ultimatums - do they work?

[tpd90]

Hello bpdfamily,

I am wondering if any of you have tried using an ultimatum to get your loved one to get professional help.

After another failed attempt to gently encourage my partner to seek the help they need I am starting to feel hopeless.

I am interested if anyone has tried anything along the lines of "if you don't get help this relationship isn't going to work"... .

I am hesitant to do this as I feel it is quite drastic and could really hurt my partner ( who I love) and I know it will really trigger her abandonment issues.

Any experiences or insights would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

[VeryFree]

Professional help can only work out if ths pwBPD wants this help.

Setting ultimatums means getting help will not be volunteerly.

Realise, that if you are going to set an ultimatum, you will have to be ready to hold on to it... .

[waverider]

No, all you will get is an initial attendance, if you are lucky.

If you act out your consequence then that may push them closer to a rock bottom, providing your consequence is serious enough. Keep doing this and you will create chaos, add in further boundaries, and you may start the ball rolling in the right direction eventually.

But as a one off ultimatum creating a fix, no.

[Scout99]

I agree with Waverider and VeryScared on this... .

Ultimatums, if anything, will not get you there... .

The therapy, at least the good kinds of therapy available for borderline are tough to say the least to go through. So motivation is key! And there has to be a positive motivation and a true willingness to work on themselves, arriving from themselves to not just get to the point of seeking help, but also to stay in therapy.

Making an ultimatum, that to them translates understandably really to a threat of them loosing out if they fail, (and they usually believe of themselves to fail), is a negative motivator... .

Sometimes I believe that by staying in a relationship with a pw BPD who need help with both understanding that they do suffer from a disorder and are in need of help, (which they are), can sometimes actually make it harder for them to ever come to a point of realizing it themselves... . This since we provide validation and also function as an available recipient when they need to dump or project anxiety, fear and pain to give themselves a temporary relief... .

However, if pulling the plug on the relationship would be all it took to push them to the edge of realization, and through that find motivation... . Well then there would be more pw BPD in therapy, I guess... .

The problem is it is often just too easy for them to instead latch on to somebody else who will prove willing to accept the role of recipient either short or long term... . And that keeps them going around the same mountain over and over again... .

Coming to realize something is wrong with me, is hard for anybody! Just think of how hard it is for most people here, (myself included), to come to terms with our own co dependency issues or addiction to passionate feelings and or idealization... . Imagine having to face you are seriously mentally disordered?

In the end it all really boils down to what we as partners are willing to sacrifice for a relationship that at best will be good only for moments of time in the long run... . ?

That is a personal question, and one we all have to come up with our own answers to as well... .

Nothing I or anybody else here would tell you would make you know what to do about you... . Only you can get there... . And it is the same for our BPD loved ones... . They need to figure it out by themselves too... .

Like Waverider puts it: setting up more boundaries around yourself and standing up to them, may make your partner ponder on the issue, in herself... . But in the end the choice will have to be hers. If she from noticing your boundaries will get her thinking about herself and if that makes her feel that there might be things she would need and want to work on in herself, and if she begins to feel that if she doesn't she may loose you in the end... . Then that may perhaps, (and that is a big perhaps), make her interested in looking into her options, where hopefully seeking help may be one of them... .

But again... . There are a lot of what if's there... . nd probably also a lot of detours on the way of getting there... .

However again... . Boundaries are primarily for you... . For you to be able to either better cope with being in the relationship without letting it consume you or hurt or sacrifice you too much. Or for easier be able to make sound decisions for yourself about either staying or choosing to disengage and let go... . If a side effect from making them creates motivation in her to seek help, then that is a bonus. And a big one at that. But if not, it is still a way to take better care of you!

I hope things will look brighter up ahead for you. I truly do. 

Best Wishes

Scout99

[Blaise]

We had been together for 1 1/2 year with my dBPDexGF and I still had not divorced from my wife. She set me an ultimatum: either you divorce or I leave. I told her I was not ready to divorce and she left. The ultimatum will only work when there is something that can be easily remedied, which was not the case here: I am still unable to divorce, altough my wife and I separated three years ago. I still cannot figure why. So what I did when my dBPDexGF set me the ultimatum was putting on balance my r/s with her, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, my r/s with my wife. I knew that I would lose the good r/s I have with my wife, which is important to me because of our kids, and this was a greater loss than the (difficult) r/s with my pwBPD. To summarize, I think that either your pwBPD realizes him/herself that he/she needs to get help from a T, or not. If not, it is for you to decide if you can continue in this r/s, or not.

