Gaslighting, manipulation PTSD and (quiet?) BPD

[All4my4]

Hello to anyone who has taken the time to read this.  It is my first post.
I have read so many experiences on this site and gained so much clarity on my own situation for which I’m so grateful to the people on here.
I am hoping that someone can relate to my own experience and hopefully chime in with any helpful advice or encouragement.

I’m 46 and ubpdh is 50.  He is currently in therapy with a dx of PTSD and about to start EMDR (we apparently don't have a separate dx of CPTSD here in the US but i guess that’s what it technically would be considered) due to physical and emotional abuse from his father, who i believe displays many strong traits of narcissism. I wont get into the details here but many people who know him or have spent any amount of time around him can see it.  I very strongly suspect that my H also has what i have come to understand as quiet BPD. I know there is a large overlap of complex PTSD and BPD symptoms so dx can be difficult.

The most accurate way to describe what I have experienced is feeling like I’m living with two completely different people who not only don’t seem to realize each other exist, but hold me completely responsible for whichever one I get. 

There’s the kind, patient, funny, insightful, empathetic, generous, compassionate and reasonable person who he can be most of the time. This is how pretty much everyone outside our home sees him. He is highly intelligent and extremely good at socializing and loves meeting and talking to new people, can talk to anyone about anything type of person. He can read people very well, which is a blessing and a curse a times, but is probably why he is very good at negotiation and sales.  Because of this he’s an extremely successful business owner since his business relies heavily on negotiating deals and making sales.  He makes a lot of money. He treats his employees extremely well and most of them seem to really love working for him. He’s also in a very prominent role in our church and is that person who everyone in the congregation knows they can call on when they need compassion, advice and counsel or any kind of help, as he is very generous with his time, energy and resources. I believe that he has worked hard to become this type of person and that this is who he really wants to be and believes that he is.  I don’t feel like its my place to judge how “put on” or fake it might be.

Then there’s the other person.  The one who he seems very careful to reserve only for me.  (And our kids, but me to a much higher degree). This person is hyper sensitive to anything that he perceives as rejection, criticism, disrespect, etc.  As soon as he even gets a hint of a slight in any of these areas, he completely changes.  He could be in the most loving, fun, upbeat mood and boom something changes and literally everything about him changes.  His facial expressions, his tone of voice, his eyes go dark and dilated, and he will get cold and go completely silent and sulky. With maybe a few exceptions, he never easily “re-regulates” from this state on his own.  He instantly changes from all those positive qualities to the complete opposite.  He becomes extremely critical and confrontational, berating and attacking.  It’s never “hey i felt kinda disrespected or hurt by that, can we talk about it?” It’s more like “you clearly don’t respect me, you have never taught our kids to respect me, the Bible says men need to feel respected and you never make me feel respected, you obviously couldn’t care less about me and my feelings because if you did you would have (fill in the blank), he says things like, I’m tired of being the only one who makes effort in this marriage and getting nothing in return, so until you start showing me you care about me, things can’t get any better,  or i would not marry you again if i could go back and i don’t know any man who wouldn’t feel same”. These are just a sampling of the direction he takes things. And if I show any defensiveness (because what human wouldn’t??) or even show emotion by crying or have the slightest hint of frustration, it makes everything 1,000 times worse, and things will just escalate.  He will say that he was simply just trying to express his feelings and pour out his heart about how deeply i “wounded” him, and that I need to be more humble and learn to look at myself, like he has learned to (yes he has actually said that to me), and that all i had to do was apologize (even if i did 10 times) he wouldn’t have had to express himself so strongly, and that until i can learn how to hear things about myself we will always have conflicts.

This kind of switch in his behavior has come about at extremely unpredictable times and situations.  It can come about just because for some reason he suddenly feels like I don’t love or care about him. It can happen from just simply disagreeing with him on some mundane thing, like what kind of shrub to put in the front yard. It has happened after my being sick on the couch for days with strep throat and the second I’m up and about he’s suddenly sulking and saying i don’t care whether or not he’s even there. It has happened because I *seemed* more anxious about his family coming to visit than my own. It has happened because he on impulse wanted buy this huge painting for our main living room that did not even remotely match the decor and i voiced that i didn’t really like it. It has happened because he asked me to make a phone call to a specific person about a specific thing and i wasn’t comfortable with doing so. It has happened because i laughed at some innocent things our grown children were joking about and even he would have normally found humorous, but on this day for some reason he didn’t find it funny and expected everyone to stop laughing as soon as he said so. It has come about when he started making really unfair assertions about my parents and their motives for doing certain things and got very pushy with me to agree with him. I told him i didn’t necessarily agree but i heard him and understood where he was coming from but that was not enough. And when i got upset about it he told me i need to work on my anger because he can’t talk to me about anything.  It came about from me being too exhausted for intimacy after a long road trip with two toddlers and a nursing newborn.  And were not talking just a little hurt feelings or frustration and then he’s over it. We’re talking major major reactions that at best are extremely confusing to humiliating and even frightening. 

