looking back: Rage episodes never even happened Selective amnesia by BPD spouse

[ogopogodude]

(Sorry, ... . I didn't know where to post this, ... . move it if you wish)

My soon-to-be-ex really has no recollection of her behaviour (rages of temper, breaking things, etc). It truly is bizarre. There is no accountability, ... . no memory, ... . no acknowledgement that any episodes ever  happened. How can this possibly be?

     Any mention of it will trigger an argument, ... . so I don't even bother anymore. My wife is obsessed with me after I left her for peace and calm. She keeps sending me emails of "I love you" etc, ... . then 1/2 day later comes the  "I hate you" emails.  Leaves things on my rental place doorstep, etc  She wants me back so badly.

    I just ignore all of it. I realize all she wants is someone to torment, ... . or it's because I "know too much" and have the key to her skeleton closet.

   I think the amnesia thing is just a ploy. Nobody can just eliminate that from their memory. Especially if that person goes out and fixes things that they broke the day before (fixes the holes in the wall or doors that were kicked or punched).

   Anyways, ... . I felt that I had to get this off my chest b/c its so bizarre to just keep inside. Thanks for listening/ reading. 

   

[ObiRedKenobi]

I'll believe it. My ex remembered some things anyway. Other times its like she blocked out parts of the fight where she said or did things. I would show her things she broke and she would think I did it. Its like in her head she removed herself from the situation so much that it wasn't even her doing it.

[danley]

Maybe they remember the rages but they don't see it as such. They probably feel justified and actually felt like you brought it all on. Which of course I highly doubt. Could also be that they are in denial and don't want to admit. Perhaps they find it shameful how they acted and are too proud or feel too guilty to apologize. Then again, with the disordered thinking and rationale they might truly not remember anything at all. Or like mentioned they block it out.

I know with my ex he KNEW his anger and rages were wrong and hurt me. Sometimes he'd apologize. But most times his way of apologizing was being extra sweet the next day. His tone would sound regretful like he'd want to apologize but his pride wouldnt let him. Of course I would prefer a simple acknowledgement that he said or did something hurtful but I realized that this was his way of saying sorry. It's OK for small things. But for major mess ups I'd prefer a straight up sorry.

Bottom line is that the disordered will think and act in disordered ways. But one thing I have learned is that I made sure to verbally let my ex know that what he had said or did was hurtful or offensive. I wanted to make sure he knew how it made me feel and that it wasn't OK. Whether or not he wanted to hear it or not. I didn't press for the apology but felt like him knowing how he affected me was important and I always knew he was absorbing what I said. Not everyone finds it easy to apologize or admit they did something wrong. But the fact that they DID DO something wrong and are made aware of it is important too. Its like a kid who innocently makes a comment about someone in the store or even about you. They dont know see anything wrong but as a parent you tell the child what they said wasnt nice and WHY.

[PullToEject]

It is amazing.  My ex would do and say terrible things and then be like, "so, are you still coming over tonight?"  And I'm like WHAT?  No, I'm not coming over!  I don't know if they think ignoring the damage will make it disappear or if they simply don't realize damage has been done. 

Stay strong brother.

M -

[ObiRedKenobi]

My ex would say and do some horrible things and I was expected to just be ok with it when she calmed down.

[GreenMango]

Ogopogodude it sounds like she's in the throws of abandonment fears. 

As for the not remembering my experience was part of the time it was dissociative epidsodes - truly didn't remember or recollect the full velocity of what happened.

The other half of the time it was conscious denial - lots of shame based conscious denial and trying to "un-deny" it just caused more heels digging in and ego protection - like anger or tantrums.

One of the hardest parts for me was making sense of all the stuff going on - peace came when the only answer that made sense was the person was sick, like ill sick, and that was the why and thing finally made sense.

[papawapa]

Her lack of memory is real. There is science that supports this to be true.

