Reactive abuse and physical violence

[Ashesanddust]

Hey ya'll. I know i have been posting a lot. I am having a hard time reconciling everything. I have been thinking through so much of the relationship. Examining pieces and fights.  My actions and responses to him.
There were 2 times that things got really out of control and I slapped him in the face. I feel horrible about it. I know violence is never the answer and there is no excuse.

To give you a better idea of the situation, the first time, we had been fighting nonstop for a couple days and this one day was especially bad. Probably about 5 hours of accusations and cruel words. It was late and I had been trying to go to bed for a while. He had the tv all the way up, all the lights on, was trying to push me out of the bed. He decided I was hiding something and insisted on going through my phone. He went really far back and wound up finding a sexual message I had sent to a man about 2 years before my bpd partner and i had even met. He started laying into me about it. At one point, he called me a stupid slut. At that point, I snapped. I followed him into the living room and said what did you call me? He got this incredibly malicious look on his face and said you heard me you disgusting slut. I slapped him. I left. I went to a friend's and fell apart. I told her how horrible i felt about my response. She thought it was warranted but I still do not.

The other time was when we were broken up. At this point, he had ignored and abandoned me when I was going through a miscarriage with his child, he had been on a smear campaign telling people that I raped him, he had called me every name possible, berated me while I was having panic attacks, left me alone for hours after tearing me apart while he would disappear into the night, would be upset if i tried to talk about it later when I desperately needed to, constantly blamed me for his suicidal ideation, held knives to his throat and his chest, slammed his head into walls, tore apart his apartment, pushed me to my breaking point over and over. I also have cptsd and he would trigger me very badly. Anyway, he had been calling nonstop for two nights and I had been ignoring him because typically, answering when he was like that would lead to more fighting. But i was concerned that maybe he was hurting himself. So on the third day, i reached out to check on him. Nothing. I called and texted a couple times throughout the day and no response, no read receipts. I was so stressed out all day thinking he had actually hurt himself so when I could, I went to check on him. He had another girl over, they were making out. He had turned his read receipts off. I lost it, called him a liar, slapped him. It was stupid and awful. He had spent all this time telling me that i was the only one for him and he couldn't even imagine thinking about someone else and there he was kidding this woman that he had claimed he never felt much about in the first place.

I have never hit anyone outside of the rough housing my siblings and I did as young kids. I feel so incredibly guilty about it. I know there is never an excuse for physical violence.
I guess my question is, have any of ya'll ever been pushed to that point? Is reactive abuse a thing in that way? How do you cope with doing that to the person you love? How do you cope with knowing you slapped a mentally ill person?

[ForeverDad]

Rather than viewing a slap as outright violence, I would agree with your friend that it was warranted in the aspect that a behavioral boundary was crossed and a response was natural.  Essentially, a response was appropriate and a slap is not quite aggressive.  We have observed that people with BPD traits (pwBPD) repeatedly push boundaries, especially when they sense weakness or wavering.

Looking back, yes you regret it.  But a response to poor behavior was needed.  Why?  Because pwBPD resist proper behavior boundaries, especially with those closest to them and especially in private scenarios.  That's why boundaries are for us... our response to poor behavior.

Since tit for tat can escalate tensions, one possible choice for a Boundary (I will leave when poor behavior erupts) is to exit the area, go visit a friend, walk in the park, go to a gym, go grocery shopping, whatever, and return once the other has reset.  This of course is not a fix nor does it succeed in all scenarios, but it does allow time and some distance to - hopefully - calm down the immediate incident.

[Ashesanddust]

Yeah I tried to just remove myself as often as I could. It was not always possible. Or he would follow me and not let up. Still no excuse but I appreciate you helping me feel a little less monstress about my actions. Or at least understand the why a little bit more. I got to a point where i just had no threshold for the constant fighting. You're right, he did not perceive or respect boundaries. I still just feel so ashamed.

[ForeverDad]

Another point to consider... Consider the contrast between you and your ex.  You learn and are truly seeking to do better with your life whereas that man is locked into his cycles of dysfunctional, even abusive, behavior.

Repeat... You have learned.  Odds are he may never learn.

BPD is a disorder most impacting to close relationships.  He may never get past his issues and the emotional baggage of the relationship.  Maybe a therapist can help him, if he would start and apply meaningful therapy, but reality says even that is probably unlikely.

[hotchip]

Ashesanddust, I'm so sorry you're going through this. You sound like me just a few months ago, and other people on this site and elsewhere very kindly and gently helped me through the process. It does get better, I promise.

