What was the deal breaker for your ex?

[once removed]

[jaded7]

This is a really good idea, thank you for bumping it up. I'm going to think about this. These are useful questions.

[Yonda]

I just read the first post and not the rest

Why are we talking about a mental illness and trying to make some logic out of it?

It’s a mental illness

What if you were a bipolar person would you try and make some kind of logical summary out of their mania?

There is no logic

There is no reality

There is a very scared person who sits in a child’s mind who is trying to navigate an adult world with reality they don’t understand

They pretend to be sane

They parrot learnt what they should be doing to appear normal and acceptable

They can’t maintain it because it’s not reality for them

I have much empathy for those person k was with for as long as I was

I have a lot of questions to ask myself

But it’s clear I was trapped in la la land

I have to own that

But also I care that this person is a scared out of her mind

Out of her mind

[jaded7]

Yes, I said that.

What was the deal breaker for your ex?



pwBPD are logical, sane individuals and in our struggles with them they told us or signaled what the problem they had with the relationship was.

1. What was it? What fundamentally was wrong? (what they would be saying to us if speaking now)

2. What part of that was real? What part was delusion? (your assessment)

3. Did you try to fix it? Why couldn't it be resolved?  (your experience)

4. What can be learned from this for future relationships? (please don't say avoid mental illness - reach!)

Dig deep.

I know exactly what she told me, repeatedly. Although I'd disagree that they are sane and or logical individuals. They have beliefs, they have stories about us and the relationship, but that doesn't mean they are true or logical. That's the disconnect. They believe these things, that make up these stories about you, they see in your someone who ________.....but it's NOT true!

Therefore, you can do NOTHING to change their minds about it. And if you do, you are "making excuses", "starting a fight", and on and on.

1)

"I need you to prioritize the relationship"= eating the food she thinks I should eat, wearing the  clothes she thinks I should wear, doing what she says in general.

"I need someone who will show up for me"= reading her mind when she doesn't tell you what she needs/wants, reading her mind when you ask her what you can do for her and she says nothing, then disconnects the phone two days later because "you didn't take care of her" and "my friends know what I need without asking". I attended every single event she asked me to, answered every phone call and text promptly, listened for hours as she complained about her ex, volunteered for her son's show, sold tickets for the raffle, answered every email, built every basketball hoop she needed built, etc etc.

"I need someone who doesn't melt under pressure" = someone who will take, without complaint, her put-downs and belittling, who will forget about 4 hour sessions of yelling at me and criticizing everything in my life, someone who doesn't mind when she goes days or weeks without answering texts or phone calls, or who doesn't say anything when she mocks you and humiliates you in front of her family, someone who won't mention that she evaded and ignored you for days before she slipped out of town for christmas without saying a word to you, someone who doesn't mind when she lets you know she looked up her ex bf's address in UK and calculated the distance to his place and "maybe I'll go visit him" while forgetting your birthday during that same trip, while you watched her dog for free for 3 weeks.

.....I could make this list 60 items long, I tried to only give the big picture things here.

2) it was all delusion. Every bit of it.  I prioritized her and the relationship more than anything in my life, to my detriment. I showed up for absolutely anything she ever asked me to come to, often with last second requests (from the person who told me that it's not nice of me to ask her to do things without planning). I never yelled at her, called her names, or lost my temper with her. She, on the other hand, melted under pressure and would yell for hours and point her finger in my face, violently pull off the highway, yell at me at full voice in the car. When she snapped at me during the show, with her family sitting with us, I raised my eyebrows in surprise...that later became "you melted into the floor at the show". All delusion, all gaslighting.

3)

Learn your boundaries, express them early and often. Speak up when someone is disrespectful to you. Hold your ground when you know you are being gaslighted. Walk away when someone yells at you and calls you names. Refuse to be treated with disrespect. Believe yourself and your reality.

[jaded7]

I know exactly what she told me, repeatedly. Although I'd disagree that they are sane and or logical individuals. They have beliefs, they have stories about us and the relationship, but that doesn't mean they are true or logical. That's the disconnect. They believe these things, that make up these stories about you, they see in your someone who ________.....but it's NOT true!

Therefore, you can do NOTHING to change their minds about it. And if you do, you are "making excuses", "starting a fight", and on and on.

1)

"I need you to prioritize the relationship"= eating the food she thinks I should eat, wearing the  clothes she thinks I should wear, doing what she says in general.

