BPDFamily.com

Hello.

So I'm in a long distance (2 hrs away) same sex relationship with my partner with BPD and I'm getting very frustrated with our communications. Just had a back and forth text with her that went like `this:

Her: awesome. i just got food delivery. it was gonna be 24 and change. Had a 10 dollar credit... .boom.

Me: cool. what was the credit from?

Her: I don't know. Why'd it matter.

Me: (thinking... .wow... .here we go) Just conversing. Did you mean you had a credit from the restaurant you ordered from?

Her: I had a 10 dollar credit for food delivery service. I don't want to converse needlessly about unimportant things. Be normal. "oh, sweet. Credit." It's 10 dollars I didn't' have to pay. Say oh cool or something. Doesn't require a conversation about it.

Me: from my point of view, you questioning why I would ask something relatively mundane isn't the norm. But I don't really care if it's not the norm. It's not the norm to randomly have food credits. So it's something worthy of conversation to me. It's okay that we both have different talking styles.

Her: I obviously don't remember why there's is credit. You want small talk all the time and it's annoying. Not everything is a F***ing conversation.

Me: I did say cool, btw.

Her: yeah, cool. Have a great day.

(presumably temporarily blocked as she does this all the time.)

I know that there were some things that I could have said or not said to avoid some of this. But sometimes it gets so frustrating trying to understand her and feeling like I'm letting her steamroll over me. *sigh* And of course she constantly tells ME that I turn everything into an argument, which I feel is projection as I generally try to avoid them. And also sometimes it's an argument that we don't talk enough, but now "not everything has to be a conversation"

Just wanted to vent to some people who understood. And maybe get some more advice for dealing with these episodes. I have read walking on eggshells which was great for helping me understand her.

So glad I found you because I am also in a long distance Same sex relationship with someone with BPD so I get it. It's so tough having real conversation through text when everything can get misinterpreted. What I usually do when the "why does it matter" thing comes up (which is often as I'm sure you know) is I just change the subject. Like I would say "oh it doesn't I was just wondering... .what kind of food did you get?" Or something that'll make her think about something else instead of how irritated she is

People with BPD talk with feelings and emotions, facts and reality are fudged to form what they feel is the best way to express the gist of what they mean. Hence details dont hold up, and dont even seem to have close relation to reality.

I think of this as the "Impressionist Atrist" within them. Much in the way an impressionist paiter can portray the mood of a field of flowers on a summers day, yet on close inspection no single component of that painting is anywhere near an accurate representation of a flower, pwBPD do the same with words... its an artistic license.

Focusing on the details tells them you are not appreciating the message, in fact even take it as being critical...

It is better to just treat everything as an interesting story rather than as a witness account

228kk - Thanks for your reply and I apologize for my late response. We had a huge fight a day after my post and broke up. We've been NC for almost a week. Noticed I was blocked on Facebook for a couple days, then unblocked. Now I'm trying to figure out if I should reach out to her. Thanks for your suggestion too. I think it could probably be helpful to try to change the subject so she doesn't dwell on whatever is angering her. If you don't  mind me asking, how long have you been with your partner? And have you experienced these kinds of break ups over what feels to us like very small things too?

Thanks for the explanation Waverider. That actually seems to help me make some sense of what is going on.