My mother has borderline personality disorder and it is getting worse with age, is this common?

My mother's nuts-ness has gotten worse in the past few years. She is semi-retired and in her early seventies. She was always extremely difficult to deal with but in the past few years she seems to be so horrible that I cannot stand to be around her even in short spurts.

I know that she loves me, but her behaviour is so hateful and damaging that I cannot be around her. In the past, I would go on mother-diets where I would put her on ice for months at a time and check in periodically. When she was not being a mean *****, I would see her.

Does anyone know if it is common for someone with borderline to get worse as they get older? I am thinking that now she has semi-retired her toxic fumes may just be more focused on me and that she is in reality just as bad as ever.

Everybody in my extended family thinks she is crazy, so her antics are always not surprising - but always hurtful to me as the only daughter. I am worried that I am going to have to completely cut her out of my life to protect myself from her abusiveness.

It is very sad, but I just don't know what else to do.

Some of the examples of her antics are: I cannot go on long car rides with her because she will not let me drive and she will not stop to let me go to the bathroom. I peed in my pants once after four hours of her refusing to pull over at a gas station while on a road trip to visit an ailing great aunt.

Last year I was very ill and lost 50 lbs. She decided that I was not sick but that I was a drug addict and told everyone in my family that I was not only a drug addict now but that I had always been one. This was particularly hurtful since both of my brothers have drug problems but I don't. My illness had nothing to do with addiction.

When I visit her and spend the night, she will not turn on the air conditioning in the summer or the heat in the winter to a reasonably comfortable degree - she leaves it in the mid 90's in the summer and low 60's in the winter. So, I can't sleep. Then she totally throws a tantrum when I make any noise at all - like getting a glass of water at night.

I can no longer eat with her at restaurants because she throws a tantrum if I don't order what she thinks I should eat and then throws another tantrum if I don't eat every morsel on the plate. Once I got a bad dish at a restaurant where I eat all the time. I always order the same thing, so I did not want to complain when they screwed it up just once. It was a Chinese restaurant, so I just ordered an additional eggroll. She started screaming and stormed out of the restaurant because I ordered food that I did not eat and then ordered something else.

I moved to another state almost a year ago and have not gone back to visit because I cannot stay at her house without having anxiety attacks. If I stay with a friend or in a hotel, I still cannot meet her for dinner or lunch at a restaurant because she freaks out there too.

Now, I am having trouble even staying in touch on the phone because she picks fights all the time over the most abusrd issues that really don't have anything to do with either her or me. I hate to end up totally estranged from her as she ages, but I really don't know what else to do.

My brothers hardly speak to her and never see her - and have been like that for years. I know that personality disorders are not like organic mental illnesses. I know that she is not in a psychotic fuge and that she knows what she is doing when she acts nuts. I also know that borderlines rarely will undergo therapy and that it rarely works.

I assume that with her being in her 70's that therapy is less likely now than it was before - she has always refused it and continues to refuse it.

My husband does not want me to have contact with her because she always upsets me and hurts me. And, in fairness, it is not right for me to sacrafice my own happiness and mental stability to please my mothers insatiable desire to be a total freak. I love my husband too much to allow her to destroy me - her hurting me hurts him too.

When do you throw in the towel with your own mother?