How do you deal with inappropriate jealousy?

[CautiousHope]

My pwBPD is a friend, not a romantic partner, though there are romantic feelings there. We have been doing really well, we were on a 3 week streak without any episodes (there were a few occasions where he would start up, but catch himself and dial it back in a healthy way, I'm extremely proud.) Yesterday, however, we had a doozy of a fight. He was incredibly upset that I got a ride with a male friend to a play date with a group of our friends and their children. Verbally validating and listening to his side didn't cut it, because my taking the ride or not refusing the ride was the ultimate invalidation to him -proof that I don't care about his feelings. He thinks I should not take the ride with my friend because the friend has come onto me recently (I'm not interested) but also I am not in a relationship with my pwBPD and I don't feel he has any say in who I spend my time with, so I'm not going to change that part of my life to make him more comfortable. The thing is, that even if we were in a relationship, there is no way I'm going to avoid every guy who has ever had an interest in me, so this isn't an issue I want to chalk up to us being just friends. He has serious jealousy issues that we've struggled with for the entirety of our relationship and things were getting better, but I'm not sure how to address this. I started with the tools, I disengaged, I went out with my friends, still there was a 9 hour long episode of him telling me how much he is suffering and that I don't care. I am under an incredible amount of stress right now in my personal life outside of this situation and my defenses are extremely low, and so I JADEd... .a lot. I broke down and fought back and let myself feel guilty even though I didn't do anything wrong.

The problem with this, for me, is that I don't know how we can talk about it or how I can get my side across when it is such a triggering topic for him. Even when I wait for him to be calm, this subject sends him into a tailspin every single time. How do you address inappropriate jealousy? I'm not sure what to even say to him about it at this point because it feels like one of those subjects where not a single word gets through to the other side.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

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[juju2]

Welcome 

You found us, there is experience, strength, and hope, someone here has experience in what you are going thru.  You are doing good.  Reaching out is great.  Thank you for your courage.

For me, it's about working on myself, am codependent, have spent the last year working on myself, lost 50lbs, am taking classes after work.  I am on a mission to heal.

This site is great for support, hope, help.  I read here, learned about tools, got strength from others here w more experience.

What I found is a caring, safe community.

Hang in there!  j

[CautiousHope]

Thanks Juju.

In my situation, I guess we might be an unusual example, because although my pwBPD is undiagnosed/untreated, he has shown consistent interest and effort to change and improve a lot of his issues and continues to do so, so even without therapy we do try to work through issues together and support one another. While his jealousy isn't my issue to take on, he does have untreated BPD, so he needs a little more nudging and support than your average person might in order to overcome or even look at some of the problems that affect our friendship and I'm content to provide that when I can. In this case, I am not going to stop living my life to pacify his jealous anxiety, but at the same time, it's clearly devastating for him and I think some communication would help the situation. I do feel that the jealousy is so intense that my simply laying the boundary without engaging in a constructive discussion around it is going to drive him further into his anxiety, because he feels abandoned/replaced and he can't comprehend why I am doing this when it is so clearly painful for him. I guess what I really want to know from other members is: which tools do you find to be most useful in case of especially difficult conflict, especially when they directly challenge the abandonment fears sort of head on? What kind of boundaries have you found to be helpful when dealing with inappropriate jealousy from your partner/pwBPD?

[CautiousHope]

Well, since I have already talked to him before I was able to receive a response here, I'll share how I decided to address it when I spoke to him again.

I took the opportunity to share what I would do in a similar situation, because he presented it to me that way during the argument: something to the tune of "if the tables were turned, you would feel the same way."

So, I thought carefully about that and I replied with some retroactive validation and some honest reflection and said that, yes, if I were in a relationship with someone/him and they left with a person that I knew was romantically interested in them, I might feel jealous. I think that is a normal reaction and perfectly understandable. However, it's important to me to be able to trust my partner will live in their values and if we are in an agreed upon monogamous relationship and my partner says they aren't interested in the other person, then it is important to me to be able to let my partner do those things and to lean into that trust. I said that it's easy for me to get swept up into overthinking "what if" scenarios that might be terrifying, but that I would try to remind myself that my partner loves me and is committed to me as a whole person.

He was still pretty resistant to that for a bit and was a bit defensive - but quickly pulled it back in and decided to go for some lighthearted joking instead. After a bit of playful banter, he goes "so, you feel jealous just like I do, you just don't show it the same way" (BINGO!) and ultimately said "well, I guess this is something else about myself I need to work on."

Now, I don't think the jealousy issue is "solved," but that felt really productive. Whew. The thing is, a lot of the time my inability to validate him is actually an inability to validate myself. I denied that I would be jealous in the scenario we were in (but I think it's really that the jealousy is such a fleeting/inconsequential thing for me to feel under those circumstances that I barely even notice it. For him, of course, it's excruciating so he has no choice but to notice it.) A good learning experience for me.

[once removed]

im interested to hear your approach to how you validated him. i think theres a lot to work with... .

1. a lot of people with BPD can be jealous in general, because it could be perceived as leading to abandonment, and it may with him.

2. he may do this most when he senses a waning of your attention.

3. nobody likes feeling left out and hearing about what you were up to (with anyone else) can trigger that.

4. he may feel strongly about "shouldnt hang out with someone who has come on to you" and needed a soapbox.

5. the romantic feelings between the two of you are probably complicating things. lines get blurred. this strikes me as a lovers quarrel.

you can try keeping all of that in mind, and you can speak to it. you may make him feel better about it, you may not. if you do, he will likely want more of it in the future.

but at the end of the day, if you feel its none of his business, how does it then become a 9 hour fight about it? why is it a discussion youre willing to entertain or validate in the first place? getting your point across says its open for discussion.

im not suggesting you stonewall him or not to care about his feelings. but sometimes by defending ourselves, we can validate the invalid.

