Wasn't it all just punishment?

[maternal]

As I traverse my healing from this relationship with my diagnosed Borderline ex boyfriend, I am struck at how much the entire relationship felt like punishment.

I recognize the causes and reasons for their behavior, I get that part.  But my relationship felt very much like punishment just because he needed to.  Punishment for being an imperfect, flawed and very human, human being.  Punishment for wanting to be with and stay with him.  Punishment for loving him.

It was almost as if he said "oh yeah, you want me?  You love me?  This is what you really want?  Well, I'll show you!"  As though loving, wanting and caring for him was such a crime.  There were certain things that he did that I felt were specifically done to prove to me what a "Monster" he really was, because he'd told me he was a monster and he must have had to live up to the title he'd given himself.  Having been away for a few months, and looking back, this is what it feels like it was to me.

Anyone else get this feeling?

[Blimblam]

I felt like this.  But my relationship to this feeling has changed.  I think in this pain she really showed me the path to this part of myself she and I were both seeking. It is not what i expected but it is what it is.

[amigo]

My exBPDbf actually often said " I am punishing you" when I asked why he is doing or saying something hurtful. When I asked him "WHY?" he'd say: "because you made me fall in love with you"

Of course there is that part of me that deep down believes I deserve the punishment. Not that I believe his response, I do know he fell in love with me (if that is what it really is) on his own accord. But I think there is some sick, little girl, (unresolved FOO, guilt stuff )that believes that I deserve to be punished. When I re-engaged him for the recycle, I actually felt that I wanted to do something to harm myself. Instead of getting drunk and getting on my motorcycle and/or picking up a stranger in a bar, I just texted him... .Punishing myself. For what, I am not sure.

Especially the recycle felt like punishment. As if he were allowed any and all bad behavior, because after all it was my fault for taking him back.

[Tausk]

From what I understand, one of the modes of pwBPD can be the Punitive Parent.  This is the voice in our heads that tells us we are no good, we should be ashamed, we should... .

And for a pwBPD, since they can not process shame into guilt into remorse into amends into absolution

They often project the punishment onto others.

Think about a traumatized three year old who understands that someone else has done something wrong.  Think about the intensity and awareness of the three year in understanding that someone else should be punished.  Especially someone who has done something wrong against the three year old him/herself. 

That's my exgfwBPD. 

It's the Disorder.  It was not personal. 

It hurts like hell.  But I'm learning to detach.

And after depersonalization, I'm able to examine why I stuck around for the punishment, why it felt appropriate, why I didn't stop the abuse.

[myself]

It's the Disorder.  It was not personal. 

Disordered, yes. Personal, yes.

Like others here, my ex told she was punishing me on purpose.

I was supposed to take it personally, and I did.

[Tausk]

It's the Disorder.  It was not personal.  

Disordered, yes. Personal, yes.

Like others here, my ex told she was punishing me on purpose.

I was supposed to take it personally, and I did.

Maybe that was true for you.   I cannot state any opinion on that.  

For me, I was just the next guy in line at the BPD kissing booth.  I paid my dollar and got my reward/punishment.  It wasn't any different for the ones before me or the ones after me.   In fact, in her mind, I'm just part of the jumbled blur of all the terrible people that she's come across in her life.  

It was personal to me only because I chose to accept the punishment and return for more in hopes of getting a little bit of reward.  But the whole interaction was never personally about me.   The Disorder doesn't discriminate.  I/we were not special in anyway to the Disorder.   I was not special in our love, hatred, anger, joy, happiness, punishment, rage, sexual pleasure, ecstasy, loneliness... .connection.  Nothing about our interaction was special in any form or manner.  It wasn't real.  It wasn't connection.  It was fantasy.  It wasn't personal.  

Yes, she said the punishment was personal to me, but she also said I was her soulmate and one love that she finally found.   How personal does that statement of her love feel today?  Why would her punishment statements feel any more real to me?  Narcissistic wound to the ego.

For me, I know the truth, nothing was personal because we weren't even close to being on the same plane of reality.  

For me, taking her punitive actions personally provides me no relief or recovery.  Only anger and the desire to assume the punitive parent and punish her.  

The truth is,  taking my ex's actions personally gives me the same amount of peace as taking personally the rantings of a crazy homeless woman who yells at me for not giving her money.  She has yelled at the people before me, she'll yell at the people after me.  In her mind, I'm just part of the jumbled blur of all the evil people who pass her every few minutes.  And if I keep on walking by her, she'll continue to yell at me.  

The day I walked away from the interaction is the day the punishment ended and was then directed to next person in line at the BPD kissing booth.  

[Vexed]

I can't help but believe it's punishment.

Everything I've ever asked her not to do, or told her would hurt me, she has done.  Her explanation "you gave me the idea"  or "I did it because you said I would".

[myself]

This disorder is quite insidious. Detaching is helping me face what is mine and leave the rest behind. I think about how different the realities were, coming to accept it more and more. There doesn't seem, looking back, to have been much middle ground. There were times where she tried to be in mine, and I tried to be in hers. There were definite choices being made, good and bad, on both sides. As much as I now let go because it was 'just the disorder', it's a deeper process to heal and move on from the hurts that were intentional. So much of what she said was probably untrue, but admitting something like that was being very honest. Some was personal. No doubt. Another reason she very rarely apologized. She sees me as her scapegoat, but I don't.

