Borderline Personality Disorder, Procedural Abuse, and Feminism: A Victim’s Reckoning of Their Tolls

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“I hate this world and almost everybody in it. People use each other. I find most of you disgusting. My brothers are disgusting. The people I used to work with are disgusting. You’re shallow, you’re two-faced and hypocritical, you’re judgmental, you cause me more pain than you could ever possibly know. You don’t want me around? Guess what? I don’t want to be around you ugly motherf[—]ers, either. You cause all of your own problems, heap them onto other people, and then blame those people for your problems. You bitch about the amount of pain you’re in, then tell other people to get over their pain.

“I am done with all of you. I am done with your lies and your shitty society, and most of all, I am done kissing your ass.”

—Mrs. Nathan Larson (May 9, 2014)

Virginian Nathan Larson has had a tumultuous year.

He married a woman he met online (April 23, 2014); then she moved out (June 21, 2014) and accused him, among other things, of rape (August 2014 through January 2015); then they divorced; then he learned he was a father when the news reached him that his ex-wife had committed suicide.

The quotation above is from an online post of his former wife’s published between their marriage and their separation. Below is an excerpt from a digital diary entry of hers written when she was a teen (which included a “hit list”):

I hate the students at […]. They are arrogant and foolish. My one dream, my passion is to achieve a machine gun or something and shoot every f[—]er in the school. I want to pump them full of metal, their blood splattered on the tiles. I want to make a massacre that becomes the worst in American history. There are only a few people who I would spare. Everyone else…I would love to see them writhing on the ground in pain, blood oozing out of a million holes in their body.

Nathan’s wife, who was an arguably troubled woman, abruptly terminated their relationship of “75 days total” and then informed him she had miscarried their child. In August 2014, she accused him of rape to the police, but he declined to talk with them and was never charged. In November 2014, she began to accuse him to the courts.

This wasn’t a trial run, either. The accusations brought against Nathan by his wife mirrored charges she had made against a previous partner, also to damning effect.

She petitioned three ex parte (temporary) restraining orders before successfully obtaining a permanent order against Nathan in January of this year (by default). Its alleged bases were “domestic abuse, stalking, sexual assault, and physical assault.” The order was petitioned in Colorado, and Nathan would have had to travel a significant distance to be heard in his defense. “Not wanting to invest money and emotional energy in fighting it, and knowing it would be hard for me to successfully contest it, I didn’t show up to the hearing,” he says. He elected to “move on.”

The two were divorced in April 2015, and that seemed to be an end on it.

Two months later, Nathan was told his (then) wife had given birth to a child in February, presumably the one she had told him she had miscarried. This information reached him along with the news that his former wife had killed herself following her commitment for “suicidal depression” and allegedly hearing voices compelling her “to hurt or kill the Child.”

Nathan must now contest a “dependency and neglect petition” in Colorado asserting he’s an unfit parent.

What follows are his reflections on his marriage to a woman who he alleges had untreated borderline personality disorder, on feminism, and on “abuse culture” and its damages.

Nathan Larson (with his new fiancée’s infant cousin)

Having the benefit of distance from the situation and more calmness about it (especially now that she’s dead), I would say that we both made a lot of mistakes during and after the relationship. There are some people who say that it’s a mistake to enter into a relationship with someone with untreated borderline personality, because it simply won’t work, no matter what you do. Unfortunately, once you get into a relationship like that, your sense of reality can get distorted because you’re so in love, and they’re so convincing, and they get so many other people to agree with them, that you too start to believe it if you don’t have enough of an understanding of BPD to realize what’s happening and why.

For example, suppose you used to argue with your BPD partner, and occasionally lost your temper and had to apologize for saying something unkind. Because they’re so sensitive to minor betrayals, they might claim that you horribly emotionally abused and bullied them to get your way, and then tried to be sweet to them and make up, just like in the classic model we’ve been taught of the cycle of abuse. If you’re still thinking this person is the most wonderful person in the world, then logically you might think that you really did emotionally abuse them, because why would such a wonderful person say it if it weren’t true? Plus, they are clearly very upset over how you treated them, and they broke up the relationship over it, and now they’ve told everyone in your circle of friends and family about it, and many of them are telling you they agree that the breakup was your fault because of your emotional abuse.

These are people you respect and trust, and therefore this could not possibly be happening unless you really were abusive!

You start to blame yourself and even tell people, “She left me because I was emotionally abusive” (which of course attracts more criticism, because who would admit that if it weren’t true?). Eventually, you run into someone who hears your account of what was actually said and done, and challenges your interpretation, saying you’re being too hard on yourself, and that this chick is not as great as you seem to think she is. (To which, of course, you may think, “He just doesn’t know and understand her and our deep and beautiful relationship! We were soulmates! What are the chances I will ever find another woman like that? I searched my whole life, and she was the only one like that I’ve ever met who loved and appreciated me so much.”)

If you have good friends, they’ll awaken you to the fact that someone who truly loved you that much would be willing to forgive and come back to you, or at least treat you decently, rather than holding a grudge and trying to make you suffer.

Also, there’s the fact to consider that people with borderline personality disorder idealize and devalue, and they view people as either completely good or completely bad. This means that once they’re faced with the inescapable reality that you’re not perfect, they have to view you as completely evil. They also have to deny any blame at all for the end of the relationship, lest they have to conclude that they too are flawed, which would cause them to view themselves as completely evil. They can’t handle any feelings of guilt; they have to deflect all blame, including the blame for their own emotionality.

Feminists, of course, are not thinking about all this psychology going on behind the scenes.

They’re busy calculating whether being skeptical of the claims of someone like that will make the public more likely to be skeptical of the claims of someone with legitimate, serious complaints, and make those victims more reluctant to come forward. So the innocent who was accused gets sacrificed for the greater good.