I cannot tell you how many times i have tried in these situations to muster up the strength to be as validating, understanding, patient and apologetic as possible but felt like his goal was to just vent whatever is inside him and provoke me into a fight so he can justify getting more hostile and aggressive.

 For example, I can recall one time specifically when i responded with “i am really sorry I’m making you feel that way. I don’t want you to feel like i don’t care. maybe we can come up with some ways we can feel more connected and closer, like scheduling more date nights and time alone, etc..” and his response was “i don’t know why i bother expressing my feelings to you when you obviously don’t care. If you actually cared, things would have been different by now” and when i responded “I’m really trying to understand and validate how you feel and find ways to work on things, but when you say things like that I’m not really sure how to respond”. His response “you’re a smart girl and can figure stuff out when you really want to, so figure it out”.  That’s when I calmly got up and said i didn't feel comfortable continuing this conversation and left the room.  He continued acting that way with me for two more days, every time we tried to “talk” about the issue (which was his general feeling like i don’t care about him) until he finally seemed to snap out of his “mood” and suddenly was back to his normal self like nothing ever happened, even though absolutely nothing was discussed productively let alone resolved. Of course i was completely emotionally exhausted and was not feeling as chipper and happy and loving as he suddenly was. I honestly felt like i got hit by a bus, physically and emotionally from trying not to fall prey to his attempts at creating a blow up.  He came to me and informed me that he can only be nice for so long and if i continue to reject his attempts to be nice to me he’s going to have to withdraw to “protect himself”.   He has repeatedly done some version of this routine for our entire 25 year marriage.

It has been so emotionally draining to live with this level of instability and unpredictability for decades.  I honestly feel like I am at the complete mercy of his moods and ways of trying to regulate himself.  I cannot ever seem to find a way to talk to him about any of this that doesn’t illicit extreme defensiveness and cause a terrible blow up.  It’s always the wrong time, the wrong tone, that’s not how it really happened, you’re making me sound like a monster, i could say all this same stuff about you, if i have to listen to this “poison” one more time…etc etc etc.
Since being dx’ed and in therapy for PTSD he will sometimes joke about how up and down he can be, or even make more serious comments about how he doesn’t understand how or why his emotions feel so “all over the place”.  He has even at times hinted that he understands how confusing and difficult it has been for me to be on that roller coaster.  But as soon as i start to talk about how it has affected me and my sense of safety with him, the walls go up and the defensiveness starts.  He has even told me that i need to figure out why i can’t feel close to him because he’s not the reason.

I have become extremely anxious and withdrawn over the years. I have a constant knot in my stomach and for about the last year or so, when i am around him i go numb and feel detached. I feel i have been conditioned to think about everything i do and say through the lens of how he’s going to feel and therefore react. I feel completely controlled and governed by his unstable and unpredictable moods and the labels he’s put on me and narrative he has created about me, which has made me deeply resent him. I try to limit the amount of time i spend around him because just being around him increases the likelihood of something erupting. I am scared to be myself around anyone because so much of what i have said and done over the years has felt so scrutinized, misinterpreted, twisted, or used against me as proof that I’m all these negative and unworthy things and i feel like i can’t trust my own perceptions of how i act and what i say. I hate that i have allowed his voice to completely override my inner voice. That his evaluation of me has become more important than my own.  It’s like there’s this little part of me that can recognize this but the other part that says “what if you’re actually causing the problem??” “What if you haven’t actually tried hard enough??” “What if you actually haven’t been loving or respectful enough??” “What if you have just been too controlling and sensitive and really do take everything the wrong way and you do actually lack humility??”  “What if you just need to be more attentive to him??”  I try to be compassionate and understanding towards that kid who was abused and traumatized but I’m losing my sanity in the process. 

When I see the stable person who he can be around everyone else and even with me and our kids, i wonder if I’m imagining or overthinking things. It is so incredibly difficult to reconcile the two very different sides and since no one else sees it, there’s that little voice that says maybe it’s not actually really happening and I’m just crazy.  Even the sound of his voice when he’s talking to other people in such a pleasant tone turns my stomach because it feels like it doesn’t match what i know to be true.

