A misunderstanding on a stranger's part leads to projection onto me.

[misuniadziubek]

Things have been rocky of recent between myself and my BPDbf of 4 years. He is depressed,  and in the last ten days got rear-ended at an intersection and had minor surgery.

Last weekend, I decided against going to see him as I needed to renew my passport and it was mother's day. I also needed some time to myself because dealing with him and his depression has sucked me dry. It was a great decision in terms of my own self-care, but predictably induced resentment and abandonment in my partner. I knew he was getting minor surgery this month but considering I didn't come up for the weekend, he didn't let me know that it was happening that very Monday. He had his female friend drive him to the appointment instead of me. Had I known that he wanted me there, I would have happily taken the day off work. Instead he had been telling me repeatedly in the weeks following up this that the thought of counting on me to be there is too stressful, but then flipping out on me that I wasn't there for him and that since I didn't come for the weekend he didn't bother to let me know. He obviously can't have it both ways, but it's frustrating to say the least.

So on Saturday, we got invited to go out to celebrate a late Mother's day with his best friend and his spouse and best friend's parents.

His friend told him 4:30 but at 3:40 called him to say it's been changed to 4. BPDbf had no time to change into proper clothes and shoes and was absolutely furious that his friend was so inconsiderate of his time. So for the next 30 minutes it was non-stop anger and throwing things and he drove about 30mph over the speedlimit leaving me pretty shaken up. None of it was directed at me, but I was sleep deprived and pretty out of it by the time we got to the restaurant and it kind of exploded once we sat down and I realised we weren't sitting together.

 I got visibly upset, tearing up, and excused myself to the bathroom. Best friends wife was concerned asking if I was okay. I calmed myself down in the bathroom and once I got out, turns out BPDbf followed me to the bathroom to check up on me, asking if I was okay and if he could do anything to help and embraced me in the hallway.

I came back to the table, where everyone had shifted to make room for me and my bf to sit together. It was all nice and fun until his best friend slapped BPDbf's phone out of his hand and BPDbf thought it was me and slapped my arm seemingly hard. I barely reacted mostly because he and I pull pranks on each other sometimes and light slaps and flicks and bites are common. I've never thought twice about it as it's never malicious and it's rarely fueled by anger. I grew up with male cousins and used to do that a lot as a kid. It's the equivalent of tickling each other, play-fighting pretty much, and I established a boundary with it a long time ago so that it doesn't go too far and he's been respectful to my limits.

The rest of the table didn't see it the same way. Best friend's mom exclaimed, "he just slapped her!" and best friend's wife told my BF that he's lucky that's all she saw. I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

My BPDbf definitely didn't. He got very paranoid about what best friend's wife said. On the ride home, he exclaimed in frustration that if I hadn't gotten upset in the beginning and had stopped his best friend from slapping his phone while he was reading stuff from his lawyer, he wouldn't have reacted and now he might as well not take me anywhere with him if people are going to think that we have an abusive relationship. I pointed out that what happened that day wasn't serious and I hadn't had two thoughts about it. How an altercation we had in front of his best friend 3 months ago was far more serious and yet we had worked through that and fixed it. I told him that we have an unwritten agreement when it comes to the physical stuff and it's just playful. That we have a high level of trust when it comes to stuff like that and that time and time again we've both proven that if something makes the other uncomfortable we adapt quickly. He seemed to calm down after that point.

The next day we were going over to his friend's house and he got angry that I didn't remind him to stop at mcdonalds. This escalated to the point that he told me that he had talked to his best friend about what had happened the day before and his friend told him 'if she makes you that angry, maybe she's not the one."

*Rolls eyes*

I reminded him that paint drying too slowly makes him too mad, and every relationship he's ever had triggers anger in him.

I don't know. We were fine for the rest of the day, but at this point, I can barely take seriously anything he tells me because his moods shift so quickly.

I know he's depressed and he disenfranchised with his life. I know that not seeing me for two weeks left him feeling disengaged from the relationship and like we weren't as close as usual, but I don't want to fester codependency any more.

Sigh.

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[JoeBPD81]

hi there,

I hope things are calmer now. Shame and guilt are the worst enemies for BPD people, together with fear. He felt judged and exposed, and as someone has said, the anger needs a target, and that falls onto us. It takes a lot to know this, and let the anger go past over us and not affect us. I don't know if it's possible.

I reminded him that paint drying too slowly makes him too mad, and every relationship he's ever had triggers anger in him.

Did this worked? That sounds very invalidating. It "blames" him. It would be more shoothing to say "All couples feel angry in moments of stress, and all project anger on each other, it's not pretty but it's just normal human behavior. "  There's a joke out there : "Honey, should we go to Ikea or should we just argue here at home?"

It's not only pwBPD who are angry without reason with their partners. And certainly it's not only your bf. So as long as you comunicate that you don't like that, and that you don't approve, you can normalize this behavior a bit. So looking for the cause of his anger towards you doesn't obsess him, and doesn't work against you.

Good luck!