Irreverence. Funny or cruel?

[JoeBPD81]

My gf tells me one of my problems is that I take things too seroiusly. That she tries to use irreverence to take some things with humor and not be hurt by them.

1. It goes only one way. If I make a joke, I pay for it for the rest of my life.

2. Is it humor when you are unkind to the object of the joke 95% of the time?

I told her today that it smelled very good in the house. I know it's important to her, smells. She said it was the softener...
A couple of hours later she comes in my room, and she says: I'm glad you like the smell, is one of the tricks I use to feel repulsed by you.
I had headphones, so I thought I had heard wrong. So she told me again, and added: I only use it in your clothes, I hate it.

I guess if we were teasing each other all day it wouldn't be a big deal at all. But our situation is far from funny. So it felt like a really low blow.

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[Radcliff]

I tried to keep an open mind as I was reading your post, but your description is detailed enough and your situation familiar enough that I can imagine how that felt to you.  I'm sorry you're dealing with it.  A litmus test that I apply to situations like this is whether I can tell within a reasonable amount of time (a couple of seconds) if the person is joking.  If it's unclear, then that's hurtful.  Simply allowing there to be ambiguity that hangs in the air is hurtful.  We wouldn't do this to someone we care about.

Does she really, honestly, think that she's using humor, or is she just gaslighting you?  I'm not sure we can know.  What's important is that you find it hurtful.  The last thread I read was from a member talking about using the DEAR method to express a desire for different behavior from his partner:  https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=340105.0
Might that method be worth trying?  I know you've got a tough situation, but we never know unless we try.

Here's an old thread that talks about DEARMAN:
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=206241.10
Here's a Web page that describes DEARMAN:
www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/ie_handout_8.html

RC

[JoeBPD81]

Thanks Radcliff,

I'm overwhelmed now with work and home crisis... I'll check DEARMAN, because I've already forgot what it was.

[Radcliff]

How are you doing, Joe?

RC

[JoeBPD81]

I didn't have a bad week. I guess I should use this clarity to improve and cement good things. Instead I take the oportunity to rest and not worry for the time of peace that I have.

[isilme]

Instead I take the oportunity to rest and not worry for the time of peace that I have.

I am guilty of this too. 

I'm struggling to understand how H's brain actually works.  His humor comes off as criticism to me, I don't know if he realizes he's upsetting me and so needs to pretend it was a joke or if it was a joke all along and I just am on eggshells for criticism. 

Meanwhile, he's apparently perfectly in his right to "hear" a "tone" in my voice and make all manner of assumptions about it, accusing me of feelings I don't even have.  It's not a good week, I want rest and peace.  I can usually shake things off faster, but right now I am just hurting. 

[JoeBPD81]

Isilme! Long time no see. It was good to see you. Maybe you never left but I did, and it's good to see a familiar name.

The situation is just as you described. A look, a coment, a tone from me that was never aimed at hurting or critizicing her, and all hell breaks lose. But I have to take these things as humor. And maybe they are, that's why I posted this, I don't know anymore. I'm hanging by a thread, emotionally. I mostly feel that she doesn't love me, or even like me, so I don't need her making fun of me to confirm that fear.

Today she woke up in a good mood. And she started, from her bed, screaming "You're boring!" She was making a child's tone, I asked her why she was saying that, and she said "because you are". She made it into a song "you are bald and boring, alalaala...". I tried to keep a joking mood, and I called the kids "he kids, come and defend me, mum is being a bully...". She kept at it until I left.

Then at the time I always say good morning by text, when I know she has droped the kids at school, I opened the chat and there was the words "bald" and "boring" several times with music notes. I texted "Good morning. I don't know what's all this about". And she said "Good morning. Nothing, calm down, I won't talk to you anymore".

"Bald" is recurring, and it doesn't bother me because I shave my head, and that's a thing she liked when she liked me. But "boring", she should know it hurts me. She knows all my previous marriage I felt I wasn't good enough for my wife, because I'm boring, and she was always hungry for adventure. She knows I keep a very boring and safe job, that I need to support her and the kids. She knows I've stopped doing most fun things in life because now I'm a father and I stay with her who is very depressed most of the time. She knows I don't see any friends, and that I think my friends are not knoking on my door asking to see me more, because I'm not interesting, I'm boring. She knows my social anxiety comes from thinking no one is going to be interested in what I have to say... She knows I complain that she always talks about her ex as an adventurous, interesting, good conversationist adult. While she talks to me like talking to a kid, and the most I can hope for is some pitty kindness.

She took what I have told her in confidence and made fun of it. When I'm already not happy with our life, specially how she and the kids treat me. I feel pretty ridiculous right now about doing everything for them.

[Radcliff]

I'm less concerned about whether she says you're boring than the fact that you might think your boring.  You're not doing fun things for yourself.  I understand the load of supporting a pwBPD and kids, but having no life of your own is unsustainable long term.  I know this from experience.  Do you have any ideas of things you'd like to do for yourself?

RC

[isilme]

She knows I don't see any friends, and that I think my friends are not knoking on my door asking to see me more, because I'm not interesting, I'm boring.

More likely, you are all just busy with life, and when that time after work, after chores and all adulting is done, there's not a lot of time or energy to meet up with friends.  It's normal.  Instead of having time to hang out and school/simple jobs being scheduled, we now need to schedule fun-time, too. 

My suggestion for this is to plan something simple, like a board game night, byo-snacks kind of thing, and make it a thing once a month - you need time with friends.  Rotate who goes to which homes, maybe based on sitter needs or the biggest dining table (we have the biggest, even tho our house is small, makes it more comfortable to play magic the gathering or other games that need a table)?  If this won't work, find one thing you can do. and schedule time for it.  It can be with the wife, or without if you can stand the initial issues that can cause (I couldn't give up. But I'm easily tired these days).

Her using words to hurt - This may get a little weird, lemme try to type this out:

I theorize they don't understand we can have our own feelings, our own doubts, and mostly keep them inside.  If I am not yelling, jumping up and down, screaming about the same things he wants to yell and scream about - let's say, worries about incoming weather, I must not care at all.  I look up the weather daily, sometimes more than once if a front is coming.  He never looks it up, and consequently, is easily surprised.  Even if I tell him things, he hears it on the radio in the morning and at noon, he will still be surprised.  He thinks all thunderstorms are now tornados/hurricanes.  He panics when a simply summer downpour comes.  We DID have a crazy weather event, so I am of course concerned, I just don't see any good from two of us mumbling and panicking.  I go around, store things that may blow away, check on what I can, charge things in case of a power outage, place flashlights and candles in reach, and then sit down.  He gets agitated and wants to suddenly take care of crazy things, sometimes it's easier to go along - like I agreed a branch might be dangerous in high winds, so when Harvey was coming close to us (hit about 1.5 hours north), we were outside in the just starting rain sawing off a tree branch so it'd not smash thru a window.  If I disagree that it's a good time for stuff like that, I am "arguing" and not sharing his concerns.  This runs on all topics, from politics to if he will ahve a job in 5 years, to if one of us needs to go take care of his parents.  I say it's too far down to waste a lot of time worrying, he worries every day. 

My ability to shut down these feelings enough to function daily is invalidating to him.  I need to FEEL the paralysis he feels, the anxiety, worry, and not doing so is in an indication in his mind that I don't care, understand, etc.

My reactions and words are not his, therefore I can't understand how he feels, so he gets mad - not sharing the same feeling can be seen as invalidation. 

So... he has to AMKE me feