Hi Butterfly12,
I think the hardest thing is learning to handle ourselves, especially when we are encouraged to believe it is all our doing. I have no idea how to do this.
My suggestion is to turn the focus more on to yourself, completely onto yourself, and what you want and what you feel. Less about him and what he thinks, wants, feels. More about you.
Sometimes a thought exercise is helpful to nudge out thoughts or ideas or beliefs that have gotten bottled up.
To me, and I am not an expert, a thought exercise is a way to cultivate the feelings and thoughts you want to
grow by using your imagination. make sense?
In my imaginary safe world, it would look like this, a grown adult smart Butterfly12 would take a growing but smaller Butterfly12 by the hand and lead her somewhere relaxed, comfortable and fun. Little Butterfly12 is wearing a pinafore and patent leather shoes. Hey, this is my imaginary world, you have to fill in your own details. I think there are swing sets and lollipops. Adult Butterfly says Little Butterfly you have done a great job handling some very tough stuff. Little Butterfly is unsure about this but Adult Butterfly can reassure her by listing examples of times where Little Butterfly did a nice job. Adult Butterfly can encourage Little Butterfly to feel comfortable. To feel relaxed. Once you have a glimmer of that feeling cultivate it, if it doesn't come right away that's fine too. Once Adult Butterfly and Little Butterfly are sitting companionably together on the swings t enjoying their lollipops, ask Little Butterfly, how can I take better care of you. I bet you get an answer.
And if you don't get an answer you're not out anything but 5 minutes and a little bit of mental energy.
Is he done? Or is this another game? Another test? I feel so used.
It's very hard to tell. pwBPD run to extremes for all sorts of reasons. Here is what I know to be true.
When I was first on these boards a member by the name of Winston72 said this to me.
“twisting yourself into a pretzel trying to shape yourself to match her ability to understand/comprehend ends up with you terribly twisted in your own thinking and overly identified with her thinking.”
For me what I needed to be was less identified with my partners thinking which was going to shift considerably and rock solid in understanding what I am, what I would stand for, where my limits where and how I would care for myself while in this relationship.
In being rock solid in understanding what I am, that included my own core pain as Lifewriter mentioned but also my own positive qualities. I needed to be true to myself first.
I know this is a lot to take in.
and one last note, you can't have a conversation with a person who is unwilling to talk. don't participate in a dysfunctional dance.
'ducks