Deck of cards

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

The double edged sword of relationships with a borderline is it's harder than average to remember all the "good" is really a figment of someone's delusion. I stroll down Main Street on memory lane and miss my ex like crazy but have to remind myself. Main Street is a Hollywood set, where the production of the relationship was filmed. There are trees and phone booths and building but none of it is actually real. You walk into one of the buildings and find nothing inside, it's just a painted plywood facade. Made to look like a building. I get down thinking of how it all went down and what I may have or could have done. Not thinking the reaction or result wouldn't have been any different because I was playing a game of cards with someone not using a full emotional deck. They only have a few cards to make hands from. So no matter what was different on my end, he was limited to what he could play. In his world, his two pair beat my ace high every time. They don't follow the rules, play fair or eve at the least decent. They are playing for themselves and never willing to put all their chips on the table always keeping some rabbit holed away for that day you'll leave them. So really how was a healthy long term and fulfilling relationship possible? My ex always said he appreciated me because I loved him, and he acknowledged he wasn't and easy person to love. Reality, he was impossible to love, because no amount of love was going to change the delusional thought process which destroys them between their ears.

Thoughts?

[CoasterRider]

The double edged sword of relationships with a borderline is it's harder than average to remember all the "good" is really a figment of someone's delusion. I stroll down Main Street on memory lane and miss my ex like crazy but have to remind myself. Main Street is a Hollywood set, where the production of the relationship was filmed. There are trees and phone booths and building but none of it is actually real. You walk into one of the buildings and find nothing inside, it's just a painted plywood facade. Made to look like a building. I get down thinking of how it all went down and what I may have or could have done. Not thinking the reaction or result wouldn't have been any different because I was playing a game of cards with someone not using a full emotional deck. They only have a few cards to make hands from. So no matter what was different on my end, he was limited to what he could play. In his world, his two pair beat my ace high every time. They don't follow the rules, play fair or eve at the least decent. They are playing for themselves and never willing to put all their chips on the table always keeping some rabbit holed away for that day you'll leave them. So really how was a healthy long term and fulfilling relationship possible? My ex always said he appreciated me because I loved him, and he acknowledged he wasn't and easy person to love. Reality, he was impossible to love, because no amount of love was going to change the delusional thought process which destroys them between their ears.

Thoughts?

[Moonie75]

True that they don't play with a full deck.

They've only got Jokers!

[Ironmanrises]

Actually, the double edge is that the pre-trigger(idealization) phase is real. And so is the post-trigger(devaluation) phase. To me, that is the most hurtful aspect. Both phases, are not sustainable. Each phase lasts for x period of time. That is what I experienced with mine.

[Moonie75]

Experienced the same. Their emotions are genuine & their perceptions are absolute. (In the moment).

Moments change, emotions & perceptions change.

They love us & hate us. Want us & want someone else.

And I firmly believe their time not missing us, is punctuated with moments when they do

Happy feelings & emotions register & record as happy memories. PwBPD have exceptional memories.

Problem being, it's all too inconsistent when you're emotionally unstable!

[winston72]

This thread touches a critical issue for me.  I have strong lingering memories of great moments and periods of time. 

They are hard to relinquish... . I don't want to give up these feelings.  They were the result of genuine emotions from her.  But they are genuine in the moment; she could not sustain them.  Moonie describes it well.  Before I understood about this disorder, that type of behavior beckoned me to keep trying, indeed to try as hard as possible, to level out the emotions and to find ways to sustain the good moments.  As I work my way through this relationship, this is one level of real/unreal that I try to discern.  What was really going on in this instance is hard to understand, and perhaps cannot be fully known if it is coming from a person with a confused and disordered inner life. 

At the same time, my ex was outright lying to me and running a double life, in the worst ways.  That is an entirely different layer of real/unreal that I am still sorting through.  That is just a factual issue, in my case.  What was really going on is a matter of who was doing what when.

Outright lying is something that appears quite frequently on these boards.  Unfortunately, it is a common behavior within these relationships.  Confusion derived from the ephemeral and inconsistent emotions and behaviors of people is another one. 

I like the Main Street metaphor, CR.  And believing that the facades were real, whether by intentional deceit or desperately constructed as a false persona to survive, is terrible.  It is a complex, layered injury to so many parts of our selves. 

i have taken to understanding my relationship as the unwinding of a con game more than a relationship.  And I should add that I do not think this is typical, but it was a situation that I opened myself up to.  Anyway, parsing through events and emotions to get to a more accurate picture of reality is a primary focus of gaining health.  bpdfamily.com requires knowing the facts! 

Thanks for your post, CR.

[Free2Bee]

This discussion resonates strongly with me. At the time of my relationship, I wasn't aware the my partner had BPD, so when she went off the rails and said things that were contradictory to stuff from recently as the day before, I would try to clarify, ie: "But yesterday you said the opposite... . "

When faced with these contradictions, her face would cloud and she would say very earnestly "Well, that's the way it was yesterday, I really felt that way." It was clearly very confusing to her, as it was to me.

I really and truly believe that, at least in her case, she wasn't lying to me. She believed what she was saying based on her mindset of the moment. When that changed, her entire 'truth' changed.

Rather than 'Main Street', my r/s felt like the set of an opera or play. In an instant, the 'lights' would go down and the stage crew would quickly and efficiently transform the landscape. When the lights went back up, it was an entirely different place.

[CoasterRider]

I guess my point is we find it so frustrating because we see it through the lens of a rational and logical perspective. Whereas many of you have said, they have an inability to discern between whether what they are feeling is based in logical belief or some deep seated defensive instinct that has been developed within their psych to ward off bad emotions and to protect themselves from what they do not wish to see or know. We just have to remember the reality they live in is no one where their feet are firmly planted on earth. Rather one where their heads are in the clouds because they can not mentally or emotionally deal with the real world. Trying to logically understand someone who is disordered will drive one to insanity themselves. You almost have to be there for it to make any 'sense'