Some women with borderline personality disorder are attracted to the feminist movement and voraciously read all of their materials about abuse, patriarchy, rape culture, etc. because it helps them view themselves as a helpless victim of powerful sociopaths, and thus deflect blame.

They can find a community of people who will give them the benefit of the doubt by believing their stories, and confirm their interpretation of what happened. Borderlines also sometimes struggle to find a sense of identity, and the feminist movement can provide that as well. Their victimhood actually makes them useful to someone, since it’s a story they can tell and retell to those who need to be persuaded that political change is necessary to stop these abuses. (Feminists, like advocates for most other political movements, would bristle at any suggestion that their ideology attracts mentally ill people, since that would tend to discredit them.)

Yet what the feminist movement can never satisfactorily explain to them is why, despite all this training in recognizing red flags of abusers, and despite all the tools the system has provided for punishing abusers (e.g., restraining orders, prison sentences, etc.), they keep getting “abused” by partner after partner, while many other women seem to have successful, happy relationships.

The only possible answer is that it’s a combination of sociopaths’ finding them particularly attractive for some reason (maybe they sense they’ve been abused and think it’ll be easy to re-victimize them) combined with the fact that the patriarchy is still strong, abused women are still not being believed, and therefore we need to punish abusers more harshly and give the accusers even more benefit of the doubt.

Then, finally, when we have a world where all you need to do to get a man locked away for life is cry rape without any supporting evidence, rational men will finally stop raping. Except, even if such a system were put in place, these insecure women would still feel victimized by their partners, and they would attribute the “abuse” to these guys’ acting impulsively without regard to the certain punishment.

Copyright © 2015 RestrainingOrderAbuse.com

*An excellent explication of procedural abuse by “high-conflict” people (who are associated with personality disorders like BPD) and why court procedure is attractive to them is here.

6 thoughts on “Borderline Personality Disorder, Procedural Abuse, and Feminism: A Victim’s Reckoning of Their Tolls

  1. Oh my god, I have finally found what I have been looking for. The 1000 why’s that wont leave ones thought process. Waiting for her to come clean and do the right thing. The article describes her actions to a T. I am 51 years old, recently divorced and totally convinced this would be the woman I would grow old with. May of this year, was the 1st time in my life I had ever been arrested, I could not believe the tale she told police. I was begging for mercy from her, and the cops, told me to shut the F up. I did not even lay a hand on her, get close to her, and was arrested for probable cause. By June, she had convinced my mother, that she was god awful hurting without her true love, and I was a wreck missing her, she let her in. Things were awesome until I wanted to discuss the case and how to get it dismissed.From there it was one day, how great our love is to, the next day if you make me write a letter to the judge, I will send you to jail for NCO violations. She had me and still has me devastated. By my pre-trial hearing in July, She leverage me to take a plea, or would show the prosecutor ALL the texts and HOW much we have been seeing each other. I pled down to trespassing in my own house.
    We reconciled again, I had her come to my place, which NCO got her off our lease together, sticking me with it. And formally apologize to my son, that I never hurt her, nor ever intended to do so. She did.
    Then I thought ok this is moving the right direction, maybe our lives will end together. We then started disagreeing on shared debt, I said I need cash soon, the whole deal cost me a lot of money, based on lies you told. That was deemed as a threat in her mind. I was next day served with civil no contact order, for fear of physical safety. I hired a new lawyer, that was recommended and he was not able to see, how bad she would lie on that witness stand. I had my son testify about confession. The judge found her to be credible and me not credible by preponderance of the evidence. Now I question everyone’s ethics when I heard the judge say them words. This has destroyed my life. My lawyer made a motion to withdraw, when I demanded him to go after a ruling due to perjury. There is not justice in the truth. So disenfrachized, I ask god why me?
    I still love her is bad as it sounds and know she needs help mentally, but how do I go about it? Its has to be BPD. I cant see her till Sept of 2016. I can’t afford an appelant lawyer, that asked for 5k to be retained. just every day seems worse. I am at least getting on record a motion to appeal as pro-se, then see if a miracle happens before Breif is due 2 weeks later.

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  2. The government (ChildWelfare.gov) reports in its literature that development of BPD is associated with parental neglect/abuse.

    BPD_gov

    The father in this blog post was accused by a BPD woman whose parents, according to government literature, may be to blame for the BPD woman’s mental “issues.” The government records the BPD woman’s accusations against the father, accusations made before she’s institutionalized and then kills herself, and takes these accusations on faith. These accusations effectively bar the father from assuming custody of his child, and the government places the child in the care of the (negligent/abusive?) people who produced the BPD woman in the first place.

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  3. Its really sad but the truth is borderline personality is another name for DID or dissociative identity disorder. I know..I was first diagnosed as borderline thirty years ago…it is also called MPD or what used to be called multiple personality disorder. I suspect she had antisocial personality disorder as well..I know my Mom had DID too but she unlike me was a mean bitch who abuse me regularly spiritually emotionally and physically. she tried to abuse me sexually but gave that up to my brothers…every personality is different. Me for example I tend to get involved with abusive men or crazy ones…although until Michael lost it he was wonderful…I feel for this man but at least he was able to move on..I won’t be able to do that…as Michael is so tied up with my relationship with God..And BTW I was at Shabbat tonight…

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    1. The plan to “move on” didn’t take into account a baby. Now he’s having to defend his fitness as a parent to obtain rights to a child he didn’t know he had and whose mother killed herself.

      Her accusations, accordingly, can’t be withdrawn or qualified.

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      1. Then the courts should consider all her testimony null and void! It cannot be substantiated and he can no longer face his accuser so, as such it should be completely thrown out. Simple and easy.

        However I get that is not the reality we live in.

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