Update

[B53]

FF,

I didn’t use the words right or Wrong to him.  Even when I’m using, what to me, are the kindest words I can think of, he twists them into something mean. He has hardly said five kind words in a month. He acts like he hates me. I don’t know if we can ever recover from this. It feels hopeless. It’s so sad that when you’re having the best time and out of the blue, it turns ugly. When he writes, it sounds like he’s done, but he doesn’t actually say it. I can’t see a future here.

[ForeverDad]

Even when I’m using, what to me, are the kindest words I can think of, he twists them into something mean. He has hardly said five kind words in a month. He acts like he hates me. I don’t know if we can ever recover from this. It feels hopeless... I can’t see a future here.

WYSIWYG

I was a bit of a nerd who got excited building my own computers back in the 1980s.  My first was an Atari 800 and I had a piece of code published in one of those early magazines.  I even wrote my own version of Mastermind in Atari Basic, tough since that was before floppy disks and most of my cassette tapes failed on playback.  IBM came out with the PC but that was over $3000.  I would buy Atari ST computers at auction, upgrade their memory from 512KB to 1024KB and sell them for a small profit.  (By comparison today's 16GB computer memory would be 16,000,000KB.)  That was about the time I learned about WYSIWYG.  What is it? It was the paradigm shift from blocky text and numbers on the screen to easier to view typeset words, images and graphics.

As a person who started with blocky text it was quite hard for me to transition to the graphical interfaces.

WYSIWYG ... What you see is what you get.

Can you see that your life's efforts are focused on molding and bending yourself to please someone who evidently does not appreciate all do for him and because of him?

Your SO can be compared to "WYSIWYG".  What you see is what you get.

I know my analogy is a bit sketchy, someone else could surely frame it better.  Your SO is stuck in a different world than you.  He's in a TEXT world whereas most of us are in more expansive GRAPHICS worlds.

But... Seriously, do you want to live the rest of your life struggling to please or mollify a person who lives in his own world where perceptions are paramount and easily manipulated by his own grown disordered daughter?  Is there realistic hope that his efforts at personal therapy will make a sufficiently large transformation for the better?

[formflier]

Also good to use that in determining whether or not to continue a relationship.

If anyone decides on a relationship with a pwBPD based on the belief that someday this person can be the partner they need...probably not a good idea to go down that path..

If a person decides to continue a relationship with a pwBPD based on what they see and get right now out of the relationship...then it's actually likely that the relationship will improve and both partners will be more satisfied.

Weird the way that works.

Best,

FF

[B53]

Thanks,
He broke up with me, this time will be the last. I feel like I could have done better, by him, but then it didn't seem like anything I did, nice or not seemed to matter. He came back angry and it never seemed to go away. I feel some guilt, but probably because he always blamed me for everything and this time was no different. What I experienced in this relationship, will follow him to the next and I have a lot of work to do, so it doesn't follow me. It will be nice to not have drama all the time.

ForeverDad, you are right , it is not realistic to hope anything will get better. In my head I knew it, but my heart is a lot slower at accepting the truth. If I saw someone else in my situation, I would wonder why they found it acceptable to give so much and get so little back.

FF, thanks for hanging in there with me. There is so much to learn, to live in the world of BPD. I was so unprepared. Hopefully I won't have a need for those skills in the future.

Do you think that I have learned enough not to find myself in another BPD relationship again? They seem so normal in the beginning.

I guess this post has come to an end.

Thanks all,
B53

[B53]

