Engulfment and abandonment

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

Thank you JRT. I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that.  I can only wish us a good healing really.

Thanks! It still hurts, especially after days like today. In one of the interrogatories it was claimed that I 'verbally abused her throughout the relationship'. Its hurts to see this knowing that, although I was not a doormat by any measure, I was respectful and loving to her... .very patient and understanding. I have moved on and am in a committed relationship but seeing stuff like this really bites since I gave very deeply to her from my heart. It simply blows my mind that this is something that she could believe about our relationship; there was not even an incident of this!

Could it be it had nothing to do with your behavior JRT?  Borderlines can have an overactive critical parent and lack the ability to soothe the ensuing emotions, usually shame, so projection of that on you, you now get to be the owner of all the vitriol swimming around her head, is a handy way to off it, although sometimes it takes lawyers to reinforce?

[fromheeltoheal]

Thank you JRT. I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that.  I can only wish us a good healing really.

Thanks! It still hurts, especially after days like today. In one of the interrogatories it was claimed that I 'verbally abused her throughout the relationship'. Its hurts to see this knowing that, although I was not a doormat by any measure, I was respectful and loving to her... .very patient and understanding. I have moved on and am in a committed relationship but seeing stuff like this really bites since I gave very deeply to her from my heart. It simply blows my mind that this is something that she could believe about our relationship; there was not even an incident of this!

Could it be it had nothing to do with your behavior JRT?  Borderlines can have an overactive critical parent and lack the ability to soothe the ensuing emotions, usually shame, so projection of that on you, you now get to be the owner of all the vitriol swimming around her head, is a handy way to off it, although sometimes it takes lawyers to reinforce?

[JRT]

Thank you JRT. I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that.  I can only wish us a good healing really.

Thanks! It still hurts, especially after days like today. In one of the interrogatories it was claimed that I 'verbally abused her throughout the relationship'. Its hurts to see this knowing that, although I was not a doormat by any measure, I was respectful and loving to her... .very patient and understanding. I have moved on and am in a committed relationship but seeing stuff like this really bites since I gave very deeply to her from my heart. It simply blows my mind that this is something that she could believe about our relationship; there was not even an incident of this!

Could it be it had nothing to do with your behavior JRT?  Borderlines can have an overactive critical parent and lack the ability to soothe the ensuing emotions, usually shame, so projection of that on you, you now get to be the owner of all the vitriol swimming around her head, is a handy way to off it, although sometimes it takes lawyers to reinforce?

I am convinced that I had nothing to do with what had occurred at all even after some very hard questions directed at myself. Knowing that I acting with a good heart and with great honor to her, it breaks my heart to see my great regard for her to be represented this way even though I know that it was not true. Their projection almost goes without saying according to conventional wisdom here and elsewhere. It only slightly mitigates the emotional offense to know what is going on underneath the mental hood.

Interestingly, she continues her cyber hi-jinx and escapes online via social media and telephone. Its maddening.

[hopealways]

With mine, it seemed that fear of engulfment triggered the fear of abandonment.  What I mean is that when she was talking about all the things she wanted with me, I believe she meant them.  When the time came to execute the plans of what we were talking about, she freaked out.  She freaked out because it was to much pressure to live up to the dream she had created and since she couldn't follow through with that, expected me to leave her because of it.  It was a silly notion, but she's mentally ill.

So.  Basically, she wanted this perfect life with me in a little house with a little fence with little children running around, but when the time grew closer that that life was going to happen, she fled to keep me from doing it first.  Even though I had no intention on doing that (nor would I).  In the end, it was always destined to fail.

It was best described to me that people with BPD live on a seesaw (relationship wise).  On one end of the seesaw is Abandonment, the other Engulfment.  They run from one end of the seesaw to the other at breakneck speeds to try to get it to balance until the seesaw is so back and forth that they jump off of it to get it calm (where as most 'normal' people can balance the seesaw, BPDs can't).  Usually how they do this via triangulation (new r/s).  Once they have one foot on the new seesaw, the "old" one calms a bit but they can't fully trust that seesaw anymore, so it must be "bad".  So, since they can't trust the old seesaw, they jump to the new seesaw because its nice and calm.  It's good.  Then they start running back and forth on the new one.  The process starts all over again.   They are, essentially, trapped in an infinite loop, they just can't see it.

This is very true. Engulfment triggers abandonment.

[apollotech]

Looking back on my relationship, I'm trying to kind of understand when he was engulfed and when he felt abandoned. I have a difficulty with this: I read that sometimes fear of abandonment leads to sabotage and destruction of the relationship rather than BPD clinging on the Non. So, were you able to differentiate when your partner was engulfed and when he feared abandoned and unconsciously sought to sabotage? Is there a way of differentiating the two? Opinions appreciated. 

Hi thisworld,

Look closely at what was occurring in the relationship prior to the push behaviors. Was there intense intimacy (emotional or sexual or both)? Were there long-term plans made (marriage, living together, children, vacation, etc.)? View it form the BPDer's perspective (What might seem trivial to you might not have been trivial to him.). I think you will find that engulfment, rather than fear of abandonment, generated his push behavior(s).

[GreenEyedMonster]

I think the place where the distinction becomes confusing is because sometimes engulfment can trigger a fear of failure at responsibility, which looks like a fear of abandonment. 

Engulfment fears center around conditional love.  They result from "do what I want or else" kinds of situations.  A person feels like they have to be the perfect husband, boyfriend, father, employee, etc. 24/7 or they will no longer be loved and they will hurt other people.  The assumption is that if they reveal their true selves in these situations, the relationship will fall apart.  They feel like the whole world is on their shoulders and everyone is counting on them.  There is no room left in their mind for their own thoughts or desires.  The consequences of leaving the situation are so dire that they feel like they have lost all personal choice.  They become resentful toward the person or force who seems to be creating the consequences, because in their minds, it resembles a hostage situation.

