Making physical changes keeps me busy getting nowhere, you?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Hello Everyone,

    I have been trying (since we have been separated) to make changes to physical things around here that caused disagreements between us in the past. For example; my daughters room was between the kitchen and bathroom and he (lacking all empathy and consideration of others) would (in the middle of the night or early morning) go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, run the sink, then go 2 the kitchen, start washing dishes, have a snack, use bathroom again, flush again... . Sure enough wake my daughter up, then come back to bed while my daughter 5yo is up and start trying to have sex with me (which would have been great if my daughter was not woken up by him) Then because I am not having sex with him at 5am because my daughter is awake it means I am cheating on him (even though we are together 24/7) etc... . So since he has been gone some pipes broke and I renovated. Moved my daughters room to one end, kitchen and bath near each other and our room, even got a dishwasher. Deep down I know that no matter how many things like that I change it will never get rid of the issues (he always creates new ones) But it is how I have spent the past several months. Changing everything, EVERYTHING. I just can't seem to change how I feel about him. Maybe someone will come by and Taser me for not giving the new guy a chance, *please! I really feel defective because the new guy is cool and I do like him aside from the mess with Pablo that I continue to let dominate my life when I must know better. I am on this board after all... .

[PablosAngel]

Hello Everyone,

    I have been trying (since we have been separated) to make changes to physical things around here that caused disagreements between us in the past. For example; my daughters room was between the kitchen and bathroom and he (lacking all empathy and consideration of others) would (in the middle of the night or early morning) go to the bathroom, flush the toilet, run the sink, then go 2 the kitchen, start washing dishes, have a snack, use bathroom again, flush again... . Sure enough wake my daughter up, then come back to bed while my daughter 5yo is up and start trying to have sex with me (which would have been great if my daughter was not woken up by him) Then because I am not having sex with him at 5am because my daughter is awake it means I am cheating on him (even though we are together 24/7) etc... . So since he has been gone some pipes broke and I renovated. Moved my daughters room to one end, kitchen and bath near each other and our room, even got a dishwasher. Deep down I know that no matter how many things like that I change it will never get rid of the issues (he always creates new ones) But it is how I have spent the past several months. Changing everything, EVERYTHING. I just can't seem to change how I feel about him. Maybe someone will come by and Taser me for not giving the new guy a chance, *please! I really feel defective because the new guy is cool and I do like him aside from the mess with Pablo that I continue to let dominate my life when I must know better. I am on this board after all... .

[OutOfEgypt]

Hi PablosAngel,

Deep down I know that no matter how many things like that I change it will never get rid of the issues (he always creates new ones) But it is how I have spent the past several months. Changing everything, EVERYTHING. I just can't seem to change how I feel about him.

But unfortunately, some day you will wake up or, as I did, stand out on the front porch looking up at the stars and say aloud, "I don't even know who I am anymore."  You will exhaust everything you are in trying to tiptoe around all of his temper tantrums and insatiable unhappiness and instability.  And it will take a massive toll on you emotionally and physically (the emotional stress HAS physical implications, for sure).  This is going to be how your life goes... . constantly trying to catch the plates he throws up into the air, constantly trying to make sure they don't crash on the ground, but deep inside knowing it is NEVER going to work.  It won't.

I just can't seem to change how I feel about him.

You can love him, but likely what you describe is not love but enmeshment and emotional dependence mixed with numbness.  The more you do things that you KNOW will never work, the more you contribute to that screwed up game, the more numb you get (and the more exhausted).  The numbness keeps you from facing the pain and anger of knowing that nothing you do will ultimately matter and that he will never see "YOU", not really.  But instead of facing the immense grief of that, you keep yourself busy emotionally by living in fantasy land where you will do ANYTHING just to get that verdict from him that says "I'm happy with you... . or happy enough at the moment."  Been there.

What's it gonna take for you to decide that this emotional slavery is not how you want to live the rest of your life?  Is holding onto that "dream" really worth it?  Is it really even love or just a wish that you don't want to let go of?

[maxsterling]

yep, I know that cycle, no it gets nowhere, yet still contemplate more changes.  Let's see, in the year since she has lived here, I've gotten a new sofa because she hated the old one.  Gotten rid of furniture she didn't like, put a new electrical outlet in the spare bedroom, put up bookshelves, put up curtains, painted, and about a dozen other things.  All because she complained about them and made it sound like that was the reason she felt uncomfortable.  I fool myself into thinking that I am doing those changes for me, too.  And I am.  But I also know that I'm doing some of it to try and solve her problem or get her off my back.

