BPDFamily.com

Wonder if everyone handles all this stuff the same way. My way is to pull it all apart to try to make sense…... and this is where I have got stuck.

I posted another thread about Waifs and Witches and what have you and it generated some good posts. It seems I am not alone in having fallen for the sweet charms of a waif!

Relationships with pwBPD seem to based on some or all of the following:

1)   a good standard r/s is BPD meets Co-Dependent type. I can understand this. They fill the gaps in each others’ character and to start with all things are fine. Cool.

2)   Another approach (theory) is that those of us damaged in childhood seek the familiar in an adult r/s and often find someone with the same traits as the parent or care-giver who gave us a hard time, ostensibly to put things rights. (This last bit – putting things right -  I’m not so convinced about; but going for familiar seems OK to me).

3)   Yet another angle, is that the 2 people in the r/s are of a similar maturity. But only one is mature enough to recognize a problem, try to find a solution, and end up for sanity’s sake on this forum. That would suggest to me a discrepancy in levels of maturity.

The trouble with these theories is they seem to miss one essential part.

The essential part is that we meet a pretend character. A fake. A chameleon.

The sweet Waif has no detectable character similarities to my less than nurturing mother (see 2 above). That is the very reason I was attracted. Had she come on strong week 1 with put downs and anger and the rest I’m sure I’d have been out of there…... I know it happened with another. But all I saw this time was the sweet waif.

But, at some later stage we get the morph to queen/witch and then, now that we are well into this r/s, we meet (at least I did) my well disguised mother!

This still needs some explanation as far as I’m concerned, because the mother aspect was so well hidden behind a mask I had no idea what I was in for. It just seems too weird to find a great partner, and for that very partner to flip into someone I didn’t really like. Don’t get it.

Then the codependency bit.

I am not sure falling for a girl who is looking for love is that weird. Maybe I do have codependent traits, but in most social professional situations I cope pretty well. OK I may go along with the fish choice at a restaurant, when I’d really prefer a steak, or we’ll choose a new holiday destination when I’d be quite happy going back to last year’s choice, but these ‘minor’ concessions to me go under something like ‘social grace’. It makes others happy and it costs nothing in the big “balanced” picture.

So then, I get duped by the Waif. Out with the sweet in with the sour. I try to put things straight with us (I really do) but get the angry witch, and blame and all the chaos. Things are not going well…….now it is here that my Co-D stuff becomes more apparent……

It’s a bit like being a non-swimmer at a pool party. You stay on the deck, you can drink beer, eat burgers, dance whatever, who cares if you can’t swim…... but fall in the deep end and you are in trouble. You can’t get out.

Get stuck in a r/s with a pwBPD and the Co-D traits will make seeing straight and getting out a nightmare. You have to learn a lot of new stuff to make any progress.

My point is that codependency is a real issue on exiting a bad r/s, but getting into the thing in the first place has more to do with the ploys of a cunning individual, than being a nice guy.

Maybe I’m feeling a little angry and defensive. I’m a few days into divorce proceedings and STBexW  is getting all antsy and saying why didn’t you do something (as in repair r/s) before. Aaaaaaarrghhhhhhhhhh!

If you are still here thanks for reading.

Ok, I'm fully prepared to get flamed here, but I'm just gonna put this out there:  My relationship with my wife was based on the fact that she was awesome.  Two years into our relationship:

Wake up to the smell of coffee and toast and eggs and bacon
Wifey (not at that point) comes into bedroom nude and kisses me awake and leads me to the kitchen where she's already plated everything up
Hops in the shower with me
Tells me she's already ironed my shirt and that she picked up the dry cleaning from the doorman yesterday and laid out what she wants me to wear in the guest bedroom
Gets out of the shower and pulls out her new toy that I'm going to use on her and I'm not leaving till I do and f*ck my 8 AM meeting you're the boss and if you have to reschedule it you have to reschedule it and why aren't you already over here already?

This is all the first hour of my day.  Routinely.  Two years in.  Maybe we didn't have a new toy every day or even every week but the rest was pretty much par for the course any given Monday.  Two years in.

Kids and jobs and commitments change everything in every relationship, so as we got older it wasn't feasible to take a shower with me most mornings or stay asleep while she dealt with the kids, but the passion was always there and frankly our friends were fairly envious of us because we were so in love and so committed to each other for so long.

