Choices

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Do you know what it feels terribile? The duplicity. I introduce you to my parente. The next day I discard you. I say I love you. But I discard you all the same. And even if we say... .they are sick. But they make choices. He could reassure me. Some kind words. But he chose to tell and break things. This is a choices. He could have helped me with home expenses as he lived at my house practically. But he chose to but comicsfor his collection. This is a choices.

[UnforgivenII]

Do you know what it feels terribile? The duplicity. I introduce you to my parente. The next day I discard you. I say I love you. But I discard you all the same. And even if we say... .they are sick. But they make choices. He could reassure me. Some kind words. But he chose to tell and break things. This is a choices. He could have helped me with home expenses as he lived at my house practically. But he chose to but comicsfor his collection. This is a choices.

[schwing]

I think the biggest way in which we are deceived is into believing that our BPD loved ones are capable of committed, loving, adult relationships with us. Perhaps they can simulate such for a very short time, but I truly believe they are incapable of such due to the nature of their disorder.

I think it is easier to let go, when we come to accept that they were incapable of being what we require and expect in our relationships.

If you see their behaviors as a "choice," then you are perhaps bargaining with the possibility that they could have made the "right" choice.  You are questioning that perhaps they could have chosen to not be disordered. I don't think this is true. And I think seeing it this way may make it more difficult to let go.

[Mutt]

Hi UnforgivenII,

The next day I discard you. I say I love you. But I discard you all the same.

I'm sorry that you had to go through that.  That sounds like lack of impulse control. For a pwBPD feelings = facts and for the non disordered partner it's feelings followed after the facts. At that time, you probably were giving something to your ex that made him content and then he was unhappy with something, maybe rejection, or abandonment? It could be anything really that is perceived or distorted in the person's mind. You can't control distorted thinking if you're not aware that you're thinking is distorted?

It's poor decision making and not thinking things through because of lack of impulse control and not seeing the bigger picture or their consequences with their actions or choices.

[UnforgivenII]

So sorry for all the mistakes in my post. It is my tablet it keeps correcting... .

Yes but if you make a poor decision you can always change your mind.

[Mutt]

Yes but if you make a poor decision you can always change your mind.

You're right. That makes sense to a non-disordered person but what if you were sensitive and didn't want to look bad because you made a poor decision or your thinking is very rigid and isn't flexible like a non-disordered person? Life is in the grey area with some black and white, but to a pwBPD life is black and white and the person can't integrate the two.

[fromheeltoheal]

Yes but if you make a poor decision you can always change your mind.

Yes, and to add to what Mutt said, a borderline's mind is always changing, because the emotions a borderline feels are intense, so intense that thoughts are changed to make the emotions feel better, to the point of distorting reality entirely.  We all do that BTW, frame things in our mind in such a way that makes whatever it was feel better so we can live with ourselves, but take that to the extreme and add cognitive distortion and projection, like a borderline does, and the mind changes are all over the place.

Also, there's an expectation that someone will be somewhat consistent with how they show up in the world, with a decision made and then later it is decided the decision was poor, so make a new decision, with the expectation of consistency across all of that.  But with "markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self" and "affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood", two official traits of the disorder, the person who made the original decision is not the same as the person looking at that decision later, a consequence of not having a fully formed self, so there can't be consistency.