Being responsible for causing him pain

[Lifewriter16]

My BPDbf and I broke up for the 9th time yesterday after a two week recycle.

Today, I am overwhelmed with sadness because it is striking me so strongly that it is wrong of me to keep trying to reconnect with him, apparently offering to love him, only to pull away when he starts to need reassurance of that love, reassurance that I can not give him.

The error in my ways, is forgetting that love isn't enough to make a relationship successful. All I could see was my need for him, my love, my pain but now I realise that whenever I have offered him 'love' and then limited it, I was torturing him emotionally because of his condition.

I needed to limit what I offered him. I couldn't give him any more than I did give him although I genuinely loved him. When I think of the vulnerable boy he can be, I feel so sad, because I couldn't give that boy the love he craved because the man he had become is so mean-spirited, changeable, unpredictable, angry, tells me lies, pushes me away, is verbally abusive, rejects me, has the potential to be physically violent and may be a danger to my children.

I really thought that I could take the bits of him that I wanted and make him change the rest. I really thought he was capable of changing. He isn't. He really is mentally ill, not just deliberately difficult. By loving him, I made him vulnerable and that made him into the very best and very worst of himself.

All I can conclude is this: not only is it better for me to stay away from him for my sake, it's better for him if I do so too.

Lifewriter x

[Lifewriter16]

And here's a question for myself:

Why am I so desperate that he should think of me as a loving person, even though I'm breaking up with him or he with me? Why have I been chasing this goal over the last few breakups? Why is it so important to me that his final assessment is that I loved him?

Lx

[HurtinNW]

My BPDbf and I broke up for the 9th time yesterday after a two week recycle.

Today, I am overwhelmed with sadness because it is striking me so strongly that it is wrong of me to keep trying to reconnect with him, apparently offering to love him, only to pull away when he starts to need reassurance of that love, reassurance that I can not give him.

The error in my ways, is forgetting that love isn't enough to make a relationship successful. All I could see was my need for him, my love, my pain but now I realise that whenever I have offered him 'love' and then limited it, I was torturing him emotionally because of his condition.

I needed to limit what I offered him. I couldn't give him any more than I did give him although I genuinely loved him. When I think of the vulnerable boy he can be, I feel so sad, because I couldn't give that boy the love he craved because the man he had become is so mean-spirited, changeable, unpredictable, angry, tells me lies, pushes me away, is verbally abusive, rejects me, has the potential to be physically violent and may be a danger to my children.

I really thought that I could take the bits of him that I wanted and make him change the rest. I really thought he was capable of changing. He isn't. He really is mentally ill, not just deliberately difficult. By loving him, I made him vulnerable and that made him into the very best and very worst of himself.

All I can conclude is this: not only is it better for me to stay away from him for my sake, it's better for him if I do so too.

Lifewriter x

Lifewriter, gentle thoughts here... .

You guys didn't break up. HE broke up with you after you made a very reasonable request. Please don't share responsibility for something that was not your doing.

Likewise, you didn't "pull away." You wanted to get your concerns met. That is not pulling away. His reaction is on him.

I don't think having safe boundaries around making sure your children are safe from molestation, and yourself safe from violence, is the same as "limiting" your love. A real partner would not see your concerns as withholding or limiting at all.

I do believe you are right you couldn't give him what he thinks he needs. That is not the same was what he can reasonably expect. I don't think you should take responsibility for "making" him vulnerable. He is responsible for his own choices, including whether to engage with you.

Step back. He broke up with you because you wanted to discuss his history of attacking women with knives and being investigated for molesting children. You wanted to meet in a neutral place. People do that all the time even without such things on the table. IMO you are taking on responsibility here for his mental illness and behaviors. Yes he is mentally ill. No, he is not helpless and this is not your fault. The world is full of mentally ill people capable of owning their behaviors, meeting in coffee shops, and not breaking up with you for wanting to protect your children and self.

[unicorn2014]

Those are a lot of recycles. I've yet to recycle once. My policy is if I leave, I'm done. That's how I handled my marriage: no turning around.

