Is this real or is this a phase?

This is a new account - I don’t know if my pwBPD stalks my account - but just in case she does.

My head is a mess. I don’t know what to think. People around me don’t understand. She’s the quiet BPD type.

1.5 year relationship. First 6 months was good. It was healthy. No obsessive and love bombing behaviour. No red flags. Never raised her voice once. Many rational conversations around difficult topics. She didn’t tell me about her trauma (or cptsd) until 3 months in, and she only shared because the situation was appropriate. Before that she told me she had a difficult life, but no more than that. It was a stable, supportive, good, and I’d say normal relationship.

April 2024. One of her abuser died. The abuse was horrific and she never got closure from. She went off the rails shortly after.

Every single day of those 6 months was pure hell. It was torture. The double checking car doors are locked so there’s no chance she jumps out, the constant yelling, the way she burns herself when she’s triggered, the constant blaming, the constant mood switching, the super highs and the super lows, the random big life changes, the alcohol (god the alcohol), the daily threats of breaking up, the tiniest of things that bring out that darkness in her eyes. I’ve spent hundreds of hours on this subreddit, and I can relate to something in every post I’ve read. Ironically, through all that, she still got a promotion at work, her friends threw her a wonderful surprise birthday party, it seems like everyone in her life loves her. I’m the only one who’s seen that psychotic and deranged side of her.

August 24. I told her she needs to get help or I will leave. I put my foot down on my boundaries. Cue the screaming and crying and blaming and self harm for weeks, of course, but finally, she was evaluated by the acute team at a hospital. They recommended schema therapy and DBT.

At the time we didn’t know she has BPD. We thought it was all behaviours from cptsd. She accepted the suggestion to go to counselling, but 3 sessions later told me it didn’t help. I was too tired to push. Maybe I enabled her. She took on a second job. I thought maybe she’s cheating, but I was too tired to care. I was just happy that she’s spending more time away from me.

October 2024. The abuse continued and I’m thinking about leaving her every day. The guilt was too much, so I took my time thinking it through. One day, she showed me her bank account (separate to her main one). It had $2000. She told me “it’s money for therapy. This should be enough for the first three months or so, and I’ll keep adding to the account”.

It turns out she really was working that second job. She set up an appointment with a psychiatrist (not the one from the hospital’s acute team) to get an evaluation, and she found a psychologist that specialises in cptsd, DBT, and schema therapy.

She went to those appointments. I didn’t go with her, but she showed me the transactions from that bank account. There’s a payment every 2 weeks to the psychologist. She got diagnosed with BPD. She told me her psychologist said it’s severe. She was prescribed medication and she’s been taking them every day.

November 24, everything started to improve. Instead of shouting at me, she washes her face or takes cold showers when she’s triggered. Instead of arguing over something she’s upset about at night, she takes a sleeping pill she’s prescribed and tells me we can talk about it tomorrow when she’s less tired. Conversations are calm. She cut out alcohol completely. She started exercising again, and going back to her own hobbies too. When I called her and she didn’t pick up, I used to fear for the worse. But now it’s usually something like “oh sorry I was vacuuming and missed your call”. She does her psychologist’s workbooks every day, and the entries she shared with me are genuine and thoughtful reflections on her behaviour. No blaming, no victim playing, no manipulation, just very transparent thoughts and also apologies to me. I see more and more of our earlier relationship.

And today. Truthfully, I’ve still been planning on leaving. A part of me was waiting for her to be “stable” again, so it eases my guilt when I leave her. Earlier this morning I went to view an apartment, so I can move out. There’s a lot of harm that cannot be undone.

She invited me to her therapy session today. It was the first time I attended it with her. Honestly, I didn’t expect much, maybe at most an apology facilitated through her psychologist. But instead, what I got was a deeply honest and genuine conversation from her. When her psychologist said “hurt people, hurt others”, her response was along the lines of “thanks for the compassion, but I’d like to take accountability and amend for my abusive behaviour”. I thought she’d lie or downplay what she’s done to me to her psychologist, but every event (even the worst ones), recounted by her matches up with my experience. Her psychologist wasn’t at all surprised, and was familiar with the details. There’s no sugar coating, no “I only did it because I was reacting to him”.

All of it was “I did this. That behaviour was abusive and horrible because of these reasons. My behaviour hurt my partner. I want to stop it”.

After the session, I took the afternoon off work and just cried. I don’t know if I want to leave anymore. Am I naive? Am I being tricked again? Is she just trying to manipulate me again? Or is she really changing?

I don’t even know who to talk to about this, no one understands in my close circle of friends. What do I do?