I don't know what it is but it's destroying my life (and my business)

[kunzite]

I'm dealing with a very very very talented person, who is part of my business, and with whom I am in love.
I have told this person about their talent, about my interest in every kind of partnership with them, and about my love many times during the past 18 months.
They claim to want the partnership and the love relationship with me and we cannot figure out why we have such terrible "communication problems".

Instead of enjoying what we could do together, I receive constant anger over small slights, many of which are so small in proportion to the major activities we are involved with that I have a hard time seeing (or don't remember, because to me they were trivial). I have slowly discovered that every major act of love, respect, and appreciation that I gave (gifts of love) in the history of our time together was actually experienced by them as some kind of manipulation or that I only did it under duress or just didn't mean it. It seems that everything I do is received with suspicion. For example, "you only invited me to do this very special thing because you had no one else." Or "you didn't really want me to be there." Or "you only gave me that formal recognition because it was an awkward situation." Or "you said that but then you contradicted it with your actions or you didn't implement it."

It infuriates me to be told what my feelings and intentions are. My first response is to say in a very calm ("cold" voice something like "that is not what happened for me", "that is not my experience", or "you were my first choice as I have told you many times before." This doesn't work. When s/he continues to accuse me of bad intentions, I become angry and withdraw. (I've learned from this site that this is "invalidation". My perspective/strategy as a person who has certainly struggled with my share of insecurity is to draw a strong line with my own fear, by affirming that the thing I imagined did not happen and there is no sound reason to fear it. But this does not work for them. Instead I almost feel they are pushing me to admit in some way that I really don't respect and want them. I can't do this, it's not true!)

S/he created a sense of competition with the other two members of our team, and developed an elaborate story about injustice between them. (It's partly true, but it also had a lot of unrealistic elements, and involved a lot of "work" that I never assigned but am nevertheless being in some way "billed" for.) As a result the other two resigned, destroying my investment in them. My love sees this as a result of my "long-term mismanagement". When I am at work, I feel that I am walking on eggshells, and indeed my love is usually mad at me by the end of the working session. My hesitation, and the tension between us, creates a negative atmosphere which I think may be affecting my/our customers.


One way I tried to solve the situation a few months ago was to create a "culture" document for all the participants in our team, which said that we will  believe that we are all participating on the basis of our talents, that we will not question the intentions of other team-mates, and we will not compete with one another. This was interpreted as "a power move to throw me out of the company." My attempt to take responsibility as the leader for setting boundaries and establishing codes of conduct was a big disaster.

I start to realize that their trigger issue is needing to feel important to me, and I realize that it's true that when I'm working there are a lot of higher priorities for my concentration. I have promised several times to work in the way requested, but I seem to be unable to constantly prioritize their needs over the other aspects of my work when I'm in action. (Although when I'm trying to get admin work done, endless conversations in person and by sms do take over my time and I am falling behind in all of my work, which is detrimental to my livelihood and the business we both care about)

The "endless conversations" included about 16 hours with a therapist (who refused to do anything diagnostic when I asked for that and offered that if I was really so inconsiderate maybe I should be checked for asperger's, insisted that everything was a failure to "hear" each other, and finally refused to continue working with us). It also included more than 70 hours of "negotiation" with their 22 demands on a spreadsheet and me proposing solutions to each one and eventually writing a contract, which has resulted in, as far as I can tell, zero increase in  their satisfaction although the most important parts have been actively implemented for more than a month.

I have been feeling the usual signs of demoralization, which I have experienced before in abusive relationships (I have been in four psychologically/emotionally abusive relationships, two of which were certified by therapists to be such, and one by a court), so I feel familiar with this. I was also abused physically and emotionally by my mother who was eventually diagnosed with BPD and with whom I have stopped contact for more than 4 years ago. I would not use the term 'abuse' yet about the behaviors in this relationship, however I do observe that I have certain familiar experiences (feeling ugly, being mean to myself, feeling hopeless, and disspirited). I did note that there have a been a few occasions which made my abuse alarm bells ring: S/he twice lurched at me (no contact), and also used the words "I hate you", "you never take responsibility for anything", and called me an ass and a ___. I have not used this kind of language.  

In usual abusive situations, there are cycles. This doesn't seem to have a cycle, it seems highly linked to my emotional state. If I withdraw or set any kind of boundaries it becomes explosive.

What I have observed in the last few weeks is that nearly every day they become angry, and (it seems to me) about something NEW each time. S/he says "I don't understand why you can't just communicate." "It would be so easy to make me happy, you don't even try." And "why do you take it as criticism when I tell you that something you did didn't work for me?" (The reasons are [1] It's too much criticism, too often. Once a week would be enough. every day is too much. [2] There is anger which I don't need to receive. [3] There is accusation that I did this thing on purpose out of bad intentions.)

Even though I have addressed several of their demands and when pressed they acknowledge this, I feel certain that there will always be new issues and so I have taken to a standard response to everything:

"I'm not perfect. I will never be perfect. I cannot live with this anger and criticism every day. Please put things into perspective. You are getting a lot of what you want." I reaffirm my love and my offer for working relationship. But it's true that I am affectively pretty cold, because I am so tired of having my intentions misunderstood and misrepresented and what seems like criticism of every little thing I do.

