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Ex has been out of the house for 9 months. I am reviewing the relationship with a new set of eyes and a new perspective.

One of the questions that has come up lately is about mirroring. I am not sure how to ask it.

The situation is that I am reviewing our 20 years together. Ex used to be very capable and competent. As I look back on the history, his capability and competence seemed to diminish when our third daughter was a baby. That corresponded with ME feeling depressed and overwhelmed because of caring for 3 kids while trying to recover from child birth.

Things got their worst when I was at my worst. It seemed like if I was happy, he had to be more happy. If I was depressed, he had to be more depressed.

Even FOO stuff seemed to come up for him. In the beginning, he portrayed his family as great and wonderful. Somewhere, that changed and he started talking about how traumatic his childhood was. He had to watch his brother get spanked. His mom was critical. It felt like it almost became a thing for him. It frustrated me because it felt like was trying to find excuses for his sex addiction and poor behavior so he didn't have to be accountable for it. And, it felt like he was trying to out do me with stories of family dysfunction. There was a definite feeling of one upmanship.

When we first got together, I was planning to go to grad school to get a master's degree. He wasn't sure what he wanted to do after he finished the master's degree he was working on when we met. So, he decided to go to school with me and get a degree in that field too. At the time, I thought it was pretty cool.

Now, as I look back on it, it kind of creeps me out. It didn't occur to me that perhaps he was mirroring me. I had never heard of such things back then. I look at his career path and it is the path that I wanted to pursue. I had 4 years of experience working in that area of focus when I went to grad school. I studied that area in grad school. When we graduated, I interviewed for jobs with that focus. I went on to be a stay at home mom and he went on to do the things that I had hoped to do. Whenever I would apply for full time jobs and think about going full time, it seemed like I would get pregnant again. I joked with a colleague about it one time and she said, something about not getting pregnant.

That brings me to my love of kids and family.  It seems like ex's desire to have kids was him mirroring me. In the beginning, I thought it was so awesome to meet a guy that loved kids as much as I do. I made sure he met all of my nieces and nephews. I watched him interact with them. I used to joke that he was kid tested and mother approved. Now, it seems like it was all a lie. Being around the kids seems to put him on edge.

He tried to parent like I do and gets mad when the kids don't respond to him like they do me. It is because he is trying to mirror me instead of identify his own strengths and weaknesses and be authentic.

Now, he has been without a job for a year and has supposedly been applying for jobs left and right. He has had very few interviews compared to the number of jobs that he has supposedly applied for in the last year. I am wondering if the problem is that he is now mirroring his room mate who is a guy that is on disability, is a registered sex offender, and spends most of his days watching movies. Ex has to tell me all about this guy and how he goes to church and his meetings and blah, blah, blah. As I listen to ex talk about this guy, I find myself thinking, "Holy cow, he can't get a job or be productive because he is mirroring his room mate now."

When we were living with his parents for 4 months, he started mirroring his mother. That is when some of his behaviors started to really change for the worse. Of course, I am going to be confused and hurt because he went from being one kind of guy to somebody that I didn't really know.

When I told him that I have a job interview coming up, he suggested that maybe he and I could trade places. WTH? Um, several years ago, he and I had discussed the possibility of me going back into the work force full time and him being a stay at home dad. It was mentioned in passing and I told him that it is not something we could consider until the kids were older. A lot of stuff would have to change for that to happen. Here it is all of these years later and he is out of the house. Our relationship is over and he is suggesting that we trade places. I am still floored over that.

My oldest asked me one time, "Mom, can dad make an independent decision? Why does he have to ask you how to do everything?"

Is it possible that he has been mirroring and projecting this whole time? To the outside world, he was great. Behind closed doors, he would rather check out and bury himself in a fantasy world.

The word that comes to mind is chameleon. It seems that each person your ex gets close to, or forms an attachment with, he somehow has to copy the behaviour patterns of that person. And that would fit with having an unstable or poorly developed sense of self. The other thing that strikes me, is why is he telling you so much about the guy he's sharing his room with? Do you care? Why isn't he talking about himself and what he wants and what his plans are in life. It's like he's living his life through other people.

So to me it sounds like your ex "acts", all the time, and looks for clues from others as to how he should do things, what he should want, how he should "be".

It is something very alien.In truth I can't imagine what it must be like. To not know what you want and to always be looking to others for clues must be exhausting. The idea that you and he should swap for the job interview, is literally extraordinary.

And from what I've read, this lack of a sense of self, and the consequent mirroring, is actually a very attractive thing for us nons when we first meet someone who has BPD. In hindsight, my ex had no hobbies, no pastimes, pretty much no opinions of her own. Whatever I wanted, she wanted. If I wanted to go for a picnic, she did. If I liked classical music, she did. During the idealisation phase that is.While we were dating, I don't think she suggested one thing we should do, it was all down to me to suggest things and provide ideas.

I've also read that emotionally, they can be very young, and if they have had a traumatic upbringing, their emotional development can stop or get hindered at the age where the trauma occurred. And it would seem that your ex had this experience. And thinking about it, if that is his developmental age, then if the trauma occurred at a young age, then like all kids, he is going to "copy" the behaviour of those around them, again because their isn't  a fully developed sense of self.

My ex was the same, and I remember some occasions, especially when she was doing something new, like learning a new dance or something, and she would look and behave very much like a 5 year old. Seeking approval, checking with me all the time, that kind of thing. And looking back that was kinda strange to put it mildly.

The last sentence in your write up is interesting.

Behind closed doors, he would rather check out and bury himself in a fantasy world.

Isn't that what kids do?

I don't know why he talks so much about his room mate. I don't care. Ex is the kind of person that likes to talk to hear himself talk. He does talk about himself all of the time. When he talks about himself, it is usually in the past tense and it is him reliving past events. He rarely talks about future plans. That is one of the things that I would get really frustrated with him about. We have a big family. The kids were getting bigger but the car wasn't. We needed a bigger vehicle. He would look at me like I was crazy for bringing up stuff about the future. I did the research and found a way for us to get a bigger better vehicle.


