Disrespecting Boundaries

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

Hi everyone,

I was recently involved with someone in their mid thirties that is emotionally and verbally abusive. But this post isn’t so much about our relationship. What I’d like to get feedback / thoughts on in this thread is regarding some of her behaviours / attitudes towards her friends. Sometimes I suspect that more than merely BPD is involved – perhaps overlap with other Cluster B PDs – either as traits, or full-blown. With the collective knowledge and experience of this wonderful community, I’m hoping to gain some more insight. Here are a few examples:

-   Called one friend “stupid” (to her face).

-   Called another friend “fat” (to her face).

-   At a party, she pushed one of her friends and told her to “eff off” because that friend didn’t feel like carrying on partying further into the night and going to a club with her.

-   Caused a scene in a hotel/condo lobby one drunk night, as she repeatedly yelled at a friend to “eff off”, that she’s “selfish” etc, for whatever wrong (however justified or not) she supposedly did.

-   During an argument, while partying with a group of friends, she lunged over and bit the friend she was arguing with in the face (and strongly enough to leave a mark for some days).

-   Another two friends she had – we’ll call them A and B – were both her friends, and both A and B were in a relationship together. One night she unexpectedly kissed A. The next day, she asked A not to tell B.

-   Yet another two friends she had – we’ll call them C and D – were also in a relationship together. During the course of that relationship, she repeatedly hit on C.

-   And yet another two friends she had – we’ll call these E and F – were also in a relationship together, when my ex once unexpectedly kissed E. And this one happened while my ex and I were in a (supposedly serious) committed relationship. She never admitted that to me (I only discovered this after we broke up, through other people). Instead, what she told me randomly one day, while we were still together, was that another one of her friends, G (who is also friends with E and F), was the one who kissed E. What makes this all the more sickening is that my ex and G threw a party to celebrate their birthdays in unison the last weekend I spent with my ex and both E and F showed up. I remember being surprised they would show up to support G’s birthday despite her having supposedly disrespected their relationship in such a way, and I also remember noticing a certain distance between them and me that night. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but now I know it’s because all of them – my ex, and E, F and G – all of them knew it was actually my ex that had kissed E. 

-   I once had a friend visit me from abroad, while my ex and I were still together. During his visit, one of his best friends, that he was also in love with, died. A couple of days later he, my ex and I went to see a film he wanted to see. It was about love. At one point during the film he was quietly sobbing to himself. My ex had the audacity to elbow me, point to him, and laugh.

-   I once mentioned to my ex that friends can be like family to me, and it seemed to fly right over her head, as she made the following remark: “Why? Friends are just there for boredom” – as if they are just objects. Although she is a very social person, even charismatic, highly educated, and fun, my ex doesn’t have many (consistent) friends. She’s even admitted that herself (I’m not sure it bothered her though). She’s also mentioned, many times, that she gets bored of friends easily, and so simply just changes them.

-   She often disliked all sorts of people, including my friends. Always had something negative to criticize, judge or say about them. For example, one of my best friends is Brazilian. English is obviously not his forte. She once overheard me listening to a voice message from him and, as she walked by, said: “Is that H? He sounds stupid”.

-   The friend she laughed at in the movie theatre example mentioned above, she once told me “I don’t like him. I hope you know I’m only tolerating and spending time with him for you”. Meanwhile, he may not be my best friend by any means, but he is such a nice, introspective, non confrontational guy. He did nothing wrong to her, or me, ever.

Naturally, most of the people mentioned in the examples above (who were, for the most part, all part of the same friend circle) have ceased talking to her from some point on over the last year. I recently heard that my ex had lost another entire friend group for similar reasons as to the ones mentioned above, before this friend group. 

What’s interesting is how once this friend group started to drift apart from her, my ex started to view / rationalize them as the “bad” ones. I remember once talking her out of plans (probably more just fantasies she verbalized aloud though) to sabotage that group as some kind of revenge. To be fair, however, she did seem to also have a few “lucid” moments in which she showed some recognition that some of the behaviours above were a bit messed up - though I don’t think she recognized all of them that way, while I don’t think she ever apologized to any of those people either. (Moreover, I suspect she may have had motivation to do that that because she was about to recycle me at that point and probably knew I would eventually hear about some of these things from that group of friends that I was still in touch with.) To add contradiction to this, person A actually did still talk to her for a while after the incident (despite person A having proclaimed to everyone else that she wants nothing more to do with my ex, she felt sorry for her on some level and felt it polite to at least reply to my ex’s messages), and when A would message my ex, there seemed to be a level of recognition there too, as she would say things like “See? If I was so bad, then why is A still talking to me? I can’t have done anything that wrong”.

There were random comments from her during the course of our relationship (whether before or after the above mentioned), along the lines of: “Sometimes I just like causing drama, I just get bored.”, or “You would have hated me ten years ago. I did some terrible stuff to people”, etc.

Anyways, I think you get the idea.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do you think this is behaviour typically linked to BPD, or rather more something else?