[CautiousHope]

im interested to hear your approach to how you validated him. i think theres a lot to work with... .

1. a lot of people with BPD can be jealous in general, because it could be perceived as leading to abandonment, and it may with him.

2. he may do this most when he senses a waning of your attention.

3. nobody likes feeling left out and hearing about what you were up to (with anyone else) can trigger that.

4. he may feel strongly about "shouldnt hang out with someone who has come on to you" and needed a soapbox.

5. the romantic feelings between the two of you are probably complicating things. lines get blurred. this strikes me as a lovers quarrel.

Yes, he is very jealous, but it has improved slowly over the last 6 months or so since using the tools and listening to him explain how it feels for him. Even he has noticed a great improvement in his feelings of jealousy and his compulsion to act on it. For contrast, further back in time when we were strictly friends, he would get jealous of me sitting with my neighbor for a couple of hours or going to dinner with my parents. Not romantically, but because he felt "replaced" or "disposable" or "left out," as you said. He will always say "it's not that I don't want you to go with your loved ones, it's that I want to go, too." In this case, it does seem and feel like a lover's quarrel (and I do believe the blurred lines are confusing for both of us, but I'm not interested in moving into a relationship beyond this unless he commits to therapy, so we are friends with complicated feelings.) but again he expressed feeling replaced by my friend. He didn't specify as friends, but he used an analogy to explain that even though he recognizes that he himself is not replaceable, he feels like his place in my life is easily taken by any other guy friend and that's terrifying because being "best friends" is something extremely important to him. Not just with me, generally speaking, it's always been a particularly important relationship for him. Those were all angles I tried to grab at right off the bat. I think what happened in this case was that a LOT of different things factored into his dysregulation and it wasn't just one thing fueling his chaos. It also happened abruptly, I found out about the ride, mentioned it, he melted down - I took the ride 15 minutes later. So I think no matter what I said, my taking the ride before he was able to process what he was feeling or if it was "okay" just felt invalidating.

you can try keeping all of that in mind, and you can speak to it. you may make him feel better about it, you may not. if you do, he will likely want more of it in the future.

In my second post I did mention that I did retroactively validate and it seemed to hit the nail on the head for him, maybe because he'd had enough time to cool off about it and needed less specific validation? At that point it seemed to be enough that I agreed that it's not unusual for someone to feel jealous under those circumstances. It's a lot less about making him feel better about it and a lot more about getting him to where he can level himself so that we can talk about it in some kind of constructive way. I know this can be done, because he's receptive to discussion about a lot of things now that I've learned the tools on the site, but this one is incredibly triggering so it is hard. But, I feel like the follow-up conversation we had was constructive and, while I don't expect it has solved the problem, it seems that we have nudged things in that direction. If he's never going to be comfortable with me taking a ride with a friend (even a friend who may have come onto me), we can't be in a romantic relationship because my autonomy is very important to me. But, given the option of learning to be more comfortable with that or having to give up hope that we may move our relationship forward, he says he'd prefer to work on it. How that will unfold, I have no idea.

but at the end of the day, if you feel its none of his business, how does it then become a 9 hour fight about it? why is it a discussion youre willing to entertain or validate in the first place? getting your point across says its open for discussion.

im not suggesting you stonewall him or not to care about his feelings. but sometimes by defending ourselves, we can validate the invalid.

Well, to some degree it is open to discussion. I am not opposed to a future relationship with him, so this is something I'd like to discuss and see if we can come to some kind of an agreement on. If not, okay, but I'd like to have the option of discussing it.

It turned into a huge fight because I got sucked into it. Usually I don't, but I was in a mood myself, and I am under a lot of stress and eventually I just started to defend myself and push back. We didn't actually fight for 9 hours - I went out with my friends, had a nice evening, he just sporadically sent me distressed texts in that time frame and continued to get more and more frantic. So, what happened was that before I left he felt invalidated by my lack of facial expression (at least that's what he blamed it on, he felt like I was just staring at him blank and cold, which was definitely not the case), I tried to validate him and it didn't work because he still freaked out when I left with my friend. I tried one more time to quickly validate him after the ride (he called while I was at my friend's house). When that didn't work, I disengaged. After I got home, he messaged me and he seemed like he had calmed down. He hadn't, in fact, he quickly spiraled right back out and instead of sticking to what usually works, I just got frustrated and we fought.

I'm pretty disappointed that I did, but the jealousy issue is a difficult thing for me to let go because he and I have a great relationship when he's not dysregulated (I'm sure that's true for many people here) and other issues that caused him a great deal of distress or dysregulation have improved greatly after we've been able to talk them through, so I really hope this can be one of those things. We have very good communication, we talk about our feelings in a healthy and constructive way, we share our needs and respect one another, we are mutually supportive and encourage each other's growth and goals, we also set goals together and challenge one another, so it feels weird to have a topic sort of off limits for us, so I value the relationship a lot and this particular issue is just a complicated one. But, I honestly feel like I worked a lot of it out just by typing up these couple of posts, so sometimes it just helps to think out loud!  

[once removed]

If he's never going to be comfortable with me taking a ride with a friend (even a friend who may have come onto me), we can't be in a romantic relationship because my autonomy is very important to me. But, given the option of learning to be more comfortable with that or having to give up hope that we may move our relationship forward, he says he'd prefer to work on it. How that will unfold, I have no idea.

what happens when/if you meet someone else?

[CautiousHope]

If I meet someone else that I'd like to be with, I'll be with that person. I would hope to maintain a friendship with him, but I highly doubt he'd be interested, which is his choice to make of course. I value our friendship, but I can't deny or pretend that I don't have feelings for him, I just don't want to be with him as more than friends unless he decides he wants therapy.