"I need someone who will show up for me"= reading her mind when she doesn't tell you what she needs/wants, reading her mind when you ask her what you can do for her and she says nothing, then disconnects the phone two days later because "you didn't take care of her" and "my friends know what I need without asking". I attended every single event she asked me to, answered every phone call and text promptly, listened for hours as she complained about her ex, volunteered for her son's show, sold tickets for the raffle, answered every email, built every basketball hoop she needed built, etc etc.

"I need someone who doesn't melt under pressure" = someone who will take, without complaint, her put-downs and belittling, who will forget about 4 hour sessions of yelling at me and criticizing everything in my life, someone who doesn't mind when she goes days or weeks without answering texts or phone calls, or who doesn't say anything when she mocks you and humiliates you in front of her family, someone who won't mention that she evaded and ignored you for days before she slipped out of town for christmas without saying a word to you, someone who doesn't mind when she lets you know she looked up her ex bf's address in UK and calculated the distance to his place and "maybe I'll go visit him" while forgetting your birthday during that same trip, while you watched her dog for free for 3 weeks.

.....I could make this list 60 items long, I tried to only give the big picture things here.

2) it was all delusion. Every bit of it.  I prioritized her and the relationship more than anything in my life, to my detriment. I showed up for absolutely anything she ever asked me to come to, often with last second requests (from the person who told me that it's not nice of me to ask her to do things without planning). I never yelled at her, called her names, or lost my temper with her. She, on the other hand, melted under pressure and would yell for hours and point her finger in my face, violently pull off the highway, yell at me at full voice in the car. When she snapped at me during the show, with her family sitting with us, I raised my eyebrows in surprise...that later became "you melted into the floor at the show". All delusion, all gaslighting.

3) I did try to fix it. I tried to active listen, I agreed with the 'mutual' decision to take a time out when she called for one (she would then, like an unethical warrior, then go in for the attack again after I'd agreed to the timeout), I tried to schedule plans with her since she told me I was a child and 'ruined an entire summer' by cancelling plans (I didn't), but she cancelled the first three at the last second. And tried to cancel the last two of the summer in anger. I tried saying I love you, I support you. I tried being a good listener, I showed up for everything she asked me to. I tried to have honest conversations about how I was feeling (always resulted in an attack), I tried to not have expectations for her following through on her word. I tried to make sense of her senseless accusations. I tried to ignore her putdowns and belittling.

4)
Learn your boundaries, express them early and often. Speak up when someone is disrespectful to you. Hold your ground when you know you are being gaslighted. Walk away when someone yells at you and calls you names. Refuse to be treated with disrespect. Believe yourself and your reality.

[Pensive1]

1. What was it? What fundamentally was wrong? (what they would be saying to us if speaking now)

Perhaps the two biggest things in my case were:
(a) my disagreeing with her (saying she was wrong about something). Over our years together, she repeatedly explicitly said this was a "dealbreaker").
(b) feeling abandoned by me because of time I was putting into other things (politics, etc.).

2. What part of that was real? What part was delusion? (your assessment)

Regarding (a) above - I am prone to looking for what's wrong in statements people make or plans people make (to the point of nitpicking). Truth and accuracy matter a lot to me. Partly that's the case because I grew up with a mother with BPD, and part of how I coped with all her distortions of reality was by trying to very carefully keep attuned to what was real myself. And partly that's the case because, given trauma history in my childhood, I'm always on the lookout (overly so) for negative things (the element of a plan that would cause it to fail in a catastrophe, etc.). And I'm a scientist - a profession that esteems truth and accuracy.

Meanwhile, my ex has difficulty tolerating anyone disagreeing with her, because she experiences it as social rejection. That's something I didn't really understand when we were together. And her thinking often contains major elements of fantasy. So you can see, a match made in heaven (not). For most people, this behavioral tendency of mine is as worst a minor annoyance - but for my ex, it was intolerable.

Regarding (b) above - I have a long history of being obsessively involved in various projects. I have a very strong self-sacrifice scheme, so I would be constantly spending time trying to help others in various ways (including serving on city committees, etc.). Manwhile, my ex had difficulty spending time alone, and my absence while trying to help others left her very unhappy (even if she agreed with the cause I was involved in). She started her affair (jumping to another guy) while I was out of state for three weeks, providing hospice care for an uncle, so he could die at home, while my ex was going through a very stressful period herself.

3. Did you try to fix it? Why couldn't it be resolved?  (your experience)

Regarding (a) above - at times I tried hard to reign in any statements disagreeing with her. I'd cut it back by 2/3 or more. But that wouldn't result in any reduction in her complaints about it, etc. I ended up concluding that I was essentially helpless to resolve this. I didn't realize, until the relationship was over, that she had BPD and that she would take any disagreement (at all) as rejection. After I realized this, I was able to radically reduce anything I said that disagreed with her - to where I did so only when it was essential, or where I could assess that she'd want the correction. But it was too late.