[x1985x]

For me, I was just the next guy in line at the BPD kissing booth.  I paid my dollar and got my reward/punishment.  It wasn't any different for the ones before me or the ones after me.   In fact, in her mind, I'm just part of the jumbled blur of all the terrible people that she's come across in her life.  

Wow. That completely sums it up. Well put friend, so well put.

[SeekerofTruth]

It's the Disorder.  It was not personal.  

Disordered, yes. Personal, yes.

Like others here, my ex told she was punishing me on purpose.

I was supposed to take it personally, and I did.[/quote]
It was personal to me only because I chose to accept the punishment and return for more in hopes of getting a little bit of reward.  But the whole interaction was never personally about me.   The Disorder doesn't discriminate.  I/we were not special in anyway to the Disorder.   I was not special in our love, hatred, anger, joy, happiness, punishment, rage, sexual pleasure, ecstasy, loneliness... .connection.  Nothing about our interaction was special in any form or manner.  It wasn't real.  It wasn't connection.  It was fantasy.  It wasn't personal.  

Yes, she said the punishment was personal to me, but she also said I was her soulmate and one love that she finally found.   How personal does that statement of her love feel today?  Why would her punishment statements feel any more real to me?  Narcissistic wound to the ego.

For me, I know the truth, nothing was personal because we weren't even close to being on the same plane of reality.  

For me, taking her punitive actions personally provides me no relief or recovery.  Only anger and the desire to assume the punitive parent and punish her.  

The truth is,  taking my ex's actions personally gives me the same amount of peace as taking personally the rantings of a crazy homeless woman who yells at me for not giving her money.  [/quote]
That is just an outstanding piece of writing TK_SP.  I'm trying to go with ya on this type of deeply insightful interpretation because I think it is excellent, especially when coming from a recovery mindset and integrative viewpoint that has something pragmatic, valid, and adaptive about it.

This is where I loose  you:

"For me, I know the truth, nothing was personal because we weren't even close to being on the same plane of reality. " --- I simply haven't the heart.

Forgiveness is not a one-time thing.  Depending upon the depth, kind or type of injury and associated psychopathological mind-numbing response/reaction dynamic of circularity, denial, projection, passive-aggressive or whatnot but absent having any remorse, ownership, or sincere apology.  We may have to remember to remind ourselves to forgive... . 

Yet for me, most honestly, it was only in tapping into my justified source anger, disappointment, and rage that I could sincerely with relief and empowered congruence declare:  "There's things I can't forgive her for"... .

and then subsequently having enough of the strength, energy, and conviction to tell her off and call her out (without swearing or name-calling... .unless you call the terms psychopathic borderline and narcissistic personality disorder, vindictive, lying liar, stay away forever , don't ever come back, emasculating, neutered, loser, ... .in email (our last remaining portal of communication contact aside from social media stalking) and then resolving to go nc thereafter.  I was getting off energetically and excitedly because while I may have got my butt kicked and handed to me on a sllver platter handed, I got the satisfaction of at least getting the last word in.  My words were unloving and unforgiving and my motive was to hurt and punish and shame (not sure if she splits and doesn't care or fuels her rage, or wounds and guilts her)... .but in the intensity of that anger and recognition of my willful lack of forgiveness for her now and possibly forever, burns deeper my resolve in achieving and erecting more psychologically iron clad boundaries with anger serving as a useful tool or a set up triggering some type of regressive reaction to perceived threats that I have now generalized toward essentially all others in the event there may be a boundary violation as I might more readily snap out 

But at least for now, I'm grateful for my small moral victory.  Please let me appreciate, enjoy, and relish in this moment for a while.  Give me some time away space apart and no mental emotional physical contact with her... .I don't need that type of resistance to my life any longer.  I have rebuilding and recovering to do!

[hergestridge]

Punishment is a central concept in the vocabulary of a pwBPD. My wife never understod that her actions had consequences. When her actions had lasting consequences on her relations with others she viewed it as she was being "punished".

She never understod when she had outstayed her welcome in a social circle through ill behaviour, she viewed herself as some kind of martyr that had been excommunicated.

When I asked her it would always surface that her silent treatments, little tantrums and sulks were due to something I had said or done, but it became impossible and not worthwhile to keep track of it because it was like pulling a tooth to make her tell. And besides I didn't think it was that much of a big deal because I would be annoyed with little things that she did all the time too. But apparently she was very disturbed and overwhelmed by the emotional drama that is undeniably part of a relationship. You could never go to sleep and feel that what happened today was OK afterall, because you never knew... .

Sometimes she saw it as having gone completely of the rails. It would later trasnpire that she had been really trying to "punish" me with silence and snide comments but I just hadn't noticed because in the usual shi*storm of BPD behavior I just hadn't noticed. I wouldn't notice until she'd storm of to bed without a word.

Sheer hell.