BPDFamily.com

Has anyone been asked to provide a very expensive item as proof of commitment and trust?
How did you respond?

Like a piece of jewelry? No.

My BPDh did repay a large sum of money to me in the past year, as a partial way to make amends for money that he spent inappropriately from our joint account. Vicki Tidwell Palmer talks about financial trust rebuilding by gifting/repaying money in Beyond Betrayal. (I know i reference that a lot, but its the most recent book I've read.

Has your BPD given you something or are you thinking of asking for something?

Sounds like that could end up being the thin end of the wedge and could set up a dangerous precedent.

The reasoning is quite normal for a pwBPD though as they often make grand gestures when trying to gain acceptance. So they are most likely projecting that reasoning on to you.

Thanks for the reference!
No, she is asking for this gift. It just feels like an ultimatum, and also - I need to see the trust going both ways to feel confident enough to invest this much right away. So, where I see it as step 5 or something, she sees it as step 1, like she won't move ahead in rekindling the relationship until this happens first. For me, I need to see some stability (I'm sure we all would like that), and then I would gladly lavish her and share all that I am. A difficult ask maybe. It just feels like they're always one step beyond reason (reason as we understand it).

Makes a lot of sense, TY

Have you done something to break trust? Or is this more a BPD problem with her lack of ability to trust anyone?

Giving large gifts just because does seem like a bad precident.

The board had a member at one time whose BPD wife did not work. During the final year, he had gifted her with a vacation to Asia and a replacement engagement ring ( the original wasn't big enough). Another member also had gifted a $30k vacation.

If you mutually set a goal that, by this time, we will have achieved a level of stability and will celebrate that by buying XYZ, that could work. Doing something up front sounds y sky, in terms of your getting your needs met.

She had dug through my phone history and seen that I was still talking to and friends with ex girlfriends (contact that had happened before we became involved) and took it as a betrayal and personal attack on her, as if I have some devious agenda to sleep with every woman in the world. It's like being judged in the present because of the past.

Yeeeeaaaahhh i would think you would want to avoid rewarding that kind of controlling behavior.

Sounds more like retribution. To comply with this would almost be a sign of guilt. I wouldn't go there. Do you trust her not to dig through your phone history and make something of nothing? That is the real issue.

No, I don't.
And she'll spin it in such a way that perfectly exemplifies her point and leaves me speechless a lot of times. Or I'll tell her that I know that's how it looks on paper, there's no way to explain or defend that. I see it from her POV. (In the past, an ex was going through a rough time and I had texted that I love her (as a supportive friend) - I don't even remember it honestly) but I tell her that thoughts and intentions, and words on a page are not necessarily the same thing. She creates a story in her head at lightning speed.

pwBPD are experts at doing cut and paste jobs with facts an quotes and then adding their own contexts so that you almost start to doubt your own context, and end up feeling guilty

By the end of our conversation, she is making perfect sense, and I feel like I have multiple issues.
I don't know which way is up anymore.

The truth is probably somewhere in between a combination of both.
But trying to find our common ground is like trying to equate two mathematical formulas...

Supposedly it's over again now, because I didn't budge on buying the jewelry before seeing stability.
So, I'm not sure what happens now. I've been studying BPD for the past 8 months in hopes of successfully navigating things, and although I didn't expect her to change, I thought I could handle things a lot better. Most of which I think I did, but the reality is that it would still be really hard to be comfortable enough to be myself and share any feelings I wanted to share freely.

She's been a really special person in my life. There's been a lot of good.
I just don't know where to go from here now...