Push-pull and mirroring at the same time?

[thisworld]

Have you experienced anything like this? Like your partner pushing and pulling on intimacy level but at the same time mirroring you? The impression I got while trying to learn about BPD was that this is somehow linear, but in  my case I feel like they happened at the same time (perhaps because we had to co-habit from very early onward due to some unexpected circumstances on his behalf?)

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey TW-

Do you have an example of what went down exactly?  And how did you react?

[GreenEyedMonster]

One time my ex was mirroring me and flirting with me while going on about how he didn't even like any of the things we did together anymore.  Is this what you mean?

[thisworld]

Maybe a bit. It's more like... .imagine the mirroring phase (and he was this very cuddly person who would always want to hold my hand, would sleep with an arm over me etc and- I was very surprised, I touch people less) but then during the very same period, he could be very irritable (almost rude or controlling me with his eyes and a very strangely authoritarian expression on his face) if I just naturally moved to sit or lie down beside him by the beach - "I want to lie down here alone, you lie down opposite me." And then back to his old self again. By this time he was dependent on me and maybe was engulfed but at the same time mirroring continued in everything else. Later, sex became a very obvious tool of control and push/pull but this strange thing about previous times surfaced and I'm just trying to make sense of it? It's almost like he introduced me to something (friendly body language, holding hands all the time, being bodily close) only to reject it when I thought it would be naturally there? I mean, who doesn't lie down next to their guy by the beach? Very confusing, very strange. Sometimes I remember that facial expression and get scared, it was almost hateful . Had never seen anything like that in a boyfriend before. 

[shatra]

thisworld wrote

imagine the mirroring phase (and he was this very cuddly person who would always want to hold my hand, would sleep with an arm over me etc and- I was very surprised, I touch people less)

-----But mirroring = they copy you, and reflect yourself back to you... .if you are not touchy and he was touchy, that wasn't mirroring. Mirroring is when you like disco music and have a loud laugh, and he suddenly likes disco and starts imitating your laugh

----They push pull is ongoing, I think they can mirror you during either phase?

[GreenEyedMonster]

My ex was very hot and cold during the idealization phase.  Either he was all over me, or didn't touch me.  We were staying in a hotel in a big city on vacation and had just taken in a romantic show at a comedy club and I expected things to be pretty hot when we got back to the hotel.  He watched a little late night TV, rolled over, and went to sleep, despite me all dressed up in lingerie next to him.  This is the same man who always had to sit on the same side of the booth as me in restaurants because he couldn't stand not to be touching! 

[fromheeltoheal]

My ex was very hot and cold during the idealization phase.  Either he was all over me, or didn't touch me.  We were staying in a hotel in a big city on vacation and had just taken in a romantic show at a comedy club and I expected things to be pretty hot when we got back to the hotel.  He watched a little late night TV, rolled over, and went to sleep, despite me all dressed up in lingerie next to him.  This is the same man who always had to sit on the same side of the booth as me in restaurants because he couldn't stand not to be touching! 

Yes, that is confusing and hurtful emotionally.  We all have a variety of moods and aren't always 'in the mood', but with someone with an unstable sense of self and emotions they feel intensely, whether they show it or not, it's beyond just varying moods, and contributes to the 'walking on eggshells' because we just don't know what the hell is going on.

And it's helpful to compare to a 'healthy' relationship, what would two people in a healthy relationship do?  If one of them was upset, they could tell the other one, with a vibe of mutual trust, respect and honestly, and with complete emotional vulnerability, they would work towards a resolution of the issue, and it would make the relationship stronger.  That was impossible with my ex, and I tried, but when it didn't happen I went to some very unhealthy behavior too.

So what did you do when he wasn't hot for you that night?  Was there a conversation about it or did you let it go?

[thisworld]

Yes GEM, very much like that, and similarly at a holiday place:)) Like hitting when least expected.

Shatra, it was him who initiated physical contact and maybe he carried on because I responded well? He actually slept like a dog in bed with arms and legs everywhere -it was new for me, too. But he moved to the other edge permanently as soon as I got used to it:))  

[GreenEyedMonster]

I have never thought of this as push-pull. Let me explain why.

FYI, the incident I'm describing happened 8 weeks into my relationship.  My ex woke up to one very angry Monster sleeping in the other hotel room bed.  He claimed that he had nightmares all night from being "abandoned" by me.  He was only mollified when I half-lied and said he had been kicking in his sleep.  We nearly broke up over it.

So here's my thinking.

1.)  pwBPD are giant pits of NEED.  They attend to their own needs first, always.

2.)  pwBPD project constantly, even when they are happy.

So if my ex comes back from this comedy club and he's tired and wants to sleep and isn't turned on, he sleeps.  It's just that simple.  There is no thought in his mind, like, maybe GEM wants something.  Maybe she is sitting there all prettied up in a negligee for a reason.  Maybe I should move over and hug and kiss her good night because she needs to feel loved.  Maybe, even though I'm not really turned on right now, I should think about what she wants.  Nope.  My ex did NOT roll that way.  If he wasn't turned on, no one was in his mind, end of story.  The only reason he ever showed sexual interest in me was because it turned him on, but if I felt like doing something and he didn't, I met with resistance.  His emotional development must have stalled out before he fully realized that other people's feelings might be completely different from his.

