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There is a central element with my BPDh that i observed and that rings loudly in the posts as well: power.
Power is the ability to influence others but BPD wants to do this by controlling your opinion, movement and how you respond to him. In other words he is an oppressor.
So why on earth would anyone want to subject themselves to this? What rationale is there to stay in a marriage or relationship? ( different situation is if it is direct relative, that can not be changed) when this person is suffocating yOu? What is the argument here?
I am asking myself this question but appreciate input from you all... .

All trees are plants, but not all plants are trees.

I think you're right about wanting control, most people with BPD had a very hard time/were severely neglected growing up and this was the "only" way they managed to get others to fill their needs.

Now, I don't think all pwBPD are oppressors, though I'm sure there are cases.


More often than not they don't "want to subject themselves". They (we) fell in love with the person they were when they were not dysregulated, and they can be intoxicatingly (sp?) attractive.


Love, kids, fear of repercussions, learned helplessness, wanting to "make things work". So many reasons, not all of them healthy.


Did you stay in an unhealthy relationship? if you're struggling with something it helps to provide some specifics to get a more specific answer that applies to you in particular.

 :hi:

 - I ask myself that question every day. And... .I'm not even in the relationship right now. I've been no contact for months, educating myself in the meantime. This board among other sources has been a great help in processing and seeing things in new light. Why do I still think about her, and ask if it could work... .I'm generally a positive and hopeful person. Part of me knows there's a wonderful person there when the romantic relationship aspect is not involved (we used to be friends for a long time), and my brain is trying to solve the puzzle of how it could work, and if the amount of work and difficult times would be worth it all. Maybe it's like getting into a pool with a shark, and making sure you don't cut yourself or bleed anywhere. I'm still learning... .

I like it'smesnap's response to this, especially the "all trees are plants, but not all plants are trees" observation.

Our lives consist of situations and our responses to them. Most of us have a fair amount of control over our responses to situations, thus we don't feel an overpowering need to control the situations themselves.

However, a lot of people with BPD feel out of control of themselves and their responses. These people feel like "If x happens, I will feel y, and I will do z". They tend to feel a fatalistic inevitability about this chain, a learned helplessness; they don't know how to change things so that if x happens, they feel b instead, or, if they feel y, they do c instead. They feel as though the situation directly and completely controls their emotions and their actions. And this is terrifying for them. I suspect that if I felt like that, I'd probably want to control my environment and the people in it too.

As an example, imagine someone thinks that it is utterly unalterably inevitable that "If my partner chats to the waitress, I will feel jealous and hurt and insecure. If I feel jealous and hurt and insecure, then I will drink too much and get angry and shout and break things". They would then reason along the lines of "When my partner chats to the waitress, (s)he is trying to make me drink too much and get angry and shout and break things". They would think that their partner had complete control over them, that their partner could make them feel things and do things that they didn't want to feel and do. And they might then feel like making sure their partner didn't chat with the waitress was the only way to save themselves from being "forced" to drink too much and get angry and shout etc.

In other words, when people with BPD act in controlling ways, it is often because they feel controlled and are trying to resist that control. They often genuinely feel that they are the one being controlled. As they feel they lack abilities to control their emotional responses to things and they feel they lack abilities to control how they react to their emotions, they feel extremely vulnerable to outside events and feel like they have to control these instead.

Understanding this with compassion can go a long way. That doesn't mean accepting their control, just empathising with where it may be coming from.

Adding to my last post, one thing that I have found really helpful here with my boyfriend is talking to him a lot about other people's situations and how other people have choices in how they respond to things.

For example, one of his neighbours was frustrated that her landlord kept putting off doing necessary repairs on the property. Eventually, she lost her temper with her landlord, had a go at him, and told him to F off. The landlord responded by giving her formal notice to quit and now she is panicking that she's going to end up homeless.

I talked to my boyfriend about it like this: It's understandable that she was frustrated and angry that her landlord wasn't fulfilling his contractual obligations. Her landlord was wrong not to do this. But she didn't have to respond by telling him to F off. She could have sent him a written request to do the repairs, citing his obligations in the tenancy agreement and in law. She could have contacted her local authority to ask them to issue him with a legal notice to carry out the repairs. She could have quietly looked for somewhere else to live, then, when she found somewhere, given the landlord notice that she was quitting the tenancy. Similarly, the landlord didn't have to ask her to leave. He could have recognised his part in why she was angry, tried to calm things down, asked her not to swear at him in future, and come up with a schedule to tackle the repairs one at a time prioritising the most urgent ones first.