Very true. That kind of thing frustrates the daylights out of me. I tend to be a bit of a loner and do my own research and make my own decisions.


It was really cool to have somebody so interested in some of the same things that I was.  The thought of going to school with him was pretty cool. It is the perfect recipe for being enmeshed.


Ex had hobbies and pastimes when we met. He had some pretty cool hobbies actually. He didn't have a lot of his own opinions. Most of his opinions were parroted from his church or whatever group he was affiliated with at the time. A lot of his opinions were him parroting his parents as well. He was so eager to get married in his church to make his parents happy. He couldn't own that HE wanted it. It was for his parents. I didn't care because my attitude is that marriage is about the person not the wedding.

I am trying to think about what we did when we were dating. I think most of the stuff that we did revolved me and my family. I don't recall him planning much. That didn't seem unreasonable because he hadn't been living here that long.


Ex's upbringing isn't one that is obviously traumatic. Something happened somewhere along the way. I have no idea what that is. Trying to get him to talk about anything that was truly relevant and hinted of true sharing was next to impossible at times.


That is the way ex is with parenting. He checks with me on everything. He can't make a decision for himself at all. Even now that he isn't living here, he will text me to check with me on stuff that I consider small and inconsequential. It is like he is afraid of making a decision.


Yeah, pretty much. The only thing is that our kids are more tuned into reality than he is.

I let it go on for a long time because it didn't seem to be interfering with too much. After all, I think everyone needs some down time. It wasn't until the kids got older and needed more that I stopped being able to deal with it. I needed down time and I wasn't getting it and it was making it difficult for me to function in a rational and coherent manner. It is NOT normal for a spouse to behave this way in an adult relationship.

It was also becoming more and more difficult to take because he was looking to me to make most of the decisions. I got really, really tired. 

Sounds like he has no stable core sense of who he is or what he wants.

It took me a long time to get the no sense if self trait with boarderlines. But now I get it. My BPDw is a zombie when she is home. She is s blank shell. Since Ive detached from her abd without someone to attach to and mirror there is nothing there. Its an empty void. The woman I loved was only a reflection of me. My wife really doesnt exist. There is mo ethos that make her who she is other than the disorder.

Here is a question: How can you tell what is mirroring and what is an attempt to connect?

The reason that I ask that question is because there was a point when things seemed to change. When we were dating, I had clear goals. I wanted to go to graduate school and get a master's degree. I knew I wanted to have a family.

After we got married and started a family, it seemed like all of my hobbies and interests slowly went by the wayside. When he and I got married, he was really insistent on raising the kids with a foot in his church. I had no problem with that as long as the kids were being raised to be decent and compassionate human beings. So, I joined his church. All of the kids were baptized in his church. I used to go to church with him regularly. It was my attempt to connect with him and create a unified family. I would ask questions and try to create family routines and family stuff that honored his desires. He couldn't help keep up those routines. I would ask him to explain stuff to me. Hey, it was his religion, he should be able to share that with me. He had to do his daily Bible readings. At one point, I asked him if we could do it together. That didn't last very long.

There was something similar that happened with music.

When I look back, I can see where "I" lost my sense of self. It felt like I had lost any kind of sense of who I was or what I wanted. It seemed like my only goal in life there for a while was to be a good mom. That didn't feel right because it felt too much like living through my kids rather than being normal.

That is a very sobering thought! It makes a lot of sense and explains why I could do pretty much whatever I wanted as long as it didn't interfere with his desire to do next to nothing.

I also find myself wondering if ex was ever as good as I thought he was. Was all of the awesomeness that I saw me projecting my ideas of who I wanted him to be rather than who he actually was?

It used to irritate him that I was able to do so many things with such ease. I would make myself smaller and smaller and do less and less so as to not make him feel bad about himself.

Not easy. Which is why many people (including me) get entangled with an NPD or BPD person. Looking back, I'd say that a key difference is that if it mirroring then for us, it just feels too good too soon. It means you are not dealing with someone who has a proper sense of self. It is enmeshment not a relationship, and the attraction will take off too quickly.

If you start dating a normal person (a non) then at first, you know, the first couple or three times you meet, it can feel a bit uncomfortable. Like you aren't in synch, and of course, you aren't. If you both have a good sense of self, then you shouldn't actually get along that well, but at the same time, you might see things in that person that pull you back and you want to see them again. The connection is therefore slow and gradual, and may involve the explicit need to compromise and negotiate. And for me that is healthy and normal. I'm not dating at the moment, but with my friends for example, this compromise and negotiation is constant, but agreeing to meet up and do things together, creates the connection.

With my ex, whatever I wanted, she "wanted" which for me felt great - very validating, except it wasn't real, she was just mirroring, and so the enmeshment (not relationship) began and took off very quickly. 


So, I had this too, and looking back I remember a specific moment when I started to become enmeshed, and I started to fall into the FOG, and it was when I wanted to challenge her on something she had done that really hurt me and she wouldn't discuss it. She simply told me to "just leave". By doing this - in effect dismissing my needs and telling me that I wasn't even worth listening to, and that she didn't need me around and devaluing me, I was sent into the FOG. She was telling me that if I disagreed with her - I'd be chucked out. Welcome to the world of fear. Yet I was falling for her and wanted to be with her, and so I was already in trouble emotionally, because I was beginning to feel the bonding of love, but this was combined with fear, and guilting/shaming and obligation soon followed. After that, my happiness depended on her being happy, and so my sense of self got progressively damaged as I stopped thinking about myself, and just thought about her and making her happy.

And that is not a healthy relationship, because I had lost touch with my needs, my goals, my wants, and this had happened because I didn't want to upset her again for fear of her retribution. And that in a nutshell was the start of me "walking on eggshells".

