BPDFamily.com

Hello friends,  

Back Story:https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=284980.0;topicseen (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=284980.0;topicseen)

Long story short, we were together, long break, back again and then broke up and backstory and bla bla... .I don't want to bore you.  :)

He tried to get me back on and off for 6 months when we last broke up. I realised I still loved him but by then I felt scared to be honest, and he did too, plus he was angry. Finally a friend told him how I felt. We exchanged sweet Christmas greetings and now for some strange reason he is back to being angry.

After the holidays I contacted him, no response. And then last week he is turning up where he knows I will be. In fact he told a mutual friend a whole week in advance that he would go there, which he never does (the same friend who had delivered the message to him) I think to make sure I would be there in hope to meet him. And then he shows up with a female friend and refuses to speak to me or even acknowledge my existence. And then did exactly the same thing a second time that week.

His behaviour is passive aggressive, something has triggered him to feel angry and it is very obvious he is deliberately trying to make me feel bad for some reason. I find it hard to cope with this. I have PTSD and now find it very difficult to go out. I am just feeling exhausted from all the drama. But I don't want to stay home because going there is my fun, my social circle. This is something I do for me and has nothing to do with him at all. I have been dancing all my life and this is more my hangout than his. He can go there too of course but I am wanting to find a way to co-exist, without this passive aggressive thing going on.

How can I communicate this to him in a good and balanced way? How do you successfully "convince" somebody to not behave passive aggressively?

I suppose I first have to figure out what the return is for him... .

I don't know exactly why he is angry but I think something has flipped him back to where he was. What I mean, I don't know how to validate. And I am not calling because I think he would feel happy to not pick up, so I thought of just sending an email.

Thank you all in advance!

Hi Mitti--I don't know what to recommend what you do (I think it matters what you want ultimately here; do you know?). But just wanted to note that this situation is nearly IDENTICAL to what happened with the two of you 18-20 months ago. And it turned out he DID want to be in contact with you but had a super hard time really owning it, maintained intimate contact with another woman while doing this strange dance with you to somehow deal with his feelings, and things got murkier and murkier.

Does that help shed light on what you want to do this time? You have been here before.

Hi patientandclear,  :)

Yes, you are right. It is similar and he is again using some friends as a "shield". We did get back together that time in the end but it was a very strange way to get there. It's actually not as complicated lol, this time in that there is no backstory around us even nearly as convoluted as it was then. That situation was also the reason we broke up this time.

Then he was angry that I had left, that is how he perceived it because he told me. And this time I was the one to break it off again. This time he had had two years of therapy, two different Ts though so probably cannot count as that long, but he dealt with the breakup very differently. He tried to get me back, and I remained unsure, which I didn't tell him, because I also couldn't own my feelings I suppose. Now that I have told him, he is, like you said, behaving the same way.

We had a falling out this autumn and weren't in touch for a couple of months. I wrote him about something else and he seemed pretty eager, in his passive aggressive way, to have some form of contact. He responded to my texts at strange hours, like in the middle of the night or early early in the morning. Knowing him I feel pretty sure he did this to see if I would respond, in which case he could conclude I wasn't seeing anybody else. He knows I have been dating. I didn't respond because I was asleep. Then we spoke but when I couldn't just admit to what I wanted to say, something he had waited to hear for 6 months he got irritated, and he said to not call him. After this I asked a friend to tell him. I have no idea how that might have felt for him. Most of the time he doesn't mean it when he says to not call him. He expects for me to understand when. I don't.

Anyway, I suppose what he is doing now is payback, because hearing I still have feelings for him I opened a door for him to hurt me back, the way he probably felt for the six months I wouldn't take him back. So it is the same, but also different.

What got us talking that time was that he had to because he kept coming to my dance classes. He placed himself somewhere where nobody could "accuse" him of actually wanting to talk to me. There is nothing like that now, and he feels more confident being in this environment.

Thank you so much for helping me see the similarities. I suppose at some point he will be looking for a similar safe way of approaching me. Meanwhile I just do not want to have a stress reaction. The risk is that whatever I ask for will be the one thing he will withhold until missing me feels worse than hurting me feels good.

Sorry, I may have been unclear. I want to reconcile. :)

But there are steps, and first we need to get to a place where we talk again.

This is my perception of where we are at - he is placing himself near me but with a shield of other people, as I understand it, to protect himself and to provoke me. If I move forward he could get angrier and distance himself more (it has happened) if I do nothing he may feel rejected and distance himself more (this has also happened).

Does anybody recognise this behaviour and what did you do? What worked and how?