STBx's Lack of Self Awareness is Just Amazing

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

So there I was last night just chatting in the living room of MY house with my STBx once again making one of her multi-day pop ins given the state of the place she moved to.

I made the mistake of saying that I saw my mom over the weekend, and she went into some diatribe about how that's great, to enjoy the time with my Mom while I have it, to forgive my Mom for the past, then made it all about her and how she forgave her parents for all the trespasses they had with each other and with her. STBx's parents were both violent, nasty drunks and the father had beaten her mom to within inches of her life on multiple occasions.

Anyhoo, I get this weird idea in my head... .if she is willing to forgive her reprehensible parents for what they did to each other and to my STBx and empathize with them given their own horrendous upbringings that they passed down to my STBx, then shouldn't she be able to forgive me and empathize with me and realize that what she thought I did to her wasn't anywhere near the scale of what her parents did and that I, too, had a childhood that formed me into who I am and do have limitations (even if her demands and expectations were unreasonable and unrealistic)?

The short version of the answer I was given was the following: "No. Because you never apologized." Whereas her parents apparently DID apologize and tried to make up to her their transgressions against her for a large portion of their lives. Granted, they have both passed away and now walk on water in my STBx's mind, but that's a whole other story.

I reminded her I had apologized on multiple occasions with multiple marriage counselors for the shove I had given her once when she had made a motion to strike me. It didn't matter. The recording playing in her head is that I never apologized for anything (including the shove) and, therefore, do not deserve any forgiveness or empathy.

Given her religious upbringing, I can't help but feel that there is this weird God complex going on for her where I am one of her subjects who has to repent for the sins I was born with and those she feels I propagated against her, and no amount of apologies will make a difference until I repent on my deathbed.

On one hand the convo and my insight here about it is just a layer down into the onion of the blackness she has cloaked me in. On the other hand, it's pretty dismaying watching her deflect the slings and arrows of common sense with her Wonder Woman bracelets. She is a whiz with those things.

In the end it seems as though she lives in that age old bully/abuser mindset that she is acting this way toward me and treating me this way for my own good. She knows all, is the self-proclaimed arbiter of all that is right and good in her world, and I am nothing but a supplicant.

Yet, she is the one squatting my MY house under the guise that HER kids are living with ME and she has every right and privilege to do so when I don't owe her a thing, and given how she treated me she should be embarrassed to even show her face in my proximity let alone my living room.

It's tempting to try and break through her tangled web of denial, but toward what end? She's never going to change her views toward me, and even if she did it wouldn't change my stance toward her.

J

[Jeffree]

So there I was last night just chatting in the living room of MY house with my STBx once again making one of her multi-day pop ins given the state of the place she moved to.

I made the mistake of saying that I saw my mom over the weekend, and she went into some diatribe about how that's great, to enjoy the time with my Mom while I have it, to forgive my Mom for the past, then made it all about her and how she forgave her parents for all the trespasses they had with each other and with her. STBx's parents were both violent, nasty drunks and the father had beaten her mom to within inches of her life on multiple occasions.

Anyhoo, I get this weird idea in my head... .if she is willing to forgive her reprehensible parents for what they did to each other and to my STBx and empathize with them given their own horrendous upbringings that they passed down to my STBx, then shouldn't she be able to forgive me and empathize with me and realize that what she thought I did to her wasn't anywhere near the scale of what her parents did and that I, too, had a childhood that formed me into who I am and do have limitations (even if her demands and expectations were unreasonable and unrealistic)?

The short version of the answer I was given was the following: "No. Because you never apologized." Whereas her parents apparently DID apologize and tried to make up to her their transgressions against her for a large portion of their lives. Granted, they have both passed away and now walk on water in my STBx's mind, but that's a whole other story.

I reminded her I had apologized on multiple occasions with multiple marriage counselors for the shove I had given her once when she had made a motion to strike me. It didn't matter. The recording playing in her head is that I never apologized for anything (including the shove) and, therefore, do not deserve any forgiveness or empathy.