I think your multiple recycles may have to do with the distorted thinking you were talking about on a previous thread. What do you think?

[C.Stein]

The error in my ways, is forgetting that love isn't enough to make a relationship successful. All I could see was my need for him, my love, my pain but now I realise that whenever I have offered him 'love' and then limited it, I was torturing him emotionally because of his condition.

This is very good insight LW and something you can work on for future relationships.  Recognizing that you could not give him what he needed does not make you responsible for his emotions nor does it mean you were torturing him.  He chose to stay in the relationship just as much as you did.

[patientandclear]

I think this is where many BPD relationships reach a point of stuck-ness: where the partner asserts a need, rather than swallowing or burying the need in order to make the r/ship go forward.

You were willing to bring your doubts and fears into the r/ship and seek reassurance and problem-solving. That's a normal, healthy relationship skill. It is not "taking your love away."

He may well have PERCEIVED it as taking your love away or putting it in doubt. Absolutely--in light of his fears and past experiences.

My ex BPD person would tell me that what he really needed from me was to tell him what I really thought. I think he wants to be a person whose loved one can tell him what she really thinks. But when I do, he rebuffs that. If it's a need, he says no. If it's a hurt, he is hurt I told him the hurt--and how he deals with being hurt is either subtly or dramatically to downgrade the relationship. He can't stay in it and hear such things from me.

For quite a while I kept things going by intuitively grasping this and not sharing with him my own feelings or needs. For better or worse, and all my advisors say for better, I no longer am willing to do that. It doesn't honor either of us. But now, the introduction of my needs and wants results in reactions by him that don't work for me.

I miss him. I don't want it to be this way. I've rethought a million times if there were a way to tell him what I feel and what I need that would work better for him. But in the end, it is also his work to do to be able to stay in relationship with someone while hearing that that person has feelings and needs that are anything other than "everything is blissful and ecstatic and I need nothing from you."

[Lifewriter16]

Hi patientandclear. Like you, I kept things to myself simply to allow us to carry on. I have been sitting on the important issues and trying to get information out of him in a roundabout manner. I haven't been particularly successful there. I haven't felt reassured by what I have discovered either.

I think you are right that my BPDbf perceived that I was limiting my love for him, but actually I was limiting access to me. He can not bear limited access. He expects it 18 hour a day. It's been consuming me and robbing me of my opportunities to deal with my own pain. That limited access caused a dysregulation but the real reason for this major dysregulation was, as it always is, nothing to do with me. He had a meeting coming up with the child protection social worker and both his parents to determine whether the grandfather was to be denied access to his granddaughter. He was very scared in advance of this meeting and in abandoned/abused child mode (though it is only in retrospect that I have realised that). During that meeting, he was given information about his early childhood that he hadn't been told before. Apparently there was someone else who was violent around. He would tell me nothing else. I suspect the family is claiming it wasn't his father who hospitalised him after a beating at aged 2 years. That would shake all his emotional foundations. I suspect it's an outright lie told to get them off the hook. He did tell me that he'd had a long conversation with his mother after that meeting during which she told him lots of things that he didn't know about his early life and that it had brought them closer together.

Monitoring his dysregulations and our arguments/breakups against current events over the last year, has told me that they occur when other things emotional are happening in his life (like therapy ending, the anniversary of his second wife's death, visits to his father, arguments with his wife etc). And usually, I am the one he directs all his pain and anger at. I thought it quite likely this would happen again given the news he had been given and tried to circumvent further damage by suggesting a healing break with regular updates. He agreed initially, saying he was going to propose we hang back for a while. However, he thought about it and started dysregulating. I noted that he was clearly not happy with the agreement we had come to. He proposed that we meet and talk. I agreed and the rest, you already know... .



Hi C.Stein. You're right too. I wasn't torturing him, he was doing that all by himself but me being available to him is allowing him to run repeatedly through his emotional cycles, mode to mode to mode and back again. He is better off without me because he can't control his thoughts or his behaviour. And I'm going to have to find a way to feel better off without him, because I've got to cope somehow.



