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Author Topic: How the story turned out for American man & Russian woman: Don't touch me, marry  (Read 51317 times)

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Offline Manny

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P.S.what and where is VJ?

visajourney.com

He got some crazy advice and opinion over there, which is why he got invited here.
Read a trip report from North Korea >>here<< - Read a trip report from South Korea, China and Hong Kong >>here<<

Look what the American media makes some people believe:
Putin often threatens to strike US with nuclear weapons.

Online andrewfi

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if she is bpd you don't want her posting here. nothing good will come of it. a horrible illness with devastating effects upon those around the sufferer. probably before she turned against you the best sex in your life and you felt fully loved.

when she turned against you then you can see evil in action. of course I don't know if she is bpd but I can relate to the incidents you shared, especially the thing on the car and the shift in responsibility afterward. almost the scariest thing in my life was driving a bpd sufferer who decided she did not need the car to be stationary before climbing out of the car...
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Offline Rasputin

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For now I'll just say I excused her bad behavior as either cultural differences or simply being  extremely stressed.

Men merely look for excuses to justify bad behaviour and to mute those tiny voices of reason inside yelling out for them to run.... Invariably, they will never be convinced otherwise.

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I was ignorant of personality disorders like BPD. I allowed her American friend to explain away her behavior on those grounds and accept his and her assurances she would be normal woman once in USA.

I wager you were happy to have the friend explain away the behaviour as you found her attractive  :popcorn:

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Anyone who is poo-pooing BPD is simply unaware and inexperienced like I was before this mess.

In most cases, you don't have to be a clinical psychiatrist to know if something is amiss and at the end of the day, it matters little whether someone suffers from BPD on any other major psychological issue, it should be clear that you should not be marrying her. But, I am sure that even if you had known, you would have been more than happy to rationalize it away  :-X
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Online andrewfi

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Rasputin, as is so often the case a generalisation can be misleading. Now we do not know if this woman is borderline, but from what the OP wrote I can certainly see where that opinion might come from.

With BPD if a person develops an attraction for another then there is going to be very little to give the game away, particularly in the context of a bloke importing a woman to another country to be his wife.

For a start, if a borderline is attracted to a person they will be loving, attentive, kind, great company and likely the best shag of a bloke's life. Sex is something of a core competence for borderlines.
At the heart of the malady is a fear of being alone and to that end sufferers do all they can to bring people close to them and to keep them there.

The problems come later as the borderline will usually act in ways to 'test' the attachment and devotion of her partner - this very activity will often drive friends, family and lovers away - BPD sufferers are often quite lonely as a result. In my experience there was plenty of time for a wife hunter to fall in love, and import his fiancee before anything would show up as wrong.

Of course, the woman's family will likely know there is something wrong but they will be glad to see the back of her happy to see she has met a good man and so will say nothing, and, of course, because the foreign swain is not, unlike yourself, fluent in the local language he will not easily detect issues that arise from the way these people can speak, not can he easily ask questions of the family - until too late.

In the context it'd be quite easy to ascribe the negative features of BPD to culture shock, particularly if one was not familiar with that syndrome.

I do not know if this woman is a borderline, but if she is then the reaction to the stress of moving to a new home may well have been enough to trigger a flip from one who almost idolises her man to one who thinks her man is the most imperfect creature under the sun. BPD has been described as an extreme abreaction to stress - I think that is a little simplistic but I know that a man who can control and manage the environment of his BPD partner to minimise stress will see positive results.

Sometimes women (and it is largely women who suffer with BPD) can, after flipping to disdain, flip back to the original man but it is not common - the effort required in justifying the change from love to hate and back again is simply too much for most women to manage - in my case though it did happen, more than once. There are reasons why it happened but they are not likely easily replicable and probably not something the OP would want to do anyway.

Truth be told, it is likely that more than a few women who self export, or who choose that route do so as a way to 'self medicate' issues including BPD and given the contracted courtship precess and imperfect communication it is no great surprise that women seem to be lovely women in their home country but turn into shrews when they move.

Rasputin, don't for one second think that all aspects of mental illness are always negative, they are not. There will be a range of behaviours that are often context specific; unless you would rule out a woman who was good natured and good humoured along side the ones who appear less positive then one simply can not make an easy generalisation as you did.

In my case, I had known the woman for some 3 years before we started to live together and after almost six years of knowing her I can assure you that most guys would not know there was anything wrong with her if they knew her for only a few weeks on a daily basis. On a wife hunting trip where the woman is being given the opportunity to escape, as she sees it, the nasty world that she inhabits, the man will be love bombed and the woman will be entirely sincere in her feelings and actions.
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Offline msmoby

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OMG,

The OP apparently came here to get away from bizarre advice .. I REALLY hope he doesn't take that of andrewfi ( the marketeer - turned 'shrink')  too seriously ... he points out to Rasputin the dangers of generalisations and proceeds to do JUST that..

Based on some of his assessments re the 'plights' of other members 'afflictions' when they take issue with his pronouncements  - this post should carry a warning notice :(
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Offline cufflinks

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OMG,

The OP apparently came here to get away from bizarre advice .. I REALLY hope he doesn't take that of andrewfi ( the marketeer - turned 'shrink')  too seriously ... he points out to Rasputin the dangers of generalisations and proceeds to do JUST that..

Based on some of his assessments re the 'plights' of other members 'afflictions' when they take issue with his pronouncements  - this post should carry a warning notice :(

Not being a pop PSYCHO-analyst (just a normal analyst of life)  besides the evil wife of satan behaviour - my experience with BPD and Bi-Polars is that their attention spans very greatly from moment to moment.  It is extremely hard for them to focus.  We hired one woman as a web consultant on a work made for hire independent consulting basis - one or two days she would go through a manic creative burst and then a week would follow where she was lost and nothing got done...  so focus was a major issue for her and work just did not get done.   In the case of the OPs fiance' she exhibited clear focus on getting married now!  Which the OP clearly saw as a very red flag - did she have BPD?  Perhaps, but she did have a clear focus on her goal which was a GCG mule to rake over the coals and she had the help and advice of a USA resident "friend" egging her on.