Regarding (b) above - I started seeing a therapist and one of the first things she told me is that I had to learn how to say "no" when I was asked to help. I then greatly cut back on time I was putting into projects. But it was too late (just months before the end of the relationship).

4. What can be learned from this for future relationships? (please don't say avoid mental illness - reach!)

One thing I've learned is that I need to heal from my own childhood trauma history. That includes reducing my tendency to look for what's wrong in a statement or proposed plan (as least outside of a scientific context). And my tendency to overly self-sacrifice.

I will note that every romantic relationship I've had is with someone who turned out to have serious mental illness and required caretaking. It's totally clearcut repetition compulsion (stemming from caretaking my BPD mother). I intend to break that pattern.

[Pensive1]

I thought I'd add, regarding 1(b)/2(b) in my response above, that with the projects I was involved in, I was not only physically absent much of the time, but I was also often obsessive and anxious about the projects, and she would complain that this often rendered me emotionally unavailable. There's certainly some truth to this complaint.

If I had to assess responsibility for what went wrong in the relationship, I think I'd allocate 1/3 to 1/4 of the fault to myself, and the remainder to my ex. Her BPD is quite severe (though I didn't recognize that she had BPD until the relationship was over, and my therapist pointed it out - I was deeply in denial). Over the course of the relationship, I repeatedly pleaded with her to go to couples therapy with me. She did briefly, relatively early in the relationship, but soon dropped out, claiming that the therapist was blaming her for everything (which wasn't true at all). Thereafter, she always refused any further couple's therapy.

[Pook075]

1. What was it? What fundamentally was wrong? (what they would be saying to us if speaking now)

I didn't love her any more, I hated her family, and I degraded her constantly.

2. What part of that was real? What part was delusion? (your assessment)

None of it was real.  She had this conversation inside her own mind (instead of with me), so I did a lousy job defending myself.

3. Did you try to fix it? Why couldn't it be resolved?  (your experience)

You can't resolve anything unless you talk it out.  As they say, it takes two to tango.  Relationships are work and require constant commitment, so everyone needs to show up and actively participate.

4. What can be learned from this for future relationships? (please don't say avoid mental illness - reach!)

Pick a spouse that's open and honest, and comfortable in their own skin.  Marriage is about two people becoming one, and sacrificing for one another in everything.  If you can't talk things out with them over little stuff, then it speaks volumes about what will happen when there's bigger stuff. 

Find a great communicator that loves you for you, exactly the way you are.  If you can love them the same way, without judgement, then you've probably found your person.

[kells76]

Let's take a minute with this thought:

pwBPD are logical, sane individuals and in our struggles with them they told us or signaled what the problem they had with the relationship was.

This is a really important nuance to highlight.

This isn't saying "pwBPD start from sound axioms". It isn't saying "pwBPD have reality-based core beliefs".

It's saying -- you can have a flawed foundational axiom, and still build out logically structured premises and conclusions from that.

It's kind of like how a person with schizophrenia might act.

The foundational axiom -- that Mom is poisoning my food -- isn't sound and isn't reality-based.

What follows from that, however, is logical.

If Mom is poisoning my food, then it's only sensible of me to be paranoid of her; to watch her every move; to not eat what she makes for me; to believe that while others can eat what she makes, I can't; to not take the meds she gives me (after all, if she has no compunctions about poisoning my food, how can I trust that she isn't poisoning my meds); to say whatever it takes to get her off my back ("Sure Mom, I'll go to the doctor and take my pills") and never follow through; to sleep on the streets instead of at my parents' house...

If you genuinely believed that your own mother had it out for you, wouldn't you act just like the above example? I would. It's logical -- it's just that it's a logical, rational structure built off of a flawed axiom.

Hopefully that example helps as we think about how the pwBPD in our lives have acted.

It's not about agreeing that they had correct foundational beliefs.

It's about understanding how the things they did and said had their own logic.

If your pwBPD truly believed that you didn't show up emotionally for them, you were emotionally abusive, and you were perpetually self-centered (as my H's kids' mom believed), then can we understand (not agree with) the structure of what they said and did after that?

I don't agree with her foundational assumption (that it was H's fault that he didn't show up emotionally for her, and that he was emotionally abusive), but it helps me understand why when H got a job at the kids' school, she withdrew them for that year, and when his contract expired, she re-enrolled them. Her decisions made sense given her axiomatic beliefs.

Food for thought.