Why do untreated borderlines always blame their partners when they actually think they are normal?

I get codependent after codependent after codependent who either stayed with their bpd partner for years or only left the relationship because they got discarded. Most of them want to point fingers at the borderline and call them evil monsters who manipulated them. The honest truth is that most codependent partners have serious issues of their own. They desperately crave love so much that they will stay with a toxic person for years instead of being alone. Or they become these addicted trauma bonded addicts that simply can’t tolerate the thought of not having their supply (the borderline). I’m not trying to blame codependents. I know the codependent partner takes a massive amount of horrific abuse and that’s my point. To TAKE that much abuse means you are CHOOSING to TOLERATE a massive amount of dysfunction and toxicity for YOUR OWN NEEDS! If someone keeps punching you in the face after the second or third punch I’m going to look at you like an insane person if you insist on standing there and taking more hits.

Just this past week I was confronted by two severe codependents (one discarded and the other married to a toxic pwbpd). Both seem to think it’s their borderline partners fault that they tolerated abuse. I offered advice to both over how to heal and how to make PERSONAL CHANGES so they can learn to be happy and healthy. Tragically the married codependent IMMEDIATELY went into excuse making mode “I won’t break up my family. It’s not all that bad.” I’m thinking you’re on Quora, reading and commenting about bpd abuse, half the stuff you’ve mentioned is bad enough to be reason enough for divorce. Tragically codependency is this disorder that keeps the person resistant to healthy change. The discarded partner wanted to blame the borderline for everything and hide behind the “I didn’t know about bpd” bullshit excuse that I honestly can’t stand. I’m left thinking if the person you dated was so sick, so abusive, so messed up, so toxic then why did you stay with them 🤔🙄! It’s because codependents are messed up too but they hide behind these facades of the caretaker, fixer, rescuer, strong one, healer, favorite person when in reality they are just as needy and just as screwed up as the borderline. If someone abuses you at a level 10 of abuse and you don’t leave. Then it means you are a level 10 at allowing people to abuse you! Allowing people to harm you and continuing to stay with them isn’t a badge of honor. It’s a sign of serious mental health problems and instability called codependency (most of you have other issues on top of that).

When a borderline splits part of their mental illness forces them to paint the person they split on as this evil, abusive, narcissist. Even with treatment it’s almost impossible to get a pwbpd to be able to honestly reflect their past behaviors because they suffer from a mental illness that tells them it’s everyone else. They can’t look at themselves because they don’t have an identity. They are only deep need and impulsiveness. There’s really no core person and all they have is self hatred so looking internally at their part of relationships isn’t an option. So they blame and project onto the abused codependent partner, devalue them, discard them, likely make false allegations or claims of terrible narcissistic abuse. They ARE MENTALLY ILL so don’t act surprised when they act irrational or insane!

Hi everybody! I have been looking at posts on narcs and narc abuse on here and if has really helped me out a lot. I am currently struggling with my situation and need some advice/support. I met a narc last year, everything seemed to good to be true. Love bombing, always texting calling and taking me on dates. Everything changed when someone warned me about him out in public in front of him and who he is. This caused a conflict with us and the love bombing seized. he would tell me that everything is okay and i can come and talk. He would set a time limit on me and kick me out after that. he would then text me like everything was fine and we hung out again and after that he completely ghosted me for one week. He came back and texted me a week later laughing about the ghosting and acting like nothing had happened. he continued to text me ( not like in the beginning) make plans with me, then on the day of the plans he would just ghost me. One day he would act interested the next silence. i contacted him a month later and he acted like nothing happened. He was on a vacation and sent me a picture of another woman ( someone he allegedly met on the trip) to strike a reaction but i never gave him one. After the trip he came to my place and was extremely rude, accusing me of going on dates with a bunch of men. The next day he accused me of being an alcoholic and that he wanted nothing to do with me but said well maybe we can be "friends" then ghosted me i assumed at this point it was over and i would never hear from him again. He contacted me on the holiday a month later acting like everything was great. We ended up hanging out a month or so later and when we hung out it went well, i thought things were going in the right direction. after we hung out.. silence. I would try to text him and if he replied it would be very short then he just stopped replying. He ghosted me for almost three months. I thought he was done this time and of course he popped up again like nothing happened. At this point i was getting sick of if so i questioned him as to why he dissapeared and always does this. Of course he had some sob story about a injury and family member dying of cancer. I felt pity for him and he gave me an apology.. so i took him back stupidly. things seemed to be going smooth for a couple months, of course until his family member died and his injury got better he never contacted me and was distant. Menawhile, i was there for him during the difficult time for him. He lied to me about the funeral and never wanted to chat. I was chasing him and he would always claim nothing was wrong but when i said i thought he used me when he was down he could not handle it and would always tell me he didnt care and to go away. I would get so upset i would try texting him to work it out he would barelt respond and if he did he would not be nice about it. we did hang out a couple times after that, he would ignore me after. One day i was like hey i think you are seeing someone else, and i was like well ixam seeing someone so no problem if you are he said " buy bye good luck with your new guy stop contacting me" i was devastated and tried to get into contact with him for weeks then i just gave up and accepted it was over. He ended up contacting me a month later acting like everything was fine. He wanted to go out and have drinks i told him i would. He and i both seemed to have a great time. He ends up ignoring me again. I kept texting him trying to figure out what was wrong. He kept saying everything was fine and i said ok can we hang out again? He said maybe i was like why? He just kept saying maybe … our last conversation we had… i said what is wrong ? He said nothing is wrong everything is fine. I asked him why he keeps saying maybe. He said " maybe but i dont want to see you right now" i said why? He saix " im just not feeling it, if i wanted to date i would" i said why did you contact me less then a week ago wanting to go out? He said i didnt.. even though he did. So i said should i just move on or what? He said whatever you want to do. So i said that he was really confusing me and asked him if he had anything more to say before i move on? My messages were turning green so i panicked he blocked me and reacted irrationally. I said " omg did you block me? My messages are not going through. Even texted him on my work phone asking what was up. And called him twice ( please dont judge me i know it is pathetic i never was this type of girl before him) so he replied and said " Ok I'll block you now" then immedietly blocked me. He has never blocked me before since I have met him he will just ghost. Is this ths final discard aka " grand finale? Did i just push him too far? this has upset me so much its hard to even function.