In retrospect this may have been a very well thought out and planned effort on the UAW's part and just poorly executed by her inability to keep her horrendous behavior under wraps. 

This is one of the oldest scams in the International-W (Asia, RU-UA-Latin America ladies etc) arsenal - many folks chalk it up to medical or cultural issues when the simple answer might have been the OP was just an easy mark in the UAW's mind - she having been a terp for a while in UA may have decided why not find her own little pot of gold at the end of the USA/UK/EU rainbow and our OP was just the unlucky target.  The GCG DV scams are legendary and devastating - the idea that you show you care for a woman and her child only to have sex trafficking and slavery charges thrown at you - what if he was a teacher or a trusted business person with a reputation to protect - he could have been ruined - these types of charges are very sobering and a real warning to any western man in this process.  Difficult women and bad behavior go hand in hand and never get any better.

My experience with sharp FSUW in the states when asked if I should bring an FSUW over to the USA is a blunt "Why not you will get at least 2 good years out of her!" Also in biz in the RU-UA-STANS you learn that what people say and what they do are often different and why it is so important to really know someone the way you would in the USA before you bring them into the inner sanctum sanctorum of your life and possibly expose yourself to someone who could do harm to you while you sleep.   This could have ended much much worse for the OP and serves as a warning to us all really.

Offline Rasputin

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Rasputin, as is so often the case a generalisation can be misleading.

He had identified problems before she came to the USA and he identified problems before getting married.  The problem with most is that they ignore the obvious and simply write it off. If I were dating someone and I were observing erratic behaviour, I would not wait for the psychological assessment to do a long soul searching as to whether I want to be in that relationship and would certainly not be buying the pop psychology how-to books. Sure, if you discover something after marriage, you have to do your best to deal with it. However, if you suspect something, anything, in the first weeks of dating (i.e. you are blaming culture or anything else for behaviour you do not like), or at any point before marriage, it is reasonable to assume that things will get much worse and not better after marriage, and then you have to seriously consider ending the relationship.
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Online andrewfi

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moby, are you still drunk?

I am a marketer, actually, when you have a business, so are you. I am not a shrink, but I have lived with a woman with BPD as you already know, but perhaps like many topers your memory has taken a hit? So, no not generalising, I was making reference to my existing knowledge about specific situations - do you see how that is not the same as an overbroad generalisation? No, possibly not or you'd not have made such a silly point in the first place.
Don't forget moby that pretty much all human communication involves some degree of generalisation - the trick that you have yet to master is to understand the degree to which generalisation is appropriate.

Cuffy is right, attention span of an agitated flea - at least when under stress, very hard to get my ex to focus unless first one helped her to relax.

Yes, cuffy, it may have been part of a scheme to enable her to use the guy as a mule but if the OP is an honest reporter I think not. From all I have seen it is too easy to get to stay in the US by alleging assault etc. If she really wanted to stay she'd have stayed.

As you, moby, did not notice I gave very little advice, you misread or chose to invent stuff again - with you it is hard to know which you are doing at any one time, maybe you do both simultaneously. ;) Hey, two things at once - will wonders never cease.
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Offline msmoby

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moby, are you still drunk?

If one can get drunk -  not having consumed alcohol (for two days - and only two shared small glasses of red wine in a WEEK) ..then 'YES' I was drunk  :laugh: Again, you  illustrate the pretty worthless nature of of your conclusions re any posters.... and consequent 'advise' ..


I am not a shrink, but I have lived with a woman with BPD as you already know, but perhaps like many topers your memory has taken a hit?

I (well)  remember the story about your ( relative short-term ) intimate phase of your relationship and attempts to do the right thing for someone you cared for.... as ever - you assume this makes you some sort of expert...

You are NOT the only person who has experience of said condition and you most certainly could have ( and IMHO DID) generalise, viz:

1/ Did you meet the OP's woman and were you intimate with her ?

2/ Have we heard HER side of the story ?

3/ Bi-polar sufferers are not necessarily 'good lays' - they MAY need sexual intimacy, as a form of 'reassurance' - but I have a feeling such experiences might not necessarily be a 'good lay' ....  ( based on my interpretation )

Don't forget moby that pretty much all human communication involves some degree of generalisation - the trick that you have yet to master is to understand the degree to which generalisation is appropriate.

Being 'lectured' by you  - as to communication skills - by a guy who's standard 'excuse' is, " 'you have a reading comprehension issue "  is (as always) deliciously ironic..

There's generalisations by someone who IS knowledgeable on a subject, and 'generalisations' by folk who regard their limited experience as making them an 'expert'..  As you aren't even very good at figuring out my sobriety levels, I think it is not unfair to wonder at YOUR ability to judge ...

As you, moby, did not notice I gave very little advice, you misread or chose to invent stuff again - with you it is hard to know which you are doing at any one time, maybe you do both simultaneously. ;) Hey, two things at once - will wonders never cease.

Andrewfi, what I keep seeing is  perennially single guys arguing the toss ( and throwing not the occasional insult - questioning another posters sobriety, sanity, education level [ delete as appropriate] ) who probably read more about subjects they post on, rather than having any practical experience...

My generalisation is probably a LOT more accurate.....

To the OP.. I'm sorry - this is not a pop at you, but I REALLY think that going into such detail in public is unnecessary - as it just ends up with folk poring over the embers of your relationship .

 

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Here is my Russophobia/Kremlinphobia topic

Offline Philnatseaman

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Not being a pop PSYCHO-analyst (just a normal analyst of life)  besides the evil wife of satan behaviour - my experience with BPD and Bi-Polars is that their attention spans very greatly from moment to moment.  It is extremely hard for them to focus.  We hired one woman as a web consultant on a work made for hire independent consulting basis - one or two days she would go through a manic creative burst and then a week would follow where she was lost and nothing got done...  so focus was a major issue for her and work just did not get done.   In the case of the OPs fiance' she exhibited clear focus on getting married now!  Which the OP clearly saw as a very red flag - did she have BPD?  Perhaps, but she did have a clear focus on her goal which was a GCG mule to rake over the coals and she had the help and advice of a USA resident "friend" egging her on.

