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"I came across a really interesting article about personality disorders and their role in divorce. I was lucky - while Peter certainly has some narcissistic tendencies and a definite lack of empathy on occasion (and that&amp;#039;s certainly not an uncommon opinion for an ex, I would imagine), I wouldn&amp;#039;t classify him as having a full-on personality disorder. I have known people that fit that definition, and also seen marriages blown apart by the strain of their issues, too. I was reading through the article and one paragraph really popped out at me. The author, James Dolan, points out: &amp;quot;The system&amp;#039;s prevailing notion in the termination of marriage is that both sides are equally at fault. This is debilitating, infuriating and magnifies the already intense suffering of going through divorce. An otherwise put-together person will become as crazy as they&amp;#039;ll ever be while going through divorce, and this while dealing with a spouse who plays somewhat fair. When dealing with a personality disordered spouse, the suffering greatly intensifies.&amp;quot; I can tell you now, there are few things that engender more wrath from a person going through a divorce than having some judgemental jerk tell you that it&amp;#039;s both your fault. That you both made mistakes. That it takes two to make a divorce, just like it takes two to make a marriage work. Not that any of that is entirely false, mind you. I made mistakes in my marriage. I am at fault for some of the misery my ex was feeling. I&amp;#039;ll own that because I need to, and I need to learn from it. But at the same time, I&amp;#039;m not the one who decided to take a vacation from my marriage when the going got tough.  It just goes to show you that the only people who are really qualified to make a comment on anyone&amp;#039;s marriage are the two people who are in it. You have no idea what either of them is living with on a daily basis. Between personality disorders, inner demons and a thousand other daily life stresses, sometimes people break. They break apart and they can&amp;#039;t be put back together again because they don&amp;#039;t want to be that person anymore. Sometimes, that means they don&amp;#039;t want to be the person they had to be in that life with someone else. And if your spouse is one of those people discussed in the above article, you&amp;#039;re going to have a long, hard road to anything resembling happiness.  Have you ever been involved with someone who fit the definition of a Personality Disorder? How did you handle it? [Ellie DeLano is the author of David And Me Under The Sea: Essays From A Decade With Autism, and also blogs at SingleMomtism.com. You can follow Ellie on Facebook and Twitter] "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a48879/personality-disorders-make-divorce-difficult/>