How many times did you say "I want out"?

[LimboFL]

Blim, I just looked the first 7 or 8 paragraphs of Melanie Klein's piece.

Actually, as you explained it would, it is amazingly enlightening. I am going to dig much deeper but the amazing part is the focus on anxiety as the primary emotional component that rules everything else. My ex suffered terribly with anxiety, she always seemed to be on edge, playing with her hands, fidgeting. In fact, it was my empathy for this that drove me to understand the desperate need to self medicate. The though being, whatever allows you to escape from that horrible anxiety... .I understand. The difficult part was that the medication brought out other character traits that were more directed towards me or resulted in behaviors that were very unsettling. In other words, stunt one, get another.

However, again I didn't until reading that piece realize how much of a central role anxiety plays in mental disorders. I never met her Mother but she was a stern, very formal lady on the phone and very hard on my ex, even as an adult. I can only imagine how she was when my ex was a baby. There was clearly BPD traits if not more, so my ex probably suffered the stress of disconnection from birth and it continued through to her Mother's passing.

While I had never met her Mother, I spoke with her on the phone and while I was completely comfortable with her, the almost stern formal way in which she communicated offered me some light on what my ex must have gone through, especially as my ex (like myself) were quite rebelious (it caused tremendous friction in my own upbringing, not to the point of neglect, though.

Again, quite an epiphany, that anxiety is at the heart of it all. This was the one trait that was always consistent with my ex. Thank you Blim, I look forward to reading more into it all, although I will have to put my smart cap on because there are some very heavy and complex nuances. She is writing, probably, for other doctors with specialties in psychology. Nevertheless, I think I can digest the most important messages.

[Blimblam]

The part about the breast as the first object of the infant and the good breast for nurturing and when the baby craps it projects it into the idea of the bad breast.

The splitting metaphor.

I didn't do it justice at all . 

[ReclaimingMyLife]

It was melanie kleins metaphor for splitting in the first few pages of her paper "notes on the paranoid schizoid position."  

It was maybe 10 sentences or maybe less. But it was like a poetic metaphor and so open to interpretation and exploration that I found it within and it was like a domino effect of understanding.

Carl Jung describes it also but it took him thousands of pages and he didn't explain near as eloquently.

Blimblam, do you have a link to this paper?  If so, would you please post it?  Would like to see it explained... .esp in ten sentences!  Thanks

[LimboFL]

Here reclaiming:

www.melanie-klein-trust.org.uk/paranoid-schizoid-position

[ReclaimingMyLife]

Thanks for the link!

As for your original question, Limbo, how many times did I say I want out?  I would love to know.  A lot and it was only an 8 month relationship.  How soon did I say it?  Soon.  How soon did I think it?  Within the first week I feel sure.  After that, I am sure I thought it if not daily then weekly.  I would love to know how many times I actually said it (he could probably tell me the exact number with days and times included).

I'd love to say we had a great honeymoon period and that his difficult behavior showed up later.  But it didn't.  It showed up immediately.  And honestly, without it, I probably wouldn't have gotten hooked.  I got totally hooked.  And not, I don't think, by needing to be needed.  But by power and ego.  Competition.  A challenge.  Making it be what I wanted it to be.  Pulling a rabbit out of the hat.  Instead, I got a nightmare.     

[jhkbuzz]

Can someone provide the link to the Madeline Klein reading?

[Blimblam]

I read it in the first chapter of this book

www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0743237757/ref=mp_s_a_1_3_twi_3_pap?qid=1429646943&sr=8-3&keywords=melanie+klein

I checked it out from my local public library.

It was the thing that helped me really make splitting click and it was like I found a constant in an everchanging dreamscape to understand the underlying structure.

Splitting is described by many others also and each take on I enriches my perspective.  It maybe be another source that really makes it click for you. 

When I read that metaphor I didn't even finish the paper it was like I found that within me and my shift became my own inward discovery, I don't think I even read anything after that besides this forum for at least a month.  I just connected a bunch of dots within myself and i continue to do so as well

[Maternus]

To answer the initial question of the thread: There were two times when I wanted to say "I want out" but was too gutless to say it. It's funny, I don't even know what the cause was, I only know that I was totally frustrated that my needs are irrelevant in this relationship. I only know that we had that two arguments that went vitriolic, but I can't remember the cause.