In retrospect this may have been a very well thought out and planned effort on the UAW's part and just poorly executed by her inability to keep her horrendous behavior under wraps. 

This is one of the oldest scams in the International-W (Asia, RU-UA-Latin America ladies etc) arsenal - many folks chalk it up to medical or cultural issues when the simple answer might have been the OP was just an easy mark in the UAW's mind - she having been a terp for a while in UA may have decided why not find her own little pot of gold at the end of the USA/UK/EU rainbow and our OP was just the unlucky target.  The GCG DV scams are legendary and devastating - the idea that you show you care for a woman and her child only to have sex trafficking and slavery charges thrown at you - what if he was a teacher or a trusted business person with a reputation to protect - he could have been ruined - these types of charges are very sobering and a real warning to any western man in this process.  Difficult women and bad behavior go hand in hand and never get any better.

My experience with sharp FSUW in the states when asked if I should bring an FSUW over to the USA is a blunt "Why not you will get at least 2 good years out of her!" Also in biz in the RU-UA-STANS you learn that what people say and what they do are often different and why it is so important to really know someone the way you would in the USA before you bring them into the inner sanctum sanctorum of your life and possibly expose yourself to someone who could do harm to you while you sleep.   This could have ended much much worse for the OP and serves as a warning to us all really.

You make some good points.  I'll share my view relative to my girl.  (i.e., ex-fiancee; it's shorter just to say girl)

First off, my girl was absolutely NOT bipolar, but very clearly BPD behaviors 24-7, and when I looked at her behavior and how things went in hindsight, it became even more obvious to me.  The assorted put-down remarks from people about amateur pop psychology simply reflect people who have not experienced a BPD in a close relationship.  That was ME before this mess.  At least eHarmony and Chemistry.com in the USA don't seem to send me personality-disordered women; they usually send me emotionally needy codependents whose previous relationships were with Narcissist PDs or BPDs.  So, a lot of this was my fault for being inexperienced and ignorant when this mess started, and an optimist to boot.  Anyway, I digress.  My girl, and many BPDs, can be highly situationally competent.  My ex is a fantastic English-Russian interpreter.  There are a lot of BPDs with PhDs and advanced degrees.  I can recommend my ex as an interpreter; languages are her gift, and in her area of competence, she would be a very good worker, and you would likely never know about her BPD issues.  Often this side is only shown to the very close people.

I read an interesting article on whether BPD actions and schemes are premeditated.  Basically, the answer is that they generally do not have a grand 5-year step-by-step plan for world domination.  They are masters of the improv.  They are instinctive predators, like a crocodile or a shark.  If you find yourself in their element, without adequate preparation, you are in big trouble.  It's more that they have an instinctive, emotional sense of whether things are in balance in the relationship for them, i.e., they are in control, and if they feel they aren't, they have clever manipulation tactics for judo-flipping you and having you wind up on your back with their heel on your throat.  If you feel like you are always "in trouble" with a close person, over trivial things that often seem contrived, that is one potential sign of BPD-like behavior.  As a pragmatic matter, to me it's irrelevant if there is a formal diagnosis, or if someone meets ALL the criteria.  It's a continuum.  If you are on the receiving end of BPD-like behavior, there are communication and action strategies that will be much more effective than the "normal" and "logical" response most people would have.  Basically, if you are consistently getting into logical arguments with a BPD, and trying to convince them of the factual and logical correctness of your point of view, you are screwed.  (Hint: instead, acknowledge their EMOTIONS, without necessarily agreeing with their warped view of reality, and then find some small part of what they are saying that you CAN agree with, and agree with it.  By you validating a part of their reality, they can calm down, they are no longer fighting for air, just to simply exist, and then they can often return to communicating in a more normal and reasonable way.)

My purpose here is to share my story so that other people who are READY to hear and understand it, and in a situation that is potentially similar to mine, can spot similarities and patterns and pull the plug much sooner and less expensively than I did.  So I don't really care so much whether people agree with me, or pooh-pooh BPD, or whatever.  To each their own.

Anyway, I think my girl was actually sincere, on one level, about being with me and living happily ever after, but on another level, the reptilian level, was not attracted to me and did not respect me, and in any battle between the logical mind and the reptilian mind, the logical will serve the reptilian.  I was guilty of being confident that I would win her over once she got over here.  I was incorrectly assuming she was a normal, though very emotional woman.  I was wrong, and the issues were much deeper.  So even though on one level she was sincere, Plan A, she had a ready-to-go Plan B in the back of her mind if I didn't toe her line.  She really was hoping and expecting she would have me "under her heel".  It is hard for her to emotionally adapt to and break in a new man.  She told me she only wanted to have to ever do that ONCE again in her life, i.e., with me.

If she had been a more competent actor, perhaps I would have been tricked into marrying her.  I can see some merit in the sharp FSUW statement, "Why not you will get at least 2 good years out of her!"  Except that when you are dealing with a BPD, I learned that the more likely outcome is that you will have your life as you know it destroyed.  Back to the crocodile analogy.  While I'm no Steve Irwin, I figured out that marrying this woman, given USA family courts, VAWA, etc. was equivalent to wading into her crocodile pond, and with few or no offsetting good times, no good two years.  That was the ONE thing I did figure out, is that the moment I married her, it gave her sudden incredible legal power and institutionalized ability to totally screw over my life, and that I needed to feel certain of her commitment to me, and that things would be good, and most of all, that the risk of having my life turned into hamburger was nonexistent, before pulling that marriage trigger.  She didn't exactly help her cause by statements about going to the police and demanding her rights.