I am in individual therapy now and i have talked with her about these feelings.
We are working on finding ways to get me out of fight or flight, get that knot out of my stomach and get back into being grounded and feeling safe. And to start to learn trust my inner voice a little bit. Those are the goals for now.
Hoping we can move to setting boundaries and working on codependency at some point.

As you probably know, there is so much more depth and intensity to this than what i have even included.

For anyone still reading this, has anyone experienced this level of incongruency with their BPD person?

  I’m concerned that much of his behavior is not coming from PTSD alone and that trauma therapy is not the only thing he needs.  I know the splitting and outbursts can be caused by BPD. but I am actually most concerned with the gaslighting and other manipulative tactics he uses to essentially avoid taking true responsibility and maintain control.  I know they can be unhealthy tactics that someone had to develop to essentially survive as a child but if he can’t even see (or acknowledge) that he does those things how much hope is there for change?

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[CanBuild91]

Hi All4my4, I'll let the more experienced members of this board provide the advice on therapy etc, but just want to let you know how much I relate to this, how painfully familiar all of these patterns sounds. Seeing them act like the most perfect and kind people in public, while we see a totally different side of them in private, is absolutely maddening. The can't-win scenarios and refusal accept blame for anything, causing us to wonder if we're the problem.  I relate to all of this, and am wishing you the best in changing the dynamics of your marriage. 

[seekingtheway]

Hi there,

Welcome to the boards, and thank you for sharing your story with us.

I can relate to a lot of the dynamics that you describe. I was only with my ex for three years (on and off), but he was definitely more the Quiet BPD type. And he has a very similar community face, and has a beautiful gentle, caring, compassionate, loving side to him that I deeply connected with and loved very much. He had the ability to be mature and thoughtful and considered about things and was reading books on growth and self-development and went to therapy etc. In many ways, he was my ideal man.

But then there was another side to him that was at complete odds to that. And it would come from nowhere. The intense sensitivity to any type of dissent, criticism or rejection also existed, and things could do a 180 within a matter of seconds. We'd be enjoying an amazing day or moment together, and then he'd perceive something I'd said as negative (even if it wasn't) and the reaction would be intense. And if I tried to push to resolve it, he would usually just end up shutting down completely, leave for the day or even threaten to break up.

He also had an unstable sense of self, and I came to accept that he did have almost two sides to his personality that appear to be in complete opposition to each other. It's very difficult to hold those two versions of him in one hand, because it doesn't feel congruent and my brain desperately wanted that congruency in order to feel safe. But it helped to understand the mechanics of BPD and understand that this is literally how it presents.

I definitely lost myself in the process of trying to keep my ex happy, keep things peaceful, and maintain the connection at all costs. We broke up in the end and I think that was for the best because it wasn't going to work for me, but looking back at our times of conflict, I realise that defending my position and trying to get him to see sense almost never got me to a good place - the times that I simply validated his feelings and asked more questions about how he felt, and encouraged him to keep talking and keep telling me so I fully understood where he was coming from are usually the interactions where he relented the quickest and the conflict blew over. I wish that I'd learned how to do boundaries and validation properly while in the relationship, even if it just meant that I didn't lose touch with myself so much.

It sounds like you're already using a lot of validation and soothing statements, but he is pushing you and testing you to see if you really mean it, and you are (understandably) tiring from it and needing to walk away, and in the meantime he snaps out of it and expects you to follow suit, whereas you are feeling exhausted, anxious, hurt and on edge, and I'm guessing you would prefer he then came and addressed and repaired the situation with you rather than pretending it never happened, but then in the times you do try and repair, you feel like you are being unfairly blamed? Is that an accurate reflection of what's happening? Would it help to workshop one of the scenarios you mention and try and coming up with a different way of handling it?

I have become extremely anxious and withdrawn over the years. I have a constant knot in my stomach and for about the last year or so, when i am around him i go numb and feel detached.

This is often what happens as the nervous system becomes increasingly more burdened and under stress. Often what happens in the beginning is that our nervous system activates and we fight back in whatever way we can to resolve the situation. But over time, if the stress continues and we can't find safety within our body, we go deeper into stress and the nervous system begins to take you into a more shut down state. This is when dissociation starts happening and you become more foggy. It's the body's way of protecting itself.

I think one of the greatest things you can do and are doing is getting into individual therapy and working on finding some solid ground to stand on within yourself. It's important to feel that you trust your own insticts and perceptions, which you may not be feeling much at all if you're having your reality questioned and distorted. But you'll need that trust so that you can communicate with more strength, set better boundaries and be more sure of them. Journalling, therapy, time that is designed to restore your nervous system, writing here... all these sorts of things might just help you to re-build your confidence a little bit, so you can get to a point where you feel clearer about what you need to do.