I think that people with engulfment fears truly want to be good and responsible, to the point that it consumes them.  They appear to avoid responsibility, however, because once they take it on, they take it so seriously that they can't focus on anything else.  Taking on responsibility feels like gambling, with the result that they could be labeled a failure or a bad person.

Example:  My ex was really good with kids and seemed to like them, and talked about wanting to be a good dad.  He wouldn't have kids, though, because the implications of failing as a parent frightened him too much.  He acted like he hated kids, as if the kids had set up the prospects for failure themselves.

Abandonment fears are much more arbitrary.  It's more of a fear that the other person's personal preferences will cause them to fall in love with someone else, dump them, reject them, move on, etc. but for reasons that the individual can't control.  I think a lot of the devaluation described on these boards is when people assume that their partner is going to abandon them for reasons beyond their control.  Devaluing and discarding are ways for people to control a situation that otherwise feels entirely beyond their control.

I have both engulfment and abandonment fears, so I've seen all this from the inside.

Another clarifying example:

-Fearing that there will be a round of budget cuts and you will lose your job due to lack of seniority = abandonment.

-Fearing that you will mess up and cost a client a lot of time and money at work, then get fired, so you become obsessed with doing your job right = engulfment.

In both cases it's fear of losing a job, but one is within the person's control while the other is not.

[thisworld]

Given that the disorder is on the spectrum, engulfment and abandonment can manifest in many ways depending on the person's maturity level, experience and attachment style of their partner. Two avoidant people might prolong a relationship where as two dependents might accelerate it's failure.  The BPD's unintentionally harmful way of dealing with engulfment and abandonment is push pull but sometimes push pull appears to be the intentional abusive power struggle of a narcissist.  I think my ex applied push pull for both. It's very hard for me to discern one from another in my ex and if someone can help differentiate the two I would appreciate it.  For the sake of this discussion, I will describe my ex's behavior in how it applied to her engulfment and abandonment fears.

After the breakup, what I saw as my ex being disingenuous was actually her mirroring me out of fear of being alone/abandoned. She changed parts of herself so I would be attached to her at a time when she was very lonely. This didn't last of course and about six months in I could tell something wasn't adding up when she would get clingy (abandonment).  Fast forward a year I found her on the bathroom floor of our new house holding herself in a fetal position - Her concern was a loss of autonomy (engulfment).  A few months after that she said we don't talk like we used too (abandonment). Fast forward six more months - shortly after the proposal she began to distance herself in the relationship claiming she needed "external validation"(engulfment).  All the while she was pushing the timetable of our relationship equally though I see now this might have been her mirroring me.

I know that her engulfment fears were fully triggered by the proposal (something she hinted at wanting) and it was too late to go back.  I found a letter that she was writing to a former lover where she said that she feels like she has to be "smaller in all of her relationships".  I would say that was a big engulfment fear red flag.  After the break she told me that "everyone ALWAYS leaves or dies on her" (abandonment fear).  She posted on FB a few months later that "She can still love someone but cant live with them when she can no longer be someone she isn't" (engulfment fear). Her abandonment and engulfment fears were apparently non stop but seeing that she was middle age, she was able to hide the day to day push pull very well but it was the bigger picture she couldn't handle. Her fake it till you make it approach to relationships works for a little while but eventually sabotaged any hope of establishing her own self in an adult relationship.  Looking back, I can see that she was on the preverbal seesaw the whole time (great analogy by the way).

It was her higher functioning level that made it "feel" like we had a somewhat normal relationship and what makes it so hard for me to detach from this woman.  If the seesaw was more pronounced, I would have been out much sooner. Now that I am out, I can see that even her higher functioning behavior wasn't normal at all.  There were many times were I can remember when she was dealing with emotional dysregulation and most of our time together was on her terms.  And yet I was labeled the controlling one despite my walking on eggshells.  I can see that her mirroring me could feel like I was controlling her but this was her choice and it's very sad that she doesn't see it this for it is the root problem of her condition.

What is even sadder is without mirroring the good of someone else, she doesn't really have much of a chance of attracting a nice partner because she is actually quite obnoxious, self centered, intense, sarcastic and hateful. In spite of this, I loved all of her and it's very sad that she pushes the very people that love her away without seeing the problem.

All of her relationships, be it friend, family or lover, are wash, rinse and repeat... .Victim.

I feel bad that I was yet another cycle for her so it's hard for me to let go. I tell myself that she is mentally ill and it's not my problem anymore but even this doesn't hold back the daily flood of emotions from our trauma bond that had to end.  I'm working on my own issues now. I wish I could say the same for her but just the other day a friend told me that she complemented on how my ex was dressed at work.  My ex's response to the complement was, "well, I don't have a man"... .

I think what I experienced with my ex is eerily similar to Tomxzx's experience and I find my feelings very similar, too. I think my ex is comorbid with narcissism with a very overt somatic aspect but feelingswise the combination makes him come across as a vulnerable narcissist, one who has all the symptoms but also seems to anxious to be a full-fledged narc. Almost like a bitter codependent actually - which is also probable because of his family and addiction history- addicts are also codependents. I have been reading things like how BPD is like failed narcissism and I understand what this means at a feeling level. Maybe this combination makes it difficult for me to discern what's going on, too. On a different note, yes, with age, I believe they manage to hide certain symptoms to a degree sometimes.