Print Page - Exhaustion, frustration. isolation

Hi there. Boundaries can be hard to both determine and to enact.

Often, people seem to start out looking at boundaries as ways to change our partner's behaviors and make them less "BPD-y". Some people even confuse them with ultimatums. They are not, not really at least. A boundary is literally like a wall that you determine will protect you physically and emotionally, and will help you maintain respect for yourself and your choices.

One boundary is how much drama you feel you can/should accept before ending a conversation or removing yourself from it. You can choose to enact a boundary like this many ways, like "I do not like to be yelled at, I will leave and come back when you are calmer." Or, simply leave, or a myriad of ways in between the two that work for you. I am not good at leaving so much DURING a rage, but I do find ways during a lull to leave the room, and engage in an activity that calms me (I usually end up doing some sort of cleaning, yay OC issues!). I remember errands, I remember chores, and am now good about keeping my phone, purse and keys together just in case I need to make a quick exit.

You can't MAKE him stop yelling and raging. But you can stop accepting the verbal barrage that comes with it. If you are not there to take it, he is forced to self-soothe as best as he can - it's like an atrophied muscle that needs to be exercised. BPD makes them want US to manage THEIR emotions. But we can't. They need to learn to do it, and if we keep doing it for them they never learn to even try.

Another item that to me is sort of a boundary is how hurt you allow BPD rages and comments to hurt you. I know now after 22 years that H has some serious emotional handicaps that make him say/do things rashly. He HAS improved, but still, it comes out, and I have to still fight my initial urges to "make it all better/fix it/explain it away." All of my initial urges actually made things worse in one way or another. Explaining it away is just JADE-ing, and very invalidating. Trying to fix it also can be invalidated as it's not responding to the FEELING, which is the most important thing to him whether he realizes it or not. I am codependent. I am used to thinking my emotions have to based on those of the people around me - if they are happy, I am allowed to be happy. If they are sad, I need to fix it so we can all be happy again. My boundary about this is around MY emotions, allowing me to have mine, and H to have his, even when I don't agree with how he feels, don't think it makes sense, and frankly, am annoyed by it because I am feeling calm and he's going off on a video game (so I leave the room). I repeat "he can his emotions, I don't need to share them." And also, I choose now to let a lot of the insane comments bounce off me so to speak - some still can sting, but I can calk a lot up to BPD and pretty much not take them to heart, not feel I am supposed to fix it, and realize only he can change how he feels. I still allow myself to get enmeshed and realize I am getting agitatted simply because he is, and have to purposefully extracate myself to get behind that imaginary wall keeping my emotions and his seperate.

My boundaries are unspoken - I never shared my BPD suspions with H, and so just started quietly employing tools found here as posssible. You can state "I won't accept ebing treated like that", but it can come off as a challenege instead of you stating a boundary to be respected. And you ahve to be preprated to take action to protect that boundary.

Bad reactions to illness - I get this. I am not sure what has helped lessen it, but in the past, H has not reacted well to me being sick - and yes, one reason was I was unable to engage in sex because of it. I could count on one, maybe two days of empathy and him trying to be helpful, and then he'd get mad, cranky, and call me lazy for needing rest. Over the past two years, his health has been severely affected by the onset of diabetes at a pretty early age, 40, as well as other co-morbid issues. I think my my H, once he's been in a situation, he does better with others in the situation.

He has little empathy, but can have loads of SYMPATHY. When we were younger, I was working full time, and he went through a period of just school, just part-time work, no school or work, and then back to part-time work. He would get mad at me for being exhausted come Friday night, having to work late due to equipment failure, and would mock me if I fell asleep "early" before midnight.Again calling me lazy. THEN, he got HIS first 8-5 job. That first Friday, he looked at me after work as we tried to prepare the house for friends coming over to visit, tired, and said, "Now I understand."

Since your H does not have IBS, it's easier for him to believe you are just rejecting him. Abandoning him. You're such a big meanie for being in horrible pain when he has needs. BPD makes his feelings = facts. Those feelings can change in a heartbeat, and therefore so can his facts.

I think in the case of illnesses, validation is more of the tool to employ to decrease drama and abandonment about it. "I know you're disappointed, I am too, I hate how this keeps us from being able to be close but there is nothing that can be done. Can you stay with me and let's quietly watch a movie or something together while I ride this out?" He feels you are pushing him off. This tells him you want to be close but you are sick and can't, but you still want him around (assuming you do). Something along these lines might prevent him from feeling rejected, and a need to create a crisis to force attention back to himself by threats of self-harm.

Self-harm - I am lucky in that this does not come up too often. In really bad states, H can get so agitated he hits himself in the head and throws things, but has never threatened suicide in a way I have taken him to mean it. (both my parents attempted it, so I kinda go off their threats when angry versus the actual attempt). I also have noticed the very worst instance coincide with low blood sugar issues, so that helps me deal. If he's agitated and it's close to a meal time, I need to get food into him to keep the drama at bay.

Other members on here have pretty much called the "bluff" so to speak and called a prevention hotline or even the police. BPD likes to stay hidden, so outing them to an authority can be dicey, and cause other kinds of blow ups, but might also prevent such threats int he future if they were meant as emotional manipulation and not as an honest intent.

I tend to this he's using hyperbole to communicate how upset he is. Your emotions sadly don't register as his are too overwhelming. A pwBPD never learned to manage their emotions, and so have a sort of handicap where all the things we can squish to the back of our mind, take control of and dismiss if needed - they cant. They choose us to be the ones to take their emotions from them, usually in the form of a rage, because they simply can't manage them on their own. This is not healthy. and the only way it seems to change is if we stop accepting those emotions and find ways to diffuse them by acknowledging them or remove ourselves to force them to exercise some self-soothing to learn how to manage them without using us as a proxy.

What a hard place for you to be put into. You aren't feeling well and then you had the added tension of either giving into sex or dealing with a dysregulation. I have been in your exact scenario before.

My H and I used to have quite big fights over this same topic. He would view my refusal for sex as a complete rejection of him, that I didn't love him, and he felt like he wasn't a good enough man. It got so bad that just knowing he was making signs for sex made me feel uncomfortable and anxious.

I've found something that seems to work well and we haven't had this fight in well over a year. Just a few weeks ago my H even told me that he feels like sex is not as big of a deal to him anymore. I asked him what changed and he said he feels more secure in our relationship and mentioned the way I turn him down for sex as one of the reasons he is more comfortable.

As with all conversations with my H when I need to tell him something he won't like I use SET (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=143695.0).

Conversation might go like this:
H: Are we having sex tonight?
Me: I know sex is important to you. It's important to me too. I'm not feeling well though. Can we do it tomorrow afternoon as soon as I get home from work?

A couple things that make this work:
1. I address his needs first and let him know that I'm not rejecting him with the supportive/empathetic statement
2. I don't hem haw around about it. I'm honest.
3. I give him another specific date/time so he understands it's not a rejection of him. I'm not just not into it at present.
4. I stick to my later date/time so that he knows I'm keeping my word
5. Being specific about the later date/time gives him something to look forward to

Do you think this might help with him?

BPDFamily.com

Relationship Partner with BPD (Straight and LGBT+) => Romantic Relationship | Bettering a Relationship or Reversing a Breakup => Topic started by: confused75 on March 20, 2018, 07:25:56 AM