be abandoned, for one thing. Why would someone who lives that way actively antagonize the people around them? Yes, the emotional feedback loop if not broken out of can make people with untreated BPD show strong emotional reactions (anger, depression, crying) in the moment, but they snap back out of it, are usually ashamed afterwards, and don't press on with what can only be described as nonsense.

[willcipriano]

Did you experience BPD as a romantic partner? It's quite different than being a friend or relative. I can't really do it justice and its a bit long but this talk changed my life (I don't say that lightly and he's fairly entertaining as a speaker): https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1t4CZMUqak&t=55s&pp=ygUtdGhlI...

It answers the antagonize question specifically it's just too much to type out for me now.

To butcher it, they feel great anxiety that you are going to leave and test that assumption by acting out. When you don't leave after they act out, they feel comfortable for a time until the cycle begins anew.

[ganbatekudasai]

> Did you experience BPD as a romantic partner?

Yes. (We broke it off, but for reasons entirely unrelated to BPD. We're still friends. It's not my only experience with BPD.)

> To butcher it, they feel great anxiety that you are going to leave and test that assumption by acting out. When you don't leave after they act out, they feel comfortable for a time until the cycle begins anew.

I agree. Believe me, I am actually very familiar with that. But your storyline still does not fit. Imagining a shifted property line is way more than that, and claiming that she owns the town is straight delusional.

In all the "testing of the assumption that I am going to leave/abandon" them that I underwent, never did anyone come close to spending six months to "prove" a delusional claim. It was all highly emotional spur of the moment stuff. No lies or actual counterfactual realities involved.

Going back to the article you linked, that actually all rings very true to me. But it does not mention either lying, or delusional and counterfactual beliefs at all. If that was a common symptom, why would the article not list it, especially given what a bad symptom it is?

Especially because, for example, the articles on narcissistic or histrionic personality do mention it pretty clearly?

I'm not sure why this is so important to you. You obviously have to deal with someone who has a personality disorder. It's a lot to deal with. Why does it have to be BPD, specifically? Or why can't it be BPD and something else on top of it?

[WarOnPrivacy]

> She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible.

When folks would ask me about what disorder she has, I'd answer All of them. When she drifts into psychosis she'll have symptoms common to schizoaffective and maybe dissociative.

I genuinely can't come up with one symptom group that she never dips into.

[ganbatekudasai]

> She may have something more, she isnt honest with anyone including therapists so its certainly possible.

That, by the way, sticks out to me a lot. Read the article you linked, and see if you find anything that matches that. Then look at histrionic and narcissistic disorders instead, and see if it matches that.

[deepfriedchokes]

Unable to admit being wrong is narcissistic personality disorder. Do some research it’s fascinating.

[drewcoo]

Sounds more like histrionic personality disorder, but I am not qualified to diagnose and even if I were it would be unethical to do so over a web forum.

[ganbatekudasai]

I agree, and I should not have made a definitive statement about what I think it is instead. I don't know whether their wife is narcissistic. But having close experience with BPD-afflicted people, I feel the need to defend them. I understand pretty well what they go through (and watching for example videos where other people describe it, and even reading papers, seems to confirm my understanding), and mislabeling other disorders as BPD does them a disservice, in my opinion.

People are going to read this, and then when they meet someone who they know has BPD somehow (for example when getting close in a relationship), they are going to think that that person can become that delusional. That's not what happens.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> that sounds a lot different from BPD, like a ... very narcissistic person instead.

Both is more likely. There's tons of overlap between the symptom groups.