BPDFamily.com

What was the most successful behavioral change you or your partner made which benefited your relationship?

What has been the hardest behavioral change for you personally to implement?

i didnt do a whole lot of improving in that relationship.

i did attempt time outs when arguments got circular, or when verbal attacks got over the top. it reduced stress for me when i followed through. unfortunately, i often did not follow through.

The most significant thing that I changed when dealing with my x that brought me here was enforcing boundaries. It also proved to be the hardest. Her extinction bursts took things to extremes. They almost landed me in jail, she almost wrecked her car (with me in it), and threatened to smash her car into my motorcycle (just to name a few).

The biggest change that came from her was empathy. She actually started to listen to what I had been telling her. If it had lead to something that actually resembled her respecting my boundaries it would have been great. But, I'll take what I can get.

The hardest behavioral change for me to implement was probably not invalidating her. I had gotten so caught up in the tit-for-tat, and fighting fire with fire that I stopped worrying about whether or not I invalidated her.

I guess the real question is this... .did the changes alter the outcome?  It seems like we all talk about the changes we made... .for our EX, .

I looked in the mirror and made lots of changes once I learned about BPD (after our first breakup).  Most of them were how to communicate and validate.  The problem was, my side of the vanity seemed to be the only one with a mirror.  I made every adjustment she indicated I needed to make just to have her end it again six months later for other issues that were never mentioned.  I was the dog chasing the unattainable tail.

At some point, you have to quit changing so you can go back to being yourself again.

I suppose that is true if you liked who you were to begin with. But, I think that when must of us around here take a good, hard look at ourselves, we realize that we contributed to the problems in the relationship.

The idea is to not make changes for the pwBPD, but rather to better ourselves. If you are only making a change for another, then the change is never going to be real. If you would rather do things as you were doing in the past, or as you put it, "go back to being yourself," then you never actually changed at all. You just played a game. People with BPD are very much in tune with such things and they tend to be able to spot games and manipulation like that from a mile away. If the changes are not real, then the pwBPD will likely know. An unsustainable situation is created. You would then be wearing a mask and be just as disingenuous as others who pretend to be something that they are not to win/get/keep a prospective mate.

None of the tools and lessons here are a guarantee, they are simply designed to give the non the best shot and help the individual grow as a person. Not all relationships can, or should be, saved. Sometimes people just don't mesh. Sometimes people can be completely in love with one another and still cannot make a relationship work.

Perhaps there was nothing that you ever could have done that would have made your ex happy. Perhaps there were things about you that she just didn't like. That's what happened between me and my x that brought me here. Sure, I used the tools and lessons to save the relationship, but when all the chaos started to end and my emotions were able to settle, I discovered that I didn't actually like her. I didn't like the music that she listened to, the movies and TV shows that she watched, and many other day-to-day things that make up a person's personality. The BPD turned out not to be an issue in the end. I just didn't like her. We have to be careful to not blame all the woes in our relationships on the disorder.