A primary reason that BPDs are so incredibly dangerous in family court settings is that the BPD rearranges facts and sequences of events in their head to match their emotions.  I watched my girl do this over and over.  In insightful moments, she readily acknowledged to me that she does this.  So the BPD woman embellishes a story to make herself the victim, and the man the villain, and actually comes to believe her own rearranged version, in her own head, and then can convincingly tell that outright LIE of a story in a setting like family court, complete with convincing contrived tears and emotions.

So not only was this woman emotionally unstable, but turned out to be a very poor schemer and plotter.  Simply not very competent.  When her tactics didn't work, (withholding affection and intimacy, and not sleeping in the same room with me) she would come back, wait a while, and then retry the same tactic again, expecting it to work the next time, that somehow she just wasn't doing it right, or hadn't worn me down enough, or whatever.  No ability to adjust and change tactics in response to the situation.  I had given her credit for being much more clever and adaptable than that.   Not exactly the kind of highly capable partner I could build an empire with.

In hindsight, some of the responsibility for her behavior is mine.  She is a BPD.  Who knows what a BPD's deepest fear is? Anyone??!! Their deepest fear is ABANDONMENT by those they are emotionally connected to.  So, when I started spending evenings away from the house after her outbursts of bad behavior, initially it got her attention and she cleaned up some of it.  However, on a deeper level, it triggered those reptilian emotional fears of abandonment.  Then, when I started seeing the previous girlfriend again, that drove her over the edge with abandonment fears.  She's not capable of understanding that her actions DROVE me to do these things; after all, to her (and BPDs in general), a partner is not allowed to have needs of his own, so, of course my needs were unimportant and readily dismissed.  So, combined with the BPD behavior of "splitting", where a person is all good or all bad, I was quickly all bad, and along with the abandonment triggering, it turned into outright hate towards me.  I admit it; she messed with me, and, after trying kindler, gentler, unsuccessful measures, I messed with her right back.  I am no innocent choir boy here.

There were enough signs I should have recognized, and pulled the plug many months and thousands of dollars earlier.  As strange as this is going to sound to people, I felt *compelled* to bring her and her daughter over, that there was some higher purpose at work, and that I was merely a pawn in some overall higher plan, not her plan, but a higher plan.  I felt there was some spiritual reason I was supposed to do this, but had no clue how it would turn out or what the higher purpose was.   As it has turned out, there are already four people in my life who have shared their BPD stories with me.  Three of them rent from me, and the other one is my "personal auto mechanic".  So hell, never mind the spiritual stuff, it was about business and marketing.  Yeah, my best tenants are victi-- er, former partners of BPDs.  Two of these people knew they were dealing with a BPD, and have been able to give me helpful tips and advice during my ordeal.  As one of them said to me, "Hell, I did seven years of personal research on BPD relationships, so that you wouldn't have to!"  My mechanic has a baby mama who has pervasive BPD behaviors.  (Thank God he had sense enough not to marry her) I turned him onto a different way of looking at the situation, and ideas for improving communication from the Stop Walking On Eggshells book.  I bought him a copy, and autographed it, wishing him luck in improving "his condition".  So maybe if babymama finds it, she'll assume it's self-help for him and "his problem", not anything about her.  The other renter is arriving in a week.  He's coming here to fight his family court battle and become involved in the life of his 4-year-old son, and he is also dealing with a woman with pervasive BPD behaviors, and a family court system that is especially biased against men and fathers in the county I live in.  But you know what?  I'm going to help him win.  "Winning" being defined as being involved in the life of his son in a normal way, despite the obstacles his babymama has, and will continue to, put in his path.

Offline Philnatseaman

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He had identified problems before she came to the USA and he identified problems before getting married.  The problem with most is that they ignore the obvious and simply write it off. If I were dating someone and I were observing erratic behaviour, I would not wait for the psychological assessment to do a long soul searching as to whether I want to be in that relationship and would certainly not be buying the pop psychology how-to books. Sure, if you discover something after marriage, you have to do your best to deal with it. However, if you suspect something, anything, in the first weeks of dating (i.e. you are blaming culture or anything else for behaviour you do not like), or at any point before marriage, it is reasonable to assume that things will get much worse and not better after marriage, and then you have to seriously consider ending the relationship.

Yeah.  That's where I'm at now.  I'm just a slower learner.  But to show at least *some* progress, I eventually did come to the conclusion that I shouldn't expect anything from her to be different and better after marriage.  If I wasn't enjoying her company and working successfully with her, and sharing normal affection and intimacy with her before marriage, there was no absolutely no reason to expect it to suddenly change for the better after marriage.  So I was a day late and a dollar short.  Oops, make that 18 months late and around $14,000 shorter.  But the education was *priceless*.

Offline Philnatseaman

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P.S.what and where is VJ?

visajourney.com

He got some crazy advice and opinion over there, which is why he got invited here.

Yeah, there were a lot of dumb things said by ignorant people.  However, there were lots of helpful posts at VJ also.  The ones that were most helpful were from FSU women who told me that what I was experience was absolutely NOT due to cultural differences.  They empathized with my ex-fiancee's emotions in adjusting, but to a one, agreed her choice of sleeping in another room and pressuring me for quick marriage were the WRONG response.  They said that their response, in a similar high-stress adjustment situation was to move even closer to their fiance/husband to be, seeking his comfort and affection.  So that helped define for me what "normal" behavior should be, and have absolute confidence that the core issues did not involve cultural adjustments.

A couple people on VJ pointed me in the mental health direction, though they pointed to bipolar.  That eventually led me to stumble across BPD, and realize that was what I was dealing with.

Offline curiogeo7

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Thank you for telling your story. After 3 years I am still a newby, ( no have not found a gal yet I would cross the street for muchless the Atlantic, or pacific.
 Spent 4 years with a bipolar girlfriend, before I kissed her cheek and walked on.
  I ask why is there such a high incidence of emotional and mental "problems" with EE folk?
 Or is it only because that is what we find on the dating sites?
You do not make others choices for them, do not let others make choices for you.

