do you get anywhere by trying to punish your BPD spouse for bad behavior

[sara101]

my BPD husband recently acted out (went over a boundry ) and caused me a lot of grief , I responded by telling him I wasn't going with him on a vacation he wanted to plan at the end of the month. I  felt that I needed to respond in a way that will make him realize that there are consequences to his actions. he decided to go on vacation without  me (I don't care about the vacation) .will he learn from this experience?

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[SadWifeofBPD]

hmmm... . it depends...

I've found that if I SAY I'm doing something as a punishment/consequence, then that just makes H want to retaliate even further.  If I just let the consequences happen, then he sometimes "gets the message." 

For instance:  If H is very rude and hurtful and then I say that I'm too upset to go to XXXX with him, then he's more likely to learn from that than if I said, "because you did that, I'm not going to XXXX with you." 


It's not a fair thing because H would constantly say that he's doing (fill in the blank) to punish me for some perceived injustice.  But, he'd never tolerate me doing that.

[pallavirajsinghani]

As with children, punitive behavior does not work with BPD sufferers.  Instead what works is plain and simple one sentence statements as my colleague above said:

"I am too upset too go to the vacation because of this incident".

(You do not say,  "I am too upset because YOU caused this incident... . and therefore YOU are the reason for my being upset."

As you learn more about the communication techniques that are proven to be helpful with the BPD sufferers, you will become more adept at this.

In all honesty,  if you did not go to the vacation to punish him but secretly you did want to go, then really you are punishing yourself by depriving yourself of the pleasure.  So, accepting that you are not willing to go because you are upset is honesty towards him and towards yourself.  The desire for "revenge" and "punishing" is usually due to the overwhelming sense of outrage and injustice... . usually, the calmer better sense takes over.

[Chosen]

From personal experience, it doesn't work and it backfires.  If he already knows he did something wrong, he would've felt sorry without the punishment.  If he doesn't think he has stepped over your boundary, no amount of punishment will give him this realisation.

I think letting him suffer the consequences and initiating punishment is different.  For me, it's totally ok (and even needed) that we allow them to suffer natural consequences of their actions.  For example, your boundary may be "If he gets up late in the morning, I will not do his share of housework just so he won't be late."  So he gets up late.  He expects you to do stuff for him to solve his problem.  I would advice you not to because he needs to feel that him getting up late has a consequence.

However, if you initiate another "punishment", say because you helped him solve his problem (but that was overstepping your own boundary), you refuse to go out with him that night for a dinner date, then he will come back to claim it's your problem, that you have an attitude problem.  And he won't be able to associate that with the fact that he stepped on your boundary.

Sorry I didn't explain it so well, but I hope you get the idea and it helps a bit.