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I'd like to hear other peoples thoughts on this. To me it feels like a desperation without the actual realisation of what's going on for him. I think it would feel different if it had come from him without the help of AI! Also if he was saying 'I've realised I've been awful and there are some things I need to address in myself".
Thank you in advance for anyone's thoughts on this. I was kind of expecting this turnaround to happen once we were separated which would have felt easier to deal with!
I'll tell you my thoughts, and provide my experience of going through this very thing below:
Thoughts: Well, as they say, talk is cheap. If you had everything you wanted from a relationship: compliant partner, security, leeway to do what you wanted at their expense, etc. and the other person deigned to complain, what would you do? Assume that you're like your partner. First you'd do the easiest thing: use the same verbal and emotional threats that always worked before. Then, escalate... show them how bad it can get if they don't go back to being a doormat. Then if that doesn't work, okay, make some minor verbal concessions, reassure them, etc. That doesn't work, maybe promise therapy. Whatever to get them to back down, and then slowly start to work on convincing them how wrong they were to put you through this, how much you love them, how they should never stand up for themselves like that again because it's so unfair, it stresses you out, they should actually get therapy to learn to deal with their emotions, etc. etc. UGH!
Experience: I went through this twice...
first when I nearly got divorced about a year before it finally ended. we agreed divorce was on the table and both saw attorneys. She freaked out, called all my family members, begged me to reconsider, apologized for her behavior, and promised she was going to start therapy and "work on" herself.
I gave in because I considered the cost & effort of divorce & decided I didn't want to go through it then. although I really didn't believe she would actually change, I hoped at least we'd get
some improvement.
That lasted about a week, before she started "re-writing history," telling me I was "too emotional," pinning all the responsibility for our near-divorce on ME, not on her threats and demands (she had been refusing to allow my family for a visit, and told me, well, screamed at me really, that if I wasn't going to accept that, I should divorce her! She
LITERALLY was the source of the divorce threat!).
Things went back to "normal" later that month... i.e. a big fight over nothing every other week, along with a week or so of silent treatment before we quietly made up. This pattern continued for another year, during which time we had our third and final abortive attempt at marital counseling. This attempt ended when she got angry with the therapist's questions toward her, screamed at the therapist and refused to go to more counseling.
Second time I went through the manipulative attempts to keep our marriage intact was when our divorce started. I ended our marriage a few months later, after another pointless blow-up fight. This time, she attempted to do the same thing, only less nicely than before: she played hard ball longer, acting like I should be the one to come crawling back. When I moved out and filed for divorce, she realized it was really happening, she started acting sad and remorseful (though not accepting responsibility for it). The next stage was her begging me to come back and call it off, promising to work on herself, and saying that if we went to counseling again, she promised not to say anything or yell at the therapist, as though that was the whole problem...
I ignored all this. She was awful and contentious throughout the divorce process, but did very little about it. Once she started getting bills for her attorney's fees, she dialed down the fighting a lot; making baseless accusations is easy and cheap normally, but in court you have to back it up with evidence, & paying your attorney to collect and formally categorize that evidence gets really expensive. If the pwBPD doesn't have a spare $100,000 to throw around, they get quiet (at least in court proceedings) really quickly.
