Birthday Wishes

     Today is The Fiancée's 21st birthday. According to USPS, she got her gift yesterday, and I texted her at midnight to be the first to wish her the best of birthdays. As I expected, she didn't respond, but I'm glad I did it nonetheless. As much as I did wrong in our relationship, I did and do mean it when I say I love her unconditionally. I hope she knows that.
     Last night, I was talking with a new friend of mine and we were talking about what went wrong within the relationship with The Fiancée. They pointed out that it wasn't healthy for me to blame myself so intensely for what went wrong and to view myself as such a monster. They said that just because I didn't view myself as a bad person or accepted the fact that my BPD had a large role to play in the lack of control for my behaviour doesn't mean that I'm not taking responsibility for it. A comment on here said things along the same line. That's hard for me to make sense of. I understand their meaning and can grasp it intellectually, but I feel like if I don't feel the way that I do, that I'm making light of what I did to The Fiancée or making it out to be like I don't accept responsibility because I'm blaming it on my mental illness. I am attempting to enter therapy, which I'm sure will help me figure things out, but scheduling is difficult.
     I'm curious for all of y'all's opinion on this. How do your opinions of someone change when you find out something about them that would oft be considered shameful? I'm not speaking of things where one has no control, like if I told you I had been raped or had a mental illness. I don't believe those should be considered shameful at all.  More along the lines of if you had known me a decent amount and liked me, and then found out I had been verbally and physically abusive to my loved one? How does that change your perception of a person? Does it at all? Does it make them someone you would no longer associate with? I'm so often too scared to tell someone I've abused The Fiancée because it scares me to think that people's opinions of me would change because of it.