The Siren's Dance: Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder

By Anthony Walker and Anthony Walker

Book Overview

Walker's disturbing memoir follows the relationship between the author (a psychiatrist) and his wife, Michelle, from its tumultuous beginning in 1985 to their ambivalent last good-bye three years later. The subtitle "a case study" attempts to maintain a professional distance from this devastating relationship, but it's all too clear that the illness from which Walker's wife suffered came close to dragging him down with her. Walker is first smitten by Michelle when, as a medical student, he encounters her on rounds, where she is presented as a recent suicide attempt. He can't understand how such a beautiful, sexy young woman would want to kill herself and returns to interview her for a school presentation. Despite warnings from his teacher, friends and father, he falls deeply in love and is drawn into her world, only to emerge with great difficulty a year later. Walker, an outgoing, athletic, cheerful young man, relinquishes more and more of himself to Michelle and gradually becomes isolated, depressed, devious and even violent as he tries to cope with-and ultimately escape from-Michelle. Walker, who now treats teenage girls with borderline personality disorder, is not an expert writer. His dialogues often sound as if the speakers learned English as a second language. But this intimate narrative, showing how the best intentions of a na

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1794612734
• ISBN13: 9781794612730
• Release Date: January 2019
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Abuse, violence, codependency: I couldn't put it down...

This account of the author's marriage to an abusive woman with BPD reads like a novel - except it really happened! I couldn't put it down. Now a psychiatrist, Dr. Walker details the experiences surrounding his youthful marriage to a charming and captivating - but manipulative woman - who nearly destroyed him. The reader gains an understanding of the BPD mind as well as the partner's co-dependent participation in the events. As Jacqueline's verbal abuse escalated into violence over time, a loving husband progressively lost touch with his inner self, running the risk of becoming violent himself. Neither person set out to hurt the other. Unfortunately, this is how too many of these one-sided relationships go. BPD is poorly understood by the lay public, yet is a prevalent illness more often diagnosed among women than among men. This clearly written and informative book is excellent reading for any person interested in BPD relationships. This book is MUST reading for any man who has been in a destructive relationship with a BPD woman - the woman he just can't do enough for... Dr. Irene

Highly accessible and recommended reading.

The Courtship Dance Of The Borderline is a informative, humanistic look at "borderline personality disorder", a mental illness characterized by the afflicted person's tendency to resolutely divide the world into heroes and villains. Author and psychiatrist Anthony Walker, M.D. recounts the his marriage to a woman with borderline personality disorder and how their relationship became pathologically harmful to both of them. A straightforward, understanding view, The Courtship Dance Of The Borderline was deliberately and successfully written to be as accessible to the lay reader as to a mental health professional.

What is it like to be married to someone with BPD?

The term Borderline Personality Disorder seems to get thrown around easily. Sometimes it is even used as a pejorative. Friends and families often don't understand what someone married to a BPD goes through. This is a book to give them. Many of the instances in the book are very easy to identify with if you have ever been in such a relationship. Manipulation, all-or-nothing, up-and-down, good-or-bad, nothing in-between, suicide threats. This book is written by a psychiatrist but it is a memoir and not clinical...anyone can read it. I found it though to be a tremendous asset mainly because Dr. Walker put down his thoughts and motivations in ways that I could understand my own. I read it in one night unable to put it down.