Relationship forensics

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Hi all,

I'm here for some understanding of a relationship I left a year and change ago due to what I later learned rated as psychological abuse. I was aware at the time of the DSM list of criteria for BPD but that didn't ring a lot of bells, though in the past weeks the stories I read here, at Out of the FOG, BPD Central and borderlineblog have had that eerie feeling of familiarity.

We met a college alum event in my old hometown and we hit it off quickly, but not weird quickly. The runup was like that: it had certain aspects of romantic relationships with BPD people -- the apparent connection, the jumping in with both feet -- but not in a way that even now feels pathological. She visited me for my birthday and we started a long-distance relationship. I learned that she had had a rough childhood -- her father was an alcoholic and physically and verbally abused her from pre-pubescence until he came down with liver disease and died when she was in her early 20's. She had more than the average psychological liability -- anxiety and insecurity -- but nothing that seemed beyond handling.

After a year and a half she moved to my city with a job, moved in to my apartment, and naturally that's when it started blowing up. The main theme seemed to be her being unhappy with something and blaming me for it, regardless of my offers to ameliorate it or what I had done to prevent it, or for that matter what she didn't do to prevent it. So for example when we might eat a restaurant and she would say that it would disagree with her and blame it on me ("it was what you wanted" even though I had gone out of my way to show her a menu. (She had a lot of GI and back problems which I think were real enough, but that she also used as a weapon.) This combined with what I think of as aggressive passivity -- she wouldn't check the bus schedule for herself, claimed that making coffee for herself was beyond her abilities (she was a very good cook and candy maker) and would get angry if I pushed her to do things for herself, normal everyday adult things.

The projection was rife. Early on she claimed that I never apologized and always had to be right, and looking back I can think of one thing she ever apologized for, and I never knew when she would characterize my having a different viewpoint on something as my "trying to start a fight".  I asked her for an example of something I should have apologized for and she said not telling her immediately when I had brought up the laundry (instead of mentioning it a half hour later).

Whenever I tried to confront her about any of this she would either zone out or give me this contemptuous look (that I flashed on when seeing Bojack Horseman's mother) and say something like "there's more that one way to look at that." She had some consciousness of her problems -- she prevented my calling it off three months after she moved in by declaring without prompting that "the buck stops here" and at some point self-diagnosed with C-PTSD -- but always had a reason not to get help.

After not quite a year I pulled the plug. The abuse, combined with the unwillingness to even acknowledge it or get help, made it plain that nothing was going to change. She called me "another sacrifice to her childhood" and she moved out. Aside from some attempts at drawing me back in it went about as smoothly as I could ask for. Aside from some exchange of belongings mediated by an acquaintance of hers (who seemed to want to avoid face-to-face contact) I've had no contact with her. She stayed a couple months with some old friends of mine who had known her -- they said they were going to be neutral and we never discussed it.

Ironically my own understanding started at Out of the FOG while searching on "partners of childhood abuse survivors" while still with her. I later realized that their list of PD traits matched what I had experienced, but it took a while before the BPD connection clicked. I knew that C-PTSD is supposed to be either comorbid with or easily mistaken for BPD, but it wasn't until reading some of the personal experiences of romantic partners of BPDers that the light went on. I did look for similar perspectives on C-PTSD but they seem to be rare.

I'd be interested in observations about the connection.

Thanks!

[randosomeday]

Hi all,

I'm here for some understanding of a relationship I left a year and change ago due to what I later learned rated as psychological abuse. I was aware at the time of the DSM list of criteria for BPD but that didn't ring a lot of bells, though in the past weeks the stories I read here, at Out of the FOG, BPD Central and borderlineblog have had that eerie feeling of familiarity.

We met a college alum event in my old hometown and we hit it off quickly, but not weird quickly. The runup was like that: it had certain aspects of romantic relationships with BPD people -- the apparent connection, the jumping in with both feet -- but not in a way that even now feels pathological. She visited me for my birthday and we started a long-distance relationship. I learned that she had had a rough childhood -- her father was an alcoholic and physically and verbally abused her from pre-pubescence until he came down with liver disease and died when she was in her early 20's. She had more than the average psychological liability -- anxiety and insecurity -- but nothing that seemed beyond handling.