I think I am writing this post for me, a way of reflecting back over the last months.
I had time to sleep on it and think things through. I may have written some things that I shouldn’t and even though it was counterproductive, I was trying to explain myself so he would see that what I did, wasn’t done, to be unkind to him. I said many things that were kind and asked for peace between us. I may have gone about it the wrong way and it didn’t work, but  I was trying to make things better. In all that time, his responses where hateful. In a whole month he said about ten words that you could consider barely nice and everything else was nasty. I know he was in a BPD episode, so I tried not to take it to heart. It finally looked like it was going in a better direction. All of a sudden there was a turnaround. He said he was sorry and asked for my forgiveness. I accepted his forgiveness and told him that he was not all to blame, that I contributed to the situation. It almost seemed like when I took ownership of my part, then it became all my fault. Black or white thinking. It was all me or all him. He sent me a text asking what I felt I had done wrong. I told him and said that I just want to put this all behind us, can’t we admit that we both had something to do with it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore. He said so what was my part of the mess? He wasn’t going to drop it, so I told him what I thought his contribution was. Even as I’m writing it, I’m saying, what I think may not be correct, this is only my perspective, but none of this is important anymore. The next day, I get an email again saying how horrible a person I was, how I never let anything go, on and on. It was like I sent this out of the blue. I then asked for a truce, waved the white flag. His response was attacking and he told me all that was wrong with me, once again. I said that if I have done these things then I need to work on myself as a person and strive to be better. Then it came to me, he didn’t remember that he asked me to tell him , his part.
So, I sent him an email, with a copy of what he asked. I said that I wouldn’t have written it at all, but that he wanted it.
He said it was just a plan to see if I would really drop it and let things go. I still think he was in different reality and didn’t remember writing it. He when on to tell me more horrible things about me and  like so many other times, said it was over.
I told him that I’m sorry I let him down and if he felt that way, then I had failed him. I will continue to work with my therapist to look into what I need to change to make myself a better person. I hope he has a wonderful life and I only wish him a future of joy and happiness.

So my point is this, I may have done things wrong, but I have spent two and a half years with him and he has continuously put me down and has said things that no one should ever say to another human being. I have forgiven him and have tried to make this relationship as good as I could under the circumstances. I have endured a lot because of this disorder. Why should I feel guilty about anything? This is a horrendous mental illness that destroys everything and no one deserves the fallout. I feel sad at the moment, but there is nothing more I can offer without loosing who I am as a person. I saw a Ted talk about breakups. The guy said to make a list of all the bad times, so when you start to focus on all the good times and wonder if you did the right thing or if you could have done better, the list will be a reminder of why you’re not together.

Three months ago I made the decision to give this another try. I would be much further along, if I had not decided to go back. I am not really sorry I did. I needed to know if it was possible to make it work. I now know that it was not and I can go on with my life, knowing I did the right thing.
I will be following a long reading all the stories here and hopefully have a positive word to add every now and then and welcome the new people.
If you got this far, thanks for all your help and thanks for listening.

B53

[formflier]

Thanks for being so open.  I would encourage you to take some of these posts to your therapist and explore if any of this might be useful in the therapist's work with you.

So my point is this, I may have done things wrong, but I have spent two and a half years with him and he has continuously put me down and has said things that no one should ever say to another human being.

I'd be curious to know how the conversation with your therapist goes about this subject.

It's unlikely there is "one" reason why you made the decision to stay.  Our decisions are usually much more complex that "one reason".

 Why should I feel guilty about anything?  

I've mentioned before about the words we use...my impression was you interpreted that as the words you use with pwBPD (and that is important).

Clarity:  I hope you can work with your therapist to explore how you "talk to yourself".  Words like "right and wrong"  "guilty" often raise the possibility that a person isn't being very kind to themselves.

Please don't experience this as criticism...please do experience this as coaching advice that will likely result more fulfilling relationships "across the board" (not just with a pwBPD)

How does this apply to pwBPD?  Well...they seem to be experts and figuring out what is "not authentic"...fake..contrived...  

So if you talk to yourself one way and everyone else the same way and then when you speak with them..it's completely different.  They will know something is off

However...if your normal way of interacting is the same way you deal with them...most likely it will have the desire effect.

I hope you can stick around.  Sure..perhaps you feel more comfortable on a different board as you sort out the status of your relationship...we can help guide you.

Last for now:  I'd love to hear more about how you were extra kind to yourself today.  Please share..

