BPDFamily.com

I had a situation with my BPD girl: she sometimes has this problem with transpiration and smell of sweat. It sounds weird, it's not a big deal to me but I know that she was put up on that a lot of times by her mother who told her to use deodorant. I also know, when she was young, the kids in school bullied her for that.

So in a situation when she felt a little vulnerable, I made a remark which was meant as a compliment. I said, I really like to have her lying next to me and smell and feel her close. I really like her smell and my pillow smells like her when she's gone.

Immediately after I finished my sentence, she closed the Skype in a kind of rage and just shut off. Our conversation stopped and she only came back 15min later with the sentence: 'sorry honey, today I felt confused.'

Since that day, our r/s was not the same anymore. She pushes me away where she can, makes her own plans, puts friends as a priority, family, sports... .everything is more important. She says she has to take care of herself now.

Could I have triggered a childhood trauma? What did I do wrong?

You triggered feelings of shame. She now knows you notice her smelling.

On a side note; my uBPDxgf also had problems with sweating. I've heard of this many times with pwBPD. Probably some kind of internal stress.

hmm, I never noticed it in a 'negative' way though

I could easily see my bf reacting poorly to something along these lines, so yes - possibly you've accidentally triggered something. For my bf, I can try to compliment him and it only takes one 'poorly chosen' word for him to take it like a massive insult.

Looking at your post, perhaps it could have been the word smell? Just guessing here, of course, but the word 'smell' is usually used in a negative way - when you smell something, if someone smells, if there's 'a' smell it's usually not pleasant, whereas 'scent' is commonly viewed as positive. Considering she was bullied, perhaps it was as simple as that...

Of course you don't always string sentences together by considering each word you put in it carefully (how exhausting would that be lol), so sometimes these things just happen. The fact that she came back after 15 minutes and apologized for her reaction is a positive though, at least it would be for me  :)

Have you talked about it at all, after that?

no I never dared to come up with that topic again. But it was the moment when the BPD push started. Then followed all kind of head aches, belly aches, fatigue, crying when I was not there, until the day when she saw other guys behind my back and we broke up.

Today, I think, maybe I could had saved something by addressing the topic.

(I have to add, English is not our both 1st language. So misunderstanding because if language barrier is programmed)