After a year and a half she moved to my city with a job, moved in to my apartment, and naturally that's when it started blowing up. The main theme seemed to be her being unhappy with something and blaming me for it, regardless of my offers to ameliorate it or what I had done to prevent it, or for that matter what she didn't do to prevent it. So for example when we might eat a restaurant and she would say that it would disagree with her and blame it on me ("it was what you wanted" even though I had gone out of my way to show her a menu. (She had a lot of GI and back problems which I think were real enough, but that she also used as a weapon.) This combined with what I think of as aggressive passivity -- she wouldn't check the bus schedule for herself, claimed that making coffee for herself was beyond her abilities (she was a very good cook and candy maker) and would get angry if I pushed her to do things for herself, normal everyday adult things.

The projection was rife. Early on she claimed that I never apologized and always had to be right, and looking back I can think of one thing she ever apologized for, and I never knew when she would characterize my having a different viewpoint on something as my "trying to start a fight".  I asked her for an example of something I should have apologized for and she said not telling her immediately when I had brought up the laundry (instead of mentioning it a half hour later).

Whenever I tried to confront her about any of this she would either zone out or give me this contemptuous look (that I flashed on when seeing Bojack Horseman's mother) and say something like "there's more that one way to look at that." She had some consciousness of her problems -- she prevented my calling it off three months after she moved in by declaring without prompting that "the buck stops here" and at some point self-diagnosed with C-PTSD -- but always had a reason not to get help.

After not quite a year I pulled the plug. The abuse, combined with the unwillingness to even acknowledge it or get help, made it plain that nothing was going to change. She called me "another sacrifice to her childhood" and she moved out. Aside from some attempts at drawing me back in it went about as smoothly as I could ask for. Aside from some exchange of belongings mediated by an acquaintance of hers (who seemed to want to avoid face-to-face contact) I've had no contact with her. She stayed a couple months with some old friends of mine who had known her -- they said they were going to be neutral and we never discussed it.

Ironically my own understanding started at Out of the FOG while searching on "partners of childhood abuse survivors" while still with her. I later realized that their list of PD traits matched what I had experienced, but it took a while before the BPD connection clicked. I knew that C-PTSD is supposed to be either comorbid with or easily mistaken for BPD, but it wasn't until reading some of the personal experiences of romantic partners of BPDers that the light went on. I did look for similar perspectives on C-PTSD but they seem to be rare.

I'd be interested in observations about the connection.

Thanks!

[tin]

My ex was diagnosed with PTSD. When I had googled trauma and BPD abuse (for myself!) a bunch of research studies popped up indicating that people with childhood abuse and PTSD are prone to BPD. He always tried to get me to forgive his anger, rage, outbursts, and emotional abuse by talking about his past traumas and all the ways he was a victim and hurt. While I am sad about what he went through, it doesn't make what he put me through okay.

[randosomeday]

My ex was diagnosed with PTSD. When I had googled trauma and BPD abuse (for myself!) a bunch of research studies popped up indicating that people with childhood abuse and PTSD are prone to BPD. He always tried to get me to forgive his anger, rage, outbursts, and emotional abuse by talking about his past traumas and all the ways he was a victim and hurt. While I am sad about what he went through, it doesn't make what he put me through okay.

Hi tin, thanks for the response.

The funny thing is that my ex never asked for forgiveness for anything because, with one exception that I can think of, I don't think she ever even acknowledged any specific wrongdoing. And I do mean ever. She didn't even cast it as justified, it was like it hadn't happened. She did broadly attribute her state of mind to her childhood in those two turning points, but normally she blamed things on her boss at her new job. For all I know he was what she said he was, but I remember her abuse starting as soon as she moved in, before she even started at the new job, and it any case she was coming home and figuratively kicking the figurative dog.

I also thought at the time there was something about the move that set off her PTSD, maybe with regard to violence (sexual and otherwise) she had experienced, but I don't know if she ever made that connection.

[starfish4455]

I recognize some similar stuff to what you describe. The blame was often covert.For example the person might show an interest in a restaurant. Might not be your first pick but you might say "sure this restaurant might be fun" but then this person would be upset by the wait and act be unhappy that the two of you were there. Maybe throw in a "I wish we hadn't gone here."

It doesn't have to be direct blame in order for it to elicit some type of guilt. I'd describe it as a lot of "wistful" statements, sort of like desiring things to be different when they were of the person's own making, and everyday life situations not worthy of regret or blame.

