My first response when reading this was this: his room mate paid you to write her paper. I noticed this because it was a way to step into the drama between them. I also need to work on resisting temptation to "help" people sometimes, so I will share my views on this. Please note that I am speaking from a place of understanding, not being critical of you. It's because when we look at our own behavior, there is the potential to do something different.
You had an earlier post where he was not doing his responsibilities as a room mate, and that his room mate was angry at him. Since he likes his room mate and is afraid of losing her, you wondered whether or not to step in to the relationship to help smooth things over.
The issue was between your bf and his room mate. His room mate was reaching out to you. You did recognize the potential for a triangle.
Sometimes the wolf "invitation to the triangle" can come in sheep's clothing ( not so obvious and seemingly innocent) but this one was not so innocent. Being paid to write a paper isn't innocent. Well you know it is cheating, and that is wrong, so I won't go into that, but in this case it was also this:
It put the room mate's responsibility for her grade on to you, and you took it ( rescuing, caretaking)
There was a secondary motive or payoff- you had the potential to help the relationship, smooth things over between Bf and room mate by being indispensible to her at the moment.
Bf's responsibility to repair the relationship with his room mate were placed on your shoulders ( you then became rescuer) and when something went wrong, he blamed you for this instead of being responsible for his own situation.
I don't mean this to sound critical, but to turn the focus on your role in this- because it is the only part you can make a change with. They have their wrongs too. Room mate should not cheat, BF needs to take care of his responsibilities, but you can't impact their choices.
Don't do someone's academic work for them, ever. It's morally wrong, and besides that, it is taking someone's responsibility away from them, it is enabling and that is entering a dysfunctional relationship. It also ruins your own self esteem as it lowers your personal values.
When there is drama between two people, stepping in to "help" can be a step on the triangle. Again, I'm not trying to chastise you, just putting this in this perspective so that hopefully you'll see the signs before jumping in. I try to be aware of the potential triangles too. Sometimes, even with our best efforts, we get on to them, but if we see it, we hopefully step out sooner.
Hang in there... .or maybe I should say hang out of there.
Wow. A good wow.
I've been working so incredibly hard on trying to have healthy boundaries and limits in relationships and trying to protect myself. I don't honestly have these abilities well developed in the slightest, I'm a very raw work in progress, so most of the time I'm either going off facts (This is not my responsibility) or tuning into my own feelings and seeing whether I'm helping or harming myself.
And yeah, last week I recognised the potential for triangulation in what wasn't my problem and so I came on here to test that theory and your response was incredibly helpful, so I'm really grateful for that. I'm making progress, but it takes time.
It's like a weak muscle and I have to keep working on rehabilitating it so that eventually I become sensitive enough at recognising these things.
So I agree with most of what you wrote. I honestly didn't recognise the lines I inadvertently crossed when I agreed to help her out with her schoolwork. Plus my boyfriend was egging me on from the beginning on how great it was. He knew that this could be an extra push in the right direction.
Now I realise how I let my perspective get skewed by my need to 'help and fix'.
Plus I'm still terrible at confrontations. I've gone from refusing responsibility for my actions to always admitting fault even when there are other powers at work. '
When my boyfriend found out about me missing the deadline, he blocked me, hung up on me and whatnot. Then 20 minutes later he started calling me on my phone. I was too upset to answer and I wasn't bent on him yelling at me more. I felt really alone so eventually I called him back. He claimed that by not answering his calls, I was 'hanging him out to dry.' That's not actually true.
He actually recognised some of the ways he was ruining his relationship with his roommate, saying that he already feels bad because he barely ever does anything because he doesn't have the time. But then it's like, why are you telling me this? You should be telling your roommate that.
A big mistake was involving him in the first place. I perpetuated the triangle by involving him in this and telling him what was going on. If I were to help her out at all, and I do have a relationship of some sort with her unrelated to him, then he has nothing to do with it. I could argue that in favor of my actions up until the moment that I told him about what was going on. I was seeking validation and needing to rant, but he is too involved to be objective.
He has his own beef with her and in this way I am perpetuating all the drama triangles and shifting the balance. I can be supportive of both of them without taking the hook in a normal scenario because she isn't my roommate but rather a friend. He can't do the same because he has a personal stake in everything.
And then she came to him last night concerned that I wasn't going to finish her essay on time. She did to him what she'd done to me last week with the garbage. He told her "Nah, Misuniadziubek's good for it. Don't worry." He had nothing to go off on with that.
With regards to writing essays and cheating, I've done pretty much all of my mom's work from her college from the time I was 14. The caretaking has to come from somewhere. :P
So this felt pretty routine for me. I didn't consider ethics or anything here.
I'm not trying to absolve myself of any responsibility here, but if I were the roommate, committing such a breach of ethics, well... .she kind of threw me under the bus. She put all the responsibility onto me because she doesn't have -time- to write essays for herself and this is easier. This was she also has a scapegoat for when things go wrong. So yeah, I definitely have enabled a negative behaviour in her as well. I've become better with these sorts of things, but I don't always succeed in avoiding them.
I was raised where all of this is normal. It is really a lot of work for me to recognise how toxic(?) and dysfunctional it becomes at a snap of a finger if only because of the dynamics at play.
So thank you Notwendy. That was honestly very helpful.
I would go quiet on him. It's not your problem if his roommate moves out or whatever problems he has with that person.
NONE of his issues with other people are your problem. And I mean it from this perspective: he has his crap with them, and geeze what a PIA the whole thing is FOR HIM, let him sort out the things he messed up.
And to point HE messed up with YOU! His crap isn't your crap. His roommate's crap is not your problem to fix. Aside from ethics, SHE messed up with YOU, too!
It's not the other way around. Just leave the arena and let him sort his chaos out because it's HIS creation, not yours.
And you just hit what I ran into repeatedly with my boyfriend: he bullied and scared me, then he let his other woman do the same to me. If I tried to slap her back, suddenly all the problems he had with her were MY fault. I took on the guilt and the two of them ran me into the ground.
Until you say "whatever", and step out of it, you are going to get jerked around. He will calm down and be back. If he tries to start a discussion with you about how terrible you are, ignore him. No more apologizing for their mess to them. Let them own it.
Yeah. It isn't my problem. I don't live with her and he unfairly gauged it as being my problem.
The funny part is that she did that too. She wrote me a message last night that if I didn't get this essay done, then she might fail the class, and if she fails the class then she's moving back to California and that affects my boyfriend, so I should feel bad.
Yeah. That is incredibly unfair towards me. Everyone is involving everyone else and it all becomes nothing but a Karpman drama triangle :P
I could always not participate. At all.
I still have to talk to his roommate today, though. And give her back her money.
I took on a responsibility that I couldn't handle. Everyone is SUPER supportive. Until I fail.
My boyfriend was telling me last night. I had your back THE entire time. But then you messed up and now that's on you.
And that's pretty funny to me. And I pointed it out. You had my back while everything was seemingly good. Because you had something to gain from it. But when I fall, you tell me I'm on my own.
And now this is the part that genuinely hurts. Because when I'm at my worst, I want him to be there for me. The way I am there for him. And that's unrealistic. He can't. He has BPD. It's too much for him to carry. He can barely carry his own.
So yeah. I made a mistake getting involved. Still hurts a lot.
Oh well. I really have to move forward, regardless of the end result. At best, this will add another notch to my belt, another reason to be take care of myself and become stronger.
