BPDFamily.com

It has been my experience that a BPD afflicted person cannot sit down at a kitchen table and just talk normally.  It just does not happen.  The refusal of this very act is a threat to them as this means a compromise is perceived to be potentially proposed by the other party.  

Try it.

I believe that it is the first sign of a BPD afflicted person.

Try asking the BPD to sit down with a pen & paper and put down their concerns and so on.

It just won't happen.

This means that they will have to compromise and listen to the other person. This will never happen.

Not sure about this. My BPD ex wife was very fond of doing just this, and I dreaded those times because it never lead to compromise. It just mean she was going to have her way in some way. Move her positions forward in the ever ongoing war between the sexes.

Towards the end of our (very long) relationship I avoided sitting at tables with her altogether, because it always meant unpleasantness and attacks. It was the times she tried to get at me.

I always found her way of communicating unpleasant and strange. She would have these kind of formalized "table talks" where she would have an opinion vastly different from the one she seemed to have when we had an everyday chat. Often it was came like a sudden cold shower.

This reminds me of my mom! She's impossible to talk to. She doesn't even pay attention, she just zones in and out of the conversation and laughs at my efforts. Drives me up the wall!

My mom was similar, but instead of "table talks", her things is to write notes or letters addressing you formally by your full name, the date, etc.

Hmmm interesting, ...

My ex and my ex in laws are such that they TOTALLY avoid any serious talks especially if it means that they would have to stop what they are doing, and sit down at a table and discuss things on a mature level which means a pen, a paper, an agenda on each other's minds, and to have  a reasonable, logical and systematic talk meaning to write down the current problem(s) and the action plan to carry out resolution of those problems.

This would mean compromise.  And compromise ... .or just listening to the other's point of view for that matter, ... .is NOT on any narcissistic's mandate.

It has been my experience that to allow this would be, in their minds, a total waste of time as this means that time would be allotted to "the enemy" and this would be unheard of... .

(... and to even mention a mediator or someone neutral to listen in on a conversation would be an intrusion on privacy ... but really it would mean that this would expose the nuttiness of their thought processing patterns... .)

My stbex would call "family meetings."  Discussion was welcome, as long as it ended by agreeing with her.  It was perfectly OK with her if we peons compromised among ourselves, as long as it didn't involve any give on her part.

Hmmmm ... now THAT is very interesting indeed.  I get the no compromise thing, ... as most BPD's are NPD as well (narcissistic personality disorder) but the very act of at least having a "mock" democratic process is fascinating.

    This may really come down to the "power trip idea" meaning ... during the family meeting or spouse to spouse meeting, your mate is really thinking to her/himself:

     ... ."yeah yeah yeah,... .  Ya-Dee-Ya-Dee-Ya-daaaa... .I am just playin' with you dumb-azzed peons as 10 minutes from now, I am da' person that is going to veto all your useless discussions, and I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do, because I'm da' boss of yooz, ... .(but I'll let you little people feel like you're important... ."

Anyways, ... .I hafta say that AT LEAST you GOT a meeting... .

I never got to have the venue to even voice my opinion.  Nor did our children.  We did have ONE such meeting, but what total waste of time, ... .my kids were trying to nicely say that they were literally scared sh**less of their mom but during the get-together my ex-wife just had this glassy-eyed face as if anything we said was like "charlie brown adult talk" (if you ever watched charlie brown special episode cartoons the adult's voices were GARBLED)

I've decided that trying to understand BPD is like trying to smell the color nine.

Part of my "awakening" was having normal conversations with other people.  If exh was near me that never happened. I was to be the quiet wife. When exh wasn't around and others began to talk to me, and they expected me to talk with, and have my own views,  it was so different!    No power, no competition , no Npd.

Any conversations was to be focused on him and him only. I remember well, ( more than once) wanting to tell him about something in my day, and he said back to me that he doesn't give a hoot what I did , I was not to interrupt him about him.

