I never understand how something so little is the cause of such a huge reaction. So many times it's the same thing - some little oversight which will take all of 5 minutes to fix but she'll spend 15mins yelling at me about and it completely ruins her evening.
And yes - sometimes during the arguement I find myself kind of detaching and watching the conversation as if it were a sitcom. Funny, yet sad.
Same here. I find it hard to believe that people with BPD are emotionally processing at the level of toddlers, but it's easier to believe that when I see things like this in action. Spending 20 minutes screaming and pouting because of something that could be easily fixed in 5 minutes. A few of my 'favorite' examples:
My wife hates cilantro. We were at a Vietnamese pho shop, and she ordered a dish that came with a little cilantro floating on top. She started complaining that the bowl was "full of tons of cilantro," she couldn't eat it, it was my fault for not ordering it for her without cilantro (I didn't realize it was my job to order dinner for her), she never gets what she wants, dinner is ruined, etc.
I ended up having to take her bowl of soup and fish out her cilantro. There were still tiny flecks in the pho. She pouted about that, and I had to reassure her that they were minuscule, she wouldn't taste them, etc. She finally ate her dinner.
It was only when I was journaling this that I realized how this was exactly like having a little kid.
Another example... .
It was almost lunchtime. We were in the car, and I suggested we drive home and have leftovers for lunch. My wife dysregulated immediately. She was furious. There weren't enough leftovers. She didn't want leftovers. How could I have such a horrible idea? What made me think there was enough to eat at home? This is all being yelled at me while driving along, with our daughter in the back seat.
I said, "Fine! Forget it! We can go wherever you want for lunch." I truly didn't care that much. It was just a suggestion.
So did she pick somewhere to go eat? No. She made me pull over, and she began the inquisition. Why had I thought we would want to eat leftovers, and what made me think we had enough for all three of us to eat? What was my thought process that had led to this? She demanded I explain my reasoning for her to understand. And so on, for ten minutes. By this point, even our daughter was begging her to stop.
I ended up driving her home, dropping her off, and going out to get her take-out, because she wasn't able to be in public.
A normal conversation would have gone something like this, I imagine:
Me: "Let's go home for leftovers."
Her: "I don't really feel like leftovers."
Me: "Fine, what do you want?"
Her: "Let's go to X restaurant."
Me: "OK."
Elapsed time: 15 seconds.
