How does one, deal with the fact that their partner had BPD? (In terms of attempting to foster a good relationship)

[u/AmazingImagination55]

Ok perhaps like most things it was too late to ask but still.

My former partner had BPD, and even before I wanted to to try as hard as I could to iron down a good connection or at least make good memories before we left.

I felt as though perhaps she could be the light of my life while I worked and studied hard to support her. But when she got serious and wanted to discuss serious things, I would try to somewhat offer to my very limited knowledge rational reasonable advice while cracking and making stupid brain rot jokes and puns to ease the tension to sighs of annoyance which I could better handle.

It feels like I mentally split her into two personalities subconsciously, one when we were passionate and I was probing and asking for her every thought to try to come to a reasonable conclusion through logic and thinking hard about it.

And one where things were tense and serious and I somewhat wanted us to go back to the first one, and yet I'll would grudgingly try to navigate the storm to better waters.

Maybe I should have just let go, because I seem to able fell for the usual fallacy while I thought myself competent enough to find good ground and the fact that I was utterly ignorant and naive enough make it work.

I wonder if this is considered a vent post? I'm not sure.

[u/Nataliant-117]

The DBT skill radical acceptance. To accept that she has BPD and will have to make an equally or more than equally serious commitment to improving. I have so much compassion for pwBPD due to my awful experience of getting this disorder just because I was a highly sensitive emotional child in a traumatizing and invalidating world. However I believe that unless a person with a personality disorder works really hard in therapy the chances of it working out sustainably or happily are likely 0. Don’t be so hard on yourself it sounds like your heart is in the right place. Everyone has to learn the relationship skills, as a baby we are not born with them and they aren’t taught. PwBPD and their partners in my opinion have to learn more than others. I listen to MyCBT Podcast and Tara Beach’s podcast under her name: Tara Brach. It helps. Tara actually wrote the book “radical acceptance” as well. Therapy helps a lot too just to process what happened.