[Pook075]

Hello and welcome to the family.  I can also relate to so much of what you said and felt.  My marriage ended after 23 years in the same circumstances, with the same levels of intensity and waiting for the "other shoe to drop".  And i also second guessed myself the entire way- maybe I was the monster.  Maybe it was all my fault.  After all, why doesn't everyone else see the same things I see?

The simple answer is that BPD's lash out at those they're closest to, and hide their emotions from everyone else.  Quiet BPD does feel correct, although none of us here are qualified to say that.  Just my uneducated opinion since my ex was quiet BPD and our adult daughter was traditional BPD.  The wife hid everything and processed it internally, the kid erupted constantly.  That's the only real difference since everything else was the same.

Just know that this is not your fault, and there are ways to improve your relationship once you learn to validate his feelings while staying clear of his accusations.  I know that sounds impossible, but the more you argue over the invalid, the more it enables him to be that second person. 

So just stop arguing and become very predictable in those situations.  Tell him you love him and you're there for him, but you can't argue over this right now.  If he wants to talk, then listen.  If he wants to blame, walk away.  Be very, very predictable in your patterns.

[once removed]

you love a very difficult person  

bpd and "difficult person" are synonymous, but bpd doesnt mean the absence of the ability to self reflect (though it may be limited), or the absence of the ability to be collaborative in a marriage (though again, it may be limited).

your husband sounds extremely limited in both regards.

i say that, not to make you feel hopeless, or suggest that your situation is, but to suggest that you paint the picture of a person who is very resistant to change. really, really high walls. cant talk to the guy.

the tools that you can learn here are about coping with living with a difficult person. often times, when we affect them, it results in a more stable, loving, and validating environment. there will always be challenges, in the best of cases, but thats the goal. its that kind of environment where people with bpd thrive. often, that leads to change. often, it leads to greater (though usually still imperfect) relationship security, and trust.

for example, pwbpd are more likely to be collaborative, and open to constructive criticism, in that environment, and particularly in times of calm.

it sounds like you found the right time. you found the right words. he cant hear it without the walls going up. and the cross with them  

and trying to find new ways to be heard, to break through to them, well, that can become part of the eggshell dance. when youre able to visualize his limitations and accept them (not agree with them, and not not hope they will change, but recognize they are a part of him), it can be strangely freeing, and it can do wonders for your nervous system, because its fighting a losing battle.

understanding the tools means knowing not only when and how to use them, but intuitively, why. validation is an important life skill, but its not a silver bullet to change someones perspective. there arent such things as magic words.

but the "when" is important too, and depends a great deal on your loved one, and all of the unique things about your relationship individually, the language you speak together, etc.

when your husband gets into bully mode is not the time for validation. it just feeds it, i suspect, because your words and demeanor are a bit like a mirror that reveal how difficult and ridiculous hes being. so he talks down to you "youre a smart girl, you can figure it out".

anecdotally, and upon reflection, people with bpd will often tell you that they felt so much chaos inside that they wanted the other person to feel it too. that they wanted the environment to match their intensity. that the fact that the other person was calm made them feel even more intense.

so the good news is, you dont have to fight that battle when you see your husband going past The Point of No Return (our loved ones all have one, we all know it when we see it). its like i said about the tools being about coping. its about finding what does work, or what doesnt make things worse, or failing both of those, limiting the fallout.

that can mean a lot of things, in the context of your marriage. it may mean figuring out a way to exit the conversations, that achieves one of those three things. it may involve perspective, where you visualize the place of insecurity that his words/actions are coming from, and are able to lessen their impact on you.

but agreeability is not your husbands strong suit. i hope that that improves, and you should too, but accept that that is who he is for now and the foreseeable future, and then you may find that you have more options than you ever realized.

your husband may have a great difficulty hearing you. that is a lot to cope with in a marriage. in addition to just navigating your marriage, you need healthy outlets. you need a support system ( ) . you need the validation of your experience and to know that yes, this is incredibly difficult stuff, and we can all feel your exhaustion. you need a therapist   . and it sounds like you have a plan. things can truly start to look up from here.

We are working on finding ways to get me out of fight or flight, get that knot out of my stomach and get back into being grounded and feeling safe. And to start to learn trust my inner voice a little bit. Those are the goals for now.

this strikes me as priority number one. if youre beaten down, everything else is far harder, or impossible, and it can get worse, and i think thats where most of us found/find ourselves.

i would also recommend, as part of your support system, the book Loving Someone with BPD by Shari Manning. its "long term" stuff (how to build that environment). i would make my mental health my primary focus, while also getting feedback on how to navigate the day to day stuff in the short term, and also having the long term stuff in my back pocket while i regained my footing.