In the last part of this story, I talked about how I started seeing through some of the manipulation. I started pointing out things like the triangulated relationship dynamic with her online friends. She claimed that she broke up with me because I didn't live up to this arbitrary list of standards that she had never mentioned to me before in the entirety of the relationship. I pointed out that these were things that she did not do herself.
I got rage in response when I pointed these things out. The rage revealed two things to me. First, this would always happen in response to something that I said that was true and it was a truth that she was not prepared to accept - likely because it was contrary to the image she had of herself that she was blameless in all of this. Second, she was fighting with the ferocity of a wounded animal. The intent was to intimidate me, to get me to back off from whatever truth I had just said.
When the rage happened, I would remain calm and listen. I would agree with the mistakes that I actually made and told her that I accepted that this was how she felt even if I didn't agree with everything she was saying. I never yelled or screamed. I never went into rage myself. I didn't point out all the mistakes that she made. The only time I pointed out any mistake of hers, it was to defend myself against some accusation she made against me or to point out something that was inconsistent (like having a double standard). I did make one passive aggressive, sarcastic statement once but that was towards the end.
My stoic nature during these discussions actually infuriated her. That seems strange, doesn't it? Why would anyone want someone to go off on them? Maybe it goes back to the whole BDSM fascination and that she was mostly submissive. It seems like she wanted to be punished and she was pissed at me that I wasn't punishing her. She also needed a villain that she could blame for whatever it was that she wasn't happy with in her life. I was the chosen villain because I was the one around. It really made her angry when I was understanding and reasonable with her because I wasn't playing the role assigned to me. That threatened her whole victim narrative which was, at best, a house of cards and she knew it.
When she wasn't in an open rage, there was a pervasive since of anger and hatred that was so powerful I could feel it as a physical sensation even when I was in another part of the house. I got the silent treatment a lot. She started doing things like pretending she was asleep downstairs as early as 8PM so that I wouldn't talk to her if I came downstairs. The room would be dark and she would have blankets covering her head. Sometimes she would forget to lock her phone before she went into pretend sleep mode and I would see the screen glowing in the darkness with the chat program she used to talk with her online friends. It was actually kinda funny to me. It was, like, really? Are you so scared of me and all my reasonable behavior that you have to go to this extent to avoid talking to me?
I had been learning more about BPD and I was feeling more confident because I had been able to stand up for myself successfully in some previous conversations. Instead of feeling completely lost and overwhelmed, my thoughts turned to how I could work through this situation. Gunderson's description of the three levels of emotional functioning was invaluable to me at this point. It helped me to understand that these were all predictable patterns of behavior. I cannot recommend reading this enough:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=70884.0.htmI could tell she was in the second level of emotional functioning. Here's a short description stolen from Gunderson:
When a major object [i.e. non-BPD person in the relationship]
is frustrating to borderline persons or when the specter of their loss is raised, a second level of psychological functioning and a different constellation of clinical phenomena are evident. The angry, devaluative, and manipulative features predominate. Although the affective tone of anger is pervasive, it is only occasionally expressed as open rage. More frequently, it takes a modified form such as biting sarcasm, belligerent argumentativeness, or extreme demands. The anger is modified to alleviate fears of losing the object. . ., while it still communicates the wish to maintain a hold on the person. Failing this, the patient can attempt to deny the fear of loss by dismissing the felt need for the object (i.e., devaluation) or attempt to prevent loss by dramatizing the object need. . . At its extreme, when there is danger of the anger becoming too uncontrolled, the rage gets projected onto the object and paranoid accusations occur. All of these reactions are best understood as efforts, often conscious, to control or coerce the object into staying. . . These reactions continue as long as the object is still perceived as accessible or retainable.[/u]
It's that last sentence there that really changed things for me. I realized that if I wanted the anger and the rage to stop, I had to stop sending the message that she could control me with these behaviors.
