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Title: This is caused a lot of conflict between him and my family. Post by: Alrischa on September 12, 2017, 07:04:33 PM My husband is extremely passionate about his ideals and beliefs. I have felt him being insistent if I try to disagree and he sees it as I am being stubborn or looking to fight (I will admit that I am stubborn and won't step down easily so I could have had a hand in this without knowing it)
He is a little obsessive with cleanliness and it needs to be done his way. He wants to dictate how my parents should clean/make their house presentable and this is caused a lot of conflict between him and my family. Any thoughts on how to handle this? Title: Re: This is caused a lot of conflict between him and my family. Post by: DaddyBear77 on September 12, 2017, 09:41:46 PM Hi Alrischa
Im really sorry to hear that there's so much conflict between your husband and your family. It sounds like your husband has some really strongly held ideas. It can be really hard to challenge these ideas. Sometimes it can trigger a really bad episode of anger and even rage. I've had that happen so many times. One thing that might help is skills around Validation. Take a look at the lesson here about Communication Skills - Don't Be Invalidating (https://bpdfamily.com/content/communication-skills-dont-be-invalidating). This is a really hard skill but it's often the case that the pwBPD needs to feel that their ideas are valid. It sounds like maybe his ideas are extreme, but maybe there's something you can validate here. Maybe you could share a little more about these arguments? What kind of things really set him off? What kind of things really get under YOUR skin? ~DaddyBear77 Title: Re: This is caused a lot of conflict between him and my family. Post by: Turkish on September 13, 2017, 12:20:11 AM How does he present his opinions to your parents, what does he say to them?
I can imagine my response would be, "none of your business. There's the door--->" From this and all that you wrote on your intro post, I'd say that he's looking for control over his environment. Given what you said about his childhood, he may be carrying over what was told to him as a child. My ex was/is similar. I share custody, and just 10 mins ago received a text about my home... . I well remember her Saturday morning cleaning rampages, even after we did a good job cleaning the kitchen after dinner the night before. Not good enough. She's diagnosed with clinical level Anxiety. She's talked to me about how it stems from her childhood. Yet still she projects it upon me and the kids. So despite the Dx, it's up to us on our side... .not to change her (that's impossible), but to change how we react. Make sense? DaddyBear77 provided a good link about validation. SET statements can help validate him on this and other issues: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=143695.0;all Validation is good, but we also need boundaries. Growing up on a disordered family, there were likely not good boundaries between him and his family. He's just using the behaviors he was taught, not knowing better. You don't know what you don't know. A therapist versed in BPD once wrote something like these dysfunctional coping skills feel like "survival." She was talking about lying and BPD, but I think it's applicable to other behaviors as well. I like this discussion on boundaries: This thread is about "examples". In this thread we will discuss your value, your boundaries and how to defend your boundaries. For some background information with more depth, there is a great discussion regarding the 3 types of boundaries (mental, emotional, physical) that everyone should read on this thread: BOUNDARIES: Upholding our values and independence (https://bpdfamily.com/content/values-and-boundaries) Remember, our values and the boundaries of those values aren't about someone else. They are about how we choose to live our lives. I have an eye analogy. Eyelids play an important role in protecting our vision, right? In this case, vision is the value. To have good vision, dirt and dust are seen as harmful to the eye - thus we need a boundary to keep our eyes safe. Eyelids block the dirt and push the dust out - this is our boundary defense in action. Eyelids don't try to control or punish or change the dirt, they just protect the "vision", consistently, day in, day out - often in subtle ways, sometimes in very visible ways - 400 million times in a lifetime. Relating our boundary defenses back to the value is very important. If we don't do this, we run the risk of loosing sight of our objective - and we may make matters worse. To be constructive, we need to have realistic values and we need to understand what our responsibilities are if we want to truly live them. Talk is cheap. There are 3 parts, the values we have, the boundaries of those values, and the actions we take when the boundaries are threatened. Some examples:
Click on the quote from at the top to see the whole discussion. Let us know if this makes sense and if you think you can apply it to your specific situation. Turkish Title: Re: This is caused a lot of conflict between him and my family. Post by: Tattered Heart on September 13, 2017, 08:55:58 AM Hi Alrischa,
My H is also has issues with being particular about things, although his issue is in how I cook things, not in household cleanliness. I think it really does come down to control. They feel out of control of things so they lash out and try to control others. I'd like to second what DaddyBear77 asked. Could you share a scenario, what your H got upset about, how you responded, and how your parents responded to him? |