why can't I absorb it?

[maxen]

after my wife's betrayal I got into therapy  not just in a big way, but as a way of saving my life. by my good fortune I started (and then stayed) with a therapist who had treated BPD patients and after maybe 3 weeks she opened the DSM and said "listen to this," and there it was. I'd never heard of it, tho certainly I saw that my wife had not quirks but real behavioral issues. I thought it was sloth, a laziness so deep that it perverted her moral calculations. and tho she doesn't have all the traits, the ones she has she has in buckets. and since then another therapist has seconded the diagnosis. now this is second hand, but it is as good as it gets for second hand. and everything I've read here confirms it strongly.

so why do I keep resisting it? why now a year out and the divorce underway and NC do I still argue with her in my head as if she was just being willfully unreasonable and not actually disordered? why do I relive her deranged viciousness and get violated all over again instead of absorbing that she has a clinical failure of empathy? when am I going to stop trying to find sense in this?

[enlighten me]

Hi Maxen

The problem is your looking at it from a normal perspective. You cant understand it because its not normal behaviour.

The problem I faced with my exgf is that she's just so convincing. She made me feel as if everything was my fault and had an answer and explanation for everything. I doubted my own logic and began believing everything she said about me.

What I didn't do after splitting with my uBPDexw was let go. I still believed there was hope. I never thought she would purposefully do anything that would hurt me. I didn't believe her capable of cheating or lying to me. I still held her on a pedestal.

After splitting with my uBPDgf I believed the worst.

[toomanytears]

Hi Maxen

Good to hear that someone else has these pointless arguments in their head with their ex. I do too. It's so hard to accept that my stbxh was not being wilfully unreasonable.

And just like Enlighten me says, he was so convincing. I never believed he was capable of the lying, cheating etc. If I don't keep reminding myself by rereading my old posts here I find myself getting sucked back down into the idealising vortex where I imagined I had the perfect relationship. It took ten months of therapy to get me out and I'm nearly there... .

[maxen]

thanks for the support. i've had bits of both your experiences on top of what i wrote.

If I don't keep reminding myself by rereading my old posts here I find myself getting sucked back down into the idealising vortex

this board really is a corrective, i too read the accounts of others and my own to remind myself that it all really happened. these is my issue at this point, not hers: why couldn't i trust what was right before my eyes?

[Ihope2]

I don't know if this helps, but whenever I wonder whether things could have been different with my exBPDh and me, I realise that it would have meant that I give up every shred of my own being.  I would have had to agree with everything he said or did. I would have had to listen to his diatribes for hours on end, through the night if needs be, and go to work in the morning to earn the money to support us (as he gives lip service to being a good husband, but he sits around waiting for hand-outs from others), and then at work, he would have bombarded me the entire day with his agonising and traumatising whatsapp messages (not wanting to live anymore, contemplating ending his life then and there, etc).

I would have had to turn a blind eye to his addiction to prescription tranquilisers and sleeping tablets.  I would have had to pay a fortune in his opioid medication, which the medical insurance did not agree to cover. 

I would have had to agree to him taking the car and disappearing to lord knows where at some late hour in the night, or during weekends, leaving me worrying about what he was up to.

I would have had to hear how terrible everything about my life, my house, my family and my friends and my workplace is and how I do not love him as I should, because I am not prepared to give it all up and go and live somewhere else where he prefers to live.

I would have had to hear him tell me that I am such a materialistic person and that I am obsessed with money, while he plundered our household budget every month on the things that he wants to buy instead.

And so on and so forth.  When I cast my mind back to how pressed into a corner I became, not daring to move, then I can absorb the extent of the personality disorder and the unlikelihood that he would have admitted to the distortions in his thought processes and emotions and cut me some slack.

[Caredverymuch]

I don't know if this helps, but whenever I wonder whether things could have been different with my exBPDh and me, I realise that it would have meant that I give up every shred of my own being.  I would have had to agree with everything he said or did. I would have had to listen to his diatribes for hours on end, through the night if needs be, and go to work in the morning to earn the money to support us (as he gives lip service to being a good husband, but he sits around waiting for hand-outs from others), and then at work, he would have bombarded me the entire day with his agonising and traumatising whatsapp messages (not wanting to live anymore, contemplating ending his life then and there, etc).

I would have had to turn a blind eye to his addiction to prescription tranquilisers and sleeping tablets.  I would have had to pay a fortune in his opioid medication, which the medical insurance did not agree to cover. 

I would have had to agree to him taking the car and disappearing to lord knows where at some late hour in the night, or during weekends, leaving me worrying about what he was up to.

I would have had to hear how terrible everything about my life, my house, my family and my friends and my workplace is and how I do not love him as I should, because I am not prepared to give it all up and go and live somewhere else where he prefers to live.

I would have had to hear him tell me that I am such a materialistic person and that I am obsessed with money, while he plundered our household budget every month on the things that he wants to buy instead.

And so on and so forth.  When I cast my mind back to how pressed into a corner I became, not daring to move, then I can absorb the extent of the personality disorder and the unlikelihood that he would have admitted to the distortions in his thought processes and emotions and cut me some slack.

This is profound advise. Thank you. Precisely what the disorder requires of us.

[toomanytears]

I don't know if this helps, but whenever I wonder whether things could have been different with my exBPDh and me, I realise that it would have meant that I give up every shred of my own being.  I would have had to agree with everything he said or did. I would have had to listen to his diatribes for hours on end, through the night if needs be, and go to work in the morning to earn the money to support us (as he gives lip service to being a good husband, but he sits around waiting for hand-outs from others), and then at work, he would have bombarded me the entire day with his agonising and traumatising whatsapp messages (not wanting to live anymore, contemplating ending his life then and there, etc).

I would have had to turn a blind eye to his addiction to prescription tranquilisers and sleeping tablets.  I would have had to pay a fortune in his opioid medication, which the medical insurance did not agree to cover. 

I would have had to agree to him taking the car and disappearing to lord knows where at some late hour in the night, or during weekends, leaving me worrying about what he was up to.

I would have had to hear how terrible everything about my life, my house, my family and my friends and my workplace is and how I do not love him as I should, because I am not prepared to give it all up and go and live somewhere else where he prefers to live.

I would have had to hear him tell me that I am such a materialistic person and that I am obsessed with money, while he plundered our household budget every month on the things that he wants to buy instead.

And so on and so forth.  When I cast my mind back to how pressed into a corner I became, not daring to move, then I can absorb the extent of the personality disorder and the unlikelihood that he would have admitted to the distortions in his thought processes and emotions and cut me some slack.

This is profound advise. Thank you. Precisely what the disorder requires of us.

And a big thanks from me too - great reminder of how awful the lowest points could be - how unacceptable, how corrosive, and nonsensical. TMT

[myself]

It's not balanced when they project their worst onto us, or when we project our best onto them.

It ties into the Ten Beliefs That Keep Us Stuck, thinking they see things the same way we do, process the same, etc. The gap between disordered thought and non-disordered thought is more vast than even a leap of faith can make. Many of us have tried, but how many make it? It takes two, and the other person isn't usually there.

It's difficult to digest this stuff because we're not wired to. It's not natural, it's aberration. The best we can do is learn to deal with the side effects of being poisoned in this way and to not allow it to happen again.