What Do You Make Of This.

[Aussie0zborn]

I left BPD wife while she was overseas and made a clean break. I got sucked in and went back. She called a separation two weeks ago by calling her lover in the middle of the night to kick me out of our home. It worked.

In the last few months she re-hashed the things that bothered her as she was plotting her revenge for me taking her "by surprise" when I left her. This is one of our discussions. I won't ask any particular questions, but I am interested in your comments, if you would please.

BPD : "All the teachers come to school with lunch made by their husbands. You have NEVER made me lunch. Not once."

Me : "I bet those husbands don't come home after an 18 hour day and find their wife's booty call knocking on the door. Could you imagine what might have happened if I got home five minutes later and found you having sex with him?"

BPD : "We'd have a threesome."

Me : "No, one of us would be in hospital and one of us would be in jail and not sure which one would be which. This is not supposed to happen. I don't know any man that's put in this position by his wife".

Your comments please... .

[danley]

We'd have a threesome? Was she being facetious or serious?

Her comment about her lunch was a guilt trip attempt. She wants you to feel guilty so you make her lunch. She probably feels rejected because according to HER everybody's husband's makes their wives lunch. No offense to husband's but I find it hard to believe that ALL the teachers husbands makes their wives lunch. Shes very needy. And she sounds selfish.  I notice she never even acknowledged your 18 hour work shift. And her comment of a threesome totally bypasses her owning up to the fact that she has no respect for you and no boundaries.

She should make YOU lunch!

[Learning_curve74]

It's ALWAYS somebody else's fault.

And whatever faults you have and mistakes you've made are ALWAYS worse than anything she's done.

Ridiculous and insane. 

[babyducks]

BPD : "All the teachers come to school with lunch made by their husbands. You have NEVER made me lunch. Not once."

Hey Aussie,

This probably isn't what you wanted to hear but here are my thoughts.  When your wife said you never made me lunch, to a person suffering with the traits of BPD, that translates to you never really loved me,  you don't love me now.

When you replied the way you did, that was invalidating to her and she started to deregulate emotionally.

Mind you I am not saying it was either right or wrong to answer that way,  I probably would have made a similar comment. 

What I am saying is that she heard that differently than how you meant it.  That's the hard thing with BPD so little is actually as it seems.

When she ratcheted up, with the threesome comment, it appears your emotions went up too.  Understandably,  I can see how hurtful that was for you.   

It was my experience with my EX than when there was that much shame/pain/anger in the room,   my EX had to push it away.   Quite frequently it ended up on me.   And most often I did not handle it well.

BPD is a serious mental illness, people who suffer with it have poor coping skills and impulsive reactions.  And a low level of emotional maturity.  When I am dealing with a low level of emotional maturity, I tend to regress myself. 

It helps to remember they are not bad people they are sick people.

Bad things happened in my r/s with my EX.   I want to let go of them and move on the best way I can to be a better person.  I want to handle them with emotional maturity.  Yup things happened that sucked.   No, things will never again be exactly what they were.  There is a painful history.  People got hurt.  I am wiser now, with a more intimate knowledge of who they were, and who I am.  I want to forge the inner will to do things better.

babyducks

[Aussie0zborn]

Thank you for your replies.  I think she started answering without thinking what tone or approach her answer would take so when she said, "a threesome", it finally came out as being facetious in order to not accept any responsibility for any wrongdoing.

Babyducks, I don't mind hearing the the stuff I might not want to hear as I am open to all views. This is the reason I asked for comments and posed no questions, so feel free. I wasn't hurt by her answer, I was just sick and tired of her not acknowledging the damage she constantly did while at the same time blaming me for it. At the same time, the way I handled that situation at the time and never spoke about it until now should, in my opinion, have showed her that I did indeed love her. The thing is she can't tell this to the teachers at school to show what a loving husband she had.

This is one of the discussions where she was reviewing our past and realizing that the proof that I didn't love her was in front of her eyes all along - she felt she had been so so stupid and foolish not to have seen it.

Obviously, I have never made her lunch to take to school and being the Deputy Principal it would be disconcerting for her to see all the teachers that make her working day hell walk in with a husband-made lunch. I ofcourse don't believe the bit about "all the teachers" and my hunch is "that bhit teacher that will never do as I instruct and always goes over my head and straight to the Principal comes in each day with a husband-made lunch". 

There were many other "realizations" she had come to that "prove" I didn't love her. I might post a few more as I go.

[mitchell16]

Aussie0zborn, It went thru simliar things. Mine and her friend went out to a bar, was picking up ( i suspect) becasue she came home with a man texting her, lied about it all to me, even when confronted with evidence. In the middle of the argument she brings up that her friends husband, ran her bathwater and message her feet when she got  home, i couldnt I do the same. In my opinion is like deflecting back over to us. In other words finding something you did wrong in their mind to jusify any all actions that they do. Completely shifts blame back to you

[causticdork]

I've found that the only way to have a constructive conversation with my BPDex is to completely avoid the strike/counterstrike pattern.  When she accuses me of things that are untrue I will tell her that they're untrue, but if she's laying into me for something I actually did that she's still hurt/angry about I have to completely check my natural urge to point out that she did the same thing (or worse) multiple times.  I acknowledge when I did something hurtful and apologize, but I don't mention the things she did unless she's grilling me about why we can't get back together.  It defuses arguments much faster, and keeps what limited contact we do have from turning into the same fights over and over. 

[Aussie0zborn]

Yes, I also acknowledged things that upset her and always apologized. She would NEVER apologize and I didn't have the sense to look into this behavior back then.  In the last few weeks the strike/counter trike action took over as I needed to defend myself which is something I rarely did. But using what I think is logic had never worked.

I only learned about BPD when I left her 18months ago and it was pointed out to me. I saw that she had 8 of the 9 traits that would qualify her for a BPD diagnosis.

The closest thing I ever got to an apology was, "I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings". Considering I was totally shattered by her actions I would have  thought a real apology was in order.

[babyducks]

I believe we are all here on these boards posting, and reading because being involved in a BPD relationship is damaging.

I know it was helpful for me to understand how much of the unusual behavior in our relationship was driven by the disorder.   Both of us reacted to the disorder, in different ways,

I am 4 months passed our final breakup.   And as time has helped me move out of the fog I find it easier to move forward to a healthier place for me.

It feels to me like a rebuilding process.   Except that I am not rebuilding the same person I was, I am building a better person.

[goldylamont]

Aussie0zborn, I totally understand how you feel. My thoughts on the conversation is that she got exactly what she wanted from you. She already feels like you're horrible (much of the time) so she blatantly throws sex with another man in your face, to get a negative reaction from you, and use this to justify treating you even more horrible and also bolstering her view that she's a victim. I had to learn to not counter-strike because then any type of rebuttal was used to shift the blame onto me and not onto whatever actions she actually had done. She's well aware of how painful it is to talk about sex with other men so this is a perfect way to inflict pain on you. I would try to dodge her comments altogether, in this particular situation it's hard for me to think what I would say back, but my ex (and many others as i understand) will bait, insult and push you and won't stop until you either react (ultimately what they want), leave or divert the situation. The sandwich comment was just to start things off, when you mentioned being hurt about the infidelity this left her the perfect opportunity to hurt you again.