Or leave...don't know what to do Part 2

[jaded7]

Mod Note:  Part 1 of this thread is here:   https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=342384.0;all

Just sharing some of my around and around thinking since it helps to write it out.

She employs the most crazy-making behavior and accusations.

Her bitter, biting and punishing email to me this week in which she was intentionally cruel and punishing, spent hours and hours crafting it, I know her- yet she always accuses me of being punishing and intentionally cruel if I take a single day to respond after some episode of her calling me names, yelling and belittling me.

She accused me of "disappearing. Again." All through the last 10 months she has gone through multiple periods where she simply stopped responding to my calls or texts, for up to a week or more at a time. Her son's ultimate matches I wanted to go to she would simply not communicate with me for a couple of days beforehand, not let me know if she is going or not on days it was pouring rain, then arrive at the match and send a text "I thought you were coming"  the weekend before she yelled at me for thinking she'd respond to calls or texts "I have a child!", yet of course for every weekend for 1.5 years she always called and texted during weekends, so I didn't call or text so as to not upset her and thought she'd at least text "leaving now" or "match still on"...nope. I texted her that I thought she'd let me know, she lectured me on "I have enough in my life to manage without managing yours." I said, but last weekend you said you couldn't communicate during weekends with _____, she responded "text ok" when the weekend before it wasn't.)

She accuses me of "disappearing, again." On December 17 she simply stopped responding to me, ignored 2 texts and a call to buy her lunch- later telling me "she's busy"

(she works from home, alone, doing email mostly, we've spent countless days in the past hiking and hanging out during the day- I pointed that out to her on the phone this week, she says "she told me I was busy" that day. She did not, she has never told me her schedule for the day, never)

She sent one or two meaningless, dismissive, non-communicative texts over the next 3 days

("at theater for night" and "busy. around people all the time" remember she works from home alone, drives her kid to school and has 20 minutes to chat on the phone every single day on the way back- has done that countless times)

Then LEFT for Christmas without saying a word to me even though she had said a week earlier she was going to invite me up for Christmas to her parents (never brought it up again) and texts me on Christmas Eve "tired. going to take some time to recalibrate"...which means nothing, addresses nothing and says "I'll talk to you some time in the future, don't know when, and leave me alone".

I don't hear from her until the 30th and 31st with phone calls. On the 31st I text her that I"m not up for talking that night, she never responds to that. She could have said, I don't know,  " Ok, I get it." or "thanks for the response, I'm sorry I left town without you" or "how was your Christmas?" or "how are you?" or "talk later in the week?"  or "meet up for a walk" or "I miss you" or "_________" any of a million things she could have said.

3 week later she sends an email slaying me for "disappearing. Again."

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[Ozzie101]

Projection is very common with pwBPD. They feel shame and guilt so strongly that the only way for them to deal with it is to put the "blame" on someone else. It's also sort of tied up with the "feelings = facts" thing. They can't stand the negative feelings of blame, so they'll twist the facts in their minds (and this isn't always a fully conscious thing) so that they didn't do it. Someone else did.

Throw in the common push/pull that goes along with fear of abandonment and you get a very confusing and painful situation.

I'm sorry. It's hard to wrap your head around, I know.

You said on Jan. 25 that you were feeling horrible for her and wanted to take care of her.

Why?

That sounds like an easy question, but it's not. Really think about your answer.

[WorksNeverDone]

Jaded,
I don't have much to offer you that hasn't already been presented by others with more experience than I (other than hundreds of stories that mirror yours).  Please know that a lot of us have been through these exact experiences (confusion, pain, anger, questioning reality, sleepless nights). 

Please, just remember:
You aren't crazy (I thought I was crazy for 10 years after the BPD manifested)
You can't fix her emotional state or fear of abandonment (don't try to be knight in shining armor)
You can only control yourself and your behaviors.  At the end of the day, you need to believe you did the right thing. 
If you move forward with this relationship, do so with acceptance that it is with her as she is today.
Don't move forward based on the hope that she will permanently return to a state where she is the doting, adoring person that you initially fell for.  You will likely see that person again for periods of time, but the person that you are currently experiencing is alive and well and will come back.  Often times stronger than previously.

Once, when criticizing me for my perceived "lack of pursuit" of her, my wife told me "it's not real pursuit unless I'm running away."  I feel that that quote sums up a lot of what BPDp are looking for.  They feel so much self-loathing and shame, they believe they are fundamentally unlovable.  Every time you persevere through one of their attempts to "prove" that they are unlovable, it creates a cognitive disconnect for them and they feel the need to up the ante the next time the emotional dysregulation comes. 