Looking back it is all so obvious, but at the time, I didn't have a clue what was going on.

I think that comes down to the motivation behind it.

If you are wondering what somebody else is doing, you kinda have to guess. Looking at larger patterns helps.

If you are wondering what YOU did or are doing, you can look at your motivation.

Note... .mirroring isn't a bad or rare thing. In the beginning of a relationship, there is usually a some, and I don't even think it is unhealthy, but it usually fades. That said, too much of it generally is a problem, or at least an indication that something is wrong. (Like not being willing/able to show a true core of yourself, and mirroring the other instead to avoid it.)

Why is this an either or?
Why can't mirroring be an attempt to connect?

Hmmm. I have thought about that. I don't think it felt too good too soon for me. Initially, ex came on really strong. He would come visit me at work or school every chance he got. We weren't officially dating so it seemed a bit odd. We hung out a lot. At some point after a couple of months of that, I asked him to back off because I needed some space. I don't remember exactly what I said. We were in college. I had only been out of a long term relationship for about a year. I wasn't feeling ready for that yet. He ran off with his tail between his legs like I was rejecting him. That seemed odd to me because we weren't dating and I wasn't his girlfriend. We had pretty much just been hanging out. At that point, we had only been out on anything that resembled an official date one time.



Ex did something similar with me with regards to his porn habits. I tried to talk to him about it. I wasn't telling him that he couldn't look at it. I didn't like waking up in the morning to find him looking at it and taking care of himself. We were newly weds. I was trying to let him know that if he was interested, to please let me know. It was hurtful for him to take care of himself and then not be able to be with me. His response was basically to dismiss me and act like he was doing me a favor by letting me sleep. I was being unreasonable for being hurt because my husband was choosing porn and self pleasure over me. All I was wanting was for him to be available for me a little more often. I even offered to look at it with him to show him that I wasn't trying to judge him or tell him not to do it.


I went down that rabbit hole too.


My start of walking on eggshells was when he lost his job for looking at porn at work. He had told me he stopped looking at it. I had no reason to believe otherwise as I hadn't seen any evidence of it on our home computer. Little did I know that he had a secret email account that he used to access it at work. From then on, I was afraid to do anything that might send him back to that place. I was so afraid of getting that call again.

Since I can't know another person's motivation, my default tends to be assume positive intent. Coming from that perspective, it wouldn't occur to me to think anything other than "he is trying to connect with me." Now, I don't think he had any intent. Ex isn't a very intentional person. One of his frequently used phrases is, "I wasn't thinking."


My motivation was to find ways to connect with him. My motivation was to find things that ex and I could share. I was trying to meet him where he was.


Ultimately, I think that is where we ran into a lot of trouble. I would try to take an interest in things he was interested in as a way to try to get close to him. If I would take an interest in something that he was interested in, it seemed like he would eventually lose interest in it. When I tried to get him to share his religion with me, he shut down. Even though I don't consider myself religious, I wanted to do Bible readings with him. I wanted him to share his thoughts with me. I would ask questions and try to understand him better. I took classes to join his religion. He couldn't or wouldn't open up. It seems like every time I would get close he would back away.

I don't see it as an either/or, which is why I am trying to explore the topic a little more deeply.

I do think that mirroring can be an attempt to connect. That is part of the reason that I brought this up. I am analyzing my behavior more and am seeing where there were times when I took an interest in things that were clearly his interests as an attempt to connect. If I do it, it is good yet if he does it, it is bad? That is illogical. I think too many people only see the mirroring that was done by the ex. I can see where I did it too.

Without knowing the motives (and assuming positive intent), when does mirroring crossover from being normal to being unhealthy?

I think ex and I both bounced back and forth in mirroring. I don't know how or when it happened but it seems that at some point I lost sight of myself and became more like I him. I used to be really upbeat and positive and didn't let much get me down. I used to be really ambitious. I chose to stay home with my kids with the goal of going back to work when they were old enough. I kept a part time job to try to keep my skills relevant and up to date. Getting a Ph.D. was on my bucket list. I had goals that I kept in mind and held onto. Somewhere along the way, I lost all of that. I lived one day to the next. That was clearly mirroring him and his 12 step mentality of living one day at a time and sometimes one moment at a time. That mindset is not something that I can live with because I need to have goals. I need to have something to look forward to even if it is something small.

As I type this out, I am thinking that it is okay to have some mirroring as long as you are able to keep a firm grip on who you are and what you want. I could take an interest in his religion and go to his church without compromising my own personal beliefs. It wasn't until a lot of years later that I feel like I lost my sense of self. I don't remember a time when I didn't have a pretty strong sense of self. I was the kid that didn't get swayed by peer pressure so it seems really bizarre for me to be swayed so heavily by ex. That is an area that I need to ponder.

Was I projecting good qualities on him that weren't there?

I keep wondering about that. He used to be so awesome. Even though so much stuff has transpired and I can't be in a relationship with him and there are times when I hate him, I still see good things about him. Are those good things real? I don't want to paint him black or white. I want to get a better idea of who he actually is if that is even possible.

It seems so weird to have been with somebody for so long and feel like he is a complete stranger. It was 20 years ago this coming week that he asked me to be his girlfriend. It is really sad to think about the implications of some of the stuff that has been discussed in this thread.

We have what is called "mirror neurons" that cause us to yawn when another yawns, or subconciously cross our leg when another does, or mimic other behaviors of a person we are interacting with.

I think I hear what you are trying to analyze, maybe.  

Sounds like something I was trying to analyze a bit some time ago.  (If I'm following well enough). I was really trying to see where I went wrong, how not to again.  I had analyzed the snot out of his side of stuff and was still feeling confused and like some things were unknown.

