What's the use of calling it abuse?

[Depression = 72% of members]

I wish there was some way we could have education in our youth about mental illness.  It might save many from allowing our FOO overwhelm yet another generation or cluelessly falling into unhealthy relationships.

I've thought about that too.  But then again, I think my gut instincts at times in the relationship (prior to marriage) were that I absolutely needed to get out, and was not comfortable with her.  I didn't really trust her.  So I KNEW, just not how to put that knowledge into action correctly.  I would rationalize my way around to sticking it out. 

I think I was weak during those times where the proverbial schitt was hitting the fan, and I would back down, thinking "this isn't that big of a deal, I'll let it go this time," without understanding that these were not isolated incidents, and she was consciously or subconsciously, probing my limits to see what she could get away with.  Everytime I let things go, I was just feeding the monster

Then I imagine classrooms where all the youths are looking around and virtually diagnosing all the other youths.  Oh my!

you just know the kids who actually are BPD would be absolutely unbearable: pointing the finger at everyone else, denying anything was wrong with them, throwing tantrums if cornered...

[PeteWitsend]

I wish there was some way we could have education in our youth about mental illness.  It might save many from allowing our FOO overwhelm yet another generation or cluelessly falling into unhealthy relationships.

I've thought about that too.  But then again, I think my gut instincts at times in the relationship (prior to marriage) were that I absolutely needed to get out, and was not comfortable with her.  I didn't really trust her.  So I KNEW, just not how to put that knowledge into action correctly.  I would rationalize my way around to sticking it out. 

I think I was weak during those times where the proverbial schitt was hitting the fan, and I would back down, thinking "this isn't that big of a deal, I'll let it go this time," without understanding that these were not isolated incidents, and she was consciously or subconsciously, probing my limits to see what she could get away with.  Everytime I let things go, I was just feeding the monster

Then I imagine classrooms where all the youths are looking around and virtually diagnosing all the other youths.  Oh my!

you just know the kids who actually are BPD would be absolutely unbearable: pointing the finger at everyone else, denying anything was wrong with them, throwing tantrums if cornered...

[hotchip]

He also got in my face and almost yelled that he was thinking of hurting himself, then berated me for not reacting appropriately. ('I'm telling you I want to hurt myself, and you're not reacting! You're supposed to be the person closest to me and you're not reacting!')

Re control and intentionality, one thing that has reframed my perspective over time is the experience of uBPDx telling lies re his cheating. Not misunderstandings, emotional outbursts, etc, just straight up factual lies sustained in moments of emotion but also calm and quiet, lies told strategically to multiple people and to secure a particular result.

At the time, i took the above outburst as a pure expression of distress. Now I am not so sure. Invoking self harm to demand or elicit a reaction from a partner is a pretty terrible thing, and the fact in the weeks after I was snappy, stressed or just wanted to hide and fall asleep when i saw uBPDx, and that this was characterised as me being 'horrible', is also awful.

The fact a close friend had previously lost a close person in very proximate circumstances to suicide, that i told uBPDx this affected me a lot, and yet he had no qualms continuing to bombard me with self harming rhetoric to secure a desired response or experience his own emotional release, is also pretty selfish.

[hotchip]

*cw: suicide

Sorry, the above should say that *i* had lost a close friend / close person to suicide - i walked out of her house and minutes later she killed herself. And the delusional idea i could somehow save uBPDx from his mental illness was very linked to my regret over this.

[PeteWitsend]

*cw: suicide

Sorry, the above should say that *i* had lost a close friend / close person to suicide - i walked out of her house and minutes later she killed herself. And the delusional idea i could somehow save uBPDx from his mental illness was very linked to my regret over this.

Sometimes we have history, or something about our past that leads us into these relationships.  I think it's good to recognize it so it doesn't continue to trip us up.

In your own case, that's a horrible burden to have to carry.  I hope by understanding the nature of mental illness better, you can accept that none of this is your fault or your responsibility. 