Offline Philnatseaman

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...
With BPD if a person develops an attraction for another then there is going to be very little to give the game away, particularly in the context of a bloke importing a woman to another country to be his wife.

For a start, if a borderline is attracted to a person they will be loving, attentive, kind, great company and likely the best shag of a bloke's life. Sex is something of a core competence for borderlines.
At the heart of the malady is a fear of being alone and to that end sufferers do all they can to bring people close to them and to keep them there.

The problems come later as the borderline will usually act in ways to 'test' the attachment and devotion of her partner - this very activity will often drive friends, family and lovers away - BPD sufferers are often quite lonely as a result. In my experience there was plenty of time for a wife hunter to fall in love, and import his fiancee before anything would show up as wrong.

Of course, the woman's family will likely know there is something wrong but they will be glad to see the back of her happy to see she has met a good man and so will say nothing, and, of course, because the foreign swain is not, unlike yourself, fluent in the local language he will not easily detect issues that arise from the way these people can speak, not can he easily ask questions of the family - until too late.

In the context it'd be quite easy to ascribe the negative features of BPD to culture shock, particularly if one was not familiar with that syndrome.

I do not know if this woman is a borderline, but if she is then the reaction to the stress of moving to a new home may well have been enough to trigger a flip from one who almost idolises her man to one who thinks her man is the most imperfect creature under the sun. BPD has been described as an extreme abreaction to stress - I think that is a little simplistic but I know that a man who can control and manage the environment of his BPD partner to minimise stress will see positive results.

Sometimes women (and it is largely women who suffer with BPD) can, after flipping to disdain, flip back to the original man but it is not common - the effort required in justifying the change from love to hate and back again is simply too much for most women to manage - in my case though it did happen, more than once. There are reasons why it happened but they are not likely easily replicable and probably not something the OP would want to do anyway.

Truth be told, it is likely that more than a few women who self export, or who choose that route do so as a way to 'self medicate' issues including BPD and given the contracted courtship precess and imperfect communication it is no great surprise that women seem to be lovely women in their home country but turn into shrews when they move.

...

In my case, I had known the woman for some 3 years before we started to live together and after almost six years of knowing her I can assure you that most guys would not know there was anything wrong with her if they knew her for only a few weeks on a daily basis. On a wife hunting trip where the woman is being given the opportunity to escape, as she sees it, the nasty world that she inhabits, the man will be love bombed and the woman will be entirely sincere in her feelings and actions.

Isn't it just a whole different experience, discussing this with someone who has actually experienced a BPD intimate relationship firsthand?  I can tell that obviously you have had lots of firsthand experience with a woman (women?) with pervasive BPD behaviors.  It's like the difference between reading about surfing and watching videos of surfers, vs. actually getting out the in the waves on your surfboard.  When you've experienced trying to surf the unpredictable waves of BPD emotions, and been slammed around a bit, you realize that it's going to take a lot of work to stay upright and ride the waves and turn this into something worthwhile, and in the meantime, you're going to get slammed and tossed around by the waves a lot, and it could even wind up being fatal.  A lot of people (the smart ones?? ;-) ) choose not to go in in the first place, or if they do go in, to get the hell out before they get killed.

Yes, she was a great shag, not necessarily the absolute best ever, but a lot of fun at times.  She had a wild side wilder than almost any other woman I have been with.  I agree with your earlier statement that sex is like a core competency for BPDs.  Sexual behaviors are one way a BPD can mood-medicate their emotions.  However, the affectionate side is just as important as the sexual side, so the unevenness of that was a huge red flag to me.  It was like she would give herself to me one day, meaning affection as much as sex, and then take herself back the next day, and then two days later the pattern would repeat.  It was perplexing and baffling to me.  I would have rather just had a normal affectionate woman and I didn't really care so much about the wild side.  It was fun, but only of minor importance.

Your story, of knowing the woman for 3 years before moving in with her, and THEN discovering the BPD issues, exactly parallels the story of a close friend and helpful adviser in this whole ordeal.  BPDs usually only openly show their BPD behaviors to their very closest people.  They are very clever in this way.  They know how to fool the public.  Only after moving in together were you a close enough person for her to show the BPD side to you.  It's hard for people who haven't had a relationship with a BPD to really "get" this.  BPDs are masters of getting casual observers to think they are the normal one and you are the one with issues.

Your comments about the family knowing, are exactly spot-on as well.  Her mother totally knew her issues, even though she spoke no English.  I liked her mother very much.  I would have been happy to have her as my mother in law.  However, she also told me that several years earlier, her mother had her removed from her apartment by the police, and how traumatizing this was.  (And of course my ex made her daughter come with her to the police station as well; her daughter is her "constant object", which you probably know exactly what I mean by that.)  Also my ex was abandoned in a foreign country before, by an ex-husband who she says started cheating on her.  Now I am understanding that she drove the ex nuts, and he decided he didn't need to take it anymore. Also, the 15-year old daughter knew her mother had issues, and actually taught me a lot about how to deal with her mother and her mood swings, and not to take it personally on small things, that it was about her "nerves", not necessarily about me.

"The problems come later as the borderline will usually act in ways to 'test' the attachment and devotion of her partner - this very activity will often drive friends, family and lovers away - BPD sufferers are often quite lonely as a result."
Yes, fellow surfer, this is exactly what I experienced, in hindsight.  Ironic, their greatest fear is abandonment, yet they behave in ways that drive dear ones away.

