BPDFamily.com

Hello everyone, hope everyone is having a good day so far.

To begin my story, my BPD bf and I live together. I always see him get triggered or angry over what he believes are "my actions of being a ___ty girlfriend". He is a decent guy and I do love him a lot, we have been together for four years now but there are days where I really get upset from his BPD reactions.

This morning he woke up to go to work, I went and got him some energy drink because he likes to have one before work. I thought maybe he will appreciate that, later on as he woke up he said "I don't want to go to work, I want to go to the pub, have hot dog and a beer." Last time he said this I told him to go to work and he ended up leaving half way and blaming that on me anyways.

This morning I was careful, I said to him "If you can take a sick day off and your attendance is good, don't go". Later on we were talking about how much money he would loose, he is working overtime on Monday so essentially he would earn it back if he took a sick day off. Then I mentioned "well I guess if you do go today, you will get paid that extra bit from your Monday's overtime". After I said that I see his face drop a little bit, I assumed he didn't like what he heard and I didn't act the way he "expected" me too.

He then took a shower came back, started to get ready to go to work and then asked me to go to my work room and to "get away from him". He was splitting again (something he has been doing more often these days), so I left him and started to my own tasks. However, I wont lie I was feeling horrible because I even made the effort to cook and have his energy drink ready for him. Some times I just feel like no matter what I do to show that I care, I am listening it's never good enough :/

Anyways after he got dressed and it was his time to go, I had this horrible feeling in my head that he isn't going to leave without saying something to hurt me or to make me feel just as bad as him. Not to mention I was already feeling low, he open my door and I had my head down I knew he wanted to say something mean and he goes saying "You don't understand, you are a ___ty girlfriend and don't do anything tonight because I want to remember how ___ty you are as a girlfriend" then he left I was just in tears I didn't say anything and he COMES BACK after a minute to say the same thing to see if I give him any reaction but I just had a sad face with tears falling down.

It really amuses me how it's important to him to make the effort to come to my room TWICE, to say a few sentences of how much I suck as a girlfriend, I wonder sometimes if this makes him feel better or is he just trying to make me feel sad in order to feel superior. These days I have started to feel as if I am go much more grown up than he is (we are 23). I feel like he is still the 18 years old when I met him 5 years ago and although things have changes drastically from last year, there is so much more growing up to do from both our ends. I feel like maybe I don't validate him properly and still have those days where I JADE but I guess we are all humans, BPD can really suck the life out of both of us.

What you did to appease him made no difference, not going to work was already occupying his mind. He was looking for validation from you that it was a good idea not too. When you gave a logical positive for him to go he would have taken that as invalidation.

pwBPD dont weigh up pros and cons then make a decision. They make a decision and then look for validation that their choice was right. Having then gone against his original feeling, by going, it put him in a bad mood. He blames you, and tries to trigger a fight which would have been the straw that he was looking for to crack it and then not go, and that would have been your fault too.

It is hard to not fall into the trap of validating the invalid, by agreeing that it is ok not to, and then giving a reason too. This is what happens when we jump in and weigh the pros and cons for them. He only hears the perceived criticism, which means anything contrary to his thoughts.

I guess prompting his own decision may have been better "what will be the consequence if you do? What will be the consequence if you dont? Which sounds the better option to you? Its your choice" You were trying to do this but you were giving the answers not asking the questions for him to work it out.

However, you are not always going to avoid these things and all you can do is just wash them off and dont allow yourself to be cowed into looking and feeling like you stuffed up. That just reinforces to him that you did (whether you actually did or not), opening the floodgates for projection.

It will be interesting to hear if he brings it up again when he gets home

Thank you so much for replying back to me, your comment made it so much more clearer to me. I can see now I am trying to make decisions for him instead of me validating his feeling and him taking the final choice. So the verdict is out that he left work after 3 hrs of his shift, I knew this was going to happen but it isn't my fault. So far, he is still quite mad at me and just wants to be on his own.