Trying to figure out how to interact and keep boundaries

[JsMom]

My swubpd has been struggling with something these last 2 weeks or longer. He hasn't shared what it is nor asked for help or advice. My pattern h :cursing:as been to ask him if he's OK- if there's anyway I can help.From there I'm in the middle of whatever is causing the pain. I don't want to be in that place. I do want him to know I'm here for him as support not the fix.
 I don't have the same dynamic with my younger son who lives with him. He and I can discuss whatever w/o tension or him having big reactions. He doesn't have bpd.
Yesterday  I called my swubpd to let him know my FB was hacked so he wouldn't get upset by what was posted.  His response was " I don't care what was on you FB , I'm dealing with so much right now , I don't want to hear about that"  He was holding it together.  Shortly after he text saying I'm sorry about your FB. I love you. I hope you have a good day.     I decided not to try to explain the reason I called, I text back Thanks I hope your day is good and you can get some rest. (I felt that was not caring but I wasn't sure what else to say)
So believe it or not, my son 'just' called. He said he wanted to say Hi and see how I'm doing. I told him and asked how he was doing. He went from calm to amped up. Saying- I am under so much pressure- I never want to talk about how I'm doing. Don't ask me. I called for a break.... I said OK, I won't ask and I started to tell him things in my life - what I was doing ... other trivia. He was calm and responded, asked questions.... Told me he loved me and to have a good evening.   I guess I got my answer to stay at the  surface
Any thoughts????  BTW, I went on an overnight sisters getaway and I let myself have fun and I beat back worry and fear thoughts.
Also I'm reading a great book by Margalis Fjelstad called Stop Caretaking the Border Line or Narcissist.  How to end the drama.

Our objective is to better understand the struggles our child faces and to learn the skills to improve our relationship and provide a supportive environment and also improve on our own emotional responses, attitudes and effectiveness as a family leaders

[JsMom]

After I posted I started thinking more about about the conversations I have with my son. At first I thought he uses me to feel better. That's the depth of our conversations. A call so I can distract him or a call to calm him or a call to rescue him. Yes, he says he loves me and asks about my well being and my husband's... Maybe that's a good as it can be at least for now. I do get calm interactions which is nice. Maybe it's being grateful for the relationship we do have.

[Notwendy]

I think it's some trial and error finding what works best. You have seen that keeping the conversation light on your end seems to help. Still, your son's emotions are his- it's possible some calls he's less controlled than others, but you managed your side of things.

It's not possible to know what someone else is thinking but my own explanation was that if BPD mother had difficulty managing her own feelings, then adding mine to the interactions would escalate the situation, so I kept it light on my end.

This did have a "one way" feel to the relationship but - if this was what she could handle, it's that way anyway, if I didn't keep it light. My own goal was to reduce the drama, at least what I could do on my side of it.

It's hard to know what anyone means when they use the term "love" because, feelings are subjective. With BPD, what they feel can be in the moment and feelings can change, but this may be where your son is at- it's what he can do. However, if he asks for something like money, be prepared for him to feel angry in the moment and he may say something different in that moment, keep in mind this is his feelings in the moment, too.

You can love your son in a different manner, love that doesn't waver with his moods. Sometimes love is tough love. That means acting in his best interest, even if he doesn't like it or feel it as "love" in that moment. Love is saying "no" to cookies for dinner, even if your toddler is having a meltdown and telling you that you are a poopy face. It's holding a boundary and not enabling your grown son, even when he's raging at you on the phone. His calm "I love you" moments in between are the high points, they are real to him, so appreciate them when you have them. Stay calm and steady during the meltdowns. It's still a relationship.

[CC43]

His response was " I don't care what was on you FB , I'm dealing with so much right now , I don't want to hear about that"  He was holding it together . . . So believe it or not, my son 'just' called. He said he wanted to say Hi and see how I'm doing. I told him and asked how he was doing. He went from calm to amped up. Saying- I am under so much pressure- I never want to talk about how I'm doing. Don't ask me. I called for a break.... I said OK, I won't ask and I started to tell him things in my life - what I was doing ... other trivia. He was calm and responded, asked questions.... Told me he loved me and to have a good evening.   I guess I got my answer to stay at the  surface

Great job!  While I get the sense you'd want to have "normal," two-sided conversations with your son, it seems to me he is being fairly direct by saying, "I can't handle talking about my life because I'm feeling overwhelmed, and I don't want to hear about any of your problems right now, because that will stress me out even more, and I'm liable to explode."  Basically he's asking you to avoid any triggering topics when he's feeling overwhelmed.  That to me seems like some emotional control, because he resisted the temptation to lash out or dredge up some unrelated grievance and make you his punching bag, and yet, he stayed in the conversation.  Would you agree?  Even better, it seems to me that he recognized that he was a bit rude to you, and he tried to make it up to you by calling you back and wishing you a good evening!

