Welcome arsanthony,
there are many reasons why one becomes "repeat offender" and you are not the only one here .
I have spent 30 years taking care of these women
Taking care of others is a good social trait
. Unfortunately it can be abused as well. Most people have some sense of when they are asking too much. PwBPD often ask for much more care than reasonable. Most people have some good basic sense of when to stop giving care. Us caretakers less so. Combine the two and there is a very one sided relationship heading toward exhaustion of the caretaker.
But you know that pattern well . Now what can cause one get into such a relationship or even to repeat this again and again? I really don't have the general answer, spent some time thinking about it so here it goes:
- childhood experiences affecting attachment. There is plenty of research showing that children (or animals) do attach strongly to erratic abusive parents.
- care-taking: Balance of self vs. others. Also set up during childhood.
- emotional perceiving: Can play part of an emotional feedback loop (
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=221022.0)
- lack of boundaries and boundary skills
It is often worth understanding what got us to a bad place. With BPD it is not alway easy to understand cause and effect. BPD is an agent of chaos and seeing through that fog at times is impossible.
In your situation understanding the past is important but so is improving the now. These are two different journeys that are linked but can be pushed forward independently. For the Staying Board a good starting place are the LESSONS.
,
a0