Keep in mind that pwBPD are the emotional age of children.  How good are children at thinking about others' needs?  And burdening children with adults' needs is abusive.  So pwBPD react to it as if they're being abused.  My ex thought about my needs approximately in the same way that a child would think of his mother's needs.  It might occur to him that I am a human with needs like any other person, but he thinks about those things only in passing and not in terms of his own responsibility.  (When I made it clear that they were his responsibility, he felt engulfed and outright accused me of emotional abuse.  Now he accuses me of stalking him.)

On the other side of the coin, I wonder sometimes how close I came to being raped.  My ex would have never done that out of malice or brutality, but out of a sense of projection.  "If I want it, you must."  I am fairly conservative and not at all quick to sleep with people.  I articulated this very clearly to my ex before we were ever alone together, so that we wouldn't have a misunderstanding.  I can recall, now, situations where I wonder if he projected on me the idea that I wanted to have sex with him, when in reality I wasn't ready, and would have felt horribly violated.  At the time I just wrote it off as my own anxieties, but knowing what I do now, I am not so sure.  Fortunately I stopped him before things came to that point.

My ex was very perceptive about other people's feelings.  However, my experience with other people who have grown up in abusive situations is that kids who are abused develop a sort of spidey sense for other peoples' feelings because it is a way for them to anticipate abuse and protect themselves, even if they are too emotionally stunted to be fully empathetic.  I believe this was the case with my ex.  He was almost totally incapable of imagining what my feelings were and never tempered his actions to match my emotional needs.  I once asked him to change the way he talked about a certain subject to make me more comfortable and he said, "No, that's too hard.  I won't do that."  It was like he had no comprehension that I had needs just like he did, and that just like him, I would leave the relationship if they weren't met!  The first time he came over to my parents' house, my mother baked him an entire pumpkin pie because that was his favorite food, and he barely said thank-you. 

Things like this go to show that pwBPD might be able to intellectually understand your thoughts and needs, but putting themselves in your place and being truly empathetic might be out of their league.  I've read that kids are able to do this by about age 8, so if it's true that pwBPD are often stalled out at a much younger age, this would fit.  For this reason, I have a hard time ascribing much intent to the actions of a pwBPD in terms of eliciting certain feelings from other people.  For example, my ex doesn't threaten me with a PPO to make me feel a certain way; he does it to protect himself from anxiety.  How I feel is immaterial. 

I suspect that this is true with a lot of these little incidents that look like push-pull -- they are just the pwBPD being so inwardly focused that they can only think of themselves.  Sorry that was so long-winded, but I hope it made sense.

[thisworld]

GEM,

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this and writing so openly about your experience. You cannot imagine how helpful this is. (And it's eerie because my ex used to wake up as an angry man as well) And our experiences are so similar, so very similar. I was very familiar with narcissists and the control aspect that shapes their behaviour before I met this BPD with strong narcissistic traits. We had a short but explosive relationship - parasuicides that went wrong and whatnot. My own understanding informed by NPD shaped my perception of him. It was only toward the very end that I started suspecting BPD and reading about it, I have been trying to make sense of what I went through -some sexually heavily traumatic- in terms of BPD. Feelings are surfacing, strange memories are surfacing. My realization is taking me back to earlier phases of our relatonship. It actually started to get weird long before I realized it clearly. Toward the end, sex was very blatantly an area of control anyway. My T however doesn't worry much about BPD, focuses on his narcissistic core, she says there is no BPD without narcissism and the diagnosis doesn't change that I was controlled. I fully agree - have always thought along these lines anyway. Ah, the sadistic grin... .

And here you are, another woman who went through similar things, who perceives it from a similar emotional window and basing your understanding on that lack of empathy. I don't even call it lack of empathy anymore. That's to me the result of perceiving someone as your extension - my mother is like that. They don't have empathy because we are not an "other" for them anyway.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this. It brings together the therapy narrative and the personal narrative together. And it's like this confirmation that could only come from an outsider who knew what I was trying to voice.



   

[GreenEyedMonster]

I am fortunate that I found this message board within weeks of my breakup, or I think I would have gone crazy wondering what on earth happened to me.  I have been validated by numerous other people on the boards, so I am more than happy to share my experiences.

Much is said about "painting black" and "painting white" but my experience tells me that there is more to it than just that.  My ex certainly DID paint people black or white, but this was a defense mechanism he used primarily with strangers.  For example, one time a healthcare professional told him to change his lifestyle to avoid consequences, and he painted her totally black and said that she was unprofessional and should get fired.  Painting black was how he dealt with people who said things he didn't want to hear or who held him accountable.

On the other hand, I have come to view what he is doing to me as different from "painting black," or at least more complicated.  I agree with you that it's not so much lack of empathy, but inability to see other people as complete human beings who are separate from the pwBPD.  There is also an element of being unable to separate a person's actions with their core intentions, and understanding that people make mistakes.  I think this is different from "painting black" because it is not a defense mechanism per se, but just a limitation in how they see other people because of lack of emotional development.  So it's a simplified view of the world -- if you are hurting me in any way, you must be a bad person with the intention to cause me pain.