Somehow I got to thinking, that it could maybe be best to stop analyzing where I went wrong in him, but analyze where I went wrong in me. (Kinda like how you are questioning how much you may have mirrored him). Now, I certainly don't have it at all figured out, just tossing around what came up in my head... . yet, I concluded, so long as I have my whole values and boundaries figured out, stick with them, analyze and review them with open eyes as needed, then it can be possible that folks that are not in line with my values, will naturally fall away from me, whereas I may naturally get along with ones who do share my values.

So rather then analyze in my next relationship, whether or not I am mirroring someone too much.  I have decided to continue to analyze my values and how I am living them.  This is what erroded over time.  I made "allowances" here and there until they were eventually unrecognizable.

So, I haven't had much practice testing this theory out exactly, or maybe I have.  A few months ago, I lost two friends, thought I was being "rude" but looking back, I think I was actually living my values without apology.  I actually feel better off without this friendship.  

I think it is possible that we are supposed to meld a bit with a new life partner.  Yet somehow, I feel that to the extent we allow our original values to be eroded, being bent, etc, is possibly the key to focus on. (Being sure I am not subconsciously yielding boundaries to avoid a loss, but wisely choosing with ooen eyes) Cause I wonder if focusing on that, causes all else to kinda fall into place.

Idk, this is just stuff I am pondering, and living, and learning via living, so idk if it makes sense or not and am open.

I like this and it makes sense to me.

When thinking about a life partner, I wonder how two people can live together and be partners without a bit of melding. I think a little bit of enmeshment is normal to the extent that it helps things function. When talking about dating, it is a bit different because the two people aren't sharing living expenses or trying to raise kids or do other things that require a certain amount of cooperation and negotiation. There needs to be some clearly defined expectations to keep things running more smoothly.

In theory, ex and I had very similar values. It wasn't until we had 4 kids that it became obvious that he and I did NOT have similar values. They may have been similar in theory. In practice, they were as different as night and day. I was hanging on to his words because that is what I wanted to see and hear. I lost sight of my goals and values when his behavior became the total opposite of what I was trying to achieve. He and I agreed on the notion of peaceful parenting. He and I supposedly agreed on a lot of very non-violent and peaceful ideas yet he seemed to have this base level anger that was percolating under the surface. It would come out as grumpiness. It would come out at nitpicking and invalidating. If I tried to say anything, then he would completely deny it. It was really difficult to hold on to my positivity and quest to be peaceful and gentle when he was being negative and kind of like a bull in a china shop. Over time, I lost my grip on my goals and values because I had become isolated. There for a while, the only people that I interacted with were him and the kids. It totally skewed my entire perspective and I started mirroring him because that is what was normal and safe. I was worn down and tired and was grasping for anything that I could.

This feels very much like my ex.  When dating, before moving in, we discussed a lot about values, parenting, sharing resources, etc.  It appeared that we were really well matched and wanting the same things in a family.  

However, in practice, this is not what he displayed.

While this behavior was evident in the beginning.  I instead listened to his words.  I figured his behavior was in a delay cue and he was learning his way to behave his values due to recent single dad status.  I had "allowances" for him for all kinds of stuff.  Basically, if I could determine a root cause, then I decided I could "handle" what was before me.  

I now see the flaw in this "logic." What I am able to understand, and what works well together, are not equal.

Also, he was customizing his responses and behaviors as mirroring, but after we moved in, the fear of loss of relationship was no longer a big motivator to keep up the behavior, so his true colors showed.  He actually had different values.  Started behaving closer to his values vs mirroring, then eventually started speaking them a bit more.

Also was confusing is that his values appear to change based on who he feels most drawn to or entwined with at any moment.  This had me infuriated after a while!  

It is interesting that you bring this up. Before ex and I got married in his church, we went through pre-marital counseling. I think there were even compatibility tests. We had to go to a weekend retreat where we did all of these exercises and had to compare notes. I had no reason to believe that he wasn't being genuine. In all of that, his desire for porn and self pleasure didn't come up. There were a lot of little things that didn't come up.


Exactly! Maybe I am kidding myself by thinking this but I think he did genuinely want those things. He really did want to be like that. The problem wasn't with the desire. The problem was that he was incapable of doing it no matter how hard he tried. The easier I made things look, the harder it was for him.



Oh man, that sounds so familiar to what I did. I made all sorts of allowances for him. I tried to put myself in his shoes and understand why he did the things the did. I had so much compassion and love for him that I thought I could handle it. It wasn't like he was deliberately doing some of the stuff that he did. He isn't a vindictive person. Even now, I still see him as a decent human being. He just has more problems than I can realistically handle. I overestimated my ability to deal with some of the stuff that came up. I thought that he and I could handle anything as long as we worked together as a team. The problem was that he stopped working with me at some point and started living in his own little world.


Exactly! I may be able to understand ex and have love and compassion for him but I cannot and will not live with him. I cannot and will not be in a relationship with him. To be in a relationship with him, I would have to abandon who I am and what is important to me.


I hadn't thought about it from that perspective. Before we were married, he hid his porn use from me. I shouldn't say that. He didn't hide that he looked at it and we even looked at some together. What he hid was the extent of his use. What he hid was that he wasn't nearly as innocent as he led people to believe. I didn't know about him being bisexual until we had been married for 15 years. He brought up having questions when he was younger. Big deal, a lot of teens have questions and curiosities. He didn't tell me the extent of that until years later and it was only when some weird stuff happened that it came out. He had been hiding an entire part of himself from me for all of those years. That really hurt because I don't recall ever being judgmental about anything he told me. He was so concerned with putting on a good boy act. It is kind of interesting when I think about because people saw me as the bad girl and him as the good boy. In reality, it was just the opposite. I didn't care what people thought of me. There were times when I would deliberately keep people at a distance until I knew they were safe.


That is another interesting observation and I have had a similar thought. Before we started dating, he was hanging out with some interesting people that he met online. They were swingers and people that were into very alternative stuff. I was a bit naive as I hadn't heard of some of the stuff that he mentioned. If I did hear of it, it certainly wasn't something that I had any kind of experience with. Contrast that with his overly Catholic, overly good boy persona. He didn't tell too many people about those friends. After we started dating, he dropped those people like hot cakes and assumed his good boy persona and went back to being Catholic and going to mass and playing the part rather well.

