BPDFamily.com

Hi , I'm two weeks out of my BPD relationship with my partner of ten years. I've read lots of stuff on this board and it's been so helpful.
One of the areas im still struggling to understand fully is the purpose of baiting and goading? What does the BPD partner get out of it, what purpose does it serve for them?
My ex would do this frequently and always seemed to know the areas to attack and my triggers which were often a desire to verbally defend my family and friends against his vile comments.
Shortly after the rage he would be fine and calm down. He would be able to go to bed and sleep well! Meanwhile I was hurt, angry and agitated so didn't sleep and took ages to return to feeling normal.
I would value any insight about this.

Creating an emotional outlet.

Peope with BPD have a chaos of emotion inside, with innefective outlets for that. They can't control or understand their emotions.

At an early age they may have found that arguing and raging works as an outlet for them. (as a codependent I tended to be avoidant when I couldn't process my emotions, and i'd often sleep through them, equally inefficient but less "abusive"

So he creates an argument with you, and after that the internal emotions are gone.

Its just learned (incorrect) behaviour. Hopefully that helps you to take it less personally. If your ex had just gone to sleep every time he was overwhelmed, you wouldn't see that as personal. The argument is not about you, it's just the only way she knows how to get it out.

Thanks that reply was very helpful. It always felt like I'd been a sponge and absorbed all his bad feeling then he just walked away and I was left would up and upset. I see now it's a type of projection where his unmanageable emotions were 'given' to me in order for him to feel okay!

I understand it like that as well. My ex wife in a relationship / marriage that lasted ten years would do that often. Get so angry that it was scary, breaking things, even hitting me, it was so strange, and if I at times would say anything back it would just further escalate. Sometimes she would say "why are you making me more angry" but I had no idea about BPD then, I have just been learning about it now from my T, so I would think she was been to unreasonable and I would say something back, but it was all wrong. I had no idea really.

My T explained this way recently: "When she was saying bad cruel things to you she was projecting herself, its not about you, if you think about it, it's that you've become the object of desire and the object of fear, you've become the best and the worst, there is no middle ground... .The way she spoke to you using cruel words at the end she was blowing you up, she loves you but she was hurting you, but it's not about you, she is hurting herself, but you are the symptom, not the cause, it's a hard position to understand, it's not trusting that the story that you are telling is reliable, but the problem is that they will keep pushing you until you become unreliable, you know like you may say I will never hit you, but one day they will hit you, hit you, hit you and you will hit back and they will go see? I told you you would hit me, it's this behaviour and that's why is this rather crazy position because you would think why would this person throw away such happiness? they throw the gold away and keep the sand... .she is someone that sadly couldn't get it right."

It is really sad... .I loved this woman so much, that's why I stayed and stayed despite the terrible dealings at times... .at the end she left me! And now I am trying to recover... .