BPDFamily.com

My uBPDbf uses alcohol on the weekends and usually drinks to an excess. Recently each time the end of the night ends with him looking for something to attack, put me down about etc. after reading this site and asking questions. I am trying the validation etc., bit at 3 am and when he's dunk and irrational, there is no reasoning. I try not to bite at what he is saying and I'm doing okay with but need to get better. Last night we got home at 1:30am and he went on about anything & everything he could possibly conjur up (some truth, but mostly lies). He even tried to claim things about my daughter to get me to bite. I laid in bed and mostly listened and prayed he'd stop. It went on for 2hrs.

How do you get it to stop?  I just wanted to sleep in my bed... .

I understand. When my husband was taking percocet for shoulder pain, he would talk incessantly while we were in bed. It drove me crazy, but I attributed it to the drugs.

I would literally fall asleep while he was talking. I found that the things he most talked about were things where he needed reassurance from me.

Things like... .you still love me don't you? You don't think the boys will make fun of me do you? You do think that "something blah blah" is emotional cheating, right?

Blah blah blah.

Hit the "mute" button dude.

Hi Ycul,

I am new here and so take this with for what it's worth, but this is what I've read here:

1.  You can't really validate all that well when someone is dysregulated/verbally abusive.  If he's attacking you, you might get in a "you sound really frustrated" but you can't invalidate the invalid (including someone who is laying into you unfairly.)

2.  If he won't agree to table the discussion, it is ok to physically remove yourself from it.  Something like, "I am not going to discuss this with you right now.  We can talk about it later."  Try not to get into a JADE situation where you're explaining *why* you don't want to talk about it at that moment; justifying/explaining, etc. doesn't work with BPD, but it REALLY doesn't work when someone is dysregulated. 

If you feel he might perceive that as abandonment, you can set a time to discuss it later.

Hope this helps.  As I said, I am new to all this myself.  But I've tried this and I was surprised at the results -- very effective.

You already got some good advice from earthgirl on this, but I'd like to point out something to you:

You say you just wanted to sleep in your bed. You can't make him shut up. So you only have three choices:

1. Stay in your bed, but listen until he falls asleep.

2. Stay in your bed and fall asleep while he's talking (If you personally can do that--I would have trouble!)

3. Go elsewhere to sleep in peace.

You have enough control over your situation--you can pick any of those three choices. But first  you have to acknowledge that he can take your preferred option away from you.

 Hang in there!

Given alcohol is in this mix, try to disengage from discussing anything. Alcohol tends to close peoples ears to everything but their own exaggerated opinions.

You can't stop the talking so try to stop the listening, that is your part.

This will involve planning ahead for the inevitable rather than coming up with an answer on the spot.

How do you think you can remove your ears from it?