Why can't she infer my emotions?

[ArleighBurke]

My BPDw asked me this morning if I ever imagined life with her being dead. (While this *could* be a major red flag I don't take it as such. She's high functioning and loves our 3 kids, and I'm certain this is just her shooting the breeze). Part of my reply was: "you know in the movies, you see the seedy bar with the guy sitting there, nursing his beer, all alone, giving up on life - I could understand that being me. But I hope I wouldn't do that".

She said I was detached (speaking in the 3rd person) and cold/unemotional.

Me: "What if I rephrased that: I can imagine the feelings he has - being alone, lost, a part of him dead - I can imagine ME feeling those things."

She accepted that. But she couldn't infer my emotions from what i said? This has happenned in previous conversations as well. I can't remember what we were discussing, but she couldn't infer what i was feeling from what I said - I had to explicitly state "I feel X" for her to understand.

What is this? She's a school counsellor and she normally does well identifying the kids' emotions. But is she reading their emotion, or simply knows that "when X happens, people feel Y"? The last few years (since I've known about BPD) when we've argued she's often said "I see you feel angry/hurt/etc" but when I self-check I actually don't feel anything. So is she just assuming what I *should* feel? Or is she projecting (SHE feels angry/hurt)? Perhaps she can't project a feeling if I was to die?

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[Jessica84]

Seems like their brains are wired differently. They are hypersensitive always looking for cues, but they often misread other people's emotions. My bf has trouble reading anger. Being too quiet is angry, talking too loud is angry, being hyper is angry, but so is being too calm.   Basically if I'm breathing, there's a good chance I'm upset about something. Or I'll tell him something about my day, and he'll say "that must've pissed you off" ? Um... .not really. So yeah, they may be either projecting how they feel/would feel or how one should feel.

[motherhen]

Do you think it's that she can't infer them or that your answer was neutral and not expressing the emotions and validation she was hoping to hear?

[ArleighBurke]

I thought when I said "I could understand that being me" that the sentance meant I can identify with his pain and his loneliness. I didn't SAY I would feel those emotions - but I thought is was pretty obvious that I meant that. Was that too far a stretch? It certainly seems she needs me to explicitly say "I feel X".

[motherhen]

The whole thing is kind of awkardly set up in the first place. Hypothetical situations and imagining how we might handle it is kind of neutral and not loaded with emotion for many people. And BPD tend to react to neutral as a threat where others wouldn't see it that way, they would simply see neutral.

It sounds like she was fishing for validation in a round about way but then you missed that and responded in a more hypothetical and neutral way without seeing what she was really asking was "Am I important to you and would you miss me if I was gone?".

[waverider]

"I could understand that being me"

She wants you to specifically own it

"That would be me"... "I would be like that"

I find using hypthoticals and analogies dont work to well.  Likewise my wife wont use hypotheticals to describe a feeling, she states them as facts as applied to her instead. eg "it felt like I was being abused" becomes "I was abused", even though it was a feeling rather than a fact.

You were using an analogy to describe a feeling, she wanted you to state it as a fact. You can't be like something/someone, that is too abstract, you have to say what you would do