Every few days I do feel loving and hopeful again and we have a sweet time. (And we both still regularly declare our love in writing.) But it's not long until their next accusation, then I get cold again, and my emotional withdrawal is experienced as "breaking up" even when I say no such thing, and anyway as a rollercoaster.

I'm trying to understand what is the feeling s/he needs. As I said above, I think it's the need to feel important to me. I've tried (just recently a few times) responding to suspicion and anger by not addressing the issue but saying something that affirms their importance. One time this worked. But another time it was accused as "not answering the question" or "intentionally avoiding". It seems that nothing works. I do realize that I am now often very cold, and I fantasize that if I could somehow be warm everything would be ok. I'm wary of such fantasies.

I feel in a situation of blackmail. I have to put this person's preferences first over the wellbeing of every other aspect of my company or risk losing them.  And even that big gift produces almost no happy, grateful time. None of my gifts are seen, and instead small things that I do are twisted into rejection. (Worthwhile to point out that s/he also feel that gifts are not seen.)

[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.

[kunzite]

How is possible to edit my post? I found several confusing sentences which I would clarify... .

• I offered to be tested for asperger's, not the therapist's idea. I thought if we could both take some tests, it would help get a baseline for what are we dealing with here? Is it really just communication styles or are there other issues we need to understand.  

Also a few additions/observations.

This person is *always* late, usually about 15 minutes, even to work and events with a clear starting time, and even up to 20 minutes late to the therapist. I used to react to this, then realized that was a bad cycle of me being angry every time they arrived, so I accepted this problem and stopped reacting to it. This change which was pretty big for me didn't seem to have much effect on the level of conflict.

I feel a lot of secrecy. This person never tells me anything vulnerable or intimate about their life, or talks about their problems. There's not a normal flow of intimate talk, even though we spend many hours together. I don't know why, but I have always felt uncomfortable asking personal questions that I would ask of lots of other people.

This person is incredibly vigilant. Checking my website all the time, checking the dates and locations of things in advance, basically reading all the fine print. And is always annoyed that other people on the team, including me, have not done likewise. For me a lot of this is trivia. As an entrepreneur I don't have time for any unnecessary research.

Meanwhile I intermittently am accused of taking up all this person's time so they can't take care of their life, like look for a job etc. In fact, we see each other 3 nights a week. The rest is a lot of hours in conflict by sms.

There is one other thing that sets my alarm bells ringing. I've read that abusers tend to make a lot of promises of how great it's going to be in order to keep the victim in the relationship. I've never had this particular experience. But this person says things like "if only you hadn't done x y z then i would been working with you full time to grow the business, I would have been so devoted and worked every day", like holding out this fantasy of the past which was never offered at that time, but which is now used to show what I lost. It feels in some ways like this "promising". I don't know if I'm on to anything here, it's just one of these things that made me feel "hmmm, this isn't what it seems to be."

Another sensation that I have is that I have been dragged into this person's perspective on the world, until I have actually implemented their needs as policies of my business against my better interests. The possibility that anyone else in the team (including me) has another perspective which has any validity is like not on the table. This also feels familiar from my relationships with abusers. I had to abandon my own subjectivity in order to validate them, and even when I did that, it didn't prove anything to them, it's never enough.

This feeling of "there's never enough affirmation" is something I experienced when I was anorexic, and it's part of why I am often unwilling to play the empathy game. I feel it's a black hole and what's needed is not empathy but real hard information, like "that did not happen, you are imagining things"  To the extent that I have accepted this person's worldview (and implemented it at high cost to my business) it is under duress, in a desperate attempt to "make them happy", in hope of proving my love and feeling theirs.

What's really worst about all this is that we have a lot of very specific and visible opportunities to do really beautiful things together, but all the time is spent on this endless struggle over the most trivial things, which are totally out or proportation to the love and promise we have together.

[Radcliff]

Welcome, kunzite.  I am sorry to hear that you are dealing with a tough situation.  Having that set of issues at work or in a relationship would be tough, but both together is extra tough!  

I can definitely relate to having my partner tell me what my motives were.  That is so frustrating!  In these cases, you might try S.E.T. (Support, Empathy, Truth).  For the case where your partner said, "You only invited me to do this very special thing because you had no one else," you might offer Support -- "I want you to be confident in how much I wanted you with me for the special thing," then Empathy -- "It must have been so upsetting for you to feel like I only invited you because I had to," then Truth -- "but you are the one I wanted with me for the special thing, nobody else.  In fact as I looked forward to you being with me for the special thing, I found myself smiling each time."

The endless conversations, agreements, blame, etc. are also very familiar and exhausting.  Boundary work is tough, but it sounds like some of that may be in order.  To learn more about boundaries, you might want to visit this page on setting boundaries, this thread on scripts for setting boundaries, and this thread on boundary setting examples.

I'm glad you have found the bpdfamily community.  Join us.  Visit regularly.  Read the resources on the right sidebar.  Start posting on others' threads and get to know them.  Together we are stronger, and help each other to cope and learn to make things better.

WW