What now?  She wants a new bedroom set.  And some kind of new hook/shelf in the bathroom.  A year ago, I'd be all over it.  Except, now, I see the pattern, and know she will still feel miserable, and find some other reason she is upset.  My dBPD sister in law did the same with my brother.  And he kept throwing money and objects at the issue, and she was still miserable. 

I gotta break this pattern.

[DreamFlyer99]

There is no "making someone else happy." Only they have control over that. All my trying to make my uBPDh happy just ended up in that same cycle of change change change and numbness. He wants to eat healthier, so I cook healthier, and "I don't like this. Why can't you just make the stuff you like when i'm not home?" Etc. And he buys tvs and soundbars and surround sound etc while we have a completely unusable front room that is unfinished and still has his tools in it, and an unusable bedroom. I'm pretty sure he also thinks his purchases will make him happy, but that's not the problem, the problem is in his own core beliefs that make him essentially unhappy and unable to enjoy life.

That's totally where I've had to learn that I can't make him happy and I can't be bothered by it all the time. i'm really enjoying my self-imposed "time out" living with our daughter. This way i'm less involved in his drama, but I really miss my doggies that are still with him.

PablosAngel, were you only his Angel when you were doing what he wanted? That's a tough way to live, as a Conditional Angel. We have to work to be our own person like OutOfEgypt said, and let them be their own person. They need to be the ones to solve their unhappiness, we can't. We can only control what we do, and how we learn to make choices in our dealings with their issues. We can't fix their problems. It seems like they'd like us to, but I never felt such clarity as when my T told me that "any hope for them changing is merely 'wishing' or 'magical thinking' because the only person we can change is us." We can actually stand in the way of them "growing up" when we are always trying to fix.

How are you with boundaries? That was one of the things I realized I had let slide badly within my marriage. This workshop was so helpful to me, have you read it yet? BOUNDARIES: Upholding our values and independence

Maxsterling, you seem to have experienced that go-round of trying to make her happy... . it sure seems a common thing for those of us who love a pwBPD. 

[Forestaken]

*please! I really feel defective because the new guy is cool and I do like him aside from the mess with Pablo that I continue to let dominate my life when I must know better. I am on this board after all... .

Is he your bf or h?

Take some advice from someone who just ended his 24 year marriage to an emotionally and physically abusive BPD. Get out of the relationship!  If he is accusing you of cheating w/o proof.  ONE DAY HE WILL PHYSICALLY ABUSE YOU AND YOUR CHILD!  My uBPD+dOCDxw beat me about every other day for 9 years along with the kids.  We were all scared of her.  She tried to beat my D (then 10) with a broom handle my S (then 12) jump in front and took the hit.  Her foundation? "She could feel it".  My kids (now college age) are in therapy.

The abuse starts out as control, then it becomes emotional then physical

Filing for Divorce was one of the toughest things I ever did.  Never regretted it neither.


Youdeserve better. Believe it.

[OutOfEgypt]

They need to be the ones to solve their unhappiness, we can't. We can only control what we do, and how we learn to make choices in our dealings with their issues.

I absolutely agree with Forestaken.  At first, they sweep us off our feet with adoration and infatuation so easily, giving us the powerful impression that we can make them happy (and that makes US happy).  But then once that hook is sunk deeply into our lip, their true face begins to shine.  Now we are made *responsible* for their happiness.  That is not true.  We aren't.  You cannot fill a black hole.  It is IMPOSSIBLE.

This is what irks me about so many "marriage" books.  How many of them feed into the idea that your partner somehow "owes" it to you to make you happy and tend to all of your needs.  The most content relationships I've ever seen are not those where each person "meets the needs" of the other, as though we can really do that for another person.  They are the ones where both people just want to live as individuals while having a companion who will love and respect them, mutually.  They dont put the responsibility of their own personal happiness and the filling of their emptiness and the curing of their sorrows on the other person -that is a match made in hell, and it is something that belongs to the ridiculous romance novels and movies, not to real life.

But that is what BPD's do.  They take all of their inner conflicts and they put it onto the people closest to them.  For example, as my therapist pointed out, I became the fulfillment of every unmet need my uBPDexw ever had from her mom and her family.  The owness to be the ultimate caring caretaker who is totally absorbed with filling up all her wounds and satisfying her every infantile need was put on me, and then I was punished regardless of how great I was... . she was really punishing them through me, and herself through me, as well.

No good relationship requires so much devotion.  Only God requires devotion, but he doesn't do so without giving us everything first!  Even God knows that relationships are meant to be mutual!