He also seems rather concerned with how people perceive him. I have a joke about him doing stuff to earn good boy points. He can't seem to take any kind of initiative. It is like he has to look to see what other people are doing to figure out what he is supposed to do.

I had another thought/question about this.

I was thinking about how ex and I discussed everything and went to classes and did all of this stuff to make sure that we were on the same page. I was contrasting that with how things were with the guy I dated before ex. Yes, it was over 20 years ago and I might not be remembering it exactly. What stands out is that I don't recall having those kinds of discussions with that guy and we had been engaged. I didn't feel a real need to discuss values around family or stuff like that. I just kind of intuitively knew that he and I shared similar values. I knew it based on how we were both very involved with our FOO. I knew it based on the fact that we spent a lot of time including his kid and my nieces and nephews in our outings. There wasn't a need to really discuss it as we both lived it and could see it in daily practice.

Let me dispute add/or add to this. Mirroring is always an attempt to connect, regardless of motive, reasoning, logic, etc.

The thing that tends to distress us is how our own beliefs differ from how we might perceive our loved one's beliefs. We can't predict anyone's beliefs, really, especially when we are close. Why do we try?

Thank you valet! This validates what I have been thinking about mirroring. If it is an attempt to connect, then it seems like perhaps it is given a bad rap all too often.


I think the areas that stressed me out were the ones that had to do with family. Ex and I mirrored each other in a lot of different areas and it wasn't troublesome at all. After so many years together, it seems normal to be enmeshed to a certain degree.

I was distressed because ex had made such a big deal about how he envisioned being a husband and father. I was distressed most over the fact that I felt lied to and deceived.

I wanted to perceive ex's beliefs because I think that makes it easier when kids are involved. I have seen first hand how confusing it is for kids to have two parents that completely diverge in their approach to life. I grew up in a dysfunctional home yet my dad would take us kids out and he was the fun one. When mom was at her wits end, dad would take us kids somewhere. That was one of the good things that I saw growing up. That was one of the things that I would have liked to do in my family. It was really important to me to choose a marriage partner that shared enough enough of the base values that we could raise a family together.

The stuff that I am most butt hurt over are the things relating to honesty and parenting.

I wonder if what you are hurt over, was nit even intentional?
Not saying you can only be hurt over intentional stuff, just saying.

For example, I was always hurt because I had been firm from the start of my values, that with kids, the relationship between the partners comes first, through their strength and cooperative efforts, the kids benefit greatest by seeing the model of relationship that is a strong cooperative one.

I understand, and do not have issue with single parents who merge households and feel that their biological child comes first before any man, woman, etc.  It was just not what I was going for, does not meet my requirements for how I choose to define "family."

So while ex always vehemently agreed with me verbally, in actions, he really did put his child first, then any "spare/left over" time was dolled out to me, and my own son didn't even equate to him. 

Had I understood this, I would NOT have signed up!

Did he lie to me?
I really don't think so.  However, his performance of "family" and my performance of "family" did not match and continued to be a constant unresolved disagreement.
I think he really liked what I was speaking, so continued to agree with me orally.  I think he was attracted to the sense of stability, security and the benefits that I conveyed, but he did not actually take in the details and application of what I was expressing I wanted our family to be.  I think orally, he was agreeing to the end product of what I wanted, but not the method to get there.

I do not think in his mind he actually realized that his behavior did not match up to what he agreed to.  I just feel the insight was completely not there.

Even as we faught about the competing  values of family, he seemed unaware of what original picture of that was and only heard me upset, wanting xyz, not really relating it to a bigger picture.  I was upset over loss of the principal of it, the lack of upholding a value, not the minor incident at hand, but the collection of incidents that proved to me that he was not living what I thought we agreed on.

In the future, I will never assume a person has the insight and awareness to verbally communicate to me their values.  I will look at behavior.  Never again look at what they say they want.  I will look at what they live.

I am at a point where I don't care whether or not it was intentional. It hurts either way. It is like stubbing a toe. Nobody intends to stub their to but it still hurts like crazy. I have spent a lot of years trying to tell ex that what he was doing hurt and his response was usually, "But I didn't mean to. I wasn't thinking."


That was the kind of stuff that was emphasized in our marriage prep classes. He used to go on and on about how the best gift a guy could give his kids was to love their mother. I spent a lot of time focusing on the kids because there were 4 of them. I tried my best to make sure he got my attention. I would get babysitters. I would plan stay at home dates. I threw him a big surprise party for his 40th birthday. I did all sorts of things to try to be loving and put him first. The problem arose when he started hogging all of the attention and it became a competition between him and the kids. I had all 5 of them vying for my attention at once. I have more time and space to think now that he is gone because the kids have relaxed and aren't as clingy.

I tried to talk to him about this one time. I don't remember specifically how I said it or even the exact context. I just remembered talking about making each other feel special and doing things for each other. When I told him how I felt about how he had been treating me, he turned it around on me and said that I was doing the same thing. I gave him examples of all of the things and all of the ways that I tried to respect him and put him first. His response was, "But you are nice to everybody." Um, even when I tried to put him first, he would dismiss it. What was the point?


I do feel lied to because he went out of his way to tell me some of these things. It is one thing to have a discussion about something but it is different when another person has to keep going on and on as if to convince you. At the time, I didn't think anything about it. In hindsight, I wonder if he was trying to convince himself that this is what he wanted. There were some very specific things that we discussed that he dropped the ball on rather early.