The physical ailments are a real thing. I also experienced a person who would describe GI issues and back issues, but they would only really come up as problems as methods of manipulation. You sort of have to be there, but you can just tell when it is happening. Normal people experience ailments differently.

I also think the person I knew experienced trauma, except differently than you described. Except my person never could describe it in those terms.

Good for you for pulling the plug when you did. Forensics are a better place to be than stuck in it.

[sdyakca]

Hi Randosomeday, Its interesting as I read the stories on this board and how eerily similar our stories are. One major difference yours ended much sooner than mine. Kudos to you, I hung on (actually got dragged) for eight years. Yikes. But really glad to be going in a better direction. A smart friend of mine said, if you are being treated like an a****le most of the time and the person has a faulty character, the alphabet soup used to diagnose and assign a label to them isn't that relevant to me, I just need to stop being treated that way. Best regards... .

[randosomeday]

starfish4455:

It's interesting what you say about guilt without direct blame - I remember that sort of unspoken unease around things, with the suggestion that it was somehow my doing. FOG captures it so well.

WRT the physical ailments, she had had objective problems (gall bladder removed resulting in a serious surgery-induced infection, back injury -- IBS too, though that's one of those comorbid things), but she seemed to use those for control. What I observed at the time was that according to her, her abusive father had behaved similarly, using his having to get around on crutches (from forceps-induced CP). As she put it, he could move plenty fast when he wanted to hurt her.


sdyakca:

That was the thing -- I broke up because of how she treated me.  The BPD connection only really clicked after reading around the past couple of months, particularly BPD Central's list for high-functioning BPs. I tell myself (for my own assurance) that I did right by myself -- I was pricing hotel rooms after three months of her worst phase, which then got somewhat better with the "buck stops here" talk. I stayed because I thought she had a problem that I thought she had the insight to address. The BPD angle just helps me put some order on what happened.

Even though so many people have these stories that go for lengths that are multiples of any romantic relationship I've had, I try to approach my own story critically in part because I had had a fiancee who I'm pretty certain was NPD. The outright abusive phase didn't last long then, either: I got laid off and stopped being her golden-boy supply, and then she forced me out of my own apartment. That episode informed my reponse to my most recent ex: I was not having it. But I do question how I wound up with her in the first place. We had mutual friends and she was seemingly up front about her liabilities, which I accepted without any ambition to fix for her. What warning signs I recognize now I can only chalk up to experience.

I guess what I'm getting at is that even though I know I got off easy, by luck but also my own self-defence, it's all still rattling.

[Skip]

I later realized that their list of PD traits matched what I had experienced, but it took a while before the BPD connection clicked. I knew that C-PTSD is supposed to be either comorbid with or easily mistaken for BPD, but it wasn't until reading some of the personal experiences of romantic partners of BPDers that the light went on. I did look for similar perspectives on C-PTSD but they seem to be rare.

A couple of thoughts... .

The framers of the DSM have warned that it is not to be used like a "cookbook" (their words) or a "checklist".  Many bloggers and life coaches do this. It's helpful at a superficial level, but not much more.

Simply put, we can't reliably diagnose based on behavior because many disorders exhibit the same behaviors. The difference is the internal thought process behind the behavior. The following can look a lot alike:

    immaturity,
    short term mental illness (e.g., depression),
    substance induced illness (e.g., alcoholism),
    a mood disorder (e.g., bipolar),
    an anxiety disorder (e.g., PTSD),
    a personality disorder (e.g., BPD, NPD, 8 others),
    a neurodevelopmental disorder (e.g., ADHD, Aspergers), or
    any combination of the above (i.e., co-morbidity).

A further complication is that most of our partners were functioning below the threshold for a clinical diagnosis - this is where there are fewer or less severe traits. In this realm, a person wit BPD traits can act identical to a person with ADHD traits, for example.

c-PTSD is not a mental condition. While Judith Herman (MD, Harvard) has advocated for this, it was evaluated by the APA as recently as 2015 and rejected. PTSD, originally coined for an unexplained post war behavior has, over the years, been extended to all types of trauma - car accidents, fire, etc. c-PTSD is an even further extension which Herman et.al. would like to see applied to lower level traumas that occur over a prolonged period. Herman has proposed that trauma related BPD be reclassified as c-PTSD. Her thought? Treating these people with trauma recovery therapy will be the best treatment.