"and probably not something the OP would want to do anyway."
Knowing what I know now, I could probably make an almost reasonable semblance of a relationship work with this woman, with some occasional very good times.  At the end of the day, the rewards didn't justify continuing to invest my time, attention, love, and finances in this woman.  The price was too high, and the risks of having my life turned into hamburger were too great.  There's a part of me that still loves her, but intellectually I have to tell myself that what I was in love with was the *fantasy* I created in my head about how life *could* be with this woman, and that I have to deal in *reality*, that life with her would have been very frustrating, and I would have felt trapped and boxed in in so many ways.  Just being around her during one of her moods, before I figured out better ways of communicating with her, was like being with a python that slowly squeezed the air out me, leaving me unable to breathe.  When I was with her, and she was having one of her random, unprovoked emotional snits, she made me miss my previous girlfriend, with every fiber of my being.  She made me feel feelings I didn't even know I had, of missing that girlfriend.

I did figure out much better ways to communicate with her, around the second week, and she noticed and complimented me on this, but the overall experience of the relationship, for me, was so unsatisfying I didn't feel she was worth the constant ongoing effort it would have taken.  Add to that the incredible risks of family court battles, financial disaster,  being set up for false allegations, VAWA, etc.  and it was absolutely NOT worth it.  Anyway, she showed her true character in her belated and desperate rape allegations.

Offline Philnatseaman

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Thank you for telling your story. After 3 years I am still a newby, ( no have not found a gal yet I would cross the street for muchless the Atlantic, or pacific.
 Spent 4 years with a bipolar girlfriend, before I kissed her cheek and walked on.
  I ask why is there such a high incidence of emotional and mental "problems" with EE folk?
 Or is it only because that is what we find on the dating sites?

There are plenty of BPDs and bipolar gals here in the good ole USA.  I've seen estimates that 5-10% of the female population in the USA suffers from BPD.  However, even these numbers are probably low for actual BPD behaviors, that many of the BPD behaviors, e.g., splitting, projecting, rearranging facts to match emotions, etc. could be present without rising to the level where they would be considered a full-fledged, diagnosable BPD.

I think Andrewfi may have nailed it in saying that marrying a foreigner is an escape route for some of these women in the FSU.  The local boys know she's nuts, and they have lots of other hot women to choose from, so for her, it's fuhgeddaboutit, as far as relationships go, from her local dating pool.  Sex partners, yes, she can find, but men who will put up with her in a serious relationship, no.  So that leaves the Russian bride route and a foreign man as her best remaining option.   So it could be that the ratio of women with emotional and mental issues is higher on FSU dating sites compared to the FSU general population.  Guesswork and conjecture, sure, but probably also somewhat true.

So, bottom line, I wouldn't assume the *overall* prevalence of mental/emotional issues is any higher in EE/FSU countries than the good ole USA.  After all, wasn't your 4-year bipolar girl from the same home country as you?

Offline msmoby

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I'm really not sure if any of us are qualified to label our ex partners as bi-polar or some other affliction.... I do know that despite clear signs - some of us might see something so good in that person that they'll take a chance..it might work out - it might not..

Here's an article that seems to suggest my worries re so called experts:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15213824

I feel sorry for folks in nations that don't permit a period of co-habitation before marriage ... 
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Offline Philnatseaman

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Just a follow-up to an earlier post, regarding my mechanic, who I gave a copy of the SWOE book to, and had long discussions with him about how to interact more successfully with his babymama.
I had dinner with him a few nights ago, and out of the blue, he told me that he had been using the ideas to communicate with his BPD babymama, using tips from me and my 7-years-of-personal-BPD-research friend, and the SWOE book, and that it had gone very well.
We had to get him unstuck from his silly "logical" concept that listening = agreeing.  Had to get him to see that all he is "agreeing" with is that yes, she is having emotions.
So if she says, "You've treated me so awfully since my surgery, and I know you are just waiting for me to get sick again, yeah, you want me to be sick again, don't you, you *snip*!"  So what would the "logical" response to this be?  To deny having treated her awfully, to deny wanting her to get sick again, and maybe to get mad and scold her for being so mean to you.  Wrong, wrong, wrong answer.  Logic = BAD, when it comes to BPD.  A more effective reply:  "Wow, you're really worried about getting sick again aren't you?  That surgery really sucked... it scared me too, and I can only imagine how awful it was for you."  Not *agreeing* with her insults, simply *ignoring* them, and acknowledging her feelings.  What is happening here is the BPD is feeling negative emotions, feeling very uneasy, but instead of taking responsibility for her own emotions, she "projects" the cause of the emotions onto the partner; it can't be her that's the cause of the negative emotions, so it must be something he did, so instinctively she makes up some contrived thing he must be doing to make her feel this way.  She's not intending to "lie", she's just describing what she "feels" must be true.  Anyway...
The most likely BPD response here is to settle down and realize that yes, THEY are worried, and to start acting like a normal, reasonable person again.  Notice the response also handed the *responsibility* for the emotion back to the BPD, helping them label and process their own emotions.
As you can see, it can be a lot of extra work to be this tuned in all the time, and ignore the insults by the BPD, and respond in a caring, empathetic way that helps the BPD take responsibility for their own emotions.  The truth is, the BPD isn't really even aware they're insulting you; they are just describing what feels "real" to them.  (Remember in my other post I talked about how BPDs rearrange reality in their head to match their emotions? Yeah, this is an example of that)  The other truth is, as the partner of a BPD, you are generally not allowed to have needs and wants of your own, and if you do, they are absolutely unimportant, and besides, your purpose in life is to take care of their needs and emotions.

The mechanic guy fought hard at first against understanding this kind of stuff... He is used to a world of rules and logic, as auto engines and systems usually follow rules and logic in how they work, and how to fix them.  Eventually, I got him to understand that listening to a BPD and responding effectively was not so different from listening to a car run, and paying attention to the noises it is making, and figuring out what they mean.  Even then, ignition systems operate based on one set of rules, A/C systems operate on another set of rules, fuel systems on yet another, and many of the systems interact.  So I told him what he was already doing with auto systems was way harder than figuring out the "rules" for communicating more effectively with a BPD, and it was just a matter of learning to tune in and recognize BPD-speak and behavior, and learning and internalizing a more correct set of rules for that situation.  That made a lot of sense to him, and since babymama is the gatekeeper for him being involved with their child, the best thing he can do for their children* is to work at communicating and interacting effectively with their mother, and developing a good parenting partnership.