Whether or not he intentionally lied isn't what is at issue. I guess I am trying to process the fact that he isn't who he said he was. I made a decision to marry him based on how he presented himself. I made a decision to marry him with the notion that I was making a life time decision. I had plans to sit on our porch together watching our grandkids play. It was not a decision I took lightly. I had seen way too many dysfunctional marriages and families and I tried to do everything I could to make sure that didn't happen. And here I am, a single mom trying to figure out what to do next. There is nothing wrong with single moms. It isn't a judgment thing. It is more that I feel like I wasn't given all of the information that I needed to make a decision. His inability to be honest with himself and me has negatively impacted the lives of 4 very wonderful young people. And that makes me mad, sad, angry, and all kinds of other stuff.

And it isn't just the stuff that he told me in the beginning. I was reading some of his blog posts from a couple of years ago and just about threw up reading him talk about how awesome his wife is and how "we" are doing this and "we" are doing that. And he is saying all of this great stuff about how he and I can overcome anything if we work together, blah, blah, blah. He was parroting the crap that I fed him without actually putting it into practice.


When he and I started dating, I was only 20. I put him through the ringer so to speak. I joked that he had to be kid tested and mother approved. I loved kids and knew that I wanted kids. I had been caring for my nieces and nephews since the oldest was born when I was 11. I could NOT be with somebody that wasn't good with kids.

He didn't verbally disagree with me over much of anything. Even now, he still agrees with me over a lot of stuff. That agreement is not carried out in his actions.


I think ex was attracted to the fact that I wanted what he was supposed to want. He wanted those things because that is what his parents and religion and society said he was supposed to want: marriage, family, blah, blah, blah. He was all about doing what he was supposed to do. I laughed out loud as I typed that because he was great about doing what he was supposed to do in his parent's eyes and society's eyes, not so much when it came to his family.


I think that kind of captures part of the reason that I have a problem with some of this stuff. It isn't all of the little minor incidents. It is the overarching idea that he did not live up to what we had agreed upon. He made such a big deal out of some of these things and then he is the one that went back on his word.


I was all of 20 when we met. I had no idea that some of this stuff even existed. I knew that I wanted to make sure that I was getting a good guy because I wanted a happy family that was not subjected to the dysfunction that I dealt with as a kid. That was really, really important to me even at 20. I may have been young but I know that I was crystal clear about that. One of the things that we had to do in our marriage exercises was say something we liked about each other's families and talk about how we might be able to incorporate that into our future family.

One of the things that my dysfunctional family did well was work together. And he said that he hoped we could work together like that. I don't think he realized the work involved in working together. I don't know. I just know that I feel very lied to and very betrayed because of the years of him not living up to his end of things.

I don't feel like I pretended to be anything. He got what I presented myself to be. I did not and I feel like I got a raw deal.

What I read from this is that you just picked the wrong person for the job then. He wasn't honest, and from what you're saying he isn't a good parent either. It's really unfortunate that things turned out the way they are now for you, and I know that has to hurt, but don't be mistaken into thinking that you have no power here. You can still uphold your values by being a stable parent and being as honest with yourself and the kids as possible.

It's ok to struggle now and again, most of us have been there. However, these wounds will heal in time as long as you know what your goals/values in life are.

Thank you for this! I am slowly realizing that I have a lot of power in this. I feel like I have a firm foundation to get where I want to be. I keep having these What the heck moments where I peel back more layers of stuff. I know that I can be a stable parent and I know that I have what it takes to do this on my own. I have already seen so much improvement at home that it is amazing.


I think that is part of the reason that I made this post. I think I know my values and goals. Sometimes, I need to do some self checking to unravel what was me and what was him. Instead of looking at what "we" wanted, I am trying to look at what "I" wanted. There were times when I lost site of my goals and my values because he would say one thing and then do another.

My oldest daughter and I have been talking about the importance of setting goals. It gives one something to work towards. Without some kind of goals and values, things become confusing and pointless. As I rediscover and redefine my goals in terms of "ME" rather than "we", I feel better and better.

There are a number of misconceptions when it comes to pwBPD. They do have a sense of self but it may not be stable or they may not like it. If they mirror then it could be to connect or that they want to change into a person that they see as better than them. Also because BPD is mood related then they can mirror positive or negative behaviour. If your happy then they are if your sad then they feel sad. They are affected more by negativity so if your unhappy it affects them and they become unhappy.

Another thing to bear in mind is a lot of what is seen as BPD behaviour is not. Its normal just some of it is more extreme. When looking at things people need to filter the normal (I split up with my uBPD ex and they don't want anything to do with me) from the abnormal (I split from my uBPD ex and she has smeared me, had me arrested on trumped up charges and disappeared with my son). With relationships people change for their partner. Its natural as humans have evolved to fit into groups. Some of what is seen as mirroring could just be this. Think about how you changed in the relationship to fit in with them.

I think negativity is contagious. Isn't that way a lot of people avoid the person that is continually negative?

I do know what you mean though. I know that there were times when I was struggling at different times. Instead of staying consistent and giving me a hand to pull me up, he would jump in the hole with me. It was frustrating because I recognized it and felt like I couldn't have normal emotions. There were times when it seemed like it was a competition. If I was happy, he had to be happier. If he was sad, he had to be sadder.



For me, I think the biggest change was that I kept making myself smaller and smaller so I didn't make him feel bad about himself. I got lazy. I was tired of it feeling like everything was a battle. There were times when I couldn't even go to the store without it being problematic. I feel like I lost my spark and my creativity. His pervasive invalidation really did a number on me. The one thing that I have held steadfast to no matter what he has said or done is my values around family.

One of the other changes was that I feel like I lost my ability to think. I am a very logical and practical person and I am good at finding my way, with or without, the help of others. And it was all too easy to fall into that role of victim. I can list all sorts of stuff that has happened over the years. I can also find at least one good thing that came out of that horrible thing. When this is all done, I am confident that I will be better and stronger and will have learned a lot about myself and life and everything in between.