This complicates things like constructive criticism.  If I tell my ex to stop doing something because it bothers me, and he doesn't like the feeling that gives him, I must be a bad person who wants to hurt him.  If I make him feel engulfed, or inadequate, or any of those things, I must be a bad person with the intention of hurting him.  His feelings define what he imagines as the reality of my thoughts.  (Does that make sense?)  The idea that a painful truth could be spoken from a position of compassion or trying to improve the relationship is lost on him.

So when I got pushy with him when our relationship started to really go downhill, that hurt him, and in his eyes, I am a bad person.  That is not so much a defense mechanism but his real perception of me, based on the way he acts.  He continues to hold this perception until my actions change.  This is why I am rejecting him HARD right now and very deliberately avoiding and ignoring him.  I need to send him the strong message that I need and want NOTHING from him.

The strange thing is, this will change his opinion of me, and he will once again think I'm a nice person.  By rejecting him, I could make him want me again.  But this won't last, because the minute I show interest in him again, I will be a "stalker" and "bad" because I am making him feel bad about meeting my needs.  I see this as a dead-end cycle.

I think to pwBPD, other people are black boxes, complicated things that they can't figure out.  That is part of the reason that they judge us entirely by our actions and have such a strong penchant for punishing people for being "bad."  They have no sense of the complexity of another human being.  I can't imagine what kind of parenting this would lead to, if you had children with such a person.  But that is how I see my own situation.

[thisworld]

Again, GEM, thank you for all the insight you have provided. This is helping me to see what happened both at the level of patterns and my emotional reactions. More importantly, you have helped me a lot with a critical perspective that makes it possible for me to differentiate between the control and cognitive distortions I saw - which, in my experience worked like a spiral. I know that BPD causes people to perceive facial expressions and words more negatively than intended. I didn't know this during my relationship with him but experienced this a lot of times. Toward the end, I was bending backwards to start any sentence outside hobbies or what to eat with "I'm not saying anything bad" etc. I was also constantly worried about his dismissive reactions. It's like a cycle, and perhaps an impossible cycle for me as BPD distortions triggered narcissistic wounds. I'm reading your other posts now and the depth of your perception is helping me a lot. To me, this experience cannot be read only on the axis of abandonment/engulfment.  Thanks again.

[GreenEyedMonster]

Yes, I think people really underestimate how much BPD is a product of cognitive distortions in addition to defense mechanisms.  I believe these individuals have emotions that are so strong that their rational mind is just unable to overcome them, hence the "feelings = facts" adage.

I have noticed that my pwBPD's defense mechanisms are fairly flimsy, and he is generally able to take responsibility for things when he knows he is wrong.  He is probably more shameless than other people, but that is only because he seeks to get his needs met.  Defense mechanisms wear off over time as anxiety decreases, but cognitive distortions don't change until the input changes. 

My ex feels zero guilt over what he has done to me, because in his mind it is all justified.  Not by defense mechanisms, but by his literal perception of me as a bad person with bad intentions.

I would add, in addition to some of the stories about my ex that I have posted elsewhere, that my ex was an EXTREMELY gullible person because of his inability to separate actions from intentions.  He fell victim to an internet predator who had him paying for her cell phone and other things during their relationship.  She was being kind to him, though, and that meant that she must be a good person.  The idea that a person might be kind to him in order to con him was too complex for him to grasp, so he was taken advantage of.  Anticipating something like being conned by an internet predator requires taking the vantage point of the other person -- is she talking to me just to get something from me?  What do I have to offer that she might want?  Since my ex's reality is only defined by his own emotions, and she made him feel good, she WAS totally good in his eyes.  Then, when she made him feel bad, she became totally bad.  She was the embodiment of whatever emotion she made him feel, good, bad, or otherwise.  There was no complexity or nuance in his perception of her as a person.  His emotion became, to him, the fact of who she was.

Similarly, I was (and still am) the feelings that I make him feel.  This is not necessarily "painting" me a color because he wants me or needs me to be something.  In fact, I think right now he is quite lonely and isolated and "needs" me to be good, but he can't overcome the negative emotions he feels around me.

I sensed this very early in my relationship, that my ex didn't love me for the complexity of who I was as a person, but rather he loved the emotion that I made him feel.  There was a sort of vacant feeling, or disconnect, in the relationship because of this, but it was hard to put my finger on.

I've been posted about these issues a lot in related threads, so check out what I've posted elsewhere (even today), thisworld, or feel free to PM me if you want to chat.

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey GEM-

I sensed this very early in my relationship, that my ex didn't love me for the complexity of who I was as a person, but rather he loved the emotion that I made him feel.  There was a sort of vacant feeling, or disconnect, in the relationship because of this, but it was hard to put my finger on.

