Vicious cycle

[empathic]

Hello,

my uBPDw initiated another "late night talk" the other day. I don't really like talking about r/s issues at that hour since I feel a lot of anxiety but the way she presents it I don't have much choice.

She complains about me not showing any affection towards her, and she demands that I tell her how I view our r/s (if I want to continue at all, how I see it in a year from now etc). Told her I can't give a direct answer to that, as I need to work some things through first. Which is true, because I feel depressed currently, and feel like I need to address that.

The vicious cycle is this:

Her getting dysregulated => makes me want to avoid being around her => makes her feel like I don't show any affection towards her, getting dysregulated more often => me wanting to avoid being around her even more

How am I supposed to break that cycle?

During the talk I also brought up that I see her anger as a problem, but she thinks that "people get angry in r/s all the time". She won't acknowledge it as a problem. I told her that I think things really improved back when we were both in inidividual T (with the same T) but she doesn't really want to listen to that, she wants it all to be my fault currently, and on me to correct the situation.

[Validation78]

Hi Empathic!

The more you read other threads, the more you will see that late night "discussions" are very common. If there is a time that you do not feel is right for a discussion, you can remind yourself that you have the right to walk away by establishing better boundaries. If we establish boundaries around behaviors that are not acceptable to us, and enforce them with consequences, we let people know that something they are doing is not alright with us. Otherwise, we can expect to receive more of the same.

As to how to communicate with her about the other issues, sounds like you need to read up on communication tools that are very helpful for pwBPD (especially). Tools like validation, SET, and DEARMAN are very effective when used to resolve the sorts of problems you are having!

You can find the link to the tools I mentioned on The Staying Board, under The Lessons, or click on a staying board thread, and to the right of the screen, you will see a link.

Check it out, and see if some of the discussions help. Sometimes, members even practice discussions here!

Best Wishes,

Val78

[empathic]

Thanks for your reply. I have tried the tools with limited success. Perhaps I have allowed things to go too far, as I almost feel like I have PTSD from dealing with this all these years. She is very good at creating drama, during our last talk she was crying on and off, it almost was like I was her T during parts of it.

What I really need is some peace and quiet to reflect on things, and work on myself. That is very hard to get as she's seldom away from the house. This is contrary to what she wants at the moment, as she wants us to get closer together now. But I feel that I must process what I've been through before that can happen.

[Chicken Soup]

I have been in/still in your shoes. 

My wife thought having a fourth child would bring us closer together.  I declined that offer. 

I understand the drama part as well.  Sometimes they don't seem happy unless there's drama.  Mix in three teenage sons, well it gets to be a party.

[empathic]

I have been in/still in your shoes. 

My wife thought having a fourth child would bring us closer together.  I declined that offer. 

I understand the drama part as well.  Sometimes they don't seem happy unless there's drama.  Mix in three teenage sons, well it gets to be a party.

Sorry to hear that you're in a similar situation. Yes, the "don't seem happy unless there's drama" is very true. With my wife, a quiet evening with the family is not really something she values... . it's as if she needs to talk to people all the time. And the more drama there is, the more excited she gets. Like when talking to her mother and her mother tells her about something that they both think is outrageous.

Lately I've gotten the feeling that she wants to have the apple and eat it too. I'm not good enough to trust completely, but she wants us to get closer as a couple? Hmm... .

[O.Hi]

Hi Empathic,

I'm another person still in your shoes. I've had too many of those late night conversations to count. It's a painful and draining experience.

The "dysregulation > avoidance > dysregulation > avoidance" loop feels like one of the many circular aspects of a relationship with a person with these issues.

I've tried a few different tactics to defuse the situation:

• Apologizing (whether or not I feel I've done anything wrong)



• Reaffirming my love



• Taking breaks ("I need to take a walk for 30 minutes and gather my thoughts"



• Asking to discuss the next day when emotions cool down

Once the conversation has started, nothing seems to work. Discussing the facts of the situation has no impact. The feelings are the problem. I've tried to read about the recommended methods mentioned above, but it's really challenging to use them in real life situations (especially when you are on the fence about the relationship).

[nodoover]

My H starts serious things right before bed also and I have had too many nights where he goes to sleep after and I am up half the night!

So now I try to gently as possible stop the conversation and say I am tired let's talk in the morning or later.

The other thing and I almost started a post on it myself is the hard to get close because of their behavior then they are upset we are not close, I am talking sexually.

H is very upset about how little sex we have, and he knows I feel bad and guilty about it but I have had sex too many times when I was forcing myself. It's hard for me after he says angry things to want to have sex sometimes for days after calling me names I am sensitive it hurts, he is fine sometimes even a hour after a rant but it takes me days to feel like being affectionate and then he is doing something angry again and I want to stop the spiral but its hard.

