Stamp
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What is your sexual orientation: Gay, lesb
Posts: 41
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« on: September 22, 2013, 04:48:29 AM » |
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My partner of four years has not been diagnosed with BPD, but based on everything I've read, she seems to fit the profile well enough that I think I can find some support here. I am committed to making this relationship work, but it is a struggle. I'm sure the things we're going through are familiar themes here. Her moods swing wildly from place to place. Generally speaking, it's not the mood itself that is an issue, it's the intensity of the emotion, the speed with which she can spiral from happy to angry, and the length of time it takes her to return to a calm state. She sometimes seems to completely forget interactions, although rather than admit that she forgot, she will make excuses. I apologize if this first post is a bit long, I am trying to keep it brief while at the same time being thorough and fair.
There are two triggers that caused a downward spiral in the last month. The first was the anniversary of our nephew's death (he was a marine killed by an IED in Afghanistan) and the second was finding out that her brother and sister in law have put a huge rift in the family, asking her parents to choose between us and them, because they don't approve of my partner being gay. She is 48 and only came out to her family a little less than two years ago. Her parents are very supportive, but doing so has caused them to have an issue with their son and his family.
Because of this stress, she has been having much more frequent episodes of rage. The catalyst for the most recent episode was me being disappointed because we had been apart for ten days and she was supposed to have dinner with me when I got back, but she forgot our plans and made plans to see a friend. The next day she asked me kindly and gently why I looked sad, and I told her that I was sad because she had not taken the time to have dinner with me as we had planned and that made me feel as though making plans with me was not important to her. I realize that this was not the best thing to say, but I was exhausted and I was disappointed that she had forgotten our dinner plans. At any rate, it was not a huge issue. It was the sort of thing that more appropriately might have been responded to with mild annoyance and anger, or with mild sympathy. Instead she erupted into a full blown rage, screaming insults and obscenities at me, breaking things, accusing me of being abusive, crazy, etc. She unfriended me on FB, and told me that I was no longer invited to the wedding we were supposed to attend this Friday (her friend's wedding).The rage lasted from Sunday morning until Monday mid-day. Monday morning started with me asking her how she was feeling and her immediately going into a screaming rage full of accusations and threats. We live and work together and mostly work from home teaching dog training. after her big morning rage at me she went out to the yard to teach some private lessons, and when she came back in later she was calm and talked to me as though nothing had happened. I was guarded, but it went OK. We mostly talked about work related things. Monday night when we got into bed she cried and sobbed and said she felt like a complete failure since she just couldn't make this relationship work. She was tender and kind and told me all the opposite extreme things from the argument, that i was wonderful and kind and loving etc. This is a bit more extreme in each direction than her normal outbursts, but other than the extremeness, fairly typical.
There is one other thing that she does that perplexes me. She often takes things that I have told her about and then tells other people as though she had experienced it. Not big things, for example I told her something cute our dogs did when I was playing with them, and a little while later, while I was sitting with her, she told the story to one of our students, except that she told it as though she had been the one who experienced it. She does that sort of thing frequently. I do something and she tells people she did it. Or, similarly, if I do something for her or give her a gift, she does not want people to know that i did it or gave it to her. I gave her a motorcycle for her birthday, for which she is very grateful and happy, but she does not want me to tell anyone that I gave her the bike. She tells people that she got the bike. I have no idea why she does things like that.
I am committed to staying in this relationship, and I know that, despite her behavior, she loves me very much. I have been getting much better at mirroring, and just in the last week was able to deflect to potentially huge blow ups. In one case she flew off the handle because, as we were driving home from a friend's wedding and a lovely, lovely day together, I turned to her and said 'I love you' just because that's what I felt right then. Her first reaction was to say 'you know I'm not the kind of person who says that back, right? You aren't saying it just to get a response from me, are you?' and I reassured her that no, I wasn't expecting anything from her, I just said it because I felt it. The next second she totally lost it, she told me that when I told her I loved her it made her feel awful because she felt that I was reminding her because I thought she would forget if I didn't, and that she felt that if she did a better job showing me that she loved me and showing me that she knew I loved her, I wouldn't have to resort to doing things like telling her I loved her, or holding her hand, or doing any of those other intimate things that she hated (this is an ongoing oddity with her, sometimes she freaks out at any sign of intimacy, love or caring) Rather than tell her that that was not what I meant, I just said 'you're frustrated and upset because when I tell you that I love you it makes you feel like you've failed me.' and other similar comments and within a few minutes she had calmed down greatly and a little while after that she was pretty much fine.
It's hard stuff.
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