Great thread ogopogodude,

Mine was a great listener and even taking the blame for a very long time.  That vicious cycle in time revealed that the "great listener" was a camouflage for someone who simply had no genuine insight into the issues presented at the table.  He could actually regurgitate word-for-word what I said, so I said to myself, "wow, what a great listener."  In time I found myself explaining like a mother to a child, "Hearing is a function of the Ears, Listening is something you do with the heart and mind engaged.  I'm getting the sense that you HEAR me, but definitely are incapable of LISTENING."   I also failed to recognize that his great listening skills were actually punctured quite often by calm interruptions in the beginning and then all out rages in the middle of my speaking over time.  Once I noticed he really NEVER let anyone finish their thoughts I realized it was part of his pattern of behavior.  For years I chalked up his interruptive, rude nature to Attention Deficit Disorder.

So yeah, agreed.  Sitting down at a table or anywhere for a meaningful conversation to mutually agree on a roadmap to a better place was NOT possible.

I tried on many instances to ask my BPDex about our future... .I'd say, where do you see us in 5 or 10 years.  Always worked itself out to be an argument or she would have to assert that the "kid" was 9 and we weren't going anywhere till she was older and on her own or with her father. The sc*mb*g father was ALWAYS involved in her thoughts even though she knew he was a controlling bast**d.  This should have been another flag that I SHOULD have recognized.  There were just so many things that I didn't see then that I am starting to see now.  She NEVER stood by me in support.  It just never happened.!

I don't know, mine was pretty damn eloquent. Of course, I can't decide if she is NPD with a streak of BPD or the other way around... .As much as she talked about herself and everything in her life (granted, she did have a reason to be proud of her accomplishments at her age), some of my friends eventually started wondering out loud if something was wrong with her.

... .brilliant... .

Before my ex was innitially had the big triggering moment when the RS began to slide slowly down hill.  She was an excellent conversationalist in some Ways.  She knew how to uncover the most tender parts within me with expert care and just what to say and was so understanding and forgiving.  When it came to things she didn't understand she was very upfront about it and would explain how he sort of experiences that and how it was linked to her childhood etc.  

Once she was triggered and the Rs began to go down hill her abandonment and engulfment fears were being triggered often and she began to resent me for it. Having those deep intimate conversations no longer seemed possible because she was constantly triggered even if on a subtle level but she would dysregulate often.

I think this is the biggest difference between my ex and myself when I am triggered by something I always reflect on it an analyZe it.  Trying to do that with my ex would only retrigger it.  I probably wasn't gentle enough at a certain point when I began to bring up her behaviors. She eventually did try to explain to me but was met by some sort of strict internal frame of reality that kept me from understanding and analyzing what that is has been where my healing is coming from now.  I understand where my ex was coming from and how the disorder manifested in her and what was going on and you can to if you put in the time and effort.

My BPDex broke up with me seven times.  All seven were via text message.

All six recycle/we are getting back together conversations were in person.

I'm also not sure about it... .My exBPDh loved sitting down and planning and making all kinds of lists - to do list, game plan, resolutions, day plan etc.

Mine would not have a simple adult conversation. Maybe I was getting ambushed with how I was destroying the relationship (as the first mention of a problem), or having my word choice nitpicked to oblivion, or tied up in projection, or subject to one-sided discussion rules, or having absurd reactions to basic statements, or something else. And eventually it would devolve to shouting (often quickly), then I'd finally manage to calm her down hours or days later... .which was the trap. You see, if I did calm her down, then that meant that I agreed with everything she said or thought about the issue, and if I tried to discuss any of it later when we were calm, then I was a liar who tried to deliberately deceive her. She managed to monopolize many therapy sessions into 'shout at him because he's a terrible, awful liar' this way too.

I was trying to sit down and write out a more detailed list of what she'd do, but it just kept growing. That's a good description of the relationship, when I tried to sit down and make a list of 'what's wrong and what do we need to fix' I found that it just spiraled into a giant multipage document with problems cross-referencing each other.


It helps me to try to understand what happened, and it makes sense to me - not 'I think she was being reasonable', but 'I now understand why she acted that way'. For me, the fact that there are such strong patterns in the way BPDs act makes it much easier for me to accept that she has issues I cannot hope to fix, and that I had no choice but to leave or let her issues destroy me too.