These kind of stories help show him that our responses to things aren't inevitable, even when the other person is the first in the wrong. Lots of repetition of this principle whenever a similar story comes up is helping him to apply the same reasoning to his own behaviour. I now hear him come out with things like "They shouldn't have done x. They were wrong to do x. But I didn't help by doing z. I could have done c instead, that would have been better".

I have found that challenging the fatalistic, powerless, reactive thinking can help the person to recognise that they have control over their responses to things and that this then lessens their anxiety and their subsequent need to control others. But I have also discovered that it's safest to do this by talking about other people and other situations in the first instance.

what have you observed? how does this play out with your husband?

Those are very enlightening posts, Bnonymous. Really rings a bell with my H. He's started anger management but flat-out told me he thought the point of it was to eliminate triggers, then said, "But it doesn't work that way, does it?" I told him that, no, it doesn't. You can't eliminate all triggers. That's impossible. Instead, therapy is about focusing on you and learning how better to handle anger and other strong feelings. He got very quiet after that. Not sure what he thinks now.

It's obvious, though, that control is big with him. He's told me before that his anger is my problem. I need to fix things so he doesn't get angry. Hopefully he's starting to see the fallacy in that.

Thank you so much for the enlightening responses. I would not have thought of such explanation. Obviously, i have a lot to learn about myself as well as about my hb. Thank you so much!

The question was what did i observe about power and BPD.
There is a lot to observe, for example in my case, how someone builds power? How he wants to exert the power, the influence? Is it by force? You will do so and so or i will throw a tantrum?
External power is for example when someone wants to control their environment.
I have always had more respect for the internal power that someone built, moral power, knowledge,... for example i have studied all my life to better myself and it is very important to me that i do not force anyone to do something. That they should have a choice. My hb however might not even know how forceful his message is to me. Or i might Not know how forceful my requests are for him?

Hi Copycat2018,

I agree with you that internal power is what counts. What you call "external power" is a poor substitute for the real thing (in a similar way to how excessive pride is a poor substitute for genuine self-respect). I like the distinction you've drawn and the terms you've chosen to describe it - I think these are really helpful.


I'm not sure it's that conscious. I think it's largely a matter of unexamined defence mechanisms that have become almost automatic after a lifetime of repetition. The reasoning I highlighted is unlikely to be explicit most of the time.

Re the "You will do so and so or i will throw a tantrum" - this suggests that it's experienced as an ultimatum they make to us - it's more likely that they experience it as "You do so and so to make me upset and act out". They tend to feel powerless and controlled and often have little-to-no self-awareness regarding how their interpretations and emotions mediate between what we do and how they act in response to it. They also often have little awareness that they act in ways which are likely to be perceived as controlling.

The "tantrum" (don't use that word to him btw, as it is likely to come across as disrespectful and belittling) is likely a result of poor emotional regulation and a lack of skills to deal with this. We nons often do feel restricted by it ("walking on eggshells") and that can feel as though they are controlling us through our fears of their outbursts, but this is rarely intentional on their part, and it is also something we have choices over - we don't have to walk on eggshells.

People react in different ways to requests, and when the person doesn't get their way, they act out. Sometimes sulk, others cry, beg or tantrum; growing up in neglectful environments they end up resorting to the most extreme forms: rage, break things, threaten, up to actual violence.

When they realize this got people to give them what they needed/wanted, they learn to skip the mild stuff and go right to extremes. They have not known that people can respond to other forms of requests.

Unfortunately if they try to be mild and they don't get their way they sort of "know" to escalate to get it, and if you give in on the escalation they confirm that "extreme" is the way to go, so they keep doing it.

It takes effort to escape the pattern, but it can be done.


I'm guessing you mean forceful is about not being given enough choice.

The thing is it can be confusing because their motives for requesting "impossibles" are often not readily apparent: they might tell you to stop talking to someone not because they know its wrong, but because they're feeling left out, abandoned.

Here it takes some maneuvering to figure out the cause so you can provide better solutions. If asked to stop talking to someone, you might think compromising and talking to them less often or only on certain occasions is offering more choice, but its really not addressing the real issue: He might not know a way to let you know that he wants to spend more time with you, so he uses the closest proxy: "less time with others means more time with me"

Understanding where he's coming from like Bnonymous said might clue you in to why he's making such controlling requests.


I second once removed about asking how these interactions happen between you and your husband. There's a missing piece of info here as we do not know yet the interactions you have experienced, in particular the requests you experience as forceful. The devil is in the details as they say, and they help untangle these emotionally charged situations and give perspective and focused advice.