Manipulation and regulation

[cats4justice]

Hello everyone,

I am working through the patterns I participated in with my partner wBpD. Things are going well enough, outbursts are cyclical which I tell myself I won’t stay through another one, and yet I seem to always stay. What has me ruminating is the consistency of my own reaction. I see the signs. I feel the anger coming on. I try to manage it. And inevitably the situation explodes and I say I won’t be part of this any more, but the calm returns as if they are a savior and I stay when everything in my bones tells me to go.

The last time this happened was two weeks ago. I had an important leadership talk to a group of women coming up. My partner was in the email thread confirming the date and time. While we were discussing it about 5 days prior to the event, I mixed up the date in our discussion. I figured it out and apologized profusely for getting it wrong, but that wasn’t enough. She exploded. Sent text after text to me while I was working. Kept yelling at me saying I was Chao’s and didn’t know how to respect her time. Compared my mix up with her calling me a F-ing c over and over again. Said she wasn’t coming to the talk and hoped I would be embarrassed because of it. That I would have to explain my stupidity to the organizers.

I said ok and agreed that her not going was for the best because it was my error. That I would handle everything. I also said that the way she was speaking to me - calling me names, and sending repeated messages to my office and yelling at me for three days was wrong. That she couldn’t speak to me that way.

Here’s the kicker - she shows up to the talk and says I should be grateful. Says someone had to save this relationship and it had to be her. I was angry with her. Had to pull myself together and give this talk. And then per my usual pattern, I apologize. I thank her for coming. But every time I do this, I feel like I am losing more and more of myself. I feel weak and I retreat from her. I am present but not at the same time. I don’t share my feelings for fear of her using them against me, and I don’t love the way I want to knowing this will all happen again.

I don’t want to keep doing this. I also don’t want to see her hurting. I think this is a me problem.