You have a good handle on what was going on in that relationship and with him, and you make distinctions between him and you, like any rational person would, but I'm curious, did it ever seem like he was treating the two of you as one person?  BPD develops because someone never successfully detaches from their mother to become an autonomous individual with a 'self' of their own, so all future relationships are 'attachments', a recreation of that earliest bond with their mother where they didn't differentiate between themselves and their mother, they were one person, not a stretch really since he used to be inside her, we all go through that stage of development, except borderlines, who get stuck there.  So the unstable sense of self, the fears of abandonment and engulfment, and all of the behaviors that follow come out of that lack of a self and a desire to 'complete' themselves, although that's all subconscious and just shows up as feelings.  Curious if looked at through that frame, does that seem plausible with him?

[GreenEyedMonster]

You have a good handle on what was going on in that relationship and with him, and you make distinctions between him and you, like any rational person would, but I'm curious, did it ever seem like he was treating the two of you as one person? 

Yes, definitely.  See the story on how I think I might have almost been raped because of this earlier -- "If I want it, you want it."  I'm sure it was just beneath the surface in a lot of issues in our relationship, but I could see it the most when it came to the physical/sexual aspect of our relationship.  If he were turned on, or if he got what he wanted, that was supposed to be enough for me, too.  He didn't see much of a distinction between one of us liking it or the other.

When we traveled, he rarely thought it important to choose destinations or sights to see that I wanted, either.  If he was having a nice vacation, the assumption was that I was, too, even though I rarely got to see what I wanted.  He was like a little kid in that sense, where he seemed not to understand that I might not enjoy all the same things he did.

[thisworld]

Thank you GEM, I'm reading your posts in other threads and they are eye-opening. I also would like to be able to contact you when I don't know what to do with this "gradual" gray rock thing. This requires me to be able to read his probably self-contradictory motives sometimes and it's not easy. I'll certainly ask for your insight.

Dear Friends,

What I'm thinking about nowadays is how our perception of events is affected by the informative framework available to us. I see my partner mostly through my narc filter - my mother is a low-scale narc, I have been in relationships with cerebral narcs. Perceptionwise I'm very sensitive to control moves (atmospheric invalidation:)). Only, when my ex is acting out, he is a somatic narc - sexual, body image etc- which was new for me. I actually realized the BPD component when I was thinking, wow, what an impulsive, uncontrolled narc:))

My T thinks he is comorbid BPD/NPD (she also says practically no BPD without some degree of narcissism) with degrees of emotional sadism and she refers a lot to psychopaths. In my retrospective perception, maybe sometimes I will judge him wrongly, misunderstand his motives because I'll see a narc when was being his BPD self, and maybe I will deny some bitter truth to myself because I'm sympathizing with BPD while he was being a manipulative 

My question is to what degree can we rely on disorder theories while trying to understand motives or inner workings of comorbid individuals? 

 

[fromheeltoheal]

My question is to what degree can we rely on disorder theories while trying to understand motives or inner workings of comorbid individuals? 

 

Since everyone's different, we can't rely on theories much at all, except to provide a grounding.  In the end it's not about the label anyway, it's about how we feel when we're around someone who exhibits unacceptable traits, and whether or not we want to make any room for them in our lives as we stay grounded and get clear about what's best for us.

I learned there was such a thing as borderline personality disorder after I left her, and learning about the clinical side got rid of the confusion immediately, why she does what she does suddenly made sense, which was a good thing because it allowed me to let that go, and with it a lot of self-doubt, so I could start to deal with the fallout of emotional and physical abuse and all of my stuff that showed up in what I now consider a relationship crucible, time spent in borderline school with a teacher who was in my life at that time for a reason, there were lessons to learn; the teacher appears when the student is ready, and everything happens for a reason and it serves us.

[shatra]

GEM wrote---

I sensed this very early in my relationship, that my ex didn't love me for the complexity of who I was as a person, but rather he loved the emotion that I made him feel.

------Yes. Mine often said "You make me happy"... .like an outside drug he "took" to make himself feel better.

   I felt upset over this, as I felt yes, we can have an emotional effect on people, but can you really make someone happy?  It almost sounds like they wouldn't be happy unless they are with this outside person to make them happy.

  I would rather say "I'm happy about many of the things they do and say... .I often have a positive feeling around them"... .it's a small difference,, but I feel it's unhealthy for them to say a person "makes" them happy

[thisworld]

I feel the same irritation for things like "you are such a good person", "you are an angel", "you are turning me into a proper man, I find this so sexy" etc. But I don't think the problem is at the verbal level. In my case, my gut was warning me but words are tangible things that we relate the negative feeling to. I understand the philosophical problem behind someone saying to someone else that they make them X. However, I can imagine myself saying "you make me happy" in a relationship as some form of recognition or maybe even gratitude without thinking much about it - though I fully know that happiness is not something to be expected like that and I'm usually a happy person. At the same time I can imagine all these things irritating me in this relationship being said by someone else in another relationship and not disturbing me in the slightest. I think we perceive what we people say in a larger context full of clues, other things they say, their attitudes in general, their body language, the repetitiveness of these while taking no responsibility in other areas etc. I think there was something altogether uncomfortable, sometimes unnameable and atmospheric. My partner's comments like this irritated me because I sensed a general entitlement, self-centeredness, lack of reciprocity in terms of action. Even positive recognition was based on an image I didn't own - and I shared this so many times. I believe, when I feel safe and comfortable with a partner, words or implications don't bother me much because I'm able to understand what they mean from their general attitude. With this ex though words were unfortunately too coherent with self-centered action.