I look back on some of the red flags I ignored about my XW, and one was the absolute mess of a situation she was in when we met (financially and legally).  But we worked in the same profession, and I remembered the struggles I had getting my career started in the same city.  And she was an immigrant with a tenuous residency situation in that she would need a work visa if she was hired, which obviously made getting a job even more complicated than the situation  I faced.  So I used that reasoning to excuse the things I didn't like about her behavior, and rationalized my way to thinking that if we were married and her immigration situation was resolved, she would calm down and things would be better.  WRONG!

[Notwendy]

At the time, i took the above outburst as a pure expression of distress. Now I am not so sure. Invoking self harm to demand or elicit a reaction from a partner is a pretty terrible thing, and the fact in the weeks after I was snappy, stressed or just wanted to hide and fall asleep when i saw uBPDx, and that this was characterised as me being 'horrible', is also awful.

Yes, it is awful to do what he did. It might help to separate the behavior from the motive. I don't know if we can know what a disordered person is thinking but we can decide, the behavior is awful.

I compare this to water safety courses I took at a teen. The lessons included being a possible lifeguard if we wanted to. The first lesson was to never let a drowing person grab on to you. We learned ways to avoid that and to get out of their grip if it happened.

Because a drowning person is frantic for air, and they will push you under and climb on top of you for air. It won't help the person either as actually, both people might go under.

Does this mean they are intentionally wanting to drown someone? Are they murderers? Probably not.

However, the result is, whatever their reason or intention, in this situation, they could drown someone.

Whatever reason your ex had for this- it was awful behavior. You can call it that, whether he was intentionally being awful or not.

I think we connect abusive behavior with the motive of intentional abuse, but sometimes it might not be intentional-- but it's still abusive behavior.

I am sorry for the loss of your friend. I understand the feeling of wishing you could have done something. I think this is normal to feel this way. But I also think there was nothing you could have done, you had no idea this would happen.

[Pook075]

At the time, i took the above outburst as a pure expression of distress. Now I am not so sure. Invoking self harm to demand or elicit a reaction from a partner is a pretty terrible thing, and the fact in the weeks after I was snappy, stressed or just wanted to hide and fall asleep when i saw uBPDx, and that this was characterised as me being 'horrible', is also awful.

The fact a close friend had previously lost a close person in very proximate circumstances to suicide, that i told uBPDx this affected me a lot, and yet he had no qualms continuing to bombard me with self harming rhetoric to secure a desired response or experience his own emotional release, is also pretty selfish.

When a mentally ill person "threatens" self-harm, take it seriously.  That means picking up the phone, calling emergency services, and tell them that your partner is threatening that.  The police will come, an ambulance will come, and he will be taken for a psychological evaluation.  He will say or do anything to get out of it, but you repeat what he told you to whoever shows up.

A few things will happen once you do this.

1)  He will be furious at you for "betraying" him.  Yet, you're doing exactly what we're taught to do as kids, in an emergency, you dial 9-1-1 and tell the truth.  Explain that you did the only thing you could do to help him in that moment when he wouldn't talk things out and deal with his emotions.

2)  He will no longer play the "I'm suicidal" card in arguments unless he realizes that he actually needs immediate help.  One trip in the back of an ambulance with an involuntary hold is usually enough to get the point across.  That's not something to be "weaponized" unless you actually want to receive the help you're claiming to need.

3)  The hospital systems in the US are virtually useless for these types of things and it frustrates them as much as it frustrates you.  He will be held until a psychiatrist can interview him, and if he's deemed a threat to himself or others he will face a mandatory hold (usually 3-7 days).  They will try to help him with anxiety and other symptoms, but real change is up to him.

Side note- while he may be saying stuff like that to upset you, deep down a part of him means it as well.  He's hurting mentally and has no idea how to express what he needs in the moment.  What he actually wants though is compassion and forgiveness for the way he's acting, even though he is incapable of expressing that. 

