BPDFamily.com

My uBPDh was hospitalized for an abdominal operation last week. We have a long-distance marriage, and I picked him up from the hospital and stayed with him for three days to take care of him, and get him supplies to last until he is able to go out again. You can read about the argument we had in my previous post; suffice to say he threw me out on the day I was planning to leave, demanded my keys back and that I take most of the things I use when I stay with him. He thundered that I had "willfully" made him worse. I was afraid of him and left in a hurry without obeying his commands. Since then, it has been four days of no contact from him, but I can tell that he is alive at least from social media.

The operation was brutal, and physically he is a mess and in great pain. To make matters worse, he said that when it was time for the catheter to be removed from his privates, the nurse whipped it out very fast, injuring him. He felt that she had done it on purpose to hurt him, or at least with disregard for his suffering. I tried to validate, but I also stated that she probably learned to do it swiftly to minimize the duration of the most stinging pain.

His penis did look awful. Not bloody, but misshapen and lifeless. I am wondering whether this incident has made him even worse. I know, as waverider told me, that he could not stand the helplessness of his situation and was blaming me for it. Did the nurse actually harm his member, and am I being blamed for that too? Should I have advised him to complain to the hospital?

In my experience, some people with BPD (pwBPD) choose to blame those closest to them whenever their health is failing.  My uBPD mother does this.  I think this has to do with their inability to accept that sometimes something can be wrong with them and it's no one's fault, and neither does it mean that they are a bad person (as if God would punish you through illness and ill fortune - though I imagine some people would believe this).

As I understand it, this is one of the aspects to black and white thinking.  Something bad "needs" to be someone's fault; it cannot simply be... .without judgement.  And it cannot be your fault, or else you will brow beat yourself to depression and/or suicide.

That said, pulling a catheter out like that may end up causing some scar tissue to form and possibly develop into Peyronie's disease.  I can total see a pwBPD being in pain and wanting (or needing) to blame their discomfort on someone else besides themselves.  The hard part is to persuade a pwBPD into accepting that pain can happen without needing to blame or judge anyone -- this might be one of the themes of DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy).

Best wishes,

Schwing

I am sorry he is in so much pain. I would think the only way to know if he is OK is to be checked by a urologist to see if he was injured or has an infection or any other issue that could cause him to have pain.

NotWendy: Been a long time! When he is in touch with me again, if the pain persists, I'll tell him to see a urologist.

Schwing: Yes, why is it? I have a friend who is now making relationship videos. One of her mottos is that "a happy relationship is good for your health."

The pwBPD exploits the other side of the coin: "A troubled relationship can make you sick."

However, their definition of a troubled relationship, and who is to blame for it, are completely under their control.

My uBPDh of 6 years is sick because he was a binge eater for most of his life. It gave him intestinal and even spinal afflictions. I tried my best to help him, but of course it wasn't enough. The latest is that he posted a music video to FB with the lyrics: "What a woman / You put poison in my coffee . . . You are so evil."

If the outcome of this operation is bad, he will blame me. His first wife left him over this. He still blames her for an operation that went wrong twenty years ago.

There are different perspectives as to why some people with BPD (pwBPD) are this way.  One common denominator is that this kind of behavior: blaming others when bad things happen, is actually normal behavior in the early development of the human psyche.  Young children will think in this fashion.

For example, if parents are getting divorced, young children will often blame themselves.  Why? because they have insufficient maturity to grok that bad things can happen regardless of whether or not someone is bad or to blame.  Perhaps because it is too overwhelming to the child psyche to accept that they have no control over the situation.  So young children will blame themselves as a preferable alternative -- because if they are to blame, then that implies they have control over the situation.  And they might self-blame until the self-blame becomes too overwhelming and then they might project (blame someone else).  Just like pwBPD.

For whatever reason, (i.e. biological predisposition, arrested development due to... ) pwBPD are stuck at this stage of emotional development.  If you look at workbooks for dialectical behavior therapy (which can help pwBPD recover from their disorder) you'll notice that one of the themes of DBT is training the mind to move away from this kind of distorted thinking.

This will not be accomplished by reasoning with someone with BPD.  They must first want to change.  You cannot talk someone out of being mentally disordered.

This is all you can do, a professional is the only one who tell him if is condition is normal or not. You can only validate that it must be sore and upsetting and that maybe he should have it checked

Try to avoid getting into the whole blaming the hospital/nurse game. My wife has gone through this numerous times. We have just got past a phase were she was going to sue the hospital for care neglect. Which was totally contrary to my memory of the period.

Having ailments and someone who is responsible for it is part of her identity now. It is almost as if you could take that away she would have no reason to be, she can't even conceive what healthy and happy looks like. Trying to rescue her simply fed it and dragged me into the same life wasting abyss.

The important thing is to keep your level of involvement consistent. If you rescue one day then you will be constantly appealed to.