[C.Stein]

My ex feels zero guilt over what he has done to me, because in his mind it is all justified.  Not by defense mechanisms, but by his literal perception of me as a bad person with bad intentions.

I suspect my ex feels the same about me.  It is hard to wrap you brain around this type of thinking.

[GreenEyedMonster]

My partner's comments like this irritated me because I sensed a general entitlement, self-centeredness, lack of reciprocity in terms of action. Even positive recognition was based on an image I didn't own - and I shared this so many times. I believe, when I feel safe and comfortable with a partner, words or implications don't bother me much because I'm able to understand what they mean from their general attitude. With this ex though words were unfortunately too coherent with self-centered action.

This sums up what I experienced very well.  My ex effectively felt no personal responsibility to make the relationship work, and it showed.  The relationship was all a stream of emotion to him, with no rational component or the sense of a relationship (and later marriage) as an ongoing project.  "I'm addicted to you," he would say.  Yes, he was.  He was addicted to the way I made him feel.  But like thisworld said above, I didn't own the image he had of me.  When he was getting good feelings from me, he couldn't work through concerns about my own diagnosed OCD that I had, potential problems with finances and family, etc.  All that mattered was that he felt good, and nothing else was worthy of his attention.  When my issues began to make him feel bad, and only then, they began to matter to him. 

Consider his previous relationship, with a woman from a different region of the country, who had two severely disabled sons.  She conned him into spending hundreds if not thousands of dollars on her, and they got engaged after ten days of Facebook conversation, never having met in person!  That is a prime example of someone living entirely through feelings, nothing else.  He could put up with her sons' profound disabilities because the whole thing felt good to him.  He put up with her filthy house because it felt good.  He was going to give up everything he cared about and move across the country, leaving his disabled dad in a nursing home alone, because it felt good.  Good feelings justified everything, and so do bad ones.  To him, feelings are the only real truth.

Being in an honest relationship requires feeling bad feelings sometimes.  But for my ex, any bad feelings render the relationship pointless if not toxic.

I have realized in hindsight that I was not a person to him, I was a feeling.  When I became a feeling he found unpleasant, he discarded me.

[fromheeltoheal]

GEM wrote---

I sensed this very early in my relationship, that my ex didn't love me for the complexity of who I was as a person, but rather he loved the emotion that I made him feel.

------Yes. Mine often said "You make me happy"... .like an outside drug he "took" to make himself feel better.

   I felt upset over this, as I felt yes, we can have an emotional effect on people, but can you really make someone happy?  It almost sounds like they wouldn't be happy unless they are with this outside person to make them happy.

  I would rather say "I'm happy about many of the things they do and say... .I often have a positive feeling around them"... .it's a small difference,, but I feel it's unhealthy for them to say a person "makes" them happy

And that is key, since to a borderline there is no outside person: an attachment is just that, someone to make a borderline whole, complete them, a psychic fusing to create one 'person' out of two, a recreation of that earliest bond they had with their mother, the one they never successfully detached from, the genesis of the disorder.

[thisworld]

Fromheeltoheal,

I understand your point and a general feeling of emptiness is certainly one of the symptoms of the entire Cluster B. But even with a Cluster B person, can we always attribute this emptiness to this aspect of the disorder? Feeling "complete", feeling "One" with someone you love or various descriptions of a fusion as such is a pervasive discourse across so many cultures throughout ages, so much so that I believe the majority of people in a lot of cultures would describe love like that. Codependents often voice similar feelings, many people here describe that feeling, Lacan built his whole theory - rightly or wrongly- on our search for the big Other and the small Other and comes up with examples from love poems and stories. Similarly, "you make me happy" is pervasive, it's everywhere from songs to poems. I believe only truly independent personalities and those who are striving to become independent after a heart break would say I'm one and complete in my self. I think it becomes symptomatic when people start treating these sources (say, lovers) of happiness the way we were treated: abusive and unempathetic fom my perspective, justified from my partner's perspective, self-sabotaging from the perspective of someone looking at it from outside and maybe even rational from the perspective of his contradictory inner needs. Of course, when happiness is not internally generated nobody can satisfy it 100 % but still, most of 60% happy people do not cause this much turmoil in ones around them, either.

GEM,

If your partner was undiagnosed, what makes you think he had BPD only but was not comorbid with NPD or at least had very strong narcissistic traits?  Looking for that "feeling" is very common for narcs, too and they are actually pretty gullible sometimes in their endless for narcissistic supply.