Now, I understand that this might feel less than optimal for you, because YOU desire some closeness and communication, and you don't want to be constantly walking on eggshells, worrying that if you ask your son something as simple as, "How are you?", that he'll go down a negative conversation spiral.  Trust me, I've been exactly where you are right now with the pwBPD in my life, thinking that if a "How are you?" is triggering, it's extremely difficult to have a conversation at all.  There were many times I'd say something like, "You look nice, how was your day?", and all I got was a glare from my pwBPD as she escaped to her bedroom.  My interpretation?  She felt like a question about her day was an inquisition, tinged with thinly veiled harsh judgment, because she knew she wasn't doing what she was supposed to be doing during her day.  Her coping technique was avoidance--escaping the conversation to her room.  This was probably better than self-destructing into an angry, petulant mess.  And in all the years I've lived with her (more than a decade), she's asked me about my life only once or twice.  In fact, I think that's a hint for some of her issues relating to other people:  she shows practically zero interest in anyone else, because all her mental bandwidth is occupied with thinking about herself and her ongoing "traumas".  When I witness her converse with other people, the conversations seem to fizzle out quickly, because she answers questions with one-word answers, and she doesn't throw the "conversation ball" back.  And then she wonders why she can't seem to connect with other people.  Trust me, I've tried to engage with her, and it's like pulling teeth.  The only "safe" topic is basically TV, and that's a tough one because I don't really watch much TV and don't have the same streaming services she has.

I guess that's why the general advice here would be to keep things light and superficial, and let your son take the conversation lead.  Also, remember that this is probably temporary.  If your son is feeling overwhelmed right now but actually holds things together and pushes through, he might eventually discover he can handle more than he thought he could, and he'd bolster his confidence and identity as a competent, independent dad/son.  Then a greater percentage of conversations might feel "normal."

[Pook075]

With my BPD daughter, most of the time when she calls it's two specific reasons:

1)  To ask for help or money
2)  To talk about anything random

I get why she'd call for #1 if she can't pay a bill or whatever.  But the random, senseless talk leaves me perplexed as well.  Recently it was about how the smurfs could have a whole villiage of smurfs but only one girl.  And I'm thinking, "It's a cartoon for kids from 40 years ago....spoiler alert....it's not for adults to contemplate."  Of course I didn't say that, but often I'm left scratching my head what we're actually doing on the phone.

Like you said, we rarely talk about real life stuff.  If I bring up something I'm doing or going through, the topic is quickly changed to something meaningless.  My guess would be that it still feels like a connection even though everything being said is superficial.  And if that helps her, I guess I'll talk about the smurfs sometimes.

[CC43]

With my BPD daughter, most of the time when she calls it's two specific reasons:

1)  To ask for help or money
2)  To talk about anything random

I get why she'd call for #1 if she can't pay a bill or whatever.  But the random, senseless talk leaves me perplexed as well.  Recently it was about how the smurfs could have a whole villiage of smurfs but only one girl. 

Hi Pook,

I agree, that the overwhelming majority of conversations with my pwBPD are to ask for help or money.

I suspect I can translate the Smurfs conversation for you.  My guess is your daughter is expressing some unresolved grievances and maybe feelings of rejection and self-doubt, possibly because she feels ongoing "rejection" by a society which used to have one-dimensional expectations for women, and she feels she doesn't fulfill those expectations, so she never really "fit in."  I can say that I felt angered by the Smurfs when I was growing up, because the fact there was only one female in the village, who was portrayed as pretty and in need of rescue, was a message that girls are mostly unimportant and valued mainly for their looks.  It wasn't just the Smurfs, but also the muppets (Miss Piggy was the only female puppet that I can recall, and surely the only one who primped in front of a mirror), the original Sesame Street--with ZERO female puppets that I can recall--plus Bugs Bunny and even the Superfriends, where Wonder Woman was the sole heroine.  This trend continued into high school, when we read tons of classic books, but the only interesting female character who wasn't a passing date, prostitite or barely-mentioned mother was Lady Macbeth, and she plotted murder!  Many classics have zero female characters:  Lord of the Flies, Old Man and the Sea, The Red Badge of Courage, The Hobbit, Treasure Island, Moby Dick.  I personally found it frustrating to write umpteen essays about "coming of age" books with no meaningful female characters I could remotely identify with.  The unspoken message was that my gender (and by extension, I myself) was uninteresting and unimportant, especially if we did not fulfill conventional expectations of being pretty, meek and/or motherly.  I recognize that things have changed massively in this millennium, and that scholastic reading lists have evolved, but there's still that lingering sting of growing up in a sexist environment.  It might mean that your daughter thinks that she's not conventionally pretty, and couldn't fulfill society's expectations for women that were subliminally messaged to her when she was growing up through media and education.  She might feel she has work extra hard to get attention and/or feel accepted.  Maybe she still feels invisible, rejected or alienated--by society, by her friends, maybe by her family.

Maybe I can translate it like this:  Traditional kids' media reinforce the notion that if you're not a pretty girl, then you're invisible in society.  Girls and women in classic cartoons and books generally weren't featured for their character, their abilities, their good deeds, their clevernes, their humor, their friendships, whatever.  They were the token, pretty love interests and one-dimensional.  Thus it felt to me like I was expected to be a cookie-cutter girl.  One response to that was to break the mold entirely.  I feel like I did that, to some extent in my life, and it was liberating.  But not "conforming" can come at a cost, because parents and some others close to me generally don't accept it, as my existence didn't meet their 1950s-style expectations.

Just my two cents.