[jaded7]

I'm spiraling, I think that's obvious to everyone. I'm going round and round and round in my head, trying to understand this...it's driving me crazy.

You asked why I feel horrible and want to take care of her:

I feel guilty for forgetting the appointment. I feel guilty for not actually calling her back on the 31st versus sending the text I sent (although she never responded to that). I want to make her feel good, and I want to relieve her suffering. I feel like her behavior is that of an unwell person, and I feel sorry for her, not in patronizing way, as in it must be hard...my love can help you if you accept it. She has been through some hard things in her life -boyfriend killing himself and blaming her in the note, abusive husband (she says) who scared her and frightened her- and I'm the very epitome of love and acceptance.

The only time I ever saw her emotional was once, early in the relationship, right after sex she said to me "will you take care of me". I said of course I will. But then the testing, the push/pull, the criticism, the yelling, the misdirection and evasive communication, the disappearing and ghosting, etc etc...

[Ozzie101]

Of course you want to relieve her suffering and you feel guilty. You're a caring person. Your missing the appointment is not your fault. She withheld information in a passive-aggressive mood. Result? You don't show up. That's not on you. That's on her. You know that intellectually.

Can you truly save her? Or does that power only really lie with her?

WorksNeverDone has some valuable wisdom for you there and I hope you'll read it closely and really think about it.

Being able to detach a bit emotionally will likely help with that but it will take some time. It's not easy, I know. And it hurts. But the more entangled your emotions are with her, the more this will go on -- and possibly get worse. I hope that's something you and your T are working on. It's something I struggled with earlier in my relationship. Now that I've achieved a level of detatchment, it's amazing not only how much stronger I feel, but how my H's "episodes" have reduced in number and intensity.

[jaded7]

Just had a long session with my therapist. Cried a lot, am exhausted.

I just want to say thank you to all here, this is my lifeline right now and it is very helpful to me to have you here and responding. I also respond to others with acknowledgment of what they are experience in hopes it is equally helpful to them.

I'm so, so tired and I'm going to lay down a bit. But my therapist and I did make a good connection to my sexual abuse as a child and my inability to let go of this all, the looking for validation that these behaviors of hers aren't 'nice' or 'normal', that I'm not a bad person...etc.

I can't seem to validate that for myself, when I should be able to. And it's because I'm afraid. I'm afraid because I don't have sex easily, must fully trust someone to do it, and when I do I'm completely vulnerable to deep, deep abandonment PTSD. I told my therapist that her snapping at me during sex (many times.  "Oh my god, don't touch your nose to my back...it's sweaty!", "______ what are you doing, oh my god" when she tried to get me at some angle/position I don't know, I couldn't figure out what she was asking etc etc, the withdrawal of sex and ignoring my attempts to have her come over and connect last April (because "I was the kind of person who was excited about a business opportunity with a person she never met or heard of but thought he was a "loser" from a picture of him from the 1990s), her rejection of me 3-4 times during the last time she spent the weekend here (last June) and acting like she didn't know what I was doing when I reached for her in bed, to the last time we were together when she angrily snapped at me for "you keep touching my leg!" and pulled away, which was followed by her brushing her teeth then coming back to lecture me on sex...

ALL of this makes me feel 'bad', not 'good' and like an important part of me was given to her and now I can't get it back...ever. I will be forever damaged and less than whole now. So I struggle to get someone to tell me enough times that all her behavior is bad in the vain hope that it will somehow make it ok for me to let go, and that part won't have been 'taken' from me and I'll be whole.

All this from the woman who told me that our "sex was the best she's had in 15 years" when we first got together.

[Ozzie101]

You have vulnerabilities (which is certainly understandable). She's made a habit of hitting you in your vulnerable spots -- which is characteristic of an abuser.

You have been treated unfairly, there's no denying that.

But, there's no reason to feel hopeless. You do have power. You have the power to decide what you want your life to look like going forward. You have the power to build up your strength and make changes in yourself. You have the power to decide that the past (long distant and recent) will not control you. (There are several good sayings I like on that topic, such as "Holding onto resentment/the past is like letting someone live rent-free in your mind.")

All that's easy to say, I know. Much more difficult to internalize. You can do this.

[jaded7]

Ozzie. I don't know how you do it, answering and helping all the people here on the board, but I so appreciate you. You are such a kind and thoughtful person.

Re: vulnerabilities due to the sexual abuse, it's actually worse than what I've written here.

When we first met (you might remember from the first post I wrote) on our second date I got a little drunk and kinda pawed at her, but she shut it down. I remember her saying something like "we can do this tomorrow night". The next day I was embarrassed and met her in the lobby of my building when she came by to pick me up and she was mean, surly, abrupt and weird that night as we had tea and some food. I literally thought, 'wow, this is not the person I thought I knew' and I thought I wouldn't see her again. Turns out, I learn later, she was 'mad' that we weren't going to have sex and mad that I met her in the lobby instead of having her come up and was not nice at all, totally different from the person I had one or two dates with. I was very surprised.

We talked about sex in the beginning, and I told her about my childhood sexual abuse before we ever met on a date, how it's affected me, how I hadn't had sex in 10 years (intentionally, I didn't date on purpose) and how sex needed to be connecting, loving and emotional for me. She responded with "and, we can also have quickies too".

When she'd come over to my house we'd sit on the couch for a bit, then she'd say something like "do you want to go to bed?" She'd walk over to my bed, take off her clothes and then point at me standing there saying "Are you going to take those (pointing at me) off or what?"

We'd never actually kiss or connect in a loving way in sex. She'd just take off her clothes, get in bed, and wait for me to 'do' something to her. Often she'd lay there on her stomach waiting for me to do something. Often whatever I did was snapped at.

One night (on her birthday last summer) she was surly again (I have come to realize that she probably 'hated' what I did for her birthday that summer too- I scheduled a day of kayaking for us as a surprise, then told her were going to a nice dinner in my neighborhood which is full of nice restaurants and to pick among 3 I had in mind), she got into bed like she normally did, I got in bed and reached for her to snuggle around her and connect and she sat there like a stone facing away from me. I asked her "honey are you tired and just want to sleep?" She snapped at me "what do you want? If you want sex touch me in a sexy way!"

Sitting on my couch as we used to, and I'd make some gesture to go to the bedroom so we could connect and she didn't want to, (which is totally fine) and say, "let's just lay down together and hold each other (I love connection in any way, sex is just sex) and she'd say "No".

Once when I was getting out of the shower and starting to put on some clothes she barked at me from the couch "Wait! What are you doing? Don't put those on!"

Last spring she suddenly stopped coming over and starting ignoring (as in, not even responding) my texts and calls to come over, and I didn't know why. I was hurt and confused. She actually came over after a couple of months, we were actually sitting on my couch and she says "Do you want to go to bed?" I was so happy that she wanted to connect and I said "oh...do you want to?" in a nice, happy way, she said "NO...I just said it because I don't want to" in a testy, snappy tone.

During that time in the Spring last year when she had stopped coming over, ignored my requests to connect, one time she said "busy, come over tomorrow" to her house, Very unusual. So I was looking forward to going to her house, connecting and holding each other, when I got there she was surly and was acting like she didn't remember the conversation from the day before. She was talking about completely random stuff and acting weird, and I finally said I thought we were going to go to bed and she said something like "oh...I don't remember that." She reluctantly went to the bedroom, did her normal thing of just taking her clothes off and getting in bed- no connection, no holding, no kissing (actually...NEVER any kissing during sex...this just came to me) and that's the time she just laid there on her stomach and made me 'start' so I was kissing her back and she barked at me about my nose being sweaty.

After months with no connection at all, I asked her to just come over and we can take a nap together and chat. She responded with "You and your naps".

Last summer when I was so hurt and confused that we weren't having sex at all (I later learned why- it was because of a potential business deal with a very famous person, well-known in my field, who she deemed a 'loser' and therefore she stopped having sex with me and was "reevaluating our relationship because I was the kind of person who'd be excited about it" She didn't know him, his work, his history, the program or anyone who'd ever done his program- she just didn't like a picture of him on the Internet from the 1990s) and she had 'forgotten' about staying over at my place (as we had calendared) I asked her, in a kind and loving tone "Honey, is there something wrong with our physical relationship? We haven't had sex in months, and now you are 'forgetting' that you were supposed to spend the weekend here. It makes me feel like you don't like our sex life or my body". She exploded at me and told me it "this is because of my sexual abuse" when she KNEW at that time that she'd been  intentionally stopping sex, ignoring my texts to come over, etc etc

Plus, all the other stuff I wrote above and things I haven't written about here.

It's been super painful.

[Ozzie101]

Sex is a frequent weapon of an abuser and the behavior you describe is abusive. The fact that she knows your history and vulnerabilities there makes her actions even more pointed, in my opinion.

That would be super-painful and I'm sorry.

Yet, with the way she's treated you here, you are still wracked with guilt over not being there for her for her surgery (even though she passive-aggressively kept that information from you).

One thing I've learned about my relationship with my H: The weaker I look and feel, the worse our relationship gets. My weakness scares him and he lashes out even more. But when I'm strong and secure, he feels more confident and comfortable and the "incidents" are far less frequent and intense.

I've worked on myself and my responses to him. I no longer cower when he gets worked up. I hold my boundaries with kindness and empathy, but remain firm. He doesn't always like it, but things are much better than they were a year ago.

I guess my point is, keep doing what you're doing. Work on you. Work with your therapist. Work on not letting the past and the way she's treated you rule your emotions. Take the power back for yourself because she's shown she can't be trusted with it.

[jaded7]

A short one, I promise!

Yes, that all seems abusive. I simply have not known how to react to all of this...it's so out of my own experience and how I treat other people. It confuses me, and I spend hours trying to understand it all.

And she gets MAD at me for feeling hurt by all of these things she does. Several times in the phone call last week she made a point of noting how I get hurt by these things and made fun of me for that and made clear she feels that's a shortcoming of mine. She "needs someone who will not melt under pressure". I have stood up to a carjacker, saved my girlfriend from being attacked by him, had a 9mm pointed at my head and the trigger pulled (it jammed), and I'm known as a person who can respond cooly and calmly under pressure. It's just HER behavior that confuses me and hurts me deeply. And she makes fun of it.

[Ozzie101]

That could very well be projection.

The thing is, for pwBPD, the sense of shame is intense and deep. They don't hear "Your actions were wrong." They hear, "YOU are wrong. In your core. You are awful and unworthy of love." How to deal with that? They project their own feelings of unworthiness onto others. They don't have the problem. You do. It's not a healthy or mature way of dealing with it, but emotional maturity tends to be sorely lacking in pwBPD.

Think of it as a sunburn. If you don't have a sunburn or have a very, very minor one, someone bumping against you won't really hurt. If you have a deep, third-degree burn, the bump could be excruciating.

Keeping that in mind has helped me deal with those sorts of accusations from my H. For me, knowing what's really going on and the mechanisms behind his actions/words makes it much easier for me to process or to even ignore.

That said, some behavior and words just aren't tolerable. Abusive language and treatment is not something to just brush off. So, I say all that not to say to forgive her but rather to see where it's coming from to help you process that what she's saying is not true and it's not your fault.

[jaded7]

That said, some behavior and words just aren't tolerable. Abusive language and treatment is not something to just brush off. So, I say all that not to say to forgive her but rather to see where it's coming from to help you process that what she's saying is not true and it's not your fault.

This is super important to me and thank you. I sometimes feel bad that I didn't 'practice' a better way of interacting with her, but my gosh it's hard to be attacked, gaslighted, ghosted, blamed, called names, have facts completely shifted and changed to suit a narrative that makes you look bad...etc etc

AND...talk about projection. Her last words to me on the phone "I need someone who will show up in my life. You aren't that person. I'll leave it at that". When during the last 10 months

• I've take every call, every text from her, at any time
  Met her whenever and wherever she wanted to meet
  Talked with her for hundreds of hours about her ex-husband and what an narcissist he is
  Talked with her dozens of hours about her son and his life
  Showed up with 45 minutes notice to build her son's basketball hoop (first invitation over in 6 months or more)
  Sat with her son in the train station for 1.5 hours when she forgot her driver's license at home and couldn't pick him up and had to run home
  Posted posters of her son's show in my business and talked it up with my clients
  Volunteered for her son's show and to help her as coordinator of volunteers
  Went to her son's 8th grade graduation
  Went with her to her son's 8th grade graduation party
  Went with her to her good friends marriage party in the park
  Took time off work in the weekend to meet her for walks while her son was in rehearsals
  Went to lunch or walk with her EVERY time she asked
  Read dozens and dozens of emails and texts from her ex-husband and responded thoughtfully to her about how great she is and what a wonderful Mom she is
  Took her dog in for 3 weeks while she travelled in UK...and forgot my birthday during that time

And she has done...nothing ...for me in that time
Bought every meal and coffee we ever had