* babymama has another, older child that is not his, but my mechanic treats this child as his own, so in essence they have "children" together, even though only the younger one is his.

Offline Philnatseaman

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I'm really not sure if any of us are qualified to label our ex partners as bi-polar or some other affliction.... I do know that despite clear signs - some of us might see something so good in that person that they'll take a chance..it might work out - it might not..

Here's an article that seems to suggest my worries re so called experts:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15213824

I feel sorry for folks in nations that don't permit a period of co-habitation before marriage ...

I got tired of having this argument with people who consider themselves guardians of all that is sacred and holy and professional in the mental health arena.  Notice my use of the term "pervasive BPD behaviors".  The truth is, Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD is a stupid and non-descriptive name for this condition.  The truth is, a great many mental health "professionals" are incompetent, biased, lazy, political-agenda-driven, etc.  There are quite a few good ones too, but then professional competencies are often narrow and focused in specific areas, and they may understand one set of issues well, but fail to recognize and be clueless on others.  The truth is, most people with what we call BPD will never be "diagnosed", for assorted reasons, like refusing to participate in any such process.   The truth is, the current legal/medical/HMO/insurance/pharmaceutical cartel dictates the economics and politics of mental health diagnosis, and the provider has a primary incentive to find a diagnosis that helps them get paid and provide services, and that is often more important than the correctness of the diagnosis.
As I understand it, there are disincentives to diagnosing BPD, and incentives towards diagnosing bipolar.  Bipolar gets treated with drugs and psychotherapy that insurance companies are more comfortable with.  The rap for years has been that BPDs simply don't get better, are uncooperative with therapy, meds aren't as helpful, and diagnosing someone BPD has the effect of stigmatizing them, and many insurance companies won't reimburse providers for BPD-related therapy because the ins. co views it as a black hole for money and services, since "BPDs just don't get better"

I can tell you I have personally seen a number of people who have been formally diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and when I observe their behavior, and accounts of it, it sounds much more like BPD.  There are two women that come immediately to mind.  One, I can't say if she's BPD or not, but the other, a close relative of my previous girlfriend, seems to check all the boxes for BPD.  This includes the box for "toddler rage", where the BPD occasionally will totally lose control and act like a 3 year old throwing herself on the floor and having a screaming, kicking tantrum in a grocery store when mom won't buy her the candy she wants.  This girl has gotten violent several times and hit people, family members, and I'm thinking toddler rage.  When my ex-fiancee pounded her fists and bare feet on the dashboard of my car while I drove, that was toddler rage.  When a few moments later, she reached over and yanked the steering wheel at 60mph, that was out-of-control, life-endangering toddler rage, and that's when I knew she had to go.  When a female friend of mine's BPD ex-husband, when she informed him she was leaving him, picked up a baseball bat and hit her 30+ times, beating her to the point of head injuries and wrist and ankle surgeries, that was BPD toddler rage.

So while I appreciate your point about careless use of mental health terms, for BPD, the issue is much more complex than what you describe.  Yes, it's harmful to sloppily throw around labels and apply them to anything that moves or that we don't understand.  But that's not what's happening here.  My attitude is that it doesn't really matter if someone is formally diagnosed by a "professional" or not; look at their behaviors, and if there are a host of BPD-like behaviors, then it makes sense for the "close people" in that person's life to learn and use BPD-friendly communication strategies when dealing with the BPD.  To me, BPD is a shorthand for describing a range of common behaviors, and good luck in getting a true BPD to cooperate with any efforts to "diagnose" them, short of being court-ordered.  The BPD's instant response will be that YOU must be the one with BPD, since they are absolutely normal.  After all, they've been living in their reality their whole life, and now you are telling them they are nuts?  (As I understand it, BPD is considered an emotional development deficiency, more than a mental health condition, and the experts theorize that it typically has roots in emotional/attachment trauma in the age 3-5 timeframe.)

Offline msmoby

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I got tired of having this argument with people who consider themselves guardians of all that is sacred and holy and professional in the mental health arena.  Notice my use of the term "pervasive BPD behaviors".  The truth is, Borderline Personality Disorder, BPD is a stupid and non-descriptive name for this condition.  The truth is, a great many mental health "professionals" are incompetent, biased, lazy, political-agenda-driven, etc.  There are quite a few good ones too, but then professional competencies are often narrow and focused in specific areas, and they may understand one set of issues well, but fail to recognize and be clueless on others.  The truth is, most people with what we call BPD will never be "diagnosed", for assorted reasons, like refusing to participate in any such process.   The truth is, the current legal/medical/HMO/insurance/pharmaceutical cartel dictates the economics and politics of mental health diagnosis, and the provider has a primary incentive to find a diagnosis that helps them get paid and provide services, and that is often more important than the correctness of the diagnosis.


In the UK, ( for example) we aren't SO bound by the profit motive of insurance Cos - so we can ( largely) eliminate that factor..

I hear what you are saying and feel your passion - on a subject that is REALLY big in your life right now, but it is over -  I'm not seeking any justification from you - but  remain concerned that you are fixated on the subject when you are referring to an individual case..  your personal experience. As you say, this is a complex subject with so many variables.

This is not an easy thing to recover from and I hope - in the fullness of time  - to see you're back in the dating game.


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Thanks for sharing your love story with us. From everything you've said I understood that your woman had an emotional breakdown for unknown to us  reason. We are not doctors here to diagnose her. She has left and the story is over. What I like about you is that you still say good things about her, and it's a plus to you as a MAN. Though you are fourteen thousand dollars shorter, but I hope
you've learned your lesson ... in a hard way. Money comes and go...
Next time meet the one you want to be with as soon as possible and spend as much time as you can with her before planning to spend life together, and pay attention to details. Good luck.