   

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey TW-

I understand your point and a general feeling of emptiness is certainly one of the symptoms of the entire Cluster B. But even with a Cluster B person, can we always attribute this emptiness to this aspect of the disorder? Feeling "complete", feeling "One" with someone you love or various descriptions of a fusion as such is a pervasive discourse across so many cultures throughout ages, so much so that I believe the majority of people in a lot of cultures would describe love like that. Codependents often voice similar feelings, many people here describe that feeling, Lacan built his whole theory - rightly or wrongly- on our search for the big Other and the small Other and comes up with examples from love poems and stories. Similarly, "you make me happy" is pervasive, it's everywhere from songs to poems. I believe only truly independent personalities and those who are striving to become independent after a heart break would say I'm one and complete in my self. I think it becomes symptomatic when people start treating these sources (say, lovers) of happiness the way we were treated: abusive and unempathetic fom my perspective, justified from my partner's perspective, self-sabotaging from the perspective of someone looking at it from outside and maybe even rational from the perspective of his contradictory inner needs. Of course, when happiness is not internally generated nobody can satisfy it 100 % but still, most of 60% happy people do not cause this much turmoil in ones around them, either.

Yes, the "you complete me" sentiment is well-covered turf, from Hallmark cards to Jerry McGuire to psychoanalysis, but there's a fundamental difference between borderlines and "normal" people.  Humans are social animals, born to connect, and the desire to form relationships can have different motivations for most folks: one, someone is doing quite well, enjoying life and feeling complete in themselves, but something is missing, not in themselves but they don't have that social, emotional connection with someone else, so they go form one, two autonomous individuals creating a third thing between them called a relationship, where both partners go to give and nurture that relationship.  And two, someone who is not happy or content so they seek a relationship to fill the hole they feel, they go into a relationship to take and not give.  In both of those scenarios "you complete me" might be uttered, but for different reasons.

Now a borderline, someone without a fully formed self of their own, forms attachments, not relationships, for the sole purpose of "completing" themselves in an unhealthy fusing of psyches way, a recreation of that earliest bond, and can literally feel like they don't exist without an attachment.  Hard to get our heads around at first, what it would mean to not have a 'self', and things become disordered so early in development, before cognitive thought is possible, that it gets hardwired into the personality, and a borderline couldn't articulate it, it just shows up as feelings, abandonment, engulfment, and then flash forward a few decades and many heartbreaks, and the behaviors become what they become.  Also, development stops or gets skewed when order becomes disorder, so that will obviously affect behaviors and capabilities as well.

So what do we do with that, is all that matters at this point.  :)oes that explain everything?  I don't know, probably not, but looking at my ex's behavior through that lens suddenly made everything make sense for me, and being an understanding-driven person, having the confusion go away was massive, and if that's the benefit of the clinical data then I'll take it, as the healing and growing continue and as we take better versions of ourselves towards the life of our dreams.  It's a brand new world!

[thisworld]

Yes, it's a brand new world!

And it's a wonderful world already, there is so much rationality and insight in my life now:))

And thank you for your patience and taking the time, really. I think abstraction really helps. I think you and I are, in this example, are using different methods to enter or travel in our brand new worlds - which is only normal and healthy. My ex partner was a borrower and user of various discourses so I seldom took his words as expressions of his reality (I may have dated a Hallmark card actually). When he said something that matched the pervasive discourse, I usually thought it was because of the discourse. That for instance signals at a need to find acceptance I believe. Clues or hints to his inner world usually came from less constructed, individual utterances and facial expressions. I'll never completely know and I'm Ok with that.

I'm enjoying your comments not because they are taking me to an ultimate reality - he is an individual and we may never know- but because I'm seeing first hand how other people in similar conditions are healing, what perspectives they are using and how these insights may help me build a more balanced perspective retrospectively.

So, thanks for that:))   

[C.Stein]

My ex effectively felt no personal responsibility to make the relationship work, and it showed.  The relationship was all a stream of emotion to him, with no rational component or the sense of a relationship (and later marriage) as an ongoing project.

Very similar to how my ex was.  She took no responsibility to make the relationship work even when she was the one who was damaging it.  She just expected me to fix it and would pretend like nothing happened.  She consistently lived in her fantasy future and didn't understand that in order to get the fantasy you need build a stable and healthy relationship. 

  All that mattered was that he felt good, and nothing else was worthy of his attention.  When my issues began to make him feel bad, and only then, they began to matter to him. 

Again, the same.  Any of my issues got trivialized, marginalized and avoided.  Even when she acknowledged them it was done from that point forward ... .that was the extent of her responsibility despite her being the cause of my issues.  Avoidance was her game and she played it well.  I don't think I have ever met someone who can just push on like nothing happened as easily as she could.  It boggled my mind at the time and it still does.

I have realized in hindsight that I was not a person to him, I was a feeling.  When I became a feeling he found unpleasant, he discarded me.

Perhaps there is something here.  Once the "feeling" turns sour it gets replaced with a new good feeling and the damaged sour feeling gets discarded.  I know I used to give my ex that good feeling about herself, until she broke me.  In retrospect I now am beginning to she how she started to change from that point forward. 

[unicorn2014]

this world wrote

y T however doesn't worry much about BPD, focuses on his narcissistic core, she says there is no BPD without narcissism and the diagnosis doesn't change that I was controlled. 

That is a very interesting point. I've read your first page of comments and I've probably experienced that in my r/s (push/pull + mirroring), however I'm still with my pwBPD, at the moment.

