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I'm just wondering if anybody else experiences this.

Last night my boyfriend and I went out for my work Christmas breakup dinner.  During the course of the night, we ordered a coffee.  I normally have my coffee without sugar.  Anyway, last night I decided to put a teaspoon of sugar in.  No big deal, right.  Well, he almost jumped out his seat.  I asked him what's wrong.  He said, "you don't have sugar, have you been pretending all this time not to have sugar"... I said "no, I just felt like it this time" and he said, "oh is it because it's raw sugar"? and I just said yes.

Then this morning he said the strangest thing to me.  He said, I hate it when I have a dream and it can't tell if it was real or not... .and I said what do you mean?  He said, oh, the other day I dreamed you had sugar in your coffee, and I was upset because you always said you didn't, and it confused me".  Then I said, oh maybe you're thinking about what happened last night when I put sugar in my coffee.  He said, yeah that's strange!  And we left it at that. 

I don't understand how he could have thought what happened last night was a dream?

My ex would completely forget moments, weeks, or months of our relationship and then refer to them as a "dream" later. I don't know how to explain how I coped with it. Maybe you get hopeful that they'll eventually remember some things in the right place. Often they will ignore positive things and remember negative things, or vice versa.

But you're right, it is a behavior that is often exhibited.

Hi RedRose15,

good observation and description  |iiii. It may well be related to splitting triggered by dysregulation. Not all dysregulation is immediately visible and automatically associated with rage.

Last night my boyfriend and I went out for my work Christmas breakup dinner.  :)uring the course of the night, we ordered a coffee.  I normally have my coffee without sugar.  Anyway, last night I decided to put a teaspoon of sugar in.  No big deal, right.  

you - balanced thinking: no big deal

him - b&w thinking: the world is upside down. The sky is falling

Well, he almost jumped out his seat.

him - overreacting. Clearly there is a physical threat. Lower level (Reptile) mind in charge.

I asked him what's wrong.

you - asking him to justify himself, invalidating

He said, "you don't have sugar, have you been pretending all this time not to have sugar"

him - clearly the sky is falling. The relationship is off as the person he loves just transformed into a sugar eating monster.

... I said "no, I just felt like it this time" and he said, "oh is it because it's raw sugar"? and I just said yes.

him - dysregulated, not clearly thinking grasping for straws to make sense of this universe. Self validation through making things up.

you - agreeing to it


I went through the dialog to show how major this minor event may have been for your partner considering b&w thinking, high sensitivity and tendency to dysregulate and split. And if he was dysregulated i.e. stopped thinking clearly it would not be unusual that this "extreme" episode was experienced as not himself similar to what happens when a major trauma e.g. car accident is experienced a normal person. He then seemed to have further processed the event during the night.

What is a bit odd is that your partner is so sensitive to small changes and finds and becomes regulated once a new rule has been discovered. Even more your automatic confirmation of the rule of raw sugar may indicate that such exchanges happen regularly. Needing fixed rules is a common theme for people on the autism spectrum. Of course it also could be simply b&w thinking with black: sugar and white: you, no sugar and facing an unsolvable conflict the escape is dysregulation.

Validation is critical to ground our loved ones in reality. It is at the core compassionate truth. Validation has on closer inspection four aspects

    validate the valid

 do not

   invalidate the valid

   validate the invalid

and when needed

  invalidate the invalid

It is tempting to just say yes and be done. Most of us started there too  . When faced with convenient invalid stuff to just go along and agree. But then are we not adding to the make believe thinking that is in its entirety warping the world of our partner? Should we not chip off distortion bit by bit?