I do not believe either of the situations you have described constituted abuse enacted by you against your partner.

To my mind, abuse is one person in a relationship using power over the other to harm them, and to entrench a dynamic where one person dominates and the other is subservient. Usually abuse is cyclical and ongoing, but one-off acts can be abusive if the intensity of harm and disparity of power is large enough. For example, punching your girlfriend in the face is abusive even if it only happens once.

What you describe does not meet that threshold for me. Slapping someone after they have viciously insulted you for hours using horrible misogynistic words, invaded your privacy by going through your phone, physically assaulted and intimidated you by trying to push you out of bed... this is a *minor* physical altercation. You were not seeking to dominate or entrench a dynamic where you had power over your partner. You were expressing a completely natural, normal and in my view, proportional reaction - in the face of a sustained threat to your physical and psychological safety.

Similarly, your partner's actions in terms of threatening suicide, holding up knives, smearing and berating you, etc etc - this is not the behaviour of someone who is being victimised and subservient. Far from it! Your response was, again, an understandable reaction to someone who was behaving violently towards *you*. Sometimes when we are being threatened and harmed, we lash out. It's not great, but it happens.

Most people think that violence is generally bad, but make an exception for self-defence. While your actions might not be perfect, they can't be judged in the same way as if you had, say, walked up to a helpless little child who had done nothing to you and slapped them. It was probably not helpful action to respond by slapping him, as it did not solve or de-escalate the situation. But it wasn't an unprovoked act of aggression and I do not think you need to beat yourself up over it.

I had a very similar situation - if you scroll back through these threads you'll find a post of mine, 'what's the use in calling it abuse?' - it might help you to read that.

Sending care.
 

[CC43]

There were 2 times that things got really out of control and I slapped him in the face. I feel horrible about it. I know violence is never the answer and there is no excuse.

Hi there,

I'm sorry that things have gotten out of control in the relationship with your pwBPD.  I know you know that violence isn't the answer, and that you feel awful.

Here's the thing though.  You know you were wrong, and you know there's no excuse.  You let things get out of control, probably because you were trying really, really hard to make the relationship work.  And your pwBPD takes advantage of that, manipulating you.  Your mistake in my opinion was to let him get away with too much.  The irony is that YOU feel bad about it, when objectively, the root cause of the blow-ups is the pwBPD's atrocious behavior.

I've noticed with the pwBPD in my life, that sometimes it appears that she's manufacturing a scene, in order to provoke another person into doing something they might regret.  Typically the scene involves over-the-top behavior on her part, actions that always seem disproportionate to the situation--the emotional outbursts, the cruelty of insults, the duration of a tantrum, the accusations, the physicality, the dire threats, the refusal to participate as a collaborative/rational person, whatever.  Sometimes it seems to me that her unspoken goal is to get the other person to crack.  And when they do, typically with a reaction that's minor compared to what she's done just moments before, well, she pounces all over that.  Suddenly, she focuses on the latest offense, and then doubles down.  She shifts into full-on blame mode.

In the most extreme form of this tactic, the pwBPD will completely flip the script.  Their version of events will highlight your small reaction, while ignoring their own behavior leading up to the break.  Sometimes this is psychlogical manipulation strategy is known as DARVO, short for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.  Typically the result is that YOU end up apologizing for your behavior, when the behavior of the pwBPD was worse and is what started the debacle.

At the core of this strategy is blame-shifting.  In my experience with pwBPD, the victim mindset is pervasive, as is the inability to take any responsibility for their actions.  After all, a pwBPD is convinced that others are causing their distress.  So this is not only an EXCUSE to act out and be mean to you, but also an attempt to get a rise out of you, so they can pin absolutely everything on you.  They feed on that reaction while blaming you for everything.  By blaming you, they feel increasingly justified in treating you badly, while they generally won't feel any responsibility.  My guess is that you never, ever get an apology from a pwBPD.  Does that ring true?

What to do about all this?  I think you have to recognize when you're being provoked earlier, and leave the scene earlier.  It comes down to boundaries.  You don't let people treat you like crap because you deserve better.  When they start crapping all over you, no matter how sorry you feel for them, that doesn't give them the right.  You leave the scene and only engage when they are treating you better.  I know this is easier said than done.  I'm working on it all the time.  I've found it helps to have a Plan A and a Plan B for certain situations.  For me, that usually means creating an "adult time out," time and space away from the pwBPD.  Usually that involves going to another room, but sometimes it might mean taking a walk in nature or getting out of the house--a quick errand, a stop at the library, parking in a tranquil spot.

Just my two cents.