I dunno mine was pretty charming... she really had no interests tho and couldnt sit still.  In the 3 years we were together I think she was able to sit through 2 movies.

I can relate to this very much. Soo frustrating. Mine would focus on the fact my voice went up in pitch and this apparently triggered him. He used these words. So then the issue I was trying to discuss about what was bothering me got replaced by how my tone of voice was. A clear distraction. I was not allowed to show any annoyance or anger. I could never really be heard.


It really does help in coming to an acceptance that there is nothing we can do to save them/the r/s.  I don't know where I'd be if I hadn't found this forum!

I had a r/s years ago with a pwBPD. He would insist on standing on the other side of the kitchen wall to have a discussion, couldn't even allow me to see him. It was truly nuts.

The thing was, my ex wife was 100% convinced that the problems that we had in our relationship was down to poor communication between her and me. Some shrink had actually told her that too.

This reinforced the "We need to talk"-behavior, bullying behavior. She also insisted that we would enter couples therapy. I always asked her why, and she wouldn't tell.

When we eventually managed to drag me into couples therapy (against my will!) she bailed out after just a couple of sessions because she felt threatened by the therapist, and she expected me to side up with her.

I realized quite early on that there was something really wrong about this "communication", because my wife was not interested in listening to me. She just needed to find the right method to shout me down and make me obey. I pointed this out several times over the years, and she was furious every time I said it (probably because it was true). But that changed nothing. It had to be done. It's like that with these PDd people. They know it's wrong but they can't stop.

Bottom line:

They can sit down at the table, but they can't converse.

Yep, it will just drive you nuts trying to do so, and this is one of the reasons I felt off balance and crazy at the end of our relationship.

In my experience with my uBPDexgf, she preferred texting as her mode of communication with pretty much everyone.  She stated that it was easier for her to converse in that way because she could go over things before committing to the statement.  She stated that I was a challenge because I liked to talk in person and over the phone.  She later tried to give up facebook so that as she said "would not be living an edited life" and she failed at it and had to go back on facebook in order to have enough communication (attention?) from other people.

Mine could not sit down and speak at length with someone in a normal back and forth and keep an interesting conversation going.  She had to either be acting very fake and perhaps talking about something she knows a good bit about, drinking and being the center of attention and rambling in an embarrassing way (usually in a focus way with a single person, ignoring everyone else), or she had to be "pursued" somewhat in the conversation (as in a male that is interested in her is talking her up and she just has to smile and laugh and everything is made easy on her because of the male's attention/attraction).  This last point is why she had mostly male "friends" and did not understand why I had a problem with her typical behavior (which was to speak at length in front of me to the first male that showed her sexual attention and then totally forget that I existed for an hour or more, this is how she felt people typically went about being social).

I feel that the reason that she did this was because of low self worth and unstable sense of self.  She simply didn't have many interesting opinions or thoughts.  When I wanted to discuss some pattern or I saw or an abstract idea, her end of it amounted to nitpicking at my expressions (ex. I'd make a general statement and she would say that the generalization does not hold in every single imaginable case, which is just obvious, but she would do this over and over).

Oh yes, any raise in my voice or any kind of body language at all would immediately become the focus of the conversation. She could just shout at me and get in my face and that's fine, but heaven forbid my voice ever raises or I look away or look at her or shift position or sit too still... .And if anything could be pinned on me, even something like raising my voice after an hour of being shouted at, well that means I'm just as responsible for the fight as she was.

Where she'd use 'triggering' is for words that she wanted to avoid dealing with. If she did some minor thing around the house she'd demand I thank her for it or get angry - even during the time she didn't even have a job, but I couldn't say anything about her not appreciating things that I do because anything about ingratitude was 'triggering', leading to either general anger or an accusation that I was trying to buy her. I'm so glad I have a way to make sense of that mess now.


Mine tried to get me to 'admit' at the end that my lack of communication skills was the main problem in our relationship. I refused to do it, both because I was tired of making BS apologies and taking the blame for nonsense, and because I didn't want to enable her. I've seen her post about how our relationship just ended mysteriously, and how my lack of communication skills destroyed it.

