BPDFamily.com

My original thread: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=336395.0

My pwBPD has a cycle of working herself up over trust issues. She comes up with things that happened years ago. Making unfounded connections to things that she garners from stalking friends and exes on social media. She makes accusations and adds statements about how we have a non existent relationship and eventually states she’s leaving because I don’t have her back.

In the past I have bent over backwards to accommodate her demands and battle the accusations.

Someone on here turned me on to a book called “Stop care-taking the borderline or narcissist” and it’s changing my perspective.

I seem to have an addiction to care taking. I’m working with my therapist to end that addiction.

Has anyone read that book?

It paints a pretty grim future for partners of pwBPD.

Does anyone have a success story after working on their communication skills?

GoodMan,

im not sure this is a matter of caretaking, or not caretaking.


there are two things going on here.

1. you did things to shake her trust
2. she has inherent trust issues

my ex also had (as anyone with BPD traits will tend to have) inherent trust issues. i sent an inappropriate message once. she found out about it. it really rocked our relationship. even after a lot of time, and no inappropriate messages sent by me, she still struggled. rebuilding trust is a difficult task. the bulk of it, the leadership move, is on the person who broke the trust. i think in order to do that, you have to understand things from her perspective. to really understand where shes coming from.

my sense is that primarily you are tired of apologizing (understandable), and just want to make it go away. im not sure that is going to rebuild trust in your marriage. it sounds, more and more, like you are giving up, detaching, and disengaging, headed toward what gottman describes as stage 4 of a relationship breakdown.

what do you want to see happen here? do you want to disengage? do you want to try to rebuild trust?

The caretaking comes from all that I have done to earn her trust back.

She feels we are still at the same place because she is holding herself in that place. She holds us there.

I used to absorb all the insults and threats of leaving with trying to deny and prove nothing is happening. I have taken on the responsibility of being her punching bag. Being the target. Being the awful person.

I am not a awful person.

I have changed habits she felt were all personal attacks. She told me not pushing in my chair is an attack on her.  I have to speak quietly, stand away from her so I'm not threatening, I have to walk in the house quietly and slowly. I cant speak to her until se confirms that I'm not interrupting her. (So you understand what that means is I have to know some how she is not busy because saying excuse me is a violent attack.)

Then boom were all good. We love each other.

Then right before going on massively expensive family vacations I get told she and I are going as friends and not to touch her. When we return she is moving out and I still have to go due to the feelings of my step daughter. I grin and bare it. 

Then we 180 to we can make this work and its all love!

Then we 180 again. She's moving out because she cant trust me and I'm a scum bag and all my friends are scum bags.

Then we 180 again and were working to a better end together. We will go to therapy together. we will make this work.

Then boom I get to explain to all my friends and family why she interrogated them.  That they have to remove people from their social media because the prove an unfounded connection to me. I have to be scared of texting good female friends pics of my family on vacation because I'm trying to create a "connection". There is never an apology when she realizes that she is wrong.

This is a tiny fraction of what I do to care take my relationship. I have to just absorb all of this and try to keep my family together. I up my zoloft and add xanax.

If none of this is care-taking I'd like a better explanation of what is happening.


I want to heal the relationship.

This may be impossible because as I've said she hasn't acknowledged the work I'm doing nor is doing any work on her own. She is still holding us in the place where we were three years ago.

For now this is where I'm at. I want it to work so I work on myself.  This site and books and my therapist tell me to protect myself. Don't defend. Not to engage the accusations and abuses and threats. Work on myself. 

In three weeks she will come back and tell me I'm a scumbag and she doesn't love me and I don't have her back she's leaving and taking my stepdaughter. 

I'm trying to use the tools here and in books to stop the care taking and make this work.

Does anyone here have positive examples of using the tools they have found to better communicate? Do these tools work?

Goodman:

your tag line is interesting because I keep telling my support group " i know i'm a good man but when she gets dysregulated, she paints me as this horrible, overbearing person (her mom)".

Anyway, as i was reading your post i can definitely relate.  I've tried so many things: lead by example, stay on the "high road" and now creating space.  While all have had some temporary success, i'm kind've in the same situation as you.  So I'm not writing to say I have a success story myself but i did search on this site and there are stories of successful communication after the pwBPD got help and did DBT intensives etc.  Stan Tatkin, uses the attachment styles to frame some of this behavior and he tries to soften up the description of BPD by giving them a different name in his books.   If you're not familiar with attachment styles there are the secure and insecure types and then sub types from there.   She told me right from the beginning that she was an anxious attachment type.  I thought to myself "no problem, i'm pretty secure (70/30) on my test results and that might be okay with us.   That was in the beginning.  Now, it seems like she has an ability to project her insecurity on me so that i feel less secure in the relationship and actual feel like I have taken on her projections (mostly out of fear). 