I still wasn't ready to give up though. I still wanted to work things out to where we could at least be friends if nothing else. I decided one day that I would try to have a normal, casual conversation with her. I had dinner with her. I started out saying that it was regrettable that we couldn't just talk to each other anymore and I would like to try just talking. With venom in her voice, she said, "How long has it been since we actually talked together about anything?"
I nodded and said, "It's been a long time. I can't do anything to change what was in the past but I can be here now and talk with you now if you want." This disarmed her and she meekly agreed. I asked her about things that she had been interested in or working on lately. She shared a few things and I asked her questions about it to show that I was listening and I was interested. I made a few jokes and tried to make her laugh.
Then the silence hit. This would be the point in the conversation where you would expect the other person to pick up the baton and either ask you something or find more things to say about about their own interests. She had nothing. She was visibly nervous and would not look in my direction. She talked to the cats. She did Snapchat with her online friends. She did anything that she could that wasn't talking to me. I just sat and waited. Finally, she looked at me and said, "You know, you can make conversation too."
I laughed out loud. I couldn't help it. "What do you think I have been doing? I've been asking you questions and responding to you."
She snapped back, "Well, you could say something about what you are interested in."
I replied, "Why would I think that you have any interest in hearing anything I have to say when you don't ask me and your body language is making it clear that you would rather be doing anything but talking with me?"
She didn't know what to do in response so she asked what I had been working on lately. At first I didn't know what to talk about; I wasn't actually expecting her to have any interest in anything I might say and didn't come prepared with a topic. I thought of a few things and picked some topics that she would have some interest in, but it was clear she wasn't really listening and it fizzled out pretty quickly.
That exchange showed me that no matter what I did, I was still going to get the blame even in situations where it was just out of touch with reality to try to blame me. I just couldn't see a path forward.
But I still wasn't ready to give up completely. I knew that she would probably have to move out. I didn't want to live in my home feeling a constant sense of hatred directed at me. But I thought that if I could just get her to feel some sense of empathy for me that maybe that could be something to build on.
A few days later, I asked her if we could talk and she agreed. I told her that I was really surprised that she judged me by a set of standards that she did not even meet herself. I said that this was unfair and that it was not like her to be unfair. She went into another rage and yelled, "That's it! I'm moving out because I can't handle all these talks with you!"
She hit the nuclear button. That was the worst threat that she could make to me because she knew that I was afraid of being alone. But I had already spent a lot of time alone and realized that it wasn't so bad after all. I stayed calm, said Ok and just kept moving forward with what I was saying. She was visibly shaken by my response. (Honestly, my first thought was that I was glad that she actually made a decision on her own.)
I talked about how she justified any mistake that she made or any moment when she was unable to make a decision on her DID diagnosis but she expected me to be able to make perfect decisions in spite of my PTSD and depression. I told her that this tacitly handed all the power of the relationship to me because it says that I was capable of making good decisions when she was not. I told her that I did not want all of the power in the relationship.
I also said that I wasn't looking for a free pass on my mistakes because of mental conditions. I am still responsible for my actions and my decisions regardless. I asked that, just as she excused her own mistakes because of DID, that she have the same kind of understanding that the mistakes and decisions I made occurred within the context of me dealing with PTSD and depression. "I am just asking that you show me the same level of compassion and understanding that you show to yourself. Is that a fair thing to ask of you?"
She was staring forward blankly and nodded. She could not speak. I asked her if she was dissociating and she nodded. I said, "Ok, I'll leave you alone then." I went to another part of the house.
After about 10 minutes, I heard her leave the house. I figured she was afraid that I would try to talk to her again. She was gone for about an hour and half. After she returned, I went outside and was going walk over to a friend's house. I saw her sitting in the car outside and she was frantically talking to someone on the phone. It was a full scale, 5 bell alarm panic going on. She saw me in the rearview mirror and hung up on her call. She jumped out of the car. I asked her if she was alright. Without looking at me, she yelled, "I'm fine!" as she ran into the house. She left the house a little bit later and was gone for 5 days.
