Hi Lalathegreat,
I can't decide what I'm even asking. The writing is on the wall - this is so bad for me. And yet I have never been with anyone I felt more obscenely drawn to and I can't seem to just walk away. I guess I'm just asking if anyone has been at this Crossroads - what did you decide, how did it turn out? If I decide that I need to walk away what is the safest way to do that?
I understand your ambivalence. I've felt it myself with my BPD loved one(s). You will eventually need to make a decision or else a decision will be made for you by circumstances. Something that might help you come to a decision, which I can try to offer you, is some understanding of his behavior.
Enter our mutual friend who stepped up and supported me, flattered me, gave me the emotional connection I had always longed for. Yup - honeymoon period 110%, although at the time I did not understand what was happening. I thought that I had met my soulmate. (Insert eye roll, )
There is a reason why people with BPD (pwBPD) are often compared to Greek sirens (see Odysseus). PwBPD are intuitively adept at seducing/connecting to their favored partners. They've spent all their lives honing these skills because for them it was necessary to (psychically) survive. It also helps their cause that their personalities are so malleable that they can re-invent themselves to suit any/every favored partner they select.
In the beginning because we were so "perfect" together. Now I found we were having arguments. As long as I apologized and promised I had seen the error of my ways, things continued to be ok. But the problem was that most of the time I didn't understand what I had done.
As I understand this disorder, pwBPD have a core traumatic experience from which they have not recovered. And for a lot of pwBPD, I believe they spend much of their lives avoiding the facing of this trauma. Why? Maybe because the pain of this trauma is too painful, or for them it feels like it can consume them. And so they run from it. In a sense they run from themselves. And they do so by become other people. Such as by becoming the "perfect" person for you. And for a while, this works.
It stops working when their trauma/their disorder catches up with them. And they begin to imagine that it is you who is causing them to feel the disordered feelings they feel. I believe that for pwBPD feelings of intimacy and familiarity are a key trigger for these disordered feelings. This is why at the beginning of your relationship, he did not exhibit these disordered behaviors. But as you spent more time with him, as the your intimacy and familiarity developed, so did the expressions of his disorder.
We were spending a huge amount of time together at this point and I began to genuinely be concerned that it was too much time. My other friendships were being neglected, I feared the same was true in his side though he refused to acknowledge any such thing. I felt him becoming resentful of the time I spent with his son even though he had previously praised me for being so good with him. I began to see moments of extreme anger in him - a phone call where he escalated to screaming at me for making him feel dismissed over a misinterpreted text message, and an excruciating evening where he literally kicked me out of his house amidst a torrent of abusive statements (most of which were my confidences twisted and then pointed back at me in anger). He later expressed that he felt I was pushing him away, that my tone of voice and facial expression had convinced him I was leaving so he pushed first.
PwBPD fear real and imagined abandonment. At the beginning, they insist that we will never abandon them and we agree. But as their intimacy/familiarity grows and triggers their disordered feelings, they come to believe that we mean to abandon them in spite our assurances. And they act out on these feelings. And as soon as these feelings pass, they again, in the effort to avoid real abandonment, pull us back in. And this behavior confuses us and at the same time reinforces our attachment to them.
We think, they just cannot make up their mind. In truth, they are operating on impulse the whole time. It's just that their impulses can change so drastically and so quickly. Literally, one minute they will hate us. The next minute they will love us.
How I could diffuse things and bring it back to what it had been when things had been so good.
I honestly don't think this is possible. As much as our BPD loved ones might wish it, they cannot control how they feel about us any more than they can control their disordered feelings. And if their feelings of intimacy towards us is a cause, how is this to go away? Maybe given enough time when those feelings of intimacy and familiarity can evaporate, perhaps? But would you be willing to wait long enough for them to forget and then start over? Only to repeat the cycle?
There is no "doing it right." I don't believe you can have a relationship that does not eventually trigger their issues. At best you can establish a stable relationship, but that might look more like a caregiver-patient (or parent-child) kind of dynamic than an adult intimate relationship.
By the same token, I was beginning to fall apart. I began to have physical anxiety when I knew I would be seeing him in anticipation of what I might face. Accusations and indictments of my responses to even the smallest things where he would determine exactly how I was feeling (always in judgement of him) and could not be convinced otherwise. Constantly the question "what did I do, what do you need" and then the accusation of "well I can tell you are having a problem" when I couldn't answer, followed by the accusation that I was passive aggressive.
I believe pwBPD enter into relationships in the hopes that the next person does not trigger their disorder feelings. And when their disorder feelings are triggered (and they will be) then they expect us to take responsibility for their disordered feelings. They expect us to take responsibility for them because they do not have the emotional resources to do so.
As I see it, they live in denial. And they expect everyone to help them maintain their denial, even if it means becoming their emotional scapegoats.
They cannot tell us exactly what the problem is, because they don't know what it is (or don't want to know what it is). So long as we continue to accept the fault/blame, this works for them. And we cannot fix the problem because the problem does not reside in our behavior but in their psyche.
The more insistent he became that all our problems were caused by me "shutting him out" and becoming passive aggressive, the less capable I felt I became at giving him what he was asking for. He was begging for complete communication, and yet I felt I was being set up as the villain no matter what I did. If I communicated that his behavior felt verbally assaultive to me I feared what he would do considering how sensitive he was to criticism and how certain he had become that *I* was the problem in the relationship. If I tried to express anything diplomatically he accused me of being indirect and passive aggressive. I found myself much of the time choosing to try to convince him that I was fine.
When you established more distance from him, he then perceived you as "abandoning" him. But when you were too available, he then *imagined* that you were "abandoning" him. It is a no-win situation. All the while, he insists that you are to blame.
Consider that when he blames you, he is telling you that he is emotionally incapable to dealing with his own issues and he is not asking that you defend yourself and "prove" that you are not to blame. He *needs* you to be blamed.
I can't decide what I'm even asking. The writing is on the wall - this is so bad for me. And yet I have never been with anyone I felt more obscenely drawn to and I can't seem to just walk away. I guess I'm just asking if anyone has been at this Crossroads - what did you decide, how did it turn out? If I decide that I need to walk away what is the safest way to do that?
I think many of us have been at this Crossroad. I was there. I kept trying to "fix" things. Even to the point that when she was actively seeking some to replace me, I was in complete denial of her intentions. She even convinced me that what would make our relationship better was if we had an "open" relationship.
I decided not to chose which road to walk upon. And so it was decided for me.
Eventually, for pwBPD, the best way to avoid their real/imagined abandonment is to be the abandoner.
I hope some of what I write is helpful.
Best wishes,
Schwing