Given her religious upbringing, I can't help but feel that there is this weird God complex going on for her where I am one of her subjects who has to repent for the sins I was born with and those she feels I propagated against her, and no amount of apologies will make a difference until I repent on my deathbed.

On one hand the convo and my insight here about it is just a layer down into the onion of the blackness she has cloaked me in. On the other hand, it's pretty dismaying watching her deflect the slings and arrows of common sense with her Wonder Woman bracelets. She is a whiz with those things.

In the end it seems as though she lives in that age old bully/abuser mindset that she is acting this way toward me and treating me this way for my own good. She knows all, is the self-proclaimed arbiter of all that is right and good in her world, and I am nothing but a supplicant.

Yet, she is the one squatting my MY house under the guise that HER kids are living with ME and she has every right and privilege to do so when I don't owe her a thing, and given how she treated me she should be embarrassed to even show her face in my proximity let alone my living room.

It's tempting to try and break through her tangled web of denial, but toward what end? She's never going to change her views toward me, and even if she did it wouldn't change my stance toward her.

J

[MeandThee29]

Yes, I've had conversations like that. Mine once told me a story about a guy with PTSD who tired to gouge out his wife's eyes when he had a nightmare shortly after he returned from Viet Nam. She forgave him, so I should forgive my pwBPD. He went on to say that this guy had been married five times and wasn't married to the wife that he attacked anymore. So that's an example of forgiveness?

It's all crazy-making.

Mine is going to be in town to get the house on the market, and I fully expect some real zingers.

[Jeffree]

Mine is going to be in town to get the house on the market, and I fully expect some real zingers.


Zingers such as... .?

J

[GD39]

Question. If she is squatting at your place, why you don't take the steps to evict her?

[Jeffree]

She squats in between her work trips, so it's not a 24/7/365 deal.

There's no evicting her yet I think because 1) we are still legally married, 2) she is the kids' bio mom, 3) she is moving farther away by the end of the month or so, 4) I am trying to keep things civil for as long as she is relatively civil back.

In the end, there's probably no rational reason for me to allow her access to the house. At the same time, there is no way for me to take "control" of the situation, because she is a classic bully who would stop at nothing to prove to herself whatever whacked out point she needs to use to be "right."

I can't help but try to give her as few reasons or inspirations to resort to new lows against me.

Does that make any sense?

J

[Sunfl0wer]

I think it may be easier to reach a place of radical acceptance if you can grasp that for the person with BPD feelings = facts, therefore the only “correct reality” is the one that exists in their head.  It is NOT dependent on logic, rational thinking, or other peoples behaviors or thoughts.  It is ONLY dependent on their own emotional state and what they are struggling with internally.  Trying to understand it with logic, usually fails.

All of these negative “behaviors” they do are attempts at externalizing stuff within them that they are stuck in endless loops over and are unable to process.  They are trapped in their own thinking.  They often cannot see the forest for the trees.  It feels uncomfortable, so they try to find a way to externalize the issues they are experiencing internally.  

So to speak about someone with BPD not making sense because they are judging one situation differently... . is purely absurd!  

It means one must be stuck in their own loop, not recognizing that their thought process is not logic driven, but rather EMOTION driven.
To continue on trying to make sense of things in a logical manner and assume their brain functions and orients like yours does is like telling a person who had a stroke (that affects visual perceptual skills) to make sense of a book by reading it, when they literally cannot process the letters on the page... .so forget about processing the meaning of a passage without help.

It will never make sense if you are looking at their perspective from YOUR perspective.

Summary: Feelings =Facts for pwBPD
Revisit RA (radical acceptance) to maintain personal mental health.

It is far from amazing... .it is predictable and reliable and to be expected.

[MeandThee29]

Mine is going to be in town to get the house on the market, and I fully expect some real zingers.

Zingers such as... .?
J

Blame, shame, and all of their relatives. Lots of illogical thinking like the above.

We're meeting for dinner prior to the realtors coming through, and I predict a lot of it. I've already written out a lot of my responses.