I’m not trying to make codependents feel bad, but some of you are so sick and need so much help. I’ll have people who read my posts and bash their bpd ex. I’ll then find out that they are still in contact, usually still friends with their borderline abuser, not in any recovery, not enforcing any boundaries. I’m just left thinking “WOW, this person will never heal.” A lot of you think not calling your ex is going no contact which is also another big misunderstanding. Or worse, to many codependents think reading posts will help them change a lifetime of codependent engrained behaviors 🙄. If you dated or are dating a toxic untreated borderline you are a codependent. Codependency is a relationship dynamic in which one partner (the codependent) is forced to tolerate slack, dysfunction, or abuse in order to keep the relationship alive! There is no way on earth you can date an untreated borderline and not be constantly tolerating slack, dysfunction, and/ or abuse. What’s insane is some of you will read what I just wrote and still claim that you aren’t a codependent (those people scare me). Codependency does not mean weak, can’t be alone, dependent on someone else (those CAN BE symptoms but that’s not the definition).

The biggest argument/ excuse I hear from toxic untreated codependents is “I didn’t even know about bpd so how was I supposed to know what to do.” Well, when you become a big boy or big girl and you’re all grown up you have these things called BOUNDARIES and STANDARDS! When you allow someone into your life and they don’t respect your boundaries or meet your standards then you simply move on. So many of you want to hide behind this excuse that you simply stumbled into this toxic person and that you are completely innocent 🙄. You might have never been abusive but that doesn’t excuse the fact that you tolerated them acting out! You do not need a diagnosis to realize when someone is mistreating you or acting toxic. Honestly, some of you remind of children getting scolded by a parent. Your inability to take any level of ownership is actually very sad. When you refuse to stand up for yourself, when you refuse to get help, when you refuse to create boundaries, when you refuse to leave a abuser, when you keep forgiving toxic people who don’t deserve your forgiveness, when you keep tolerating dysfunction, when you insist on staying with someone who has proved over and over with their actions that they are toxic then you don’t get a free pass to be a victim! The only person who can claim to be a victim of these relationships are children or partners who left the moment the first devaluation cycle began.

borderlines have a very very serious mental illness. They were born with areas of their brain (amygdala, pre frontal cortex, and even reduced grey matter-all emotional centers) that were damaged or that don’t develop. They are also usually exposed to trauma in early childhood (most borderlines have bpd and enabling codependent parents that allow horrific trauma and abuse). That means they’ve never known normal. If you were born color blind and we didn’t live in a time that people can test for color blindness then that person would likely never realize they couldn’t see certain colors. The greatest misunderstanding of borderlines is from codependent partners who want to blame them, accuse them of being evil, make claims that they know what they are doing. Don’t get me wrong, pwbpd can be horrific monsters, they can be EXTREMELY narcissistic, extremely manipulative, extremely cruel, and extremely abusive. They are mentally ill, emotionally arrested at infancy, age regressed, impulsive, emotionally reactive, and operating from a place of deep deep desperate need to be loved. They have a very very serious mental illness and that’s why they act hurtful and irrational.

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If you have been in one of these relationships please just reach out for help. There’s plenty of therapist who work with codependents. Even better is the free coda 12 step recovery. You can attend online or in person. If you join coda the only point is to work the 12 steps with a sponsor. You don’t join so you can silently hang out at the back of meetings. Look, if you want to heal it’s going to be hard work! Some of you act like doing the bare minimum is just impossible. If you want to be a miserable push over, who can’t enforce boundaries, who can’t say no, who can’t stand up for themselves then be my guest and enjoy your very miserable stress filled single chance at life! It’s time for some of you to stop with the insane excuses, half measures, justifications, and denial. The only person who can truly keep you away from happiness and health is YOURSELF! Stop procrastinating and just learn to take action otherwise your going to stay stuck and miserable!

The better question is why are so many codependent partners so resistant to taking accountability for their part of these relationships. You have to be a severe codependent to stay with an untreated borderline for more than a few dates. Pwbpd demand enmeshment, they over share, they hate boundaries and will not tolerate them, they require you to overlook red flags, they are constantly needing validation and love, they want to spend every second with you, they move way to fast, their behavior requires you to be constantly overlooking/ minimizing/ or forgiving toxic behavior, they are irrational, they are extremely impulsive, and they act extremely immature. You cannot be a healthy adult and partner with someone who has half those issues.