What happened to my right to change my mind?

[thisworld]

Hello 

Nowadays I'm focusing on the beginnings of my relationship with pwBPD as that's the phase where I made most of my mistakes. This focus is bringing a lot of issues lurking somewhere in me to the surface and I want to make the most out of this experience. So, here is something I realized about myself. I think I get obsessed with behaving properly in difficult relationships. I certainly did this in last relationship. "Properly" in this context means stating boundaries and being very coherent and unchanging almost to the point of rigidity. I become something as coherent as a written constitution, super methodical in a sense. I let go of spontaneous human behaviours like changing my mind especially if big things are involved. (I'm not like this with my friends and have never been like this to this degree in my other relationships.) The problem is, if I haven't clearly stated a boundary or discussed an issue openly, I simply cannot act upon it or change the development of events. I simply ban this to myself! What the heck? Why am I doing this? I'll appreciate your opinions on this.

Here is an example (I have one example, but it caused my demise:)):

When my ex  partner stated his wish to become my boyfriend, he said at the same time that he would get into rehab and start using suboxone (a substitute medication for heroin addiction) again. He said he had some successful past experience with it. His life in a big city had collapsed at this point although he is a talented person in a lot of things. So I said yes to this and told him that he could come and stay with me after rehab in this seaside spot where I live to get back on track. This is my solidarity spirit:)) And it's not limited to boyfriends or lovers actually, so I didn't have a major problem with this. We talked about how a three month window would help him to start recovery and slowly he would start functioning again.

Then the next thing I know is he has this fight with a worker in the rehab centre, doesn't agree with any constructive solutions offered by the staff (despite the fact that one of the counsellors is a trusted friend), quits rehab, loses his chances to get suboxone, this all happens on a visitors' day and I can't leave him like that there (I believed there was no one to help him but that's not very certain). So, here he is in my house in hospital pyjamas about to enter suboxone withdrawal in a matter of hours. My gut tightening badly. But I'm shocked and speechless. We go through this withdrawal and then I bring up the recovery issue. He neither rejects it nor starts it. He is dependent on me. I start my own SMART recovery for partners of addicts and know that I cannot push him into recovery. But actually, I can reject living with someone who is not in recovery. I simply don't do this. Was I afraid of losing him because I was attracted. Certainly, but not to the extent of agreeing to live with an active addict even though he wasn't using anything. I simply thought I had invited him to my place and now I couldn't ask him to leave. I think it was an ego thing for me: how could I be someone so incoherent with major decisions, inviting someone to another city and then asking him to leave? This is darn stupid. I was about to hit my head on the walls because it hadn't occurred to me to place a boundary beforehand (If you don't get suboxone, I can't live with you or something like that). This is even more stupid, to accept this before I had not thought about the boundary before. I could have given him a time limit, say 20 days to sort out a place to stay or something. But because of my coherence and fairness fetish and completely misinterpreting my own fetish, I agreed to live with him. The rest is history. (Basically a history of trying to respond to crisis). Then I did something worse that paralyzed me even further but maybe I can deal with it after this first phase. I mean, as I realize now, it's not even about changing my mind. My mind was always the same, it was him who changed our circumstances.

Please tell me why I did this and why I became like this:))

This rigidity, this obsession with having to state everything clearly beforehand and not changing my mind happened to me in this relationship. Could it be because I unconsciously decided to be the antithesis of volatility? Where did this warped perfectionism come from?

Any comment will be appreciated. 

[eeks]

Hi thisworld,

You say you "become obsessed with behaving properly in difficult relationships".  Do you think this may be because you are trying to set an example for your partner for how you would like to be treated, hoping he will follow it, and/or trying to "earn" good treatment by being spotless yourself?

And you seem to fault yourself for "failing to include a suboxone clause in the relationship contract", rather than looking at it like (I believe this is true of you, correct me if I'm wrong)  "I have never dated a drug addict before, how was I supposed to know that I needed to be so specific?  I had good intentions but this ended up turning out badly in ways I did not anticipate, so it is with grief that I have to 'change my mind' and end it"  It makes me wonder, did you have a parent who criticized you for inconsistency, not "practising what you preach, something like that?  I ask because it sounds to me like you are expecting yourself to accurately compensate for another's bad behaviour, rather than having higher expectations of them.

eeks

P.S. I have never heard anyone call it a "fairness fetish" before, I love it! 

[thisworld]

Eeks hi

And thank you so much for your help today. Both of your replies have shown me so much about myself.  It's like one light bulb after another.  I was feeling like a mystery to myself and maybe I'm a mystery only to myself

You said,

You say you "become obsessed with behaving properly in difficult relationships".  Do you think this may be because you are trying to set an example for your partner for how you would like to be treated, hoping he will follow it, and/or trying to "earn" good treatment by being spotless yourself?

Yes, you are right, I'm beating myself for failing to include the suboxone clause. I was aware of how people abused suboxone, I was prepared for it. It just never occurred to me that someone would drop the chance of accessing suboxone for good just to be able to leave the hospital at that moment. He seemed to want it so much. This was so out of my expectations. Actually, yes, to stop beating myself up for this (thanks for the encouragement:)) I'll try to think along a new way: I couldn't know this. This isn't his usual addict pattern (he even didn't go after heroin when he was out of the hospital). He just wanted to get out of the hospital. I think he had a BPD/NPD trigger (the hospital worker chucked his truth brush and was thus patronizing to him and he had a rage attack - I don't know how he can get these with so many tranquilizers in his system). And the doctor let him leave so easily - she was very busy at that time and asked him to wait a bit so that they could talk but maybe this was another wound for him. He also stayed there before and had other fights - people are scared of him in hospitals where he is "known". And no, I couldn't have guessed any of this because I didn't know about his disorder. I'll stop beating up myself for it.   

As for a parent who criticized me for my inconsistencies, no. My NPD mother very wisely avoids the word "inconsistency", just in case But you are spot on, as my ex husband said this to me repetitively, constantly, blaming me for my "double standards" - although he had a total of two examples in our 12-year marriage, one of which was a relatively petty thing I too accepted readily. But yes, I think it stuck with me, I remember feeling so guilty about this later. Maybe I learnt to feel guilt about it, it probably has roots somewhere else as well, but inconsistency almost became a taboo. I'm usually OK with not being spotless myself. I readily offer self-criticism due to my fairness fetish actually:)) But yes, I reckon I was trying to be spotless in this inconsistency thing.   

Also, because my mother and my significant relationship were built on inconsistency - lives revolving around "I didn't say that" basically- I may be trying to avoid it myself because it is very irritating and at times invalidating - though I long stopped fighting for "establishing" reality with these people. It's almost like I associate that with abuse and was trying not to be abusive myself - though it doesn't apply to my other relationships. Maybe his apparent vulnerability triggered this. Maybe I was trying to treat him the way I wanted to be treated when I was more vulnerable, perhaps as a child. (From now on I'll mother myself through myself:))

And again, you are right. Maybe I was trying to be a good example for the ex because boundaries mean a lot in a relationship with an addict.

I was reading something about positive entitlement in the workshops. Do you think my situation can be interpreted in those terms? I usually don't have a problem with positive entitlement. Do you think your comment about the parent (though it's the ex husband)  might be relevant in this sense, too?

Thank you so much for your comments.

P.S. I happen to be a libra as well:))