Anyone else constantly pushed, never pulled?

[RevScot]

I've read and heard several testimonials explaining tendencies towards the push and pull with BPD relationships.  One minute they want you on the opposite side of the planet, the next they want to be under your skin close.  Does anyone else only experience the push but not the pull?  Most of the time it seems like my wife has interest in our marriage because she can't do failure, but has very little regard for me.  This is a huge struggle for me because I love physical touch and never get it.  Could it be a power grab on her part?  Am I reading too much into it?  :/

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[expatblue]

 in common BPD experience all push no pull, no touch is called devaluation, discard.  The discard may be prolonged or muted by the bpd partner getting essential needs being met by the provider.   sad situation, experiencing this.

[thankful person]

For the first few months of our relationship,, my dbpdw would swing between loving and hating me. At some point this became hating or tolerating me with rare displays of adoration, usually so she could share on social media how she bought me roses or whatever. In recent years she has on occasion split on me for almost whole years with daily threats of divorce and constant accusations of not being good enough. When I met my wife at first, I was very lonely, and the thought of my partner having “fear of abandonment” was attractive in some way because I wanted to feel needed. I imagined that I’d be leaving for work and maybe she would be clinging to me saying don’t leave me etc. Fear of abandonment has never looked like this here, in fact since we officially got together my wife has never said anything along the lines of needing me. What fear of abandonment actually looks like is extreme jealousy, where if I’m talking to someone else, literally in any capacity, she’s not happy about it, or if my attention is on anything but her, which historically has made working very difficult. Not only does she phone me within two minutes of me leaning house, but when she was long term splitting that phone call was a tirade of everything that was wrong with me. Now these phone calls are pretty silent, I genuinely have little to say to her because she never leaves me alone long enough to have anything of note to tell her.

[RevScot]

This seems to be very similar to what I'm experiencing consistently.  It occurs to me that the "pull" isn't anything like I would do, but in fact turns out to be a control method.  Kind of like "I want you over there far less than I want you here, but in all honesty I can't stand you here either."  :/
Sorry for your experiences thankful.  Sometimes I think BPD partners a relationship superheroes

[thankful person]

Sometimes I think BPD partners a relationship superheroes

Definitely!  Us caretakers (in recovery) are the best people!

[GrayJay]

I can relate! I have been married almost 33 years to my uBPD wife, and the first 20+ were pretty happy, or so it seemed. After becoming empty nesters and retirement, my wife has gradually reinterpreted our entire marriage. She began diagnosing me as a covert narcissist, and more recently as autistic. 5 years ago she seemed very afraid of abandonment and frequently expressed her fear that I was "checking out." (I wasn't, but suddenly even a few words to a female checkout clerk or an airbnb host and she thought I was flirting and could suddenly walk off with a total stranger. It was so bizarre.) More recently, instead of pulling, she has almost exclusively been pushing: telling me how abusive I have been from the start of our marriage, how I totally lack empathy, how I'm not loyal, and so on. The black-and-white thinking, devaluation (no idealization any more), abrupt termination of sexual activity several years ago, sleeping in separate rooms, the contempt, the insults, the threats that she would be much happier without me and would have had a better life if she had never met me, even mentions that she would be happier dead...  About 2 days each week are total hell. I try my hardest to practice SET (DEARMAN is too hard for me to remember), avoid JADEing, and be as calm, loving, and empathetic as I can. In practice, it is extremely difficult to do, and results are not guaranteed. But 5 days a week are pretty nice, and our interests and personalities mesh very well on those days. She seems content, and oblivious to the raging turmoil that she has gone through, and subjected me to.  It's like nothing ever happened, and there are no apologies.  I am very conflicted, stressed out, and frequently feel hopeless.

This is just my way of saying that you are not alone. I can truly empathize with what you are going through and it is extremely difficult. Life has never been so hard, and I'm in my late 60s now - a horrible time to start over.
Hang in there, and take advantage of this site, which has a wealth of ideas, tools, techniques, and perhaps most importantly, people just like you who are trying to cope with this awful personality disorder. Best wishes to you.

[RevScot]

Thank you GrayJay for sharing, I really appreciate reading some of your journey.

[HurtAndTired]

Hey Rev,

I also wanted to add to the chorus. I have been with my dBPDw for 13 years now. I have recently been looking back over the course of the relationship to determine when we were going through which of the "BPD relationship stages." The idealization phase was only about 6 months long. After that, there was a year of obsessive neediness. Then the withdrawal and withholding stage lasted another year to a year and a half. Shortly after we were married about 4 years into the relationship we entered into the escalating devaluation stage. That has been where we have stalled out for the past 9 years. She has escalated into the discard stage several times and we have nearly broken up (once we separated, two other occasions went into MC) but then we hit the return and repair stage and the cycle repeats.

Only, for us, the return and repair stage has never involved apologies, promises to change, or a renewed "honeymoon/idealization" stage. It's more like time passes and my wife goes back to acting like nothing ever happened. I am supposed to also forget all of the nasty things that she has said or done to me during the devaluation/discard phases and never bring it up. I am supposed to just pretend like nothing ever happened. For my wife, restarting the cycle means re-entering the withdrawal and withholding stage and rapidly progressing back into the escalating devaluation stage.

That's right, the best our relationship has been for the past 9 years is the withholding and withdrawal stage, which is described as "The third stage of borderline personality disorder relationships is characterized by rising pressure on a partner. A BPD partner remains unsure of their soulmate’s feelings and goes above and beyond to get assured of them. Often, they provide tests and challenges which can be painful for a partner." This is as good as it gets for us.

Then we move on to escalating devaluation, which is defined as "After a BPD partner doesn’t get any satisfaction from the relationship and their doubts grow persistently, there is a breaking point. If you do something wrong or commit some minor offense or mistake, it becomes a complete disaster in the eyes of your partner. A partner begins to treat you completely differently, and such a sharp turn, of course, can be very painful and extremely unpleasant. At this stage, your partner with BPD may try to leave the relationship, which is an attempt to somehow control your relationship. By suddenly disappearing from your life, they count on an increase in emotions on your part, forcing you to prove to them that you still love them and that they are still important to you. When faced with such manipulation, it is worth remembering that this is unlikely to be a serious intention to break the connection with you, but only a way to feel needed and loved again."

This is where the splitting and divorce threats live. This is where I hear "You ruined my life. I wish we never would have met." I don't know how common this is, but in my experience, there has never been any return to the loving-kindness of the first two stages of BPD relationships, even occasionally, that we had during the first four years of the relationship. Any gestures of affection are a test, and these tests are increasingly hard to pass to the point of not even wanting to try to pass them anymore. I feel like Charlie Brown who sees Lucy holding the football for him to kick (and ready to pull the football away at the last second...again) and just think to myself "Nah, I know how this game ends. I'm not playing anymore."

I don't know if I envy people who get to go back, even briefly, to the honeymoon stage with their pwBPD, or if I feel sorry for them. In my point of view, at least I know what I am dealing with and there are no illusions that things are ever going to "go back to normal." It has helped me to see that this IS what "normal" looks like with my pwBPD.

HurtAndTired

[GratefulDad]

Same hurt and tired. Same. Thank you.