[maxsterling]

I decided against voicing a boundary to my dBPDgf because I realized she would view it as an ultimatum and she would likely rage.  My boundary is that any screaming or violence in my house I will immediately leave until she called or texted me that she had calmed down.  That's still my boundary, but I think that her interpretation would be that I was imposing a rule on her, and she doesn't like rules.  So instead I will simply act when she rages, and tell her I am leaving until she calms down.   Telling her now will only make her fear losing me, and bad things will happen.

I don't think pwBPD will respond well to ultimatums because they think they are being singled out for causing problems, and then they fear losing their relationship and their stability. 

If you tell your partner to seek counseling or the relationship is over, your partner will not hear it that way, and instead hear it as you blaming them for all problems.  You may as just as well say the relationship is over, because that is what they hear.  It's a tricky subject.  I'd try gentle suggestions - bring up examples of friends or family members who have been helped by therapy.

I just don't think an ultimatum will give you the desired result, even though that is the way you feel in your heart.

[eyvindr]

I've attempted to use the ultimatum strategy. All it did was lead to panic on my pwBPD's part, followed by aggressive negotiation to salvage the relationship -- always the case when met with any suggestion of time apart, regardless of how brief -- and then, once agreed to, back-pedaling about how the one thing she refused to do was to accept full responsibility for our problems.

I'm sure it's a familiar story to many of us here. Always, in the end, there would be some circling back around in an effort to enmesh me into being responsibility for causing the dysfunction, as opposed to reacting to it. Always the accusation of me being defensive. Always me at some point feeling compelled to ask if it isn't normal to get defensive when you're feeling like you're being attacked? Failed -- more like rejected -- attempts on my part to clarify, with simple examples, what triggered our meltdowns -- and how they ALL originated on her side?

Yes. I know it takes two people to argue. Yes. I know relationships take work. Yes. I know nobody's perfect. Yes. I know you tell me you need these things. Yes. I know... .

It just never ends.

:'(

[Scout99]

I decided against voicing a boundary to my dBPDgf because I realized she would view it as an ultimatum and she would likely rage.  My boundary is that any screaming or violence in my house I will immediately leave until she called or texted me that she had calmed down.  That's still my boundary, but I think that her interpretation would be that I was imposing a rule on her, and she doesn't like rules.  So instead I will simply act when she rages, and tell her I am leaving until she calms down.   Telling her now will only make her fear losing me, and bad things will happen.

This is a very important note! Boundaries are for ourselves! Not things to necessarily impose on our partners, but instead something we choose to act in accordance with! That means as a partner you should learn of our boundaries from how we act, not from what we disclose about them!

Stating boundaries like rules that they have to follow is not really a boundary... . That is imposing a rule on another person, and will in most cases, be it with a non or a pw BPD, backfire and cause a lot of conflict and stress on the relationship. However just like maxsterling puts it here, if enforced in situations like in his case, will in most cases lead to a change in behavior by the other party since he will simply leave if she begins to break his boundary... . And that in itself makes it impossible for her to continue with the unwanted behavior if she wants to still talk to him... . In essence it forces the other party to choose to adjust or face the consequence. Which in this case is him leaving.

Now an important note on boundaries is they only work if we stay true to them, and don't wax and wane so to speak... . If our boundary is something a partner can't live with they will choose to leave. And that is also then something we will have to live with and accept.

So in setting up boundaries for ourselves we also have to take into account that they are in accordance with consequences that we can live with.

It is not possible to set a boundary that can result in the partner leaving if we absolutely not want that to happen. Then we have to set up boundaries that doesn't challenge the relationship. Or we will have a hard time enforcing them... .

Best Wishes

Scout99

[waverider]

An effective boundary has no fall back position, it is your castle wall, if they are breached you loose. It is that simple, if you try to make it the fence around your estate with the possibility to retreat to the castle, then you will. Boundaries are hard to enforce so they have to be as basic and bottom line as possible to give you the courage to hold firm.

Ultimatums are like the hot air before a conflict, opening shots, bravado, and rarely enforceable against someone who is hell bent on conflict. They are usually turned around and made out to be the excuse for the conflict.

pwBPD struggle with the necessary T as they dont have the levels of responsibility and commitment to keep it up. That is the case even if they are as keen as mustard in the first place. If there is even an inkling of being controlled into it, there is little chance of sucess. You will only get false hope and ultimately let down again as they weedle out of it to get around your ultimatum. Reinforcing their distaste for T even further in the process. So you will be worse off as you will have made T a badge for their failure, and also building greater resistance to it.

So in setting up boundaries for ourselves we also have to take into account that they are in accordance with consequences that we can live with.

This is important as the whole aim of boundaries is to improve our lives, not turn ourselves into martyrs to some principle.