[Curiosus]

Hi everyone,

I was recently involved with someone in their mid thirties that is emotionally and verbally abusive. But this post isn’t so much about our relationship. What I’d like to get feedback / thoughts on in this thread is regarding some of her behaviours / attitudes towards her friends. Sometimes I suspect that more than merely BPD is involved – perhaps overlap with other Cluster B PDs – either as traits, or full-blown. With the collective knowledge and experience of this wonderful community, I’m hoping to gain some more insight. Here are a few examples:

-   Called one friend “stupid” (to her face).

-   Called another friend “fat” (to her face).

-   At a party, she pushed one of her friends and told her to “eff off” because that friend didn’t feel like carrying on partying further into the night and going to a club with her.

-   Caused a scene in a hotel/condo lobby one drunk night, as she repeatedly yelled at a friend to “eff off”, that she’s “selfish” etc, for whatever wrong (however justified or not) she supposedly did.

-   During an argument, while partying with a group of friends, she lunged over and bit the friend she was arguing with in the face (and strongly enough to leave a mark for some days).

-   Another two friends she had – we’ll call them A and B – were both her friends, and both A and B were in a relationship together. One night she unexpectedly kissed A. The next day, she asked A not to tell B.

-   Yet another two friends she had – we’ll call them C and D – were also in a relationship together. During the course of that relationship, she repeatedly hit on C.

-   And yet another two friends she had – we’ll call these E and F – were also in a relationship together, when my ex once unexpectedly kissed E. And this one happened while my ex and I were in a (supposedly serious) committed relationship. She never admitted that to me (I only discovered this after we broke up, through other people). Instead, what she told me randomly one day, while we were still together, was that another one of her friends, G (who is also friends with E and F), was the one who kissed E. What makes this all the more sickening is that my ex and G threw a party to celebrate their birthdays in unison the last weekend I spent with my ex and both E and F showed up. I remember being surprised they would show up to support G’s birthday despite her having supposedly disrespected their relationship in such a way, and I also remember noticing a certain distance between them and me that night. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but now I know it’s because all of them – my ex, and E, F and G – all of them knew it was actually my ex that had kissed E. 

-   I once had a friend visit me from abroad, while my ex and I were still together. During his visit, one of his best friends, that he was also in love with, died. A couple of days later he, my ex and I went to see a film he wanted to see. It was about love. At one point during the film he was quietly sobbing to himself. My ex had the audacity to elbow me, point to him, and laugh.

-   I once mentioned to my ex that friends can be like family to me, and it seemed to fly right over her head, as she made the following remark: “Why? Friends are just there for boredom” – as if they are just objects. Although she is a very social person, even charismatic, highly educated, and fun, my ex doesn’t have many (consistent) friends. She’s even admitted that herself (I’m not sure it bothered her though). She’s also mentioned, many times, that she gets bored of friends easily, and so simply just changes them.

-   She often disliked all sorts of people, including my friends. Always had something negative to criticize, judge or say about them. For example, one of my best friends is Brazilian. English is obviously not his forte. She once overheard me listening to a voice message from him and, as she walked by, said: “Is that H? He sounds stupid”.

-   The friend she laughed at in the movie theatre example mentioned above, she once told me “I don’t like him. I hope you know I’m only tolerating and spending time with him for you”. Meanwhile, he may not be my best friend by any means, but he is such a nice, introspective, non confrontational guy. He did nothing wrong to her, or me, ever.

Naturally, most of the people mentioned in the examples above (who were, for the most part, all part of the same friend circle) have ceased talking to her from some point on over the last year. I recently heard that my ex had lost another entire friend group for similar reasons as to the ones mentioned above, before this friend group. 

What’s interesting is how once this friend group started to drift apart from her, my ex started to view / rationalize them as the “bad” ones. I remember once talking her out of plans (probably more just fantasies she verbalized aloud though) to sabotage that group as some kind of revenge. To be fair, however, she did seem to also have a few “lucid” moments in which she showed some recognition that some of the behaviours above were a bit messed up - though I don’t think she recognized all of them that way, while I don’t think she ever apologized to any of those people either. (Moreover, I suspect she may have had motivation to do that that because she was about to recycle me at that point and probably knew I would eventually hear about some of these things from that group of friends that I was still in touch with.) To add contradiction to this, person A actually did still talk to her for a while after the incident (despite person A having proclaimed to everyone else that she wants nothing more to do with my ex, she felt sorry for her on some level and felt it polite to at least reply to my ex’s messages), and when A would message my ex, there seemed to be a level of recognition there too, as she would say things like “See? If I was so bad, then why is A still talking to me? I can’t have done anything that wrong”.

There were random comments from her during the course of our relationship (whether before or after the above mentioned), along the lines of: “Sometimes I just like causing drama, I just get bored.”, or “You would have hated me ten years ago. I did some terrible stuff to people”, etc.

Anyways, I think you get the idea.

Has anyone else had similar experiences? Do you think this is behaviour typically linked to BPD, or rather more something else?

[Curiosus]

Forgot to mention that after my ex kissed A and asked her not to tell B, my ex lied to me that it was A that had in fact kissed my ex.

[Curiosus]

Oh, and if the above isn't high school enough, the last weekend I saw my ex, which was the night of the birthday party with E, F and G, though this is one incident I can't prove, it's quite likely my ex cheated on me in the bathroom with G.