It's honestly sad and I feel bad for your husband...but that doesn't give a free license to abuse you either.  There has to be a balance in there somewhere.

[hotchip]

I used that reasoning to excuse the things I didn't like about her behavior, and rationalized my way to thinking that if we were married and her immigration situation was resolved, she would calm down and things would be better.

My situation was similar in some ways. When I first met uBPDx, he was very mentally ill, but also in a situation re finances, immigration etc which would tend to make anyone unstable. It made sense that providing him with a high level of personal support for a period might be what he needed to break out it. That said, over time, I found that offering him what he said he needed - a break from paying rent by crashing with me, some space from a difficult interpersonal situation, the change to take a holiday - didn't make things any better.

The dependence on me increased over time, as did the anger and blame when I didn't meet all his needs. He was also resistant to seeking alternative avenues of support. For example, I sat with him for some hours to help with the admin process of getting access to healthcare, and when he got it, he never bothered to use it. He read and talked about psychoanalysis in an academic context - psychoanalysis for other people - but never even Googled BPD despite agreeing with me that he met the DSM criteria.

Maybe a lesson we can take from this - it's not wrong to help a person in crisis. But if the crisis never ends, and if the crisis-haver does not take reasonable responsibility for their own health, not seem to understand or take into account our own needs - it's not our obligation to empty ourselves out trying to please them. It's not even going to solve the crisis.

Because a drowning person is frantic for air, and they will push you under and climb on top of you for air. It won't help the person either as actually, both people might go under.

NotWendy, this is a great metaphor.

When a mentally ill person "threatens" self-harm, take it seriously.  That means picking up the phone, calling emergency services

Pook, I am not in the US, but here as over there emergency services are very ill equipped to deal with mental health crisis and can often be quite harmful. I would not call the 911 equivalent unless it was a truly extreme situation. That said, if uBPDx were to get in my face and tell me he was thinking of hurting himself, today, I would take him to the emergency room, explain the situation, and leave him there. If he refused to go with me, then I would leave him on his own. I wish I had done this at the time.

[hotchip]

(I really apologise for spooling all my thoughts into this mammoth thread. I am looking into affordable counselling options - there are a few cashflow issues, which also I believe exacerbated problems in relationship with uBPDx - I plan to be in formal telehealth counselling to address codependency issues by August.)

One thing which I am still sort of processing. I've mentioned the toxic and harmful action I did, when I shouted at uBPDx to '________ing kill himself' (and then immediately retracted it).

Something that happened after this was that uBPDx called and spoke to a number of his friends and people he and I knew in common, telling them I had said this terrible thing, and most/ all of them counselled that I was unstable and abusive and encouraged him to cut me off.

It was absolutely his right to share a seriously harmful thing I had done and seek outside support. But I have resentment that in the weeks and months beforehand, as I've mentioned upthread, he had been sharing suicidal thoughts and ideation with me sometimes multiple times per day, like at least a hundred times. I had told him that this was very hard for me, and he had brushed this off and continued to do it, and I had tried to connect him with other mental health resources eg access to publicly funded healthcare and he had ignored it, and suggested looking things up online and he ignored that too.

i don't think it was intentional or conscious, but from my perspective, it almost felt like being 'set up'. Like, I know that '________ing kill yourself' is a terrible thing to say, but I also know I would not have said it if it hadn't been said to me and in my presence again and again and again and again in the weeks preceding.

And I never did say it again, after that incident. but he continued to pour his darkness and suicidality into me, and to ignore or resist any other forms of support or treatment (besides occasional meditation, and only after I insisted).

it made me angry because when he was calling his friends and they were telling him/ he was telling them how terrible I was - it showed me that he actually did have other relationships, he did have other options for support. pouring all of that darkness and trauma and suicidal ideation into me was a choice.

Why was that choice made? I don't know. But it wasn't just a lack of support or lack of control. It was, I think, about conditioning me to accept a particular role in the relationship as his externalised emotional regulation. And indeed, he continued to blame me for his mental state and to target his spiralling and suicidality at me for the duration of the relationship.

