I found this and it reflected my experience as if I were the person describing it to an uncanny degree. This is what it was like for me and this other person: www.quora.com/Can-a-person-have-a-borderline-personality-disorder-and-only-the-people-very-close-to-them-realize-it-while-everyone-else-that-kind-of-knows-them-just-thinks-they-are-a-friendly-caring-and-sincere-individual-without www.quora.com/profile/Monique-Beyer-2 Absolutely, this can be the case with a high functioning pwBPD. My husband can appear as the most kind hearted, generous and loving person to most people. In fact, I was the one who was naturally suspicious in the beginning of our relationship because he seemed too good to be true. My friends even called him the Hallmark Man, as he was, as if I had made him up in my head. (Ironically this is a picture I took of him holding a game called the “Mould Your Own Dream Boyfriend” because I would always tell him that is who he was). When I went to his hometown in Illinois, the people who worked with him after high school all gushed about how he was so helpful. He would work the overnight shift and would get off before some of the ladies that he worked with. He would often scrape their windshields for them, so they would not have to when they left work after a long shift. He was always so good at predicting and observing things that I needed. He would later admit that he kept meticulous notes of my likes and dislikes. He also admitted to making sure that he did everything that he thought I wanted, in an effort to please me. Being that Acts of Service is my top love language, he went out of his way to anticipate all of my needs and make sure that I wanted for nothing, rarely ever even having to ask for anything. He told me that everything he has done in his life was to be the perfect at everything so that he could get the love and nurturing that he always wanted from his parents and me. After he “split” me, I remember telling him that “being put on the pedestal was not fair to me, because I had no where to go but down.” What a far fall that would be, as the months of devaluation (and idealization and devaluation again) that followed were truly heartbreaking. Those closest to people with BPD are the ones who truly suffer during the constant devaluation periods, because they are the ones that the pwBPD wanted the love and care from the most. Everyone else will still see that kind, caring and empathetic person that they have learned to project. Before he “split” me, he used to wake up early to make my coffee (just the way that I like it) and pack my things for me, loading them into my car. When I would travel, he could even pack my suitcase for me, as he paid that much attention to what I wore and everything that I used/needed. In my purse, I would often find a ziploc bag of two cookies, protein bar and either a Post It note or card with some adoring sentiment about how he was so fortunate to be in my life. If he didn’t travel with me, he would be waiting at home most nights with dinner picked up from whatever restaurant he knew that I liked. One night, I sat on the couch looking at him, telling him that it was if I had made him up in my head. He replied in a genuinely surprised tone, “Are you talking to me?” I replied, “No, I was talking to the cat. Of course I was talking to you.” He sat there in disbelief, that I could compliment him that genuinely. I never understood his discomfort in accepting compliments until I researched BPD behaviors and saw that as a common behavior. The version of him that I had post “split” was so unrecognizable to me, that I thought I was losing my mind. It was the opposite extreme as he was so cold and selfish, not even considering me in any fashion. He would go back and forth over the course of the next year, but it would never be the same again. I told him that I just wanted a happy medium. I said he was too catering to me in the beginning and there was a happy middle ground where he wouldn’t feel as if he was giving too much. That is a foreign concept for most pwBPD as they operate in the extremes of black and white, without shades of grey. He would treat me so callously at times, not showing care or concern for my emotions, yet he would not leave. There were periods where he would revert to a loving version of himself, but it would not stay consistent as each “split” would result in longer devaluation periods. The false narrative of our relationship from his perspective was so far off from reality, that it was hard for me to have a logical conversation with him about it without seeming like I was invalidating him, because it just wasn’t true. His emotional amnesia would prevent him from remembering how he felt for me prior to “splitting” me that first time and therein lies the biggest disconnect for me. How can you convince someone that their recollection of the reality is simply not true? I felt like it was the movie Fifty First Dates and that I needed to show him a video of himself actually in the moment of our relationship so that he could see what he was now recollecting was not actually the reality that was. I would find out that his ex-fiancée prior to me went through the same behavior patterns with him. I imagine his first serious relationship ended much the same way. Neither was able to recover the relationship post BPD split. He has convinced himself that those relationships were not actual love either, when at the time they were his whole world. His friends (who he had also split black after a perceived breach of trust when he thought that they were talking about him in a separate group chat that did not involve him), told me that watching him with his ex-fiancée was like watching a mother with her autistic child. The version they saw in our relationship was an extremely foreign version of him, as he was laughing, joking and charismatic. They said that he was mimicking me, after they got to know me. They also said that his ex-fiancée was not aware that her relationship was over with him when he said that it was. They had several conversations with her, where she wondered why he was so stand-offish and disconnected. During that time, he had already established an “on-line relationship” with a web cam girl and made plans to meet her in Vegas after he officially ended things with his ex-fiancée. While in his “splitting state” he will dissociate frequently, which then appears as if he is almost autistic at times. I have had conversations with four different versions of him and now realize that this is why he will look at me with a blank stare when I ask him why he acted so loving recently and why he said things to me reflecting that. He simply doesn’t remember and doesn’t want to admit it. I can now recognize his dissociative states for what they are. The therapist actually met him for the first time, in a dissociative state and couldn’t recognize the lighthearted and carefree laughing version that I showed her in a video that I had saved. She saw two completely different people and even said that he was definitely not the same man in both instances. His co-workers would only see the loving version of him to me, unaware of some of his cruel behaviors when the narcissistic version appeared. In his family, there was so much invalidation and verbal abuse in his childhood that he is used to putting on a mask for the outside world, as this is how they all behaved constantly (as if nothing happened). Thankfully, my closest friends have heard some of our conversations (unbeknownst to him) pre and post BPD split and see the two sides to the coin in his behaviors. That was my validation, that I was not imagining things. When I tried to bring up BPD to his NPD/BPD mother, she said that it was not unusual for him to constantly change who he was (whether it be career, education, geographic location) because she said she had done that too (as well as his sister). She maintains that he isn’t BPD because she says that he is not suicidal. I explained that he only had to meet 5 out of the 9 traits to be officially considered BPD. She lives in denial, as admitting to such would also mean she would have to accept ownership of her role in creating and/or exacerbating his (and his sister’s) personality disorder(s). He has also readily admitted that he has never lived any place more than two or three years, yet will seemingly have a plausible excuse for all of this. In all reality, this is when he moves to hit the reset button and can start anew (which is what he has done currently), where no one is aware of his past behaviors and he can attempt again to try and come across as “normal.” Past behavior predicts future events, as he will inevitably follow the same pattern in life, unless he gets himself into treatment. He will need to work on accepting the trauma that created his disorder(s) and take active measures to distance himself from the triggers, while taking ownership for the damage he has inflicted on others.
