I am seeing progress but still things don’t feel right (7th time posting)

[NotHereButHere]

Hello everyone,

I’m posting here again because I am seeing progress in my life around me. I’ve been doing things that I would never have been able to do while in the relationship like scheduling a dentist appointment to fix a broken tooth I’ve had for a few years, spending more time with my kids and they seem to be very happy without her, and taking care of legal issues she was always stopping me from working on. There is actual progress in my life, probably more than I ever made while we were together, but things still don’t seem quite right.

I think I’m adjusting to living outside of the fantasy space we had together. She was very focused on the way things looked, taking good pictures, making sure the house looked clean, and she was very pretty so it was all flashy from the outside looking in. But it is easy to forget or block out how bad things were when she was not putting on a performance.

I do see progress so I’m not completely down and hopeless or anything. I’m just not used to the ability to get bored anymore. Things have settled and I’m not used to things ever settling. I guess it will just take more time and I just need to keep up what I’m doing and the little changes over time will start to have an impact, right now it’s still just all work without the payoff but it will be worth it someday.

Just venting again, this community has helped me a lot over the years.

[hotchip]

I think I’m adjusting to living outside of the fantasy space we had together

One thing that has helped me is the chant or affirmation that reality is more beautiful than memory or fiction. Exiting the fantasy relationship is hard though. Intermittent reinforcement and the high of cyclical crisis/resolution does something to your body. I have felt very detached and flat at times. I hope things get better for you and by the sounds of it/ the progress you are making, they will.

[Pook075]

What you're going through is so common here- everything feels like it's almost perfect, yet there's something missing.  And that's the small voice in the back of our brains reminding us of the good times, which might have been 10-20% of the entire relationship. 

All I'd say is, try to remember the other 80-90% as well.  The good times were good, but the bad times were equally bad and that took up most of the relationship.  It never balanced.

[PeteWitsend]

... But it is easy to forget or block out how bad things were when she was not putting on a performance.

...

Journaling helps.  Even if you're keeping your notes very general, a short sentence or comment of why a fight started can help you remember how you felt and why. 

I recall about a month or so before we finally got divorced, I was feeling like things were sort of getting better.  We had her mom living with us and helping take care of our daughter & clean the house (which just took fights over childcare & housekeeping off the table, but things were otherwise the same). 

I had been keeping a journal in my office at work.  I did this because she would insist we don't fight anymore than "other couples" and also that we hardly fought at all.  She would deny reality.  Well, I went back and looked at some of the things that happened that month, and saw despite it "getting better" in my head, we were still fighting and then having weeks of silent treatment in "good" months.  Yes, in a "good month" we would have only around 14 days blow-up fights and extended silent treatment for days.  Bad months it was more than 50%+, between 16-20 days in any given month.  There were no months without a blowout fight and at least a week of silent treatment.  Most months were "bad" months.

That's no way to live.  And that's even aside from taking care of your own needs, and the needs of your kids if you have them; you're spending all that time caretaking the pwBPD, just to minimize the conflict you'll have to deal with, and you're STILL miserable around half the time! 

Interestingly, once earlier in our marriage I said to her that we were fighting "too much" and when she denied it, I said I was keeping track, and it was more than she was admitting.  She got really paranoid about that and demanded I stop keeping track of our fights.  For months after that, she would demand to know if I was still keeping track of our fights and if I had stopped (I just lied and went along with it, because at this point, she wasn't being open and honest with me, and when I was open and honest with her, she treated me worse). 

Another thought: It's creepy how intentional their behavior can be sometimes. If you had to write out a how to guide on how to psychologically abuse and condition a human being, it would be similar to how pwBPD treat those closest to them: Isolate them from others;  beat them down mentally & emotionally; control the information they process and see; reward them sparingly (make a big deal about how great the reward is), but punish them severely. 

Stalin himself would nod approvingly at all this.

[ForeverDad]

Journaling helps.  Even if you're keeping your notes very general, a short sentence or comment of why a fight started can help you remember how you felt and why... I had been keeping a journal in my office at work...

Interestingly, once earlier in our marriage I said to her that we were fighting "too much" and when she denied it, I said I was keeping track, and it was more than she was admitting.  She got really paranoid about that and demanded I stop keeping track of our fights.  For months after that, she would demand to know if I was still keeping track of our fights and if I had stopped (I just lied and went along with it, because at this point, she wasn't being open and honest with me, and when I was open and honest with her, she treated me worse). 

Another thought: It's creepy how intentional their behavior can be sometimes. If you had to write out a how to guide on how to psychologically abuse and condition a human being, it would be similar to how pwBPD treat those closest to them: Isolate them from others; beat them down mentally & emotionally; control the information they process and see; reward them sparingly (make a big deal about how great the reward is), but punish them severely.

Several takeaway observations from this.  One is to keep your notes and journals safe, away from the access by the other person, both physically and electronically.

Another is to resist deleting your journals and details, believing the patterns had improved.  When dealing with BPD traits, the less-bad times often are followed by a predictable resumption of the roller coaster cycles.

I recall that one of my journals were the three calendar years printed in the back of my checkbook register.  Yes, those.  I circled the dates we had intimacy.  In the decade before we had a child, intimacy was quite frequent, even as she was going downhill.  Afterward, in the few final years, it was weeks and sometimes months apart.  To me, that was as bad or even worse than the increasingly frequent ragefests.

[Pook075]

I recall that one of my journals were the three calendar years printed in the back of my checkbook register.  Yes, those.  I circled the dates we had intimacy.  In the decade before we had a child, intimacy was quite frequent, even as she was going downhill.  Afterward, in the few final years, it was weeks and sometimes months apart.  To me, that was as bad or even worse than the increasingly frequent ragefests.

I didn't keep records but that was certainly a pattern in my marriage as well.  When things are unstalbe so frequently, intimacy is lost.  And I don't just mean sex- I'm talking about alone time, us time, quality time in all its different forms. 

For instance, there was a long stretch in our lives where we'd go to a local park and walk a few miles each evening during sunset.  We'd talk, laugh, and life felt so simple back then because we could work through things together.  That's every bit as important as fooling around, and in many ways I missed that type of closeness even more.