The thing is vortex in a normal relationship we change so that we mesh better. It is normal. Unfortunately in a BPD relationship the changes can be huge and leave us a shadow of our former selves. It that happens to us imagine how far the pwBPD has gone to change to fit for us. I'm not saying this to pity them just to add a different perspective to things.

The only people that I would say don't change are NPD.

I think this is where I slide and don't always notice it... .feeling responsible for someone elses feelings.  It seems to be a default thing that I have to be on top of myself and "allow" another to experience their feelings, allow them to sit with them, remind myself that it is not my job to compensate for their feelings in anyway.

I think if I do this, allow others to keep responibility for themselves, I may find myself in less situations where I wonder why someone is not allowing me to have my own feelings, or why my feelings are being treated invisible or such.

Thanks for bringing this up! I have had that thought at different times over the years. His religion was clearly very important to him. It seemed like any time I would have questions or even express any kind of anything that wasn't super positive, it was like he would abandoned his own religion. I would see him do it and encourage him to rethink it. I wanted us to be different and have different thoughts and approaches to things and it would frustrate me when he would try to do things like I did. Even with parenting, he would try to mirror my approaches rather than be authentic and find what worked for him. I can't imagine what it must be like for him. A lot of times, I would withhold my thoughts and opinions and try to get him to share his first because I didn't want to influence him. In my mind, it works best when two people differ, discuss those differences, and then find a middle ground. That didn't happen very often and it frustrated the dickens out of me.

Hmmm, I have a thought about this but am not sure how to phrase it. I guess I will give an example. There was an impending hurricane. Ex and the kids were freaking out. I was a bit worried myself but I channeled my worry into preparation. I knew that I couldn't show my fear. I knew that I couldn't really show anything but strength. If I had shown my fear or the fact that I was shaking in my boots, then everyone else would have totally freaked out. It is keeping my head about me when everyone else is losing theirs.

I don't know if that is compensating for their feelings or if it is being strong because I knew that him and the kids were looking to me for strength and direction. Ex became reliant on me for strength and direction and it was tiresome.

Maybe there is a difference between channeling a feeling and suppressing it to function vs making yourself "smaller" so he doesn't feel bad about himself?

Idk, just tossing stuff around as seems to help processing sometimes.

I often think that with mirroring its like an elastic band. The more they have to stretch from their own sense of self then the faster and further they snap back away from you. Both my uBPD exs have a sense of self but its easily influenced. They always snap back though. My uBPD ex wife hated football (soccer for those over the pond) but her new husband is mad on it. She all of a sudden loved football and could talk about different players and clubs. Now she has gone back to hating it. The elastic band can only stretch so far so maybe with some the relationship lasts longer as the elastic band doesn't have as much strain on it.

Thank you!

Asking me this question is very helpful as I think there are two different things at play.

The making myself smaller has to do with all of the times that he would say stuff about how I made things look too easy. Sometimes, that included being good at handling a crisis. It seemed like he approached everything as a competition which meant that he "always" walked away the loser. There were times that I would deliberately NOT do something and call upon him. I am sure that it was a huge hit to his ego to have a wife that made everything look so effortless. He went up in the attic one time to fix something and ended up falling through the ceiling. I made sure he was okay and took care of his ouchies and then proceeded to go up in the attic and fix it myself. I can't imagine being a guy and having to deal with that kind of thing. I do have a lot of sympathy and compassion for him but I have to put that aside so I can focus on how I am feeling about this stuff.

I some times think he would be great with somebody that is the frail type that needs to be rescued or with the overbearing and controlling kind. I wanted a partnership, not a parent-child situation where I am letting the kid win just to feel better about himself. That does NOT work for me. I can't imagine how he must have felt when I woke up and said "No more." I took away his source of strength and his source of direction. I was really creeped out when he was doing his step work and was talking about a higher power. He made the comment, "You are my higher power." Um, not NO but HELL NO! In my younger days, I probably would have been flattered by that.

It wasn't that I wasn't working my butt off. It was that I wasn't complaining and grousing. I did what needed to be done. Did I struggle? Heck yes. Was it tiring? Heck yes. Did I need help? Yep, but I kind of knew that I wasn't likely to get it.

I guess if I wasn't complaining, that meant I wasn't working. Ooh, that hits on something else that I have been trying to unravel. I have gotten way too negative and I complain too much. I think it is because that is the only way he could recognize "work".

I did try to suppress my feelings and not share them because it seemed like he felt 10 times worse. If I told him that something he did hurt my feelings, then it became all about how horrible a person he was and how horrible he felt. I found myself thinking stuff like, "Wow, he is clearly upset by this. I have no reason to be hurt. My feelings must not be valid. It isn't like he did it to intentionally hurt me." That is why I am so hell bent on NOT talking about intention. He dismissed me and I dismissed myself time and time again because he didn't mean to do it.

Neither of us meant for any of this to happen.

Is that mirroring in a bad way? I ask this because I am thinking about stuff with my kids. There are things that they are interested in that I am not. I will do research on those topics so that I can share with them or be able to at least understand what the heck they are talking about when they want to talk to me about it. My joy over those things stems from the ability to see the joy on my kids faces when I can have a conversation with them about it. Just last night, one of my kids was really excited about something that isn't my thing. I told her, "Man, I am so excited over your excitement." It didn't matter what she was excited over. It didn't matter if she was excited over something that I hate. What mattered is that my daughter, somebody that I love and want to have a connection with has found something that she really enjoys.

Theres taking an interest and then theres becoming someone your not. My son loves certain video games. I take an interest but I don't make myself a character play the game, gather all the best bits and build a base. Its the extreme lengths they can go where the difference is.

If I am completely honest, I can look back over our 20 year history and see where both of us did this at different times for different reasons.

One thing that ex has admitted to is projection. He is an intelligent man and does possess some self-awareness. He seems powerless to change. He has told me that a lot of the bad stuff he says about me stems from his own self-hatred. He admits to hating himself and having a lot of shame. I think that is where part of the confusion has been. How can he publicly say such great stuff about me while privately treat me so poorly. Publicly, he would gush over me and then privately he would be emailing other women about how horrible I am.

