What did you make to become so angry? I felt very stupid and then I was so angry with myself and still I am.
Hi Pearl-
I don't really understand your question, but I think I know what you mean.
I let my borderline ex get away with a lot of disrespectful, condescending, belittling, emasculating comments, mostly because I was shocked, because she was very sweet and kind to begin with, it caught me off guard, and I was trying to fix it and get back to there. This was before I knew anything about BPD, and I was very confused by what seemed like a total change in her personality as well.
For a while I bought into it and assumed she was right, I really wasn't "good enough", which trashed my self esteem and self confidence, something we hear about time and again around here, and exactly the opposite of what an intimate partner is supposed to be all about.
Examples:
"Why did you stop working out? You're fat and your chest sags. I need you to have a perfect body."
"The woman a man shares a bed with controls his world."
"You dress like a slob."
"You should sit down on the toilet, (former lover) used to sit down and he was a real man."
"You stink."
"You're a child."
"Just keep listening to your head tell you you're worthless."
"I've been with a lot of men who fck me a lot better than you do."
Oh, a punching the crap out of me didn't help either.
Typing that sht kinda pisses me off all over again. How much of that can you actually take before you explode? Quite a bit apparently, but it's never OK, and the longer you wait, the more it builds. The clincher was when we went on a cruise with her kids, and without telling me, she switched the cabin assignments so she shared the cabin with the big bed with her daughter, and I got banished to the cabin with two beds with her son.
There didn't seem to be any limit to how far she'd go, and of course sitting down and talking about it like adults was met with blame, accusation, more disrespect, no resolution. I was way out of my league when it came to playing that game, she's been doing it her whole life with dozens and dozens of men, or boys to her, and those conversations would just spin me out further. The cruise was the last straw, I felt a rage surge up inside me I've never felt before, and I'm actually proud I kept a lid on it as we left and I caught a flight home; what I wanted to do was beat the fcking btch into a bloody puddle of mush, but I smiled, hugged her, left, and got drunk when I got home. The way I played it I had nothing to regret or feel guilty about, didn't go to jail, and a whole lot of weights got lifted a whole lot of times at the gym, and healthy use of that rage.
Now, a year and a half later, I see her as a sick person and not a bad one, I have some compassion for her, and the whole thing has caused my naivety to die, and me to get in really good shape and grow up a bunch, so I'm focusing on the gifts.
