Can this be possible.

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

She comes to visit. Spent a nice couple of days together. Decide to do a picnic. I let her pack the picnic at my place so I can’t be accused of controlling or not listening etc.( yes I’m an expert now at accommodating ) we drive to the beach singing and laughing …so far so good. Drive around. Looking where to set up. She suddenly turns to me and says. ‘ I don’t want to do this’. I know the tone, the energy, the emptiness and the look all too well. Annoyed but silently I drive home , empty the car. Day ruined. She leaves. Says she has to go. Says never wants to see me again. I tell her I can’t do this either.
A few weeks later she is back ( silly me) and I ask her about ruining  such a fun day. She doesn’t remember why she felt the way she did or what triggered it, didn’t care that it hurt and annoyed the heck out of me , but said her feelings are always right.  Then dismissed it as not important by her lack of interest in it. Like it was a trivial thing.
Is this what they do. This is bpd isn’t it ? She isn’t diagnosed. But I’m pretty sure she has it. A psychologist once told me you have to love them perfectly. In every way in their eyes. One percent not perfectly and you are done.
It make me feel I’m going mad.
Any advice or comments will be appreciated 

[Prouncer]

She comes to visit. Spent a nice couple of days together. Decide to do a picnic. I let her pack the picnic at my place so I can’t be accused of controlling or not listening etc.( yes I’m an expert now at accommodating ) we drive to the beach singing and laughing …so far so good. Drive around. Looking where to set up. She suddenly turns to me and says. ‘ I don’t want to do this’. I know the tone, the energy, the emptiness and the look all too well. Annoyed but silently I drive home , empty the car. Day ruined. She leaves. Says she has to go. Says never wants to see me again. I tell her I can’t do this either.
A few weeks later she is back ( silly me) and I ask her about ruining  such a fun day. She doesn’t remember why she felt the way she did or what triggered it, didn’t care that it hurt and annoyed the heck out of me , but said her feelings are always right.  Then dismissed it as not important by her lack of interest in it. Like it was a trivial thing.
Is this what they do. This is bpd isn’t it ? She isn’t diagnosed. But I’m pretty sure she has it. A psychologist once told me you have to love them perfectly. In every way in their eyes. One percent not perfectly and you are done.
It make me feel I’m going mad.
Any advice or comments will be appreciated 

[Notwendy]

I would add to that comment about loving perfectly- it is also possible that perfect isn't attainable, because the issues involve the other person's feelings. We can't control what someone else thinks or feels.

Pefect isn't attainable because, no human is perfect. Any two people are going to have differences and disagreements at some point. In an emotionally healthy relationship- conflict isn't all the time but when there is, each person has the ability to resolve them.

It is confusing when this turn around is out of the blue- you think things are going well, and then suddenly not. Why this happens, it's hard to know what is going on with the other person- but what you do know is that it did happen. Maybe it's BPD, maybe not- but whatever it is, you saw it happen.

Why she doesn't remember it? It can be dissociation- where the person is so flooded with feelings they have difficulty recalling what happened, or it can be denial- where they compartmentalized it, or shame avoidance. However, not remembering or not being accountable is problematic in a relationship.

What you can control is your own choice. If you are in this section, then you are moving on from the relationship. That you wonder, question yourself, that is a normal response to this confusing behavior. It may not be possible to know why she does that. It may not even be about you or anything you did or didn't do. Sometimes there's no closure with this, other than the closure you give yourself.

[Pook075]

I had very similar experiences with my BPD ex wife.  If I said something rude, I was a terrible person.  If she said something rude, it was because I was a terrible person and she was the victim protecting herself.  And if I mentioned my feelings, she'd simply say, "That's not a thing...that's not real."

Once we broke up (after 23+ years), I had several of the same back and forth expeirences.  She'd come home, we'd go to do something, then she wanted to leave again.  Nothing happened bad betwen us, mind you, so the reasoning was all in her head and not based on our reality.  She just checked out and refused to let herself even consider that she was making a mistake.

Why?  I don't know, but if I had to guess I'd think its because she put herself through so much mental anguish over deciding whether to stay or leave, to convince herself that I was a complete monster, that she couldn't see a way back from it.  She'd say things like, "If i come home and decide to leave again, then I'm never coming back!" 

And I'd think, huh.  So you want to come home, but you know that eventually you'll want to leave and if that happens, then you'd never come back another time.  That's like grandmaster chess planning, only without using an ounce of logic.  Absolutely nothing about her thought process had anything to do with me- it was all her unregulated emotions.

Oh, and she was having an affair...that's the nugget that we learned later.  So it REALLY wasn't about me at all, even when she said terrible things about me to justify her secret hookups.  It was all projection.

[PeteWitsend]

... A psychologist once told me you have to love them perfectly. In every way in their eyes. ...

I disagree with this statement & way of looking at it, because this implies that the burden & issue is with the non-disordered partner, and there's something the non-disordered partner could do to resolve the issue.  But there isn't; the issue is entirely within the mind of the disordered partner... whether it's BPD, or some other personality disorder, or some combination of both.

The "Black Hole" analogy is more apt; no matter what you do, the BPD-er will demand more, because it's not about getting any demand met, it's having you chase them.  Their deep-seated insecurity always needs more; they always need to see you pursuing them, because the second you're not, their fears of abandonment kick in. 