[unicorn2014]

Second post, wow this is a really powerful thread.

this world wrote

My T thinks he is comorbid BPD/NPD (she also says practically no BPD without some degree of narcissism) with degrees of emotional sadism and she refers a lot to psychopaths.

Emotional sadism? That got my attention. Can you say anymore about that?

[thisworld]

Unicorn  

With the warning, "beware of junk psychology" which I may be doing here, I would like to share how I see this. This is not to come up with some ultimate "truth" but to share my experience as an ex-partner. I believe this experience coming from all of us is extremely valuable, can point at certain things medical sciences may be missing for many reasons and can be healing for all of us. People voicing their experiences help others make sense of what is happening at a very communal and personal level. GEM's experiences here help me personalize the therapy narrative I have with my T and it's like a reality-check. It speeds up healing as well. With only a T, it would take ages to come to this point of awareness I think. There I'm alone with my story (though she sometimes shares her personal experiences with narcs and this is very empowering). Here, I get the chance to see how others see and understand similar experiences. It is really eye-opening for me. By the way, C.Stein started this thread Shades of Black and I find that thread extremely helpful, too.

Per narcissism, my T is from the approach that both narcissism and borderline stem from very similar roots/wounds, which is ultimately narcissistic - here narcissism can be understood as a system (sometimes healthy) to regulate infantile self. However, she also thinks that the way this self was wounded was very similar and results in similar feelings/fears, though narcs and borderlines have different cognitive distortions. Apart from this, she thinks some coping mechanisms developed by borderlines are narcissistic not simply in the technical sense that they  serve the primary narcissistic wound but because they are very very similar to things narcs do. I experience this as a lack of empathy and complete invalidation in everything. This invalidation is not accidental - it somehow manages to find areas that I'm vulnerable. Anything shared, any vulnerability that they think I may have is targeted. It's like a dance. Twisting reality occurs when held accountable. I noticed this before the BPD aspect of my partner because I'm quite familiar with this kind of stuff. Triangulations and everything, classic in cluster B. I first perceived him as "Ha, what an anxious narc who is not as controlled as your usual narc, but still a narc." I first noticed this in his attention seeking from other females - narcissistic online harem. Usually, a narc would orchestrate this harem but would not be so panicky and anxious when he didn't receive a reply in two minutes and start message bombings. Narcs tend to display more charisma and control when interacting with the outer world, this guy was so insecure all around. Then I thought, oh maybe these are anxieties because he is very dysfunctional. Only later, when I had access to his self that he didn't represent to me as well as witnessing some of his turmoils I said, this guy has something else in addition to narc. During arguments he used the exact dismissive tones, behaviours, well documented invalidation techniques  psychopaths use. Now, when I look at his way of dealing with problems, is he a scared borderline who developed these ineffective communication skills, a rude narc or a downright psychopath? I wouldn't know - I know he isn't a complete psychopath. However, this doesn't change the fact that when I sit in an emotional abuse support groups, I agree with so many things coming from the mouths of survivors who lived with psychopaths. They attract the same way, they argue the same way (they don't speak another language you know, they speak the same dismissive language my BPD ex speaks and not all of them have a foul mouth). Only, on top of it they may do other things and their motives are different. From my perspective as an "other" though, the feeling is the same. Invalidated, unheard, hurt, insecure you name it. This is because whatever they did ultimately served to control me. I believe this for borderlines, whatever their feelings, they are constantly trying to control their world  so that it doesn't collapse on top of their heads. And this is a very difficult thing because that narrative they have travels between fact and fiction and is not sustainable through anything but control. Consciously, unconsciously? Probably both depending on the incident. It doesn't matter, I feel controlled. Not only in negative moments, in positive moments too. When I'm loved I feel controlled because it's obvious that he cannot see the real me but loves an image that he is dictating on me. Only, to be thrown down a pedestal that he built himself. I can only react to this, know what I want in my life and strive to have that. His diagnosis doesn't help me much because he isn't in therapy and doesn't have that awareness himself. Plus, nobody knows the outcomes of that - many narcs understand their situation but also discover that they simply don't care! My partner romanticized his "evil" character, was that a coping skill or some sign of uncaring? I will not know. I should hear what he says:)) Sex was one area where this control thing became very very obvious.

From Heeltoheal says what he learned about BPD helped him understand his partner and erased his anguish about his past. It didn't happen like that for me. The NPD and control thing was always prominent. I'm at a stage of trying to bring the two together - because I'll have to communicate with the guy for a while.

Emotional sadism. Basically people may hurt us for many reasons. They may be unaware of what they are doing, they may not care, there may be something they are after. If they are hurting us for the sense of enjoyment or pleasure it gives them, that is emotional sadism. If you feel that your partner feels good (sometimes it's even visible in their body language) when you are hurt, you are probably being exposed to emotional sadism. My partner did some of these for sexual control and feeling powerful - yes, a coping mechanism:)) But the way he derived pleasure from these had the effect of emotional sadism for me. Example: initiating sex in unexpected moments only to stop as soon as he felt my emotional involvement. He would say "This is enough" and grin. You should see his face and body language after this. He was so glad!