[ForeverDad]

When a mentally ill person "threatens" self-harm, take it seriously.  That means picking up the phone, calling emergency services, and tell them that your partner is threatening that.  The police will come, an ambulance will come, and he will be taken for a psychological evaluation.  He will say or do anything to get out of it, but you repeat what he told you to whoever shows up.

Usually both threats and suicidal talk are made in private scenarios, typically without witnesses.  When you do try to reach out for emergency services, the other is very likely to Deny, possibly even Project it onto you.

So, if at all possible have witnesses, as hard as that is.  An alternative is to (unobtrusively) record the threats or suicidal talk so there is documentation of what caused you seek help.  Otherwise, predictable Denials will result in little or no action.

I recall one time when I and my spouse had just left my cousin's home and she got triggered and started hitting me on the head as I drove down the highway.  Well, I "missed" our exit and the next exit just so happened to be the local hospital's exit.  I drove up to the ambulance entrance and reported what was happening.  She of course refused to get out of the vehicle.  Staff declined to take enforceable actions - adults have rights to decline services after all and I didn't have proof of what I reported - and so I was told the police would be called if I didn't leave the ambulance area.  I learned my lesson.  Have some sort of documentation to get action.  This was before smart phones existed, so I bough a digital voice recorder.

[TelHill]

hotchip,

I had a uBPD ex-h. He passed away of natural causes through poor lifestyle choices and his refusal to get care for a serious heart problem. He claimed he was going to unal!ve himself many times when he thought I was going to leave him. He used it like a control mechanism to get me to stay. He was not the type who would go through with it.

It's natural and healthy to try to deal with the aftermath of these overwhelming relationships.  You can try self-help like a 12 step program (Al-Anon or Codependents Anonymous) or attending services for whatever faith appeals to you until you are able to get therapy.

In my case I told myself that I'm in charge of myself and my own life. I have a right to not help anyone but myself. Adults are obliged to take care of their own lives. I am not a babysitter and I will not put up with moochers and freeloaders. 

In my ex's case, his behavior was intentional.  I had a dBPD mother and I'd guess her's was not.

Regardless if intentional or not, the controlling behavior makes you feel you have no personal agency. I needed distance from the relationship and build up trust in myself (self-confidence)  that I would not allow myself to be used by a disordered, unscrupulous person again.

[Pook075]

(I really apologise for spooling all my thoughts into this mammoth thread.)

Here, we don't apologize for processing our feelings and emotions.  Everyone here arrived a complete wreck in need of support and a community who would understand what unique things they're facing with a BPD in their lives.  For me, that was 3 or 4 years ago when my BPD ex suddenly walked away.  I was a complete mess and genuinely appreciate all the voices that made me feel normal.

Not that I was okay, mind you, but because people could relate to me and understand exactly what I was going through.  Before finding this site, I really thought that my problems were unique and nobody could possibly understand.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was very wrong.

So please keep venting, sharing what feels relevant, and continue to ask questions.  Some people post here just to write and get it recorded on paper (well, virtually anyway).  All of it is perfectly okay.

Why was that choice made? I don't know. But it wasn't just a lack of support or lack of control. It was, I think, about conditioning me to accept a particular role in the relationship as his externalized emotional regulation. And indeed, he continued to blame me for his mental state and to target his spiraling and suicidality at me for the duration of the relationship.

With BPDs, they say and do things in the moment to gain sympathy however they can.  Why?  Because they're crushed in spirit and can't stand their emotional state.

For example, my BPD ex told others that I abused her.  But then I thought back and she told me that all of her ex's before we got married abused her as well.  She painted those guys as horrible people and it suddenly sunk in that she's described me that way as well, even when we were still married and everything was good.  If she was off, she'd bad-mouth me so others would feel sorry for her.  And to be honest, I doubt she thought anything of it in the moment, like those lies don't stick around for years or decades.  