[nevaeh]

H is very upset about how little sex we have, and he knows I feel bad and guilty about it but I have had sex too many times when I was forcing myself. It's hard for me after he says angry things to want to have sex sometimes for days after calling me names I am sensitive it hurts, he is fine sometimes even a hour after a rant but it takes me days to feel like being affectionate and then he is doing something angry again and I want to stop the spiral but its hard.

I am going to look for your other post about this because this describes my relationship with my H exactly.  H is very sexually dependent on me (or really just on sex in general) in order to "feel" happy.  We have been together for 23 years (married 18). 

Basically the "only" way my H measures my love and devotion to him is by the number of times we have sex every week.  In the past couple of years it hasn't been frequent at all, which he interprets as my problem and therefore the problems in our marriage are my fault because he's not being satisfied in the bedroom and that is why he's angry all the time.  He doesn't want me to "appease" him and have sex just to make him happy, but at the same time he also tells me that sometimes you just have to separate the emotion from the sex (which is what he says in response to my comment that I can't have sex with someone I don't feel emotionally close to). 

Our late night talks ALWAYS start with him tossing and turning and me eventually figuring out that he wants sex.  If he's tossing and turning and not falling asleep because he wants sex I know we are going to be up all night "talking".  I don't know why, buy these times always happen on a night when I'm particularly tired.  He eventually gets up and goes into the other room after making a big production of the fact that he's pissed.  By this point I am in full anxiety mode and there is no way I'm going to sleep.  I end up going in the other room to see "what's wrong" even though I already know... . he tells me he's tired of me not wanting to have sex and we get in a "deep" conversation about it.  This can go on for 2-3 hours.  By the time I finally get to bed I'm exhausted.  Then for the next couple of weeks I have a huge emotional battle going on in my head when I go to bed... . wondering if I should initiate sex to make him happy (even though I don't want sex) or if he will think I'm appeasing him.  If I don't have sex then I'm just feeding in to his opinion that I am the whole problem with the relationship. 

Every night I go to bed I have this mental battle in my head going on.  It is exhausting. 

I agree though, the late night conversations are a horrible trap.  You're damned if you engage and you're damned if you don't engage.  It just sucks.

[rollercoaster24]

Hi to all who posted here

SIGH! Late night conversations. I know all the things it says here about boundaries, and that if you tolerate the 'late night conversations' then you are intermittently reinforcing them to happen all the time, but what if you didn't often have a choice, like some of you say here.

What if your partner wakes you in the middle of the night, and uses sleep deprivation against you? This happened to me so many times, (several times per week). I was under way too much duress to even think straight, let alone use all the tools listed here. And believe me, I did pretty well mostly, for someone who was under incredible stress/pressure every day in my job and life, let alone being in a relationship with a frequently volatile partner.

I would find the same thing, that he could be so verbally cruel to me, battering me with words for hours, (rant/dysregulations/rages/accusations/verbal abuse) and I really did not have anywhere to go in the middle of the night, or late at night. I certainly wasn't going to leave him in charge of my house either and just take off and sit somewhere in my car. I live in a large country, (not my home country either) and there are many people here, who just 'disappear' unsolved every day. It is certainly not safe for a woman to go park in her car somewhere, even public 24 hour takeaway places or petrol stations are not safe places to park. More if you are a woman, and likely just as bad, maybe worse if your a man.

I had no real close family either, I had lost my friends, and what friends would tolerate a friend who regularly had to wake them in the middle of the night for some safe peaceful place to go to, if things were tough at home, (your trying to do the right thing etc by disengaging and enforcing boundaries). It says here that if things become abusive, you leave straight away, but what if you have nowhere to go?

What if they won't leave your house? they won't drive off and sit somewhere to 'chill out and cool down' which we all know is the right thing for them to do, since they are the one's with the big problem.

I also found that BP had a high sex drive, and for the most part, I did too, (I loved making love and being intimate with him) however, he could make love to me, and then turn around and literally 'bite me' again only minutes later, having just made love, his verbal cruelty hurt way deeper.

I began to have a lot of anxiety around making love too, and sometimes I would cry afterwards, because the emotional pain inflicted on me was so great. I loved this man so deeply, and yet all he could do was hurt me and push me away. I didn't want to become hard, and unfeeling myself, but I felt like that was what he wanted, so he could feel better about himself.

There was always an excuse and a justifcation for all his provocations/emotional assaults/rages/etc. It was the people in my life, my job, his family, living at my house, my kids, (young adults) my friends, my EX, (children's Father separated from for 15 years now).

I even found the same thing, my desire for making love did not die physically, but emotionally I became very guarded, whilst also finding that fantasies were the only way I could achieve satisfaction sexually, and they weren't ones that I felt that good about. I kind of felt like I was putting other women in the picture with him, because I didn't feel good enough to be there, or maybe didn't want to?

I know they say fantasies are a rich part of a couples physical life, and are normal, but I found the same one was a recurring fantasy for me, and deep down I don't feel that good over my reliance on it.

[rollercoaster24]

Just a note to add here.

Apologies for my rather personal post there. That was pretty deep folks... .