Hi unicorn. People are different. I don't think it's possible for anyone to know for sure what they would do if placed in my situation. Perhaps you would leave the first time he said, 'It's over'. But, what if you thought he'd only said it in the heat of the moment, or because his therapy had just ended and he was grieving or to get his own way? Would you leave then? It's quite easy to get into a cycle of breakups when you simply don't have the relationship skills to circumvent the problems and you're having to learn as you go along. If I had left after the first breakup, I would have missed out on a whole host of emotional healing. Yes, it's been hard. But, ultimately, I believe this whole process will have been beneficial to me. I'd never have met all the wonderful people on BPD Family for a start and it is the feedback and concern I find here that is my current source of growth and support. Never say never, that's what I say.



Love to you all,

Lifewriter x

[HurtinNW]

I think this is where many BPD relationships reach a point of stuck-ness: where the partner asserts a need, rather than swallowing or burying the need in order to make the r/ship go forward.

You were willing to bring your doubts and fears into the r/ship and seek reassurance and problem-solving. That's a normal, healthy relationship skill. It is not "taking your love away."

He may well have PERCEIVED it as taking your love away or putting it in doubt. Absolutely--in light of his fears and past experiences.

My ex BPD person would tell me that what he really needed from me was to tell him what I really thought. I think he wants to be a person whose loved one can tell him what she really thinks. But when I do, he rebuffs that. If it's a need, he says no. If it's a hurt, he is hurt I told him the hurt--and how he deals with being hurt is either subtly or dramatically to downgrade the relationship. He can't stay in it and hear such things from me.

For quite a while I kept things going by intuitively grasping this and not sharing with him my own feelings or needs. For better or worse, and all my advisors say for better, I no longer am willing to do that. It doesn't honor either of us. But now, the introduction of my needs and wants results in reactions by him that don't work for me.

I miss him. I don't want it to be this way. I've rethought a million times if there were a way to tell him what I feel and what I need that would work better for him. But in the end, it is also his work to do to be able to stay in relationship with someone while hearing that that person has feelings and needs that are anything other than "everything is blissful and ecstatic and I need nothing from you."

Patientandclear, this sums up my relationship very well too. I did continue to try and communicate around my wants and needs, and sometimes not very well, as he also would say that was what he wanted. But he was incapable of handling it. No matter how nicely put, it resulted in rages. You really nailed it: my ex wanted only to hear everything was blissful and ecstatic and I needed nothing from him.

Lifewriter, I agree it is easy to say we would never do x or y. I never would have imagined dealing with the stuff I did over the last four years. My ex also often broke up in the heat of the moment. Most people when angry might say they are going for a walk, or taking a break. His go-to when angry is to break up. For a very long time I thought he was seeing that and was working on changing that behavior. Now I can see is either incapable or unwilling to change that. I'm also hopeful that this relationship will end up leading to greater insight for me on my own issues.

[unicorn2014]

Hi Lifewriter

Hi unicorn. People are different. I don't think it's possible for anyone to know for sure what they would do if placed in my situation. Perhaps you would leave the first time he said, 'It's over'. But, what if you thought he'd only said it in the heat of the moment, or because his therapy had just ended and he was grieving or to get his own way? Would you leave then? It's quite easy to get into a cycle of breakups when you simply don't have the relationship skills to circumvent the problems and you're having to learn as you go along. If I had left after the first breakup, I would have missed out on a whole host of emotional healing. Yes, it's been hard. But, ultimately, I believe this whole process will have been beneficial to me. I'd never have met all the wonderful people on BPD Family for a start and it is the feedback and concern I find here that is my current source of growth and support. Never say never, that's what I say.

Yes people are different and only you can know what you would do in your situation. That being said I know for myself that when I ended my marriage it was over. I guess that's why I haven't been through one recycle with my current partner. I think that is where I differ from pwBPD, I'm pretty solid in my relationship skills, and  that's because I put a lot of time in Al-Anon before I divorced my husband so I knew what I was doing. It wasn't until after the divorce that I learned about this sociopathic traits. However he's not who brought me to BPD family. 

I agree this is a wonderful place, and whatever gets you here is whatever gets you here.