To muddy this up a bit, the framers of the DSM wanted to drop BPD from that DSM 5. Their argument is that there is so much comorbidity between the PDs that the classifications of species are not helpful. Their thought? Diagnose as Personality Disorder and then describe the treatment specific tendencies of the individual that best direct to a therapy type.

Why is this so complicated? Largely because there are not clear and distinct treatment buckets to put people in - classifying is mostly academic.  Depression and Bipolar, on the other hand, have very specific treatments/drugs/talk-therapy.

Your forensics are not about treatment, you are trying to reflect back and understand what was going on in your relationship. I think for that purpose, getting a close enough DSM disorder that describes things is the best you can do. Once there, I think the most helpful thing is to figure out what was pathology and what was just relationship stuff and how constructively you handle it. With 29% of the population with a DSM "issue", you will run into this type of thing again.

[Insom]

Hi, randosomeday!   Welcome.

It sounds like this was a frustrating relationship.  How are you feeling now, jut over a year out?

(Great response by Skip, by the way.)

[randosomeday]

(The forum shift is good -- I wanted to post here but couldn't as a newbie)

Hi Skip & Insom,

Thanks Skip for that insider background on c-PTSD and BPD -- It's helpful. I wonder if she had at some level recognized the BPD angle and that's part of why she resisted seeing a therapist. She certainly knew what it was -- she attributed the violent behavior of an ex-BF of hers to it.

As for pathology vs. relationship issues it's hard to say, because it felt at the time like the pathology went from 0 to 60 when she moved in. In retrospect there were certain tells, sometimes. From early on she would sometimes attribute to me something I supposedly said that I didn't think I had, and didn't sound like something I would have said. It wasn't in the accusatory way it later became, but mostly just puzzling, enough to doubt yourself. I've heard this thin wedge of projection described in another forum. At the time I never would have recognized it as a harbinger of something worse.

What I maybe should have been more alarmed by was when we went on a weeklong road trip to see my family and friends over Xmas and maybe New Year's a few months before she moved. Her demands for regular balanced meals -- to me poorly articulated -- collided with the long drive and a situation of thoroughly unexpected and hidden chaos at my brother's (long story) that resulted in her not getting those meals. At the time I felt a (justified, I think) obligation in helping her feel comfortable with my family, which, combined with the undercurrent of crazy at my brother's, distracted me from expecting her to help me help her. So that for the rest of the trip (seeing friends and my father) put me on my toes about getting a 39 year old woman fed.

Later when we got back to my place we had to return the rental car. Time was getting short to return it and she seemed to be taking her time getting dressed. I asked her about when she'd be ready to go. She said I'd said she had "at least till X" to get ready when surely, I thought, I'd said "at least by X", given the way deadlines work... .? Or surely she could have figured that out, having rented a car before? So I snapped at her, which put her in a anxious funk the rest of the day. And, at the time, I thought I guess I could have gotten that wrong? But after a year of tactical mishearings I'd bet against.

And then she ripped into me one morning for not having enough coffee for us both. She got her coffee, but because of the traveling and the holiday and everything I ran out of coffee that morning and there wasn't enough for us both. Which she chewed me out for. She had some weird coffee thing, and I say that as a physical caffeine addict.

There were other issues that I could see fitting into negotiations for a healthy relationship -- bill splitting, restaurant choice, frequency of contact, her being upset on the day she was getting steroid injections for her back 1000 miles away that I took an old female acquaintance out for her birthday -- exGF called it a "date" -- but they take on more ominous cast in retrospect. They would make me very jumpy now.

So I dunno what was just relationship stuff.

As far as how I'm feeling now -- unmotivated, relationship-wise. I have a newish woman buddy who I was infatuated with for a while but got over it and we just hang out. I went out on a couple dates maybe six months after the breakup and I just wasn't feeling it -- one of them had a gluten allergy so I got panicky (figuratively) about finding an Ethiopian place with the wheatless bread. I swear I'd need a woman who will eat, like, balut or that Sardinian worm cheese. But to be honest usually when I think about trying a dating site I think of the language test I'm thinking of taking, finding a new job, and these Star Trek TOS episodes ain't gonna watch themselves... .