Thing is, in the six months or so before the end I kept saying "I think this relationship is dysfunctional but I want us to try to fix it and I think we can." And it's not my lack of communication skills if I say "I have a problem with this specific behavior, I would like it if you would moderate it" and she 'reflects' back "Oh, so you're saying I'm a crazy shunt?" (replace sh with a c, the board blocks profanity).  

Same. Heaven forbid I didn't give him my undivided attention when he demanded it & often he'd decide to get into it with me while I'm trying to wind down at the end of the day and read my book in bed... .if I didn't put my book down and give him my full attention he'd knock the book out of my hands and it would go flying across the room... .sometimes I'd get mad and go pick it up and other times I'd just sigh and listen to him. Sometimes I'd just roll over and shut my light off which was never a good idea and enraged him. 

Well, I could for many yrs into that r/s. With friends, family there were no issues either.

The last decade however, as outbursts really started, things significantly changed.

Towards friends exw became more persistent in her view, arguments, so the heat went up. As with kids diversions tactics were needed to cool down.

As with exw family, exw was a pussy, because as a 18yr old exw dumped in an outburst her parents/family, nc for a 9 yrs. So after reconciliation exw became the loving D again, afraid to do / say something wrong.

Therefore the 3 outbursts out of nowhere towards me (in which exw blew all up), after her visiting her family (for exw seemingly a ‘memorable’ experience…) Her frustrations needed to be projected. 

As for emotional matters, the standard expression was ‘you know I can’t express myself’… of course unless triggered… than exw was a master in spitting her gut.

Expressing her / our future, dreams, goals, etc.? ‘like others’, ‘just ordinary’, ‘something different’, ‘nice things’.

Really, it once took me a whole afternoon (!) to find out what ‘something different’ and ‘nice things’ were… Conclusion after a whole afternoon was that we already did ‘something different’ and ‘nice things’.

I don't believe this is accurate.



My dBPDex was always writing down what she thought and felt, then she'd ask to discuss it.



the issue would be that any point you made other than "I agree with you" would lead to circular logic which would NEVER end in compromise of any kind.



Either that, or she'd start crying and saying sorry and how she's horrible and totally give in to EVERY SINGLE THING, overly giving, only to take it all back and say I "forced" her to agree with me, and start the circular logic again

Hahaha, WOW, yes. My BPD would be all attention if he were the one talking and I replied according to the rules (admiration, interest), but would zone out when it was something that did not really interest him or was not about him.

We would eat together or go to diner or for coffee and he would start gazing at the ceiling. Only way I would get his attention back would be to ask him about something that he liked or his day.

He would also insist on sit down meals for the family and then come home and go straight to the bedroom and go on the web to do something he wanted to do. Then, a couple of days later, complain about how we never had sit down meals.

The thing is, they actually believe what they say and in their mind, it is reality.

That is exactly what happened in our relationship. My wife fought tooth and claw to have everything her way - but since I am a human being I wanted to discuss things first. Apparently she couldn't take that and we (almost) always ended up having it my way.

Then she held that against me - that I got to decide everything. But it was basically down to the fact that she couldn't compromise her own suggestions, so she just threw them overboard and let me be the captain.

It was like dragging an obnoxious teenager around.

Her favorite come-back was that I did NOT listen to how she feels, or I wasn't interested in HER FEELINGS.  She always made it about her feelings and how I was such an ass and inconsiderate.  She blamed me ALL THE TIME, and if I asked her, which I did, what was on her mind, it WOULD NOT go like a normal conversation... .she blamed and really had no answers.  It was so predictable how it was going to go... .and the more that I thought I could rectify things and possibly get thru to her, the more blame she threw and the more upset she would become.  Till this day I can feel the adrenaline rush creepin' up my gut... .I can see her sitting there with her face turned, her hand under chin and her foot swinging 100 mph!

You never consider why feelings was a popular one... along with you made me do it after one of her 10 attacks on me.