Many of her relatives seemed to dislike me and I never understood why...but now I get it.  People talk and stuff like that lingers.

My BPD daughter (yes, I hit the BPD jackpot) does the same thing- when you cross her (or she perceives it that way), she's going to talk incredible amounts of trash...some of it that she doesn't even believe.  It's an emotional release to say horrible things I guess.  When my kid was around 10, she told a neighbor that I had been abusing her for years.  The police and social services came, interviewed and checked out my kid (plus interviewed her younger sister), checked out our house, and left without saying another word.  I didn't find out until years later what that was actually about.  Yet I'd bet a dollar that the old neighbor still hates me decades later.

It is wildly frustrating and completely unfair, but hopefully you realize that this isn't actually about you.  If your person was single, he'd say that stuff about his boss, his mom, his neighbor, or whoever he felt was "ruining his life" in the moment.  If he was with another woman, he'd do the exact same thing....regardless of how good or bad that person was.

That's just what BPDs do when they're disordered.  And because they feel terrible in that moment, they never see a reason to go back and tell the truth to the person they lied about you to.  Heck, most of the time I think they forget about it, even though their words live on and cause chaos down the road.

[Notwendy]

Hotchip- here are two articles that might help you process what happened.

https://www.bpdfamily.com/content/karpman-drama-triangle

and another analogy story of the possible dynamics-

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=65164.0;all

In my situation, it was with a parent, so this is a long term relationship and one doesn't "divorce" a parent. Some adult children go no contact for their own emotional safety. In my situation, I didn't do that. It was BPD mother who would oscillate between being angry at me and then not - the "push pull" dynamics.

Although my BPD mother had mental health care- it wasn't effective with her for several reasons, - BPD was not well known at the time she started it, and also she herself could not process that anything that happened in a relationship had anything to do with her. She was in "victim" perspective- and any issues were someone else's fault. This also involved "projection" of aspects of themselves on to someone else. Without the ability to look inward, or motivation to work on that, that impacts the effectiveness of therapy.

So, if there was any idea of mental illness- although she might agree to attend therapy- she also would present us as the ones with the mental illness, and she did with me, several times. She did make some threats of self harm and we did call emergency when we were concerned. I agree with that advice but I'm focusing on the dynamics here.

We are human and have our own emotional capacity. There's also the "boy who cried wolf" phenomenon, with multiple threats a day.

Most of the time, I didn't react in anger at BPD mother. Regardless of the situation, I didn't want to be disrespectful to a parent. However, my father had passed away.  I was grieving, emotional. I didn't have much tolerance for BPD mother's behavior at the time. I yelled at her and she reacted to that.

To parallel your situation- you had just lost a friend to the unthinkable. You were not in a good place emotionally- which would be expected. I think a non disordered person can understand that someone who has experienced a loss is having a hard time themselves, but someone in victim perspective doesn't. If you have been their emotional sounding board and now, you aren't doing that, they perceive it as you doing something wrong to them.

My BPD mother also reacted by telling people I was emotionally disturbed. In a way she wasn't wrong- I was upset- but for a normal reason. You were too, but where you assumed your partner would understand, he did not. If he was used to making a threat, or sharing your emotions, he still expected it, and when it didn't work, he had an extinction burst- "pushed the button" over and over again.

I think counseling is a great idea for anyone who has been in a relationship like this. With the victim perspective/projection/blame - it's hard to not blame yourself. I think it's fair to call behavior that is hurtful "abuse" even if the person doesn't intend it to be- when it has an emotional affect on the other person. Eventually the other person reacts to that. If someone is being physically hurt, they may react by fighting back, even if they aren't someone who usually does that.

In this situation, it seems you are in general, a caring person and your partner became dependent on your emotional caretaking. When you were in a situation where you needed someone to be empathetic to you, you assumed, like one normally would, that your partner would be empathetic to you as well. However, he couldn't be and his emotional needs continued.