For example, we are not married yet but i'm now anxious that marrying her will be a heavy emotional burden for me and if she doesn't get help - a void that I can't fill in her insecure attachment style.   Stan says that there is a type called the "angry resistant" and this type is anxious attachment style and they require the opposite of what you would normally think is necessary.  So while most people pull away after being attacked by a pwBPD in this type he says they need lots of moving towards behaviors and comforting.  He doesn't call it caretaking; he calls it co-regulation.  I actually have tried this and initially it does work.  The only problem is that her insults have become worse and instead of just pulling away in an arguement (btw we're long distance), she now says mean things to me and then I find myself wanting to pull away and heal my wound.  Again it is like my 30% insecurity now gets activated and i need to have my own space.  He says that to be with an angry resistant type one has to be very secure type themselves so that nothing really throws them off or phases them.   That's really hard for me and i have to admit i'm sensitive because i grew up with and still have a mom that is super critical. 


What's kept me in the relationship up to this point is her willingness to explore these concepts.  Knowing that she is an anxious type i thought initially was huge.   But now, she seems to have learned to pass along her anxiousness onto me by framing me negatively and trying to make me her.  I noticed that pwBPD or anxious attachments do so much projection when dysregulated that they can't see the difference between their behavior and their partners.   In the past she was able to take time away and see her part and she would apologize.  That was also huge because typically pwBPD don't apologize.   But all of sudden lately she has regressed and not willing to see how her behavior is driving me away.  Then when i pull away the "angry" part in resistant comes out and she takes it out on me.   Basically Stan calls it "allergy to hope".    There is one other type and he says if the person has "avoidant attachment" types they will not typically be willing to work on the relationship because they fear engulfment rather then abandonment.  He says with abandonment issues at least they want to work on the relationship.  Fear of engulfment means you can't get too close to people.  I suspect many of the pwBPD have a combination of both and the more traits they have the more they act out in their perceived defense.


Please keep in touch.  Although i'm going through my own crisis I'm happy to pass along any resources i know that might be of support to you. 

as im sure you can appreciate, these are extremes.

going from 180 degrees in one extreme direction, to 180 degrees in another extreme direction, is still extreme.

walking on eggshells, being a punching bag, being the bad guy, is 180 degrees in one direction. deciding that this (her distrust) is her fault, that she holds you there, and the only thing you can do is 180 degrees in the other direction.

im encouraging you to seek a middle ground.

Sorry if I'm hijacking the thread, but Once Removed, can you please elaborate a bit more on this?  I'm feeling pretty stuck like GoodMan.  My uBPDh would also be "holding us at the same place", like GoodMan said.  When one party wants to rebuild trust but the other party holds on to the past (I'm not even saying I have cheated on him or what, he says I have betrayed him because I have talked to other people about him behind his back in the past.  Now, I have no close friends anymore and I don't have deep conversations with anyone, so I don't share about my marriage to anybody anymore.), what are we supposed to do?  I could apologise for a lifetime but it's not going to make the past go away!  If we're not supposed to disengage, it gets back into a circular argument, and that doesn't seem healthy for the relationship either!

What Gottman didn't say is how to turn back *if* you've really reached Stage 4 of relationship breakdown.  For me, I don't want the relationship to breakdown but I'm at my wits end.  And it seems to be that GoodMan has given tried as well, I don't know for how long, but he has put in effort too... not that it led to anything positive.

Gottman has written extensively (not in that article) about how to improve, nurture, rebuild a marriage. any of the following (there are others too) would be a great, and highly applicable read:

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
Why Marriages Succeed or Fail
The Relationship Cure: A Five-step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships
The Marriage Clinic: A Scientifically Based Marital Therapy
The Science of Trust: Emotional Attunement for Couples

this board is a place for those who need hope, but its also one that emphasizes realistic expectations. most marriages in stage four do not recover. of the ones that do, it requires a huge effort, a fundamental lifestyle change type approach to the relationship; not only a different, rehabilitative approach, but learning to more objectively look at yourself and your partner.