In 2013 when he was pawing me off on other men, he wrote on his blog that I was his wife and his best friend and that I was a blessing because he could look to me as an example of what it looks like to have inner strength, blah, blah, blah. It was so confusing to have him say all of these wonderful things while privately telling other women that I was all of these negative things. If I was so great, then why the heck did he do those things? I know that there isn't really an answer that will satisfy me. It is one of those rhetorical questions that I ask myself as I process all of this.

Even if we aren't compatible and even if it was a matter of me choosing the wrong guy for the job, I was still worthy of basic respect. He would go on and on about humility and respect and emotional freedom and all of these things yet he rarely put it into practice. I raked him over the coals one time and asked him how in the world could he do so much reading and have so many ideas yet not put any of it into practice. It was like he was mirroring what he thought I wanted to hear or what would project a good image. He would admit his faults and act all humble and then not do a damn thing different. And I bought it all hook, line, and sinker because I didn't want to be mean or unreasonable. I feel like I spent 20 years being told, I just need more time. You aren't giving me a chance.

I am not sure what any of this has to do with mirroring or projection. It somehow seems related even if I am not quite sure how.

Mirroring and projecting are neither healthy nor unhealthy. They're common psychological phenomena and all of us do them. Technically, neither are even part of the BPD diagnostic criteria. The maladaptive coping mechanisms and behaviors towards people a pwBPD are involved with are the problem.

Mirroring and projection are things that help us bond with people. A pwBPD tends to mirror and project with a darker set of subconscious reasoning. They're looking for a new surrogate parent to soothe and provide direction for their wildly untamed inner children. This is the unhealthy part—the failure to self-soothe and self-regulate in situations where most healthy adults can.

This requires therapy. It is not our problem and we did not cause it, but we did enable it and put ourselves at immense risk in the process of trying to take responsibility.

Thank you valet! This makes a lot of sense and helps me see through a lot of the mixed messages that I have read about mirroring and projecting. There have been a lot of times when I am reading here and I think, "Hey, I have done that. Does that mean I have a personality disorder?"

It can sometimes be difficult to make sense of what is normal and what isn't. 

Ultimately, I was his surrogate mother. He wanted a mom not a wife. That pretty much gets at the root of it all and sort of explains why he struggled to be physically intimate with me.


Thank you! I did spend a lot of years enabling him. Now I have to figure out why I did it so I don't ever do it again. And I have to figure out how I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.

I know that it's easy to get lost in the rhetoric and psychoanalytic ideas. I was there myself for a while.

I've found it far easier and more manageable to try and only look at the behaviors... .and not the 'why?' surrounding them. People show us who they are—any amount of analysis beyond the point of seeing how their actions affect us only serves as rationalization, which to a large degree is enabling a continuation the trauma bond relationship.

Enough can easily be enough. We just need to be able to see what enough is and stick to our boundaries around it.

I have been trying to focus on the behaviors and how they impacted me. Do you have any tips on how to stop the analysis? I keep telling myself that it doesn't matter why it happened. It only matters that it happened and it hurts. Even though I know this intellectually, I still find myself wondering why.

I have been looking through old stuff, especially some of the stuff he wrote. It is painful but it is also helping me understand my own confusion. I remember reading some of that stuff at the time he wrote it. I was so taken in by what he was saying. It was all the stuff I wanted to hear. It was all the stuff that I wanted to believe. His actions didn't match up and he would try to tell me that I wasn't seeing what I was seeing. I know I keep saying these things. It all seems so surreal at times.


I have definitely seen that enough is enough. I don't think I will have a problem keeping him out and setting boundaries with him. I feel like I keep needing to repeat this stuff so that it will all sink in. The man that I married is not the man I thought he was. It doesn't matter if it was because he deceived me or if it was because I was unable or unwilling to see what is sitting in front of me. It was probably a little of both. Either way, letting the truth set in is painful.

I really enjoy where some of these longer threads go. Yet they're still on topic somehow. I see so many(including myself) can only see by reflecting back  that the pwBPD showed some glimmer of understanding that they were different under stress(and more prone to stress easily). Today I personally believe that BPD is a developmental disorder that stems from genetics at birth with a likelyhood of forming. Mirroring and projection is a quick process to fool people that they "get it" whatever"it" is. Maybe that's why many lie. To fit in. Ive recently read that alcoholism may be related to a learning disorder. Although some pwBPD are very intelligent, it seems it is very hard to let themselves reach rock bottom and accept the chaos they are creating. Therefore latching on which is easier with mirroring keeps them afloat. YES they look for enablers.

I think everyone changes under stress. Stress interferes with the brains ability to function. It is the fight or flight thing. I can definitely see where ex was easily stressed. He would stress over spilled milk.

For those of us that have been in these relationships and stayed so long, I have to wonder if my stress response is messed up too just in the opposite direction. He got stressed too easy. I had a high tolerance for stress so I didn't fight or flight when I should have.

[/quote]Maybe that's why many lie. To fit in. [/quote]

Lying is a self protective thing whether a person is BPD or not.

I blamed myself for ex's lying. People tend to lie when they think that telling the truth will lead to rejection or getting in trouble or hurting somebody.  I wrote something one time a long time ago in relation to kids. It was something along the lines of creating an atmosphere where it is safe to tell the truth. I don't think ex ever felt safe no matter what kind of atmosphere I tried to create.


Do they look for enablers or do enablers look for them?

I don't think they go looking for anything. I think my ex is too impulsive to go looking for anything specific. Healthy people have a good fight or flight system and run like hell when the red flags start flying. I can look back over the 20 years and see that there were a lot of red flags that would have made a normal person run like hell. Oh no, not me. I had to excuse his behavior and find reasons to NOT judge him and give him chance after chance.