You have a lot to process- the loss of a friend, and the ending of a relationship with a disordered person. That doesn't mean anything is "wrong" with you. It's a lot to process. Therapy can be a supportive situation for you to work through this. It's OK to post here too, but I think the one on one with someone also can help.

[Notwendy]

To add- pwBPD have difficulty with uncomfortable emotions and turn to external sources for relief- and in that moment, they just want relief. They are focused on their own feelings. There's also emotional immaturity.

Another analogy is the Madeline children's book where when the other children see all the attention and presents Madeline gets- they want their appendix out too. They have no idea what that really involves- the pain, the surgery. They see the attention.

Prior to my father's serious illness, BPD mother was the main focus of attention from her family and friends who were in the role of emotional support/caretaker to some extent, but my father, and also us adult children- we were the main people she looked to.

It was obvious to most people that this was a very stressful situation for all who were connected to my father, including my mother but the natural course of events was that the focus shifted to him.

For my BPD mother, this meant a decrease in emotional caretaking for her, but not a decrease in her emotional discomfort. So, her BPD behavior increased and also like the Madeline story, she sought attention.

It baffled me at the time, since I didn't understand BPD as well- how a mother could not see that her children also were emotionally affected by this situation.  Why would she do hurtful things ?

For your partner- you were feeling the emotional loss of your friend at the time. What he percieved was your change in attention and focus from him and on to your friend. He felt his own emotional discomfort increase, and so did what he saw would get your attention back to him. You told him it was difficult for you- that wasn't his focus. Whether he meant it or not, one doesn't know.

This was more than you could manage emotionally at the time, but you are only human, it was a human response. I also said some regrettable things to BPD mother when I got upset with her, things I would not normally say, but it also was in difficult circumstances.

For a pwBPD, the response to this can be projection- all that back at you. My mother also called up her family and friends and told them I said horrible things to her. BPD mother would periodically stop speaking to me and then reconnect.

Why you when it appeared your ex had other people in his circle? My BPD mother did too. However, BPD affects the closest relationships the most. You were the intimate partner- so you were the closest. It wasn't personal to you, but that you were this main person at the time.

[PeteWitsend]

Hotchip- here are two articles that might help you process what happened.

https://www.bpdfamily.com/content/karpman-drama-triangle

...

I was thinking of this too, with the way he was quick to triangulate.

Hotchip, I think you should consider that the thinking in a pwBPD is so disordered that yelling something like "Kill yourself then!" at them isn't the same thing as saying that to a "normal" person.  You saw what he did after... he ran to call all his friends and present himself as the victim, and you as the aggressor.  This is what he wanted all along!  While you think you did a horrible thing, you essentially gave him what he wanted.

I noticed this in my own situation... a few times when I was absolutely at a breaking point - stressed out at work, and then at home on top of that - I lost it and called BPDxw all sorts of names. 

Now, I would also immediately feel upset with myself that I had allowed her to get to me, and was now "wrestling a pig in the mud" as the analogy goes.  When I was at that point, yelling and telling her in no uncertain terms what I thought of her, she would (paradoxically) calm down and seem satisfied. 

I realized she fed off the drama in a way I didn't.  She seemed to like fighting and screaming like that.  I don't know why... maybe in her head that showed I loved her?  If I didn't care and just ignored it when she sent me nasty-grams and said all sorts of mean things about me, my family, my career, etc. would she fear I didn't care because I didn't love her?  Her parents fought a lot, and although I couldn't speak their language, I understood they said some pretty awful things to eachother on a regular basis.  Maybe she grew up internalizing fighting as "love"?  Or maybe she had such a horrible self-image than when she could put the ball in my court like that, and make me the one swearing and losing my temper, she could tell herself I was also to blame?  Like I shouldered the burden of being an awful person with her?  One can never really know with a pwBPD, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter.  The point is, a pwBPD doesn't react to things the same way a non-disordered person does.  For them, drama and anger is like brain candy.  They feed off it mentally, and will go to extraordinary means to provoke conflict if they're not getting it.