Best,

FF

[B53]

FF,
I understand what you are telling me and your right. I use to have great self esteem, I was confident and happy and didn’t need a relationship to complete me. That’s what I mean, that I am no longer the person I use to be. That other person wouldn’t have let anyone talk to me like he has. I think in the beginning , before his diagnosis, I always believe him when he apologized, he always wanted to work on us. I haven’t met many guys that were willing to work on themself. He seemed like he was a unicorn. I didn’t know that he knew all the right things to say and the promises he couldn’t keep. I think over time, just surviving was all I could do, that voice inside me just kept getting quieter. The voice that said you need to get out, you need to leave.I have been hearing it. Then after the diagnosis, I knew he couldn’t help it, but it still was so hurtful. I  KNOW I deserve better and believe that. It’s that it takes energy to take care of yourself and I’m so depleted. What I did for myself today, is I let my self really cry. Today I don’t care that he can’t help it, I hate what I have let him do to me, I hate who he is, all I see is his angry face. I know that the hate won’t last, because that is not who I am, but today I am going to let myself hate him. It’s hard to believe that the person that can be so nice, can also be that evil.

I know ultimately I will be ok, I will get past this.I,m sure you have noticed that I am a stubborn person and I won’t let him get in the way of a happy future. He is not renting space in my head.

[formflier]

Then after the diagnosis, ^{I knew he couldn’t help it}, but it still was so hurtful. 

Again...get used to challenging your own thinking, especially things you take on as "axioms".

I simply don't believe what you wrote is true..or helpful. 

If pwBPD can't help it...then why don't we collect them and put them in prison? 

Yes their ability to "help it" is compromised in some ways...that is their responsibility to work on..not yours.

Note:  Do you see the dichotomous thinking?

Best,

FF

[B53]

FF,
So you believe that he knew what he was doing? He had some choice  in how he behaved,  it’s not just an subconscious  reaction. I think some of my problem may not be to challenge what I think, it is more about challenging what I have read and thought to be fact.

One of the things I struggle with is, what is their ability to really love? I have read that BPD is an attachment disorder and their ability to love is limited.

I sometimes have a difficult time figuring out, what particular thing that you are telling me to look at or challenge. I’m not sure if it is the choice of words, or the thought behind what you are questioning or the direction I may want to go.

B

[livednlearned]

Do you think that I have learned enough not to find myself in another BPD relationship again? They seem so normal in the beginning.

When did it first seem not normal?

One of the things I struggle with is, what is their ability to really love? I have read that BPD is an attachment disorder and their ability to love is limited.

Is there comfort in thinking that your BF might be limited in his ability to love you?

[B53]

LNL,
It was about 6 month in. A month or so after we became intimate.

No it would be less of a comfort to me. I would be very sad to think that I loved someone so much, who really didn’t love me. I’ve read about it several times and it said that their emotional maturity was that of a young child. Children don’t love the same way as adults do.

B53

[ForeverDad]

Don't kick yourself for not noticing beforehand.  I've lately been noticing how so many arrive here saying it wasn't bad at first.  So my consolation is that when you get into an obligated relationship, that is where the other feels more free to "let it all hang out".  Remember the FOG we always refer to?  Fear, Obligation, Guilt.

If the Obligation is damaging to you and the relationship is dysfunctional or unhealthy, you have a right to care for yourself and move on.

This is also a reason others may notice something is off, maybe they can't quite put their finger on it, but we see it all because only we see the private behaviors let loose.

[B53]

But... Seriously, do you want to live the rest of your life struggling to please or mollify a person who lives in his own world where perceptions are paramount and easily manipulated by his own grown disordered daughter?  Is there realistic hope that his efforts at personal therapy will make a sufficiently large transformation for the better?

ForeverDad,

I think this quote is what is going to get me through this. It was the final aha moment I needed. It’s so true, no, I don’t want to live my life that way. I printed it out and every time, I’m starting to feel really sad, I read it. This last episode was way over the top. Some of the things he did and said, I don’t think I will ever forget. I may at some point forgive, but not forget. Whether he can help it or not, I came back into that relationship  with such good intentions and hope. The day before he left was his birthday and I made it a very special day for him and in one week he painted me black. For him, it’s a terrible way to live, but I didn’t do this to him and I don’t need his abuse. I’m so done.

When I married my ex husband, he was a wonderful guy. It seem like after the day we got married he turned into a monster. What made it so hard, is that he always did it behind closed doors, so everyone thought he was such a nice guy. One day he slipped and verbally abused me in front of my sister in law. She was so horrified that she went to my parents and they helped me leave. Before that, nobody believed what I was saying, it looked like the problem was me. I have a lot of work to do on myself. Maybe I will have one last fighting chance to get back the love I give.

Thanks so much,
B53