Does the person in your life have to have someone to fight with?

[juniorswailing]

My partner and I had a good discussion two weekends ago during which I set down some expectations and boundaries. Since then we have been, in the main, getting on well. She has now fallen out with my sister and the focus of her anger seems to have shifted to her.

Is it the case that there HAS to be someone to argue with, or in this case about, in the life of a BPD person.

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[Seeks]

I have noticed this with my GF. A while back her anger bounced back and forth between me and her mother so much that I started to get "tag you are it" texts from her mom LOL

We went for a very long time with no major  disregulations as she focused on others one by one in her life. But eventually the streak was broken and she made it back around to me.  Interestingly enough, I am the only one she is mad at.

So yes she seems to cycle.

[Butterfly12]

absolutely. He used to worship me- and now all the anger he put on his friends who "wronged" him, his family, complete strangers... .now it i all on me. All of it. I am too blame for every ounce of self hatred he has. A good friend of his said to me that one of these days he will have to realize the storm that is following him around will have to be seen- not as every body else's, but as his own.

I'm not so sure he will have to see it. He doesn't want to. So much easier to blame everyone else.

[waverider]

For a lot of people with BPD they have a poor sense of self, they often feel powerless and so they identify themselves as a victim to justify this. To a victim they need to identify their place in the world. This brings about a dynamic known as a drama triangle.

The drama triangle comprises of a victim, a persecutor and a rescuer. A pwBPD is needs driven so the person assigned the role of persecutor is the one who is not meeting their needs, The rescuer is there to validate their stance that they are the victim and the persecutor is the bully.

However these roles are based on the pwBPDs immediate needs and emotions and often not on any long standing logic. That is they are not reality driven. The result is the people around them can have their roles swapped. In fact the rescuer can become the next persecutor simply because they have got tired of rescuing and so they are not meeting the victims need to be rescued, triggering abandonment... they are now the  "traitor" and are given the role of persecutor, who in then turn feels like they are being set up, reacts, and thus becomes more actively a persecutor, meanwhile the "victim" searches out a new rescuer to protect them from this new bully... They may even seek out the original bully to be the new rescuer. In fact the previous bully may even see it as payback on the previous rescuer for painting them as a bully.

This is why it becomes a toxic triangle because the relationship between the "persecutor" and "rescuer" becomes tainted, when they otherwise would have no real reason for bad blood other than the tales told (often twisted) by the "victim". They can often be left with bad blood (grudges) even after the victim is all cosy again.

These roles are hard to stay out of even when you are aware of the dynamic, almost impossible if you dont.


So yes, they need a "bully" to validate their victim position, The victim position is needed to validate why they are underachieving, by blaming the bullies in their life. Of which there will be a long history of. EVERYONE who is close to a pwBPD gets a turn in the bully chair at some stage. The trick is not to react to it, otherwise you cement yourself in place by playing the game.

If there is no one to blame then everything must be their fault, and they dont have the tools to rectify, cope with or accept that. Blaming someone is a survival need.

[waverider]

My partner and I had a good discussion two weekends ago during which I set down some expectations and boundaries. Since then we have been, in the main, getting on well. She has now fallen out with my sister and the focus of her anger seems to have shifted to her.

Is it the case that there HAS to be someone to argue with, or in this case about, in the life of a BPD person.

This will cycle back around to you again at some stage, so do you have some actions to enforce your boundaries? If they depend on cooperation, they will be no more than demands and they will get trampled on.

[juniorswailing]

I know that this will be the case, sooner or later.

She wants to talk to me later today about my sister so I guess I will have to wait and see what she says before I decide what to do.

I suspect that she will want me to fall out with my sister, but that will not be happening. She will have to deal with the situation between the two of them herself, or learn to life with it.

[Ysabel]

Wave rider, your description of the victim, persecutor, rescuer triad is soo spot on! Thank you for taking the time to respond with this insight. What validation to know its not " all in our heads".

[waverider]

I know that this will be the case, sooner or later.

She wants to talk to me later today about my sister so I guess I will have to wait and see what she says before I decide what to do.

I suspect that she will want me to fall out with my sister, but that will not be happening. She will have to deal with the situation between the two of them herself, or learn to life with it.

If you want to make this a boundary you need to decide before hand how you are going handle it. Do not try to reactively wing it, a pwBPD will beat you hands down in a winging it stand off. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience and their advantage of having no moral rules of engagement.

If you are unsure do not attempt to make a boundary just yet, just observe, take note until such time as you can make a decisive decision. Otherwise your boundaries will appear to be open for debate and that is like a red rag to a bull.