Offline Rasputin

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My attitude is that it doesn't really matter if someone is formally diagnosed by a "professional" or not; look at their behaviors, and if there are a host of BPD-like behaviors, then it makes sense for the "close people" in that person's life to learn and use BPD-friendly communication strategies when dealing with the BPD.  To me, BPD is a shorthand for describing a range of common behaviors, and good luck in getting a true BPD to cooperate with any efforts to "diagnose" them, short of being court-ordered.  The BPD's instant response will be that YOU must be the one with BPD, since they are absolutely normal.

This seems like the first step down a slippery slope to me  :-X This is a good summary that I found online and the video brings up some excellent points: http://bpdinfo.borderlinepersonality.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48:your-article-could-be-here&catid=39:loved-ones-general&Itemid=56

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Offline Philnatseaman

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In the UK, ( for example) we aren't SO bound by the profit motive of insurance Cos - so we can ( largely) eliminate that factor..

I hear what you are saying and feel your passion - on a subject that is REALLY big in your life right now, but it is over -  I'm not seeking any justification from you - but  remain concerned that you are fixated on the subject when you are referring to an individual case..  your personal experience. As you say, this is a complex subject with so many variables.

This is not an easy thing to recover from and I hope - in the fullness of time  - to see you're back in the dating game.

Yes, I plead guilty to sometimes being one of those typical USA-centric Americans.  Yes the healthcare system in Britain and Canada and many places is quite different than the it's-all-about-the-money mess we have here in the USA...

In any case, my purpose here is sharing parts of my story that might help others who find themselves suddenly confronted with with radically different behavior from their FSU girl after they bring her home.  Before it evaporates from memory.  Believe, me, I am looking forward to fully moving on and forgetting.  And I have still never run across a "Don't touch me, marry me immediately" story that turned out well for the man. 

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moby I tend to agree with you about diagnoses. In our case we did have help and the diagnosis was made as a result of private one on one and joint sessions with a psychotherapist who knew the field. Later we worked with a psychologist who was specialised in abuse cases who, whilst she preferred to not give labels certainly agreed with the patterns perceived by the first therapist.

BPD is a very complex malady becasue it is a grab bag of a whole load of nasty stuff and no two sufferers will be exactly the same which is why Philnatseaman made the point about how the behaviours from one illness cross over to another.

Philnatseaman, I know that you spent waaaay less time together than I did but you made a good call. Yes, it is possible to live with a person with BPD but there is stuff that you do not know about because it has not manifested itself with you.
Because I had a very close emotional connection it was not so easy to close the door. It gets harder the longer you go on together.

I was very lucky in that my ex opened up to me and because of that she came to understand that not everyone was like her. It made it easier for us to make a move toward therapy but therapy is almost impossible for BPD sufferers to maintain - all sorts of reasons.

Rasputin, slippery slope it may be to try to cope with an illness like this but what has not been mentioned is that after the onset of the illness, which varies but often becomes an issue in the mid to late 20's most women are able to be living a normal life by the time they are 40. About 75% of BPD sufferers are in that situation by then, but by that time 10-15% of the whole BPD population will have committed suicide and many more will have ruined and solitary lives. The thing is that if one loves a person then one loves them. If one makes a committment to that person then it stands.
In my case, my ex is still a part of my life but we do not see each other very much. I am glad she is a small part of my life and she is happy to be part of mine.
I had the hope that we might make it through the bad years and toward better times as she gets older. Sometimes I still have that hope.

By the way, there ARE ways of dealing with BPD, ways of coping, strategies to enable communication. They were worth trying for the woman who wanted to be the mother of my kids.

How can you walk away from someone you love and who loves you? Except when they flip. And in my case it was much worse because normally when they turn against somebody they tend to stay that way, it is too hard for them to construct a world in which you were once the man they loved, then a terrible bad man they hated and back to love again. My ex turned away from me and then back again, not common at all - albeit they really hate to lose touch with people entirely - even their abusers and other hated ones.

If I had to choose, then please give me a partner with bipolar disorder or depression or any one of the illnesses that are just a part of the spectrum that afflicts BPD sufferers.
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Offline Philnatseaman

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My attitude is that it doesn't really matter if someone is formally diagnosed by a "professional" or not; look at their behaviors, and if there are a host of BPD-like behaviors, then it makes sense for the "close people" in that person's life to learn and use BPD-friendly communication strategies when dealing with the BPD.  To me, BPD is a shorthand for describing a range of common behaviors, and good luck in getting a true BPD to cooperate with any efforts to "diagnose" them, short of being court-ordered.  The BPD's instant response will be that YOU must be the one with BPD, since they are absolutely normal.

This seems like the first step down a slippery slope to me  :-X This is a good summary that I found online and the video brings up some excellent points: http://bpdinfo.borderlinepersonality.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48:your-article-could-be-here&catid=39:loved-ones-general&Itemid=56

Yeah, the first, and most important part is to recognize and avoid or get the hell out of the situation quickly in the first place!  Yes, I made excuses for her, it was cultural differences, it was the stress of her difficult life in her country, and her American friend who I became acquainted with assured me that she would just be a normal calm woman once I got her over here, and she assured me of this as well.  I *wanted* to believe this.
My advice about learning BPD-friendly communication skills was more about dealing with family, e.g., parents, children, and of course, babymama, i.e., the relationships where simply walking away may not be such an easy an option.
Personally, I would walk away from a relationship with BPD unless they acknowledge the issues and are getting help.  And this was my bottom line with my ex-fiancee.  We all know how much "success" I had with that.  Maintaining your own boundaries and sense of self is very challenging in a relationship with a BPD.

I agree that video is a very good summary, and well worth viewing for people who have a close person with BPD.

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Personally, I would walk away from a relationship with BPD unless they acknowledge the issues and are getting help.  And this was my bottom line with my ex-fiancee. 

This is IMHO a truly rational approach. Ultimately, you can't save anybody, the best you can do is support them if they decide to save themselves  tiphat
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