And then psychotherapy began after an episode we couldn't manage and everything went to hell; the BPD traits I've mentioned in my other posts that hadn't manifested in our relationship suddenly came out of the woodwork, and our relationship suffered the same fate as the relationships from her youth.

My wife was awesome till she wasn't.  I didn't need to fix her or rescue her or do anything than make her as happy as she made me.  I don't know what the trigger was, but I noticed it acutely when the BPD traits kicked in and got fed up very quickly, and not knowing what I was dealing with, demanded she give our family effort when she couldn't even put effort into herself.

I don't know that it's any deeper than that.

I'm not sure that I'll ever understand why I have co-dependency traits that led me to being with a BPD gf. I've most often read that this comes from some sort of childhood issue but I didn't have any of these. My parents are still married and live in the same house that I grew up in. They were both huge parts of my life, I always did well in school and have been successful as a young adult yet somehow the co-dependency stuff is still there inside of me for seemingly no reason.

@Icanteven... .you will not get flamed by me. My honeymoon went on for 3 years! Birth of D seemed to trigger something.

@pj... .all part of life's rich fabric! I dunno.

I hope I didn't give that impression, I just know that I'm going to see "we fall in love with people who are at our emotional maturity level" written on here at some point if this thread goes long enough, and I'm getting to a point where I think that entire idea needs to be tweaked to "we stay with people who are at our emotional maturity level," with the caveat that children and marriage inevitably complicate things. 

I want to reunite our family with a healthy, well woman, and if my wife doesn't get there she doesn't need to damage our children any further.  BUT, for the vast majority of our relationship, my wife was the best thing that ever happened to me, and there weren't any emotional maturity issues to speak of; she was amazing by any objective measure so I recoil at some of the generalizations I see on here.  Do NPDs and BPDs hook up a lot?  No question.  Do codependents and BPDs wind up together?  Absolutely.  But I'm not an NPD nor a narcissist nor an inverted narcissist and my unwillingness to engage in codependency was a huge contributing factor to the demise of our marriage, and frankly it was me in very short order telling her in no uncertain terms that I wasn't going to tolerate her BPD behaviors that came out of nowhere that led to me being on this board.

The book Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist and Get on With Your Life makes a good distinction between caretaking and co-dependency, and then further breaks down the levels of caretaking into 4 groups. Here's how she describes the difference:

How is caretaking different from codependency? Caretaking may sound a lot like codependency. Codependency seems to be a more pervasive set of personality traits that are applied in every aspect of a person’s life, including at work, in friendships, at school, in parenting, and in intimate relationships. Codependent behaviors could be described quite similarly to those that Caretakers use. However, most Caretakers take on this role almost exclusively inside the family and primarily only with the borderline or narcissist. Often Caretakers are very independent, good decision makers, competent, and capable on their own when not in a relationship with a borderline or narcissist. It is almost as if the Caretaker lives in two different worlds with two different sets of behaviors, rules, and expectations, one set with the BP/NP and another with everyone else. You may even hide your caretaking behaviors from others and try to protect other family members from taking on caretaking behavior, much like child abuse victims try to protect siblings from being abused.

Also she writes this:
Caretaking Gone Bad People who become Caretakers for a BP/NP also seem to have a certain set of personality traits. These traits do not constitute a “personality disorder.” In fact, they can be highly valued and useful to relationships and families, at work, and socially, especially when they are at moderate levels. They include a desire to do a good job, enjoyment in pleasing others, a desire to care for others, peacemaking, a gentle and mild temperament, and calm and reasonable behaviors. These traits can be the hallmark of someone who is easy to get along with, caring of others, and a good worker, spouse, and parent.  But when you use these behaviors as a means of counteracting the extreme behaviors of the BP/NP, they can morph into more toxic forms and become perfectionism, a need to please, overcompliance, extreme guilt, anxiety, overconcern, avoidance of conflict, fear of anger, low self-esteem, and passivity. At that point, these traits become detrimental to the mental, emotional, and physical health of the person and become Caretaker behaviors.

This was helpful to me-- maybe it will be to you as well!