She had used her worst threat against me and she saw that I was still calm. I explained empathy to her in the most basic way that I could and she could not refute it. I showed that I was not the villain she made me out to be and that threats could not control me. Her panicky behavior afterwards was evidence that she had moved over to the third level of emotional functioning:
The phenomena include the occurrence of brief psychotic episodes, panic states, or impulsive efforts to avoid such panic. These phenomena each represent efforts to ward off the subjective experience of aloneness and, I would add, total badness. . . Under the more extreme circumstances when there has been a loss of a specific and essential object relationship, dangerous impulsive acts occur that most commonly consist of taking drugs or alcohol. These serve both to numb the panic and to initiate social contacts. Fights and promiscuity occur under these circumstances - often assisted by the disinhibiting influence of alcohol - and reflect desperate efforts to establish contact with and to revive the illusion of control over some new object. A second major type of reaction against the experience of aloneness is a prolonged dissociative episode of either the depersonalization or derealization types. She had overestimated her control over me and had hit the nuclear button too early. She didn't have another person groomed to be my immediate replacement. She was left with herself. After a few days, she texted me (she was still away from the house) and said that she missed me and things were moving too fast. She was throwing out some bait to see if I would take her back. I told her that I missed her and I agreed that things did move fast, but I had accepted that was the way that it was. I told her to follow her heart and find what makes her happy. I think I got a two word reply from her and that was all.
She returned home while I was out in town. When I came home, she was drinking. She wasn't drunk but she rarely ever drank any alcohol so it was a notable change. She seemed lost, angry and helpless. She started stocking the fridge with wine.
A week after she made the threat to move out, I asked her point blank when she planned to move out. She said she would move out by the end of the month. The conversation was tense but brief. Less than 30 minutes later, she left the house again and was gone for 4 days.
When she returned, she seemed to be in an even worse state emotionally. She was drinking pretty regularly now. She started talking about suicide, saying that it was an option for her if she couldn't find a place to live. I took it seriously and told her so. I got referrals for counselors, offered to take her to appointments or to the hospital. She gave me reasons why none of those options would work for her. I felt powerless to do anything because you can't make someone get therapy. She never expressed any means or methods when discussing suicide; if she had, I would have started the process to do an involuntary commit. I kept in contact with counselors who advised me of how to respond.
I don't know if the suicide threats were manipulation attempts or not. I would lean toward believing that they were attempts to manipulate me because she balked at any therapy options. But it is always something that you want to take seriously so I haven't made judgement on it. Let me just say, though, if it was manipulation, it was insidious. To use a person's love for you as a weapon against them in such an extreme way perverts the very idea of love. If the intent was to convince me that I should let her to continue to live with me so that she wouldn't kill herself, it didn't work. If anything, it convinced me that us living together was not healthy for her and she needed a change in environment.
She gave up on the idea of moving somewhere. She decided that she would give up all her possessions and hitchhike around the country. Of course I didn't think this was a safe thing to do but anything I said would have been devalued anyway. Besides, I respected her right to make her own decisions even if I didn't think they were good ones. I also thought that it might have been another attempt to manipulate me into letting her stay. I didn't try to talk her out of it.
She started talking about her mother more in conversations and told multiple people that she wished her mother would die so that she would be free of her. Her mother has a lot of medical conditions, some of which are life threatening. Her mother has some mental conditions as well but she is not a bad person, certainly not deserving of death sentence.
I had never known my ex to be so callous about anything and she would have never said something like this when we were together. She would say things like her mother had "lived past her expiration date and needed to go ahead and die." Then she would ask me if saying that made her a horrible person. I could tell as I looked at her that she really didn't know if that was a bad thing to say or not.
I saw the extreme nature of her destructive thoughts that she hid from me the whole time we were together. And it was frightening.