This is from the book Understanding the Borderline Mother:


"Borderlines often forget painful experiences that their children remember. Studies show that chronically intense emotions damage the part of the brain that is responsible for memory (Christianson 19992). Chronic emotional stress exposes the brain to an excess of glucocorticoids, hormones that normally help the brain cope with stress. The hiposcampus, which controls memory functioning, contains a high number of glucocortoid receptors and is therefore susceptible to damage (Schacter 1996). Because borderline mothers experienced overwhelming emotional distress as children, areas in their brain responsible for memory and emotional regulation may be damaged. Studies using magnetic resolution imagine to examine the brains of females who were abused as children found that the left hippocampus was actually smaller than those in subjects from a control group (Schacter 1996)."

[Matena]

HI, OgopogoDude. Thank you for posting your question. I am very interested in this. I believe part of the process of healing from a relationship with a pwBPD consists on being able to understand to a certain point the complex mechanisms of the BPD mind. So I think we are on the right path, by asking ourselves all these types of questions. I hope you start feeling better about this soon.

This makes a lot of sense, papawapa. Thanks for sharing the paragraph!

The best part of the relationship with my ex took place in 2010. After three perfect, fairy-tale months, he started to experience fear of intimacy and began to distance himself from me. I could see he was really suffering, but at the same time I was completely at loss about his bizarre, surprising change of behavior and attitude. At that point I said something that hurt him very deeply (I basically said I doubted about his true feelings for me, and "i should have paid attention to xxx's advice" ). Apparently my words were extremely painful for him, and after a couple of days of intense raging, he fell into a depression state for a few months.

I was supposed to visit him three weeks later. I was flying from Europe to the States. I tried to call a lot of times, but he wouldn't answer the phone. So day after day I sent an endless number of emails apologizing, trying to comfort, validating (though I didn't know what that was at the moment), offering support, apoloziging again, using the warmest, sweetest, most caring words, saying I'd like to see him, please, even for a few hours. All my efforts were completely useless: he refused to see me on that trip, just a few weeks after he had done the most amazing things for me, the love of his life by then. It was a extremely painful experience for me, and the first time I knew something was "different" about this man whom I had seen as almost perfect till then.

Last month we spent a few days together. On the course of a conversation, I  mentioned a detail about my 2010 trip to the States. He raised his eyebrows with a suprised stare and said: "Were you in the States in 2010 and we didn't see each other? How come we didn't see each other?". I was absolutely startled about him having no recollection at all of the most emotionally devastating experience in my life, a experience caused by him. I could notice in his look and expresion that he was being sincere and not lying. I am absolutely sure about it. He couldn't remember anything related to me that took place during those months in 2010. Wow!

Sometimes I wonder if he ever reads the emails we exchanged at that time. If he did, would he be shocked to see what he wrote and what he decided? Then again, I can imagine him deleting all of them the first time he painted me black. So he probably doesn't keep them anymore. 

What I just explained relates to a comment made by an acquaintance of mine, who also suffers from BPD. She once mentioned she suffered from partial amnesia. She said she'd gone through such dramatic experiences during her childhood and after her divorce that her mind had learned how to "erase" the most painful memories. Remembering them would be impossible to handle. The problem was this affected other areas of her memory such as her proficiency in Spanish. She had to start learning Spanish again, almost from scratch, after her divorce. She had forgotten many of the words and grammar structures.

This, along with the conversation I described above, made me come to the conclusion that BPD's memory skills fail to some extent when they are disregulated or experiencing events they perceive as traumatic. It is as if their intense emotions took control of their bodies, disconneting their capacity for reasoning, making decisions and remembering. Is this a reasonable explanation for it?

I'd love to hear other peoples' comments and experiences about their pwBPD not being able to recall important events that took place at a time they were disregulated. Has this happened to your SO's?

Thank you all & sending a bit of positive energy for you, ogopogodude. 

[papawapa]

I just realized something that never made sense before. My ex would often disregulate when she had been drinking. I always attributed her lack of memory of things she had said or done to her having blacked out. But that never sat right with me at the time because often times she hadn't drank enough for a person to black out.