Hi earlgrey,

You make some good points in this post, and I see how the "meeting the chameleon" could get you stuck. It's true, how can we see red flags, inappropriate behavior, inconsistencies, etc., if the person in front of us appears and behaves anywhere from awesome to normal and everything in between?

I don't think anyone here is saying that you should have known from the start. How could you? Were there signs that you missed? Maybe. But my goodness, people are complex, and there will always be little blips that pass over the radar—especially when the love hormones have kicked in. I'd go so far as to say that that happens in ALL romantic relationships to some extent.

The idea that the "presentation" is a part of a cunning put-on is always possible, but if we are dealing with BPD, I don't think that is routinely the case. I see the chameleon-like behavior as an attempt to find an identity and a way to attach to someone. The unstable sense of self is really at the root here, in my opinion, so while it may feel manipulative/planned, especially with hindsight, I don't think it is. There are lots of unconscious coping mechanisms going on that we have no idea are happening. I also believe the the feelings expressed in the beginning really do feel like the truth to pwBPD.

Looking at our bit is not about concluding that we are weird or immature for "falling" for a pwBPD. People with BPD can be loving and generous and intelligent and wonderful. When things implode, however, as they often do, how we react can tell us a lot about our own patterns. Patterns that may not be serving us anymore. These were coping strategies that helped us as children, but as adults they don't. Why? Because our survival is not at stake anymore. We don't need to do anything to make the "other" not leave, or stay happy, or take care of us. We can choose happiness, health, and interdependence this time.

I once read a quote that said, "Relationships don't exist to make you happy, they exist to make you more conscious."  Not so romantic, huh? I look at it as an opportunity to grow. 


heartandwhole

Thanks KC - actually I've got the book too. There was one very simple line in it that stuck with me... ."if the narcissist (NP) is not making much of a financial emotional or social contribution then you may question the value of the r/s more."

A very simple 'what's in it for me?'

Thanks HandW for your pointers. Yes I agree that most probably the 'cunning individual' is not an actively plotting one, but someone just doing what they can, and that takes different shapes depending on what's going on.

In the face of abandonment they (my experience) become attentive and engaging... .likewise in early days.

In the face of routine daily life they are critical, demeaning and without joy.

In the face of constructive discussions they are blameless avoiders.

In the face of criticism... .we don't do that any more!

(But I still don't get where my mother appeared from!)

 C<||| kc sunshine, I personally found those passages very helpful. Thank you for sharing the difference between co-dependency and caretaking. It was a  :light: for me.

heartandwhole

Well, EarlGrey,

The Queen B___ Mother that came to the foreground near the end is probably a reflection of the BPDs own abusive and narcistic mother, the character that they try so hard to not be in the beginning.
Throughout the r/s she talked a lot about her mother as she was processing that in therapy, and she basically was triangulated and narcistically abused her whole youth. And when things turned sour i saw a lot of links to how she described her mother.

My own mother... .it's a conundrum to be honest, but at the least she had depression and maybe even bipolar. Emotionally withholding, i don't find any picture where she was smiling.

So basically, we shared a common history, and in the beginning of the relationship we were living to avoid all that, I found a nice little girl inside of a sexy grown woman that could not in any way trigger me to see my own mother in there. Until the Queen arose ofcourse... .

Psychotherapy... .She has a very good therapist, but she made two HUGE mistakes.

One is that her Therapist probably validated some projections towards me. (they triangulate you even with their therapist, you know)

The second is that she jumpstarted a Traumarecovery session while my Ex was no way near ready to go into that yet, and was suicidal with no crisisplan on the table.

And that lead to a suicide attempt after which there was no solid ground left in the r/s, it was only devolution from that point on.

I didn't understand it either, i had some serious events in my youth, but i felt cared for still despite everything... .

Now i know that i may have been cared for in a practical way, but rarely in an emotional way.

It was not that something happened, it's what didn't happen that made me a codependant,

Emotional neglect is the trickiest form of "abuse" to spot, cause it's never a deliberate explicit action that causes trauma, it's just a deeply deprived baseline that you have come to live by and accept as the norm... .

If I've got this right, you and your ex had 'mother issues', and your r/s was good until 'the Queen arose'... .

All sounds so very familiar... .except you've managed to get a T. involved... .even down to the opening act 'I found a nice littel girl... .

My Waif found a gentle-man... .