Below is a link. The woman says she is a clairvoyant (I don't believe in this kind of stuff), an empath and a trained relationship counsellor. I don't care, she could be a Nobel laureate, an illiterate farmer in Afghanistan or someone from another planet. The sad truth is I could have written this myself, and yeah, some people describe it as emotional sadism. From that point onwards, I strongly believe we should stop healthy and constructive communicative skills with them - tell your problems, what's hurting you etc. This is because each hurt you describe becomes a potential target area for you. At that point, it would be best to work with your individual therapist, realize what is happening to you from your perspective and get feedback from the therapist or online support groups and devise a communication method that would keep you emotionally safe. Not everybody may be affected by a partner's BPD to this extent, but if you feel that you are, it's best to take action for your emotional health and safety rather than trying to solve the problems through constructive communication.

www.keen.com/CommunityServer/UserBlogPosts/Anna_Maria_Gabriel/DO-YOU-LOVE-AN-EMOTIONAL-SADIST/728841.aspx

Hugs          

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey TW-

From Heeltoheal says what he learned about BPD helped him understand his partner and erased his anguish about his past. It didn't happen like that for me. The NPD and control thing was always prominent. I'm at a stage of trying to bring the two together - because I'll have to communicate with the guy for a while.

To clarify, learning about the disorder didn't erase the anguish, it erased the confusion.  Being an understanding-driven person, I gotta know how things work, and not knowing what the HELL was going on near the end drove me to what felt like the brink of sanity and my self-doubt skyrocketed.  I was a mess.  Reading Masterson's  The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of Our Age after I left her was a turning point for me, the book was full of a-ha moments, and suddenly I understood why she does what she does, which was a godsend and made the confusion vanish.  That was only the start though, the fallout from abuse, the PTSD, the anguish, all of that was next, and it took the better part of a year to get mostly beyond it and start focusing on the future instead of the past.  It takes what it takes.

Per narcissism, my T is from the approach that both narcissism and borderline stem from very similar roots/wounds, which is ultimately narcissistic - here narcissism can be understood as a system (sometimes healthy) to regulate infantile self. However, she also thinks that the way this self was wounded was very similar and results in similar feelings/fears, though narcs and borderlines have different cognitive distortions. Apart from this, she thinks some coping mechanisms developed by borderlines are narcissistic not simply in the technical sense that they  serve the primary narcissistic wound but because they are very very similar to things narcs do.

Someone posted a YouTube video here once that had a psych explaining how narcissism can manifest as secondary to BPD in borderlines, again pegging my ex to a tee.  A borderline's constant fears of both abandonment and engulfment make control a handy way to deal with them both concurrently: trash someone's self-esteem so they don't have the courage to leave while also controlling the emotional distance in the relationship so the borderline won't feel engulfed, successfully straddling the fence between abandonment and engulfment.  That could be labelled sadistic or it could be seen as survival tools used by someone flailing against fears they can't control, guess it depends on what side of it you're on, but point is it's the overreaction to the feelings of BPD that motivated the secondary narcissism, label it comorbid maybe, but understandable anyway, which is most of the battle for me.

[thisworld]

To clarify, learning about the disorder didn't erase the anguish, it erased the confusion. 

Yes, confusion. Sorry for that, I guess I associated the two in my mind. About NPD and BPD, I agree with everything you say. That's why I couldn't remain in my relationship because how I felt about the behaviours I received - regardless of their reasons- far exceeded my boundaries. I know where taking that risk takes me from a prior relationship. I didn't want to be exposed to those behaviours and neither did I want to show behaviours that would damage my balance within myself and make me dislike myself in the long run. This is a dance for two. 

[fromheeltoheal]

To clarify, learning about the disorder didn't erase the anguish, it erased the confusion. 

Yes, confusion. Sorry for that, I guess I associated the two in my mind. About NPD and BPD, I agree with everything you say. That's why I couldn't remain in my relationship because how I felt about the behaviours I received - regardless of their reasons- far exceeded my boundaries. I know where taking that risk takes me from a prior relationship. I didn't want to be exposed to those behaviours and neither did I want to show behaviours that would damage my balance within myself and make me dislike myself in the long run. This is a dance for two. 

Yep, I had weak boundaries going into the relationship, in fact if they were stronger the relationship never would have started.  And it takes what it takes, and one of the gifts of the relationship was to smack me in the face with the consequences of weak boundaries, sometimes the lesson needs to be delivered with a club to get through to me, but I got it this time.  Moving forward... .

[unicorn2014]

Thank you this world and heel to heal, as you know I am still in my r/s now and I may be left at the end of the year if something doesn't change.

I will read the shades of black thread.

My pwBPD isn't an emotional sadist with me, thankfully.

I definitely see narcissism in him and he's in total denial about it as well as some psychopathy which he is also in total denial about. He takes online quizzes to reassure himself he's not these things. He also uses therapy to reassure himself  he's not these things and then he reports to me what his therapist said. Of course that didn't work with one of them because he used to be my therapist.

[unicorn2014]

This world do you think you could post a link to the shades of black thread?

[thisworld]

Sure thing, here it is:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=287572.0

Enjoy:))

[unicorn2014]

Thank you this world, I will read that a little later today.