I don't understand her psychology

[half-life]

Here are two stories about my uBPD wife just back to my mind.

In the first story, my wife was deploring the people on the train for their uncivic culture. She was either pregnant or carrying a child at the time. She complains that people are just self absorbed and don't even have the decency to offer her a seat.

The thing is, this isn't my experience at all. On occasion when I carry my child, I was almost always offered a seat every time. I have quickly diagnosed the problem of her. As soon as she gets on, she moves to stand on far side of the car, away from the seats. There is usually a crowd separate her from any seats. I told her from where you stand, people won't be able to help you even if they want to. I on the other hand, move directly in front of the seats. It never takes long before some nice folks get up to offer me a seat.

Despite my advice, she believe the far side is the right place for her to stand. I can't explain the aversion she has to open herself to receive help and how disgruntle she was about other people.

Second story is about a bachelorette party sometime ago. After the event she was driving home. She has forgotten to bring cash and thus unable to pay the bridge toll. Her fall back plan was to drive the long way home around bay, which takes an extra hour or two. She called me at home and I have another idea. Her friends has just took off in opposite direction but are only five minutes away. "Call them and ask them to wait for you and loan you some cash!" Instead of saving herself with a call, she outright refused because she thought it is bad thing to trouble them. I said "but they are your friend inviting you out?" How could this be trouble? She was even the bridesmaid. But no, she rather drive two three hours in the midnight than to ask her friends for help.

She states her reason of not ask people for help because "I do not want to take advantage of other people". It is rather troubling that this is how she view asking for favor from friends. How negative to think of this as "taking advantage" of other people.

This is not to say she is anti-social. The strange thing is she is very conscientious to others and she would go out of her way to accommodate friends and acquaintances. Somehow she is most avert to asking for help. If conscientious is a good character, I feel that she is just overdoing it, to the extend it is pathological. The dark side of her not getting help is she is really disgruntle about other people.

I never understanding the psychology of this. Why is she so willing to help others but resist asking for help and think of it as take advantage of others. What's you take on this?

[eeks]

Hi half-life,

In the first story, my wife was deploring the people on the train for their uncivic culture.

The dark side of her not getting help is she is really disgruntle about other people.

These are some good observations you made here, and I think are a clue to potential answers to your question. 

People generally develop habits like these in their childhood, to adapt to the limitations of their FOO.  True, they get refined and changed as we get older, but what I've read from psychologists who take a developmental approach is that a person's overall emotional patterns or "grooves" are laid down by the time we are six years old. 

Children notice what gets attention and what doesn't... .what behaviour gets rewarded and what doesn't.  Many families have traumas and/or rigid beliefs around needs, giving and receiving, generosity, gratitude, etc.  This can be religious or cultural as well.

Your wife may have learned in her FOO that giving was good, but asking for help or having expectations of others was asking too much, "taking advantage of them", etc.  Maybe certain people were allowed to ask to have their needs met, and it was others' job to meet those needs without complaining or asking for anything in return.

The key though is those needs don't just go away when we learn by early experience to ignore them.  There's always a "flip side".  My guess, and it's only a guess, is that she resents that her needs were not met and that resentment seeps out in the form of moralistic judgments on society "self-absorbed, no decency, uncivic".

I almost decided to move your post, because it seemed like it was a question about your ex and not yourself.  However, I think this could be a good example for us to think about with respect to ourselves.

Your wife is telling a "story about how life is", if you will.  "People don't help when I need them to.  They are so selfish, indecent, etc."

So my question would be, who is this judgment really about?  A few possibilities:

1) Her parents (didn't help her when she needed them to, or responded with criticism/impatience to her requests to have her needs met)

2) Herself (if the assertion of needs was punished or criticized in her FOO and labelled as "selfish", she fears the supposed selfishness and indecency in herself, which may not be selfishness at all, but healthy self-interest to get one's needs met)

3) Herself (she is actually selfish in ways she's not aware of)

So, why would someone want to adhere to such a story?  When it looks from the outside like what she is doing, metaphorically, is dumping cup after cup of water that she is offered onto the ground, and yet keeps complaining that she is thirsty?

My understanding of this is that people only stick to self-destructive beliefs if they perceive that they are avoiding even worse pain.  And that that pain will eventually need to be acknowledged and faced (this is where a skilled therapist can be really helpful... .emphasis on the word "skilled", in addition to clinical knowledge, the therapist has to have faced their own pain enough to be able to guide others in that way). 

What that pain is for your wife, we can't know, and we may never know.  But we can ask similar questions of ourselves.

What is your relationship to needs, and asking for help, half-life?

[half-life]

Thank you for your response. It is very helpful for me to get a sense her thought. To be clear, this post is more for me than for her. We have already separated for a while. And long before than I have already given up on helping her. It usually do not end well anyway. Any attempt to get her to think differently would trigger deep resentment with horrific accusations like my criticism is stabbing her in her heart. So this is really about me trying to find the orientation after many years of bewildered and hitting the wall.

For me, I think mutual assistance is the ideal. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts because we have complimentary skill that could be helpful to others. Moreover, the act of mutual assistance actually bring people together to make them feel like the are a part of a bigger community.

That said, perhaps because I am an introvert, I think I am not nearly expressing my need enough, nor am I actively attending other people's need as much as I should. I like the character "generous". I want to be generous myself and I want to with other people who are generous.