I experienced this first hand for years; BPDxw's demands were either impossible to fulfill, vague or contradictory.  Fights were not intended to actually resolve anything, but a means to create the constant attention she needed.  Indeed, during our last abortive attempt at marriage counseling, this issue was brought out when I presented some fairly objective demands to continue the marriage: stop fighting in front of kids and stop accusing me of infidelity.  When the counselor asked her what I could do in return, she said "he needs to love me enough."  When the counselor pointed out that was a subjective standard, and impossible to comply with, BPDxw started yelling at the counselor and refused to go back. 

[maxsterling]

Typical.  The pendulum can swing to the other extreme almost instantly.  And for no reason that makes sense.  Could be the noise you made while breathing.  Could be that you scratched your leg, or your voice didn't sound right. 

As wendy said - perfection is impossible, because perfection itself is a flaw in their mind. 

[Rowdy]

I disagree with this statement & way of looking at it, because this implies that the burden & issue is with the non-disordered partner, and there's something the non-disordered partner could do to resolve the issue.  But there isn't; the issue is entirely within the mind of the disordered partner... whether it's BPD, or some other personality disorder, or some combination of both.

The "Black Hole" analogy is more apt; no matter what you do, the BPD-er will demand more, because it's not about getting any demand met, it's having you chase them.  Their deep-seated insecurity always needs more; they always need to see you pursuing them, because the second you're not, their fears of abandonment kick in. 

I experienced this first hand for years; BPDxw's demands were either impossible to fulfill, vague or contradictory.  Fights were not intended to actually resolve anything, but a means to create the constant attention she needed.  Indeed, during our last abortive attempt at marriage counseling, this issue was brought out when I presented some fairly objective demands to continue the marriage: stop fighting in front of kids and stop accusing me of infidelity.  When the counselor asked her what I could do in return, she said "he needs to love me enough."  When the counselor pointed out that was a subjective standard, and impossible to comply with, BPDxw started yelling at the counselor and refused to go back. 

it depends how you interpret that psychologists statement. The way I read it is an unattainable standard the disordered person expects can never be met. I believe the disordered person does expect you to love them perfectly in their eyes. In fact that is a word that cropped up when my wife and I split up, and has done sporadically since the breakup, calling my current girlfriend ‘Miss Perfect’ or before I started seeing her “hope you find your perfect girlfriend” which is of course all projection.

 I never had any demands or expectations from my wife, other than asking her to pick the towels up off the bathroom floor after she had showered, or clean the toilet with the toilet brush after she had been and left it in an unsavoury state, but even then in our 27 year relationship I probably brought those two gripes up only a couple of times even though the things I’d mentioned would happen on a daily basis.

The black hole analogy is extremely apt too. I experienced the same as you have described. I wasn’t really one for buying flowers, but when she told me she would feel more loved if I did, and that her favourite flowers were daffs or tulips from the supermarket, I’d always pick her some up when I went there, but this then turned into “well you don’t get them from a florists so it doesn’t mean the same”
I would be accused of infidelity and she would argue in front of the kids too. She would even expect me to reprimand our kids for their behaviour at times and when I did would then completely undermine me in front of them. She too accused me of that old chestnut of ‘not loving her enough’ or the way she felt she wanted to be loved. But I think that psychologists statement eludes to the same thing.

[Prouncer]

I feel I need to be clear about the context of my psychologists statement as there is a tad of misunderstanding I’m thinking. What she was saying is that you have to love them 100% the way they want. To love them perfectly , in their view. Which is of course impossible. One will never love anyone perfectly. One never could. Especially with the continually changing goalposts the pwBPD places before you. The psychologist was also alluding to the impossibility of a relationship with a pwBPD. It’s simply too hard, impossible, and that imperfection of love  the pwBPD will always find fault with and unless you do love them in a way they think is perfect , which no one can , then you are toast.

[Pook075]

I feel I need to be clear about the context of my psychologists statement as there is a tad of misunderstanding I’m thinking. What she was saying is that you have to love them 100% the way they want. To love them perfectly , in their view. Which is of course impossible. One will never love anyone perfectly. One never could. Especially with the continually changing goalposts the pwBPD places before you. The psychologist was also alluding to the impossibility of a relationship with a pwBPD. It’s simply too hard, impossible, and that imperfection of love  the pwBPD will always find fault with and unless you do love them in a way they think is perfect , which no one can , then you are toast.

That's semi-true.  The BPD's main problems in relationships is themselves, and none of us can "fix" mental health in anyone else.  You can absolutely learn to be more supportive, less judgemental, more validating, etc and it will serve you well in all of your relationships moving forward (from family to work to new love interests).  And there's many here that have made BPD relationships work for a very long time by using those skills.

The other side of the coin, however, is that the non-BPD is playing by an unfair set of rules where their feelings and emotions are often placed on the backburner.  For instance, my ex wife would start to scream at me over something ridiculous that had nothing to do with me, and I could choose to yell back (wrong move) or lovingly calm her down (right move).  That's easy to do in a vaccuum, but over a lifetime it's almost impossible to always get it right.

Will one blowout lead to breaking up?  It could under the right circumstances, but usually it doesn't.  That's why I said your doctor's statement is only semi-true. 

[ForeverDad]

One concern when trying to be accommodating when in a relationship with a person displaying BPD traits and patterns is that it can slip into appeasing and that is a relationship imbalance and unhealthy.  It is perceptions getting out of control and being unable or unwilling to perceive that.

A certain amount of push-pull is fine in a healthy relationship.  Some would say it adds spice to life.  But the on-again, off-again discord you're experiencing is why many here found it is frustrating and impractical to "still be friends" after an ended BPD relationship.  Sometimes we can't go fully NC because of complications such as having long term entwined finances or having children together.

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