What I do have to say, is if I had to summon up my experiences with BP, it likens to being in love with a scorpion, or a black widow spider. They bring you in close, then bite you, or eat you straight after.

The black widow more fits the bill I think, except in my case, it was a male spider eating me after I had just mated with him.

Roller

[sjm7411]

I can relate to this post - especially the late night conversations, they are just endless and give me a huge amount of anxiety too when I know they are coming.  It sets the stage for immediate dread and emotional shutdown, I can feel my heart start to race and my brain kick into survival mode.  I have gotten to the point where I've left the house at 2AM because I can't take it anymore, knowing if I stay home I will be up all night.  I've actually slept in my car in a parking lot a couple of times.  Then I get accused of cheating on him or planning to leave him which creates a whole new set of abandonment issues.  It's an act of desperation to sleep in my car.  I feel so dysfunctional, I just want to have a normal relationship.  In the 13 years of my first marriage, not once did I ever stoop to that level of desperation during an argument.  It makes me think I was an idiot to leave my first marriage.  This one is so much worse. 

[empower-me]

Wow does this thread hit home.

I bet it does with so many non's that have that pwBPD who depends on them so much to be intimate whenever they say 'lets do it... . " They have such an innate dire need to have their sex drive fulfilled in order to function and feel somewhat normal.

I too have been told that "I" am the main reason for his reason to be either happy or depressed. All based  on my availability! don't even try to be sick one night!

All I had to do (his words) was just be available to him for sex whenver he wanted it and all our problems would blow away in the wind.

The only thing I needed to do in order to keep our r/s in good standing was please him sexually. thats it! And Poof!  The world would be perfect.

But I too was just like you.  Having to deal with all the mood swings and emotional baggage and then the tantrums right before bed or the irritation if I had the NERVE to say, I didn't feel like it! OMG... . I was a horrible person and I always reject him!

And I would ask him. "Ok, what can I say to help you feel like I'm not rejecting you? I promise, this is not about you but about how I'm feeling at present." And at times that was the truth at that point.

But they take it so personal and get so bent out of shape that by the time your done arguing you surely don't have any desire to be with them intimately or any other way!

Then the yelling can start as I try to sleep in the livingroom and they go on and on and on.  And yes, I too have given in for the sake of peace and then you feel like you've just sold your soul for his cheap thrill.

The whole thing gets so ugly and can really do a number on your head.  You want to enjoy intimacy with them but they depend on it so much for everything they feel.  They use it to decompress from all the pain they feel that day and when we say we're not in the mood it may as well be a knife in the heart.

They have lost their connection to release the pain they have pent up in side them and feel like they are going to explode without that escape.

We don't understand how deep seated this need is for them so we just know how horrible it can make us feel.  But they have so many uglier thiings going on than just feeling rejected.

I wish we could find a way to communicate with them easier.  I think so much could be worked out if they just knew how to express themselves more clearly without feeling such an overwhelming need to attack us in order to feel less broken and dejected.

What a shame to have to experience this when at other times it can be so beautiful and passionate.   boy did this thread bring back so many bad and some good memories.  

[SweetCharlotte]

Gosh, I have to be the discordant note in this thread because I don't ever feel like denying my partner sex because of his BPD behavior. Even if he sometimes "bites my head off" soon after. As long as I'm not dead tired, I am always receptive for intimate relations with my uBPDh.

I realize that I'm pretty unusual. The fact that I "never say no" has gotten kind of publicized, because he has mentioned it to his buddies and they are amazed. They all feel that their wives don't give them enough, except for one who is grossed out by his wife who has gained a lot of weight. Before I hooked up with my h I was completely abstinent for 12 years—maybe that has something to do with it!

Sometimes I actually fantasize (not as a sexual fantasy but as a self-affirmation fantasy) that I will refuse to make love, or at least refuse to go down on him. Then, in the moment I always become a totally willing partner. No matter how bad he treats me before or after. It's kind of sick!

[empower-me]

Interesting...

How has that impacted your relationship?  Has it helped his level of dysregulation or helped to minimize it?   Or can you say since you've always been open to him?

[SweetCharlotte]

I think it has helped to keep us together.

It's my own form of "Radical Acceptance" and he knows he can rely on it. He knows I would never sexually abandon him at least and that there are ways we can relate to each other when words fail us.

However, our sexual dynamic may have precipitated our last fight because I still insisted that he come to bed even though he had been rude to me all day and then he planned to sack out on the couch. I knew on some level I was sexually offering myself and he was rejecting me because I had snapped and called him a jerk. I couldn't let it pass, kept insisting, and he called a taxi in the middle of the night, stayed in a hotel, and flew back to his city the next day after giving me one more chance on the phone to promise to be more respectful. I just couldn't say those words; it felt too degrading after the way he had walked all over me the day before. However, if he had been in our bedroom I would have welcomed him back. If we were non-human primates, he'd be a chimpanzee and I'd be a bonobo.