[Jeffree]

Sunfl0wer,

Thanks for the reminder, refresher, and all. That makes a lot of sense.

J

[Turkish]

At the core of a pwBPD is the feeling of shame.  At the surface,  this translates into survival behaviors like lying ("to a pwBPD lying feels like survival"- Lawson), and Projection, among others.  At the surface,  "my feelings are inherently worthless," deep down,  "therefore I must be worthless." Shame. The surface behaviors cover shame, hence, the validation tools which signal that the fact the fact that they feel (have feelings) has merit.  Not necessarily the outcome,  which is tricky. Hence, SETto start. This isn't surrender, it's dealing with an emotionally sensitive person in order to reduce conflict.

I sympathize with the realty issues MeandThee29. A friend told me it must be exciting buying a home.  No.  With my ex,  it sucked big time.  No joy,  just stress.  I wish I'd had the tools here at the time,  but what was,  was.  I can't imagine dealing with it with a divorce.

[Jeffree]

For me, crazymaking feels like my safe word. When I try to interject about some of these black, ingrained thoughts of hers about me in the context of a conversation where she's basically blaming me for the dissolution of our marriage, the fallout almost always leaves me feeling dismayed that she can still think such things about me. I try to go into it knowing my efforts will fail and that she will not take ownership or budge in the direction I'd prefer her to go in about it, but it still leaves me feeling unloved, ignored, unheard, unappreciated, and invisible. While I do logically understand it's folly to think anything different would result, it gets tiring being left feeling this way after these interactions. I don't usually engage with her this way, and when I do it's with a lot of trepidation. Then I am left with all this frustration, disappointment, and hurt to somehow offload to the one person who would allow me to offload it with her, if she gave a single crap about me, only she doesn't give that crap. I get that, but it still sucks. It's like I've often said, she and people like her are crazier than I am sane, and I have to avoid them.

But crazymaking being a real thing is a great reminder of what is going on with her toward me. It helps me not take it as personally as I do sometimes.

J

[Insom]

Hi, Jeffree!

In the end, there's probably no rational reason for me to allow her access to the house. At the same time, there is no way for me to take "control" of the situation, because she is a classic bully who would stop at nothing to prove to herself whatever whacked out point she needs to use to be "right."

It sounds like you are feeling powerless, like there are no good choices.  And that you're also feeling bullied in your own home.

3) she is moving farther away by the end of the month or so

How certain is this?  How would you like things to be if/when she moves further away?

[Jeffree]

It sounds like you are feeling powerless, like there are no good choices.  And that you're also feeling bullied in your own home.


Yes about feeling powerless, but at the same time, I do not have enough support throughout my life to let this bounce off me better. I am financially bankrupt, underemployed and having no luck finding better work, my dad died in Jan., my dog died in March, and I am just doing the best I can to survive.

Bullied? Yes, but not anywhere on the scale to which she used to do it. I think even she knows she's not in a position to bite the hand that houses her kids and herself when she is in between business trips. Hers is now a passive aggressive, "I told you so (SS19 would be doing better if we were on the same page me and my dearly departed (who died of a heroin overdose) had set as the parenting norms)... .I've always been civil (since I moved out)... .You have to set guidelines and a schedule to help SS19 through his depression (how you parent is not effective and never was)... .That's why we're not together anymore (Too different, dissimilar parenting styles, your family rejected my kids (which they most certainly did not, but she thinks they did for some ridiculous reason), etc."

3) she is moving farther away by the end of the month or so How certain is this?  How would you like things to be if/when she moves further away?


Seems pretty certain to me. Yesterday she showed me a studio she's looking to rent about four hours away. Whether she gets it or not isn't as important as that's the general vicinity of her next move.

With her that far away, I would like things to be officially over for good. She would have no reason to visit my area other than to see her kids, which I doubt she would do because of the inconvenience. Thus, they would likely have to visit her or stay in touch in other ways. Done!

Hopefully just another few weeks and she'll be living where the grass in greener... .again. 

J