There will always be a next time as these issue are repetitive, if they aren't then boundaries are rarely needed.

[juniorswailing]

I should maybe qualify.

My boundaries are that I won't be shouted and sworn at but I will listen to her point of view and give her an honest answer.

This stems from 2 weeks ago, tomorrow, where she spent the night at my sister’s house. I was there for part of the evening and this was against a background of her being angry at me but behaving towards my sister as if nothing was wrong. Talking about plans for the future, holidays, Christmas etc etc

When I arrived this continued until I had to leave to go home and the following morning I received a text saying that once she got home she would leave. She did in fact do this when she got home later in the Saturday afternoon. I was upset and called my sis who later put something on to her FB status about being disappointed with someone you thought you knew which was picked up on by my partner.

She is angry at my sister posting this as although it didn’t mention her it was about her and it has been rumbling on since. My sister was really angry with her behaving the way that she had done and also for upsetting me, hence the post.

Jeez, I feel as though I’ve time warped back to primary school at times!

[waverider]

I should maybe qualify.

My boundaries are that I won't be shouted and sworn at

So what are you going to when she does? And she will if shes done it before

[juniorswailing]

Walk away until she has calmed down.

I'll keep you posted tomorrow   

[waverider]

Walk away until she has calmed down.

I'll keep you posted tomorrow   

I would recomend that you say you will be back at X time... , and try not to finger point, ie ... when things are a little calmer, rather than, when YOU stop being a pain... Thats just a red rag.

Also dont leave it until you are angry. That leads to emotional reactions, and reactions undermine objective decison making

[juniorswailing]

She had a meeting with her therapist yesterday, a doctor who has been seeing her for over a year in relation to anxiety and trust issues that she has as a result of some horrendous things that have happened to her in the past.

Immediately after the meeting she said that it had been good, and she was away to see her daughter and later I received a call asking if I wanted anything from the shop as she was going there on the way home. All very pleasant.

When I got home I asked about the meeting and was told that she had mentioned to the therapist that I had brought up the possibility of her having mental health issues, which when I did she agreed with, and that it was possibly ?.  The? that the therapist decided she was on about was multiple personality disorder, only it’s called something else now (DID) and that she doesn’t have that or any other mental health issues. Apparently I should be more of a partner and not someone that is trying to care for or cure her.

I explained that what I thought she had characteristics of was BPD and that, as previously explained, I was not trying to or even capable of curing her, I was trying to be the one constant thing in her life that was there for her and that my reading up on BPD was me trying to get some understanding of the bizarre behaviour and some idea of how to deal with it.

Anyhoo this then led onto a discussion about my sister whom she clearly now has an issue with and the fact I should have said this, done that when she posted on FB. I am not the problem, so she says, but she didn’t speak to me for the rest of the evening and slept on the sofa!

I’m the first to say I’m no expert and I haven’t been labouring the point with her but she has so many traits of BPD that it’s uncanny so either her DR doesn’t know what they are doing, is lying, or she made the whole thing up about what the DR said. If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.

We are supposed to be going away this weekend but I’m rapidly getting to the stage that I wouldn’t care if we went or not.

[waverider]

Sorry to hear you dumped in this  juniorswailing.

Keep in mind what a Dr sees in a quick visit is not what you see everyday, That is a real issue for personality disorders, it is often selective and hidden and can sometimes difficult to be revealed.

Also be aware that what she tells the doc you said and what she tells you the doc said in turn is all likely to be twisted.

Deal with the reality as you see it, not what you are told it is. If she had come home and said that the doctor had told her that she was not a pink alley cat but instead was a spotted mushroom, and that you should stop calling her green toad and trying to turn her into a butterfly, then it probably wouldn't be any further from reality than what she did tell you. Except you would laugh as it would be more obvious to you it was nonsense.

Nonsense is nonsense only sometimes it is better disguised to sound plausible.

[juniorswailing]

The reality is that when it is good it is brilliant and when it is bad it’s pretty crap.


Seems to be a bad spell at the moment!




Thanks for your responses btw. It does help talking to someone.

[Beacher]

WOW wave rider you said it all. They definitely need someone to dump on, usually the closest loved one at hand. My husband constantly screamed and blamed his parents for all his misery, and because he was such a wonderful person and they were pretty impossible I chalked it up to him being the victim and stupidly convinced him to move in with me to get away from them. 2 months later, guess who became the new punching bag?  Now I kicked him out and he is going to move back with his mother, and is being very sweet to me. God help her.