It’s been a while

[Boogie74]

Things have been mostly better with J in the last several months- despite a few hiccups and blow ups.

Today I encountered a tough situation:

We live in an apartment and (as happens in life when you have neighbors), one of our neighbors has some problems.   Nothing crazy injurious to us- we SUSPECT that he may have keyed our car- but we have no real evidence other than, “He’s sketchy- has a restraining order against him from his ex girlfriend and his friends park in our parking spot” kind of reasoning.   She doesn’t want to call the police to make a report (but realizes that it might be necessary)

J has literally taken to a growing anxiety when he is home.  He plays his music a notch too loud and smokes- so we sometimes get smoke odors through the walls.   But again, this is life in an apartment.   We don’t get to pick our neighbors and sometimes we need to recognize that it sucks when people do annoying things, we can’t always stop it to perfection at all.   We can (and have) told the landlord about it and spoken nicely to him about it- but beyond that, sometimes life sucks.

Today, she told me that he’s home and that he’s like the college roommate that never leaves the dorm room.   I responded that he’s not a roommate- he’s a neighbor and he is allowed to be in his apartment as long as he wants.   

While this response was invalidating as to her feelings of anxiety about him watching tv within 500 feet of us in his own apartment, I have no way to be supportive and empathetic as to the concern that a neighbor we don’t like is, well, HOME, doing nothing of any consequence beyond, maybe, neglecting to do his own laundry or making poor television programming choices.

She told me that I was “taking his side” and “defending him” and I should take “her side.”   I explained that there isn’t anything to defend him for- he’s not a college roommate that wants to be a 3rd wheel to a date- he’s in his own apartment and watching tv. 

She then blew up more- I wasn’t listening to her feelings and I should go away.   I left the room.   In the time spent writing this, she has completely gotten over the issue.   I imagine she recognizes that her anxiety and anger at a neighbor simply being HOME more than she would like to see is unreasonable in reality- yet a very upsetting emotion nonetheless.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

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[Cat Familiar]

She told me that I was “taking his side” and “defending him” and I should take “her side.”   I explained that there isn’t anything to defend him for- he’s not a college roommate that wants to be a 3rd wheel to a date- he’s in his own apartment and watching tv.

Ugh!  
I’ve been there too. Exact same response, even identical words.

Different circumstances. Same dynamics. What both you and I did was to explain the situation from the perspective of the person our spouses were attacking.

For me, it seemed only a natural thing to do. I tried to give my husband a context that he didn’t seem to understand about how his sister was responding. You tried to convey that this loud obnoxious guy has every right to be in his apartment as much as he wants.

Chalk it up to a great example of JADEing—you were not justifying, nor were you arguing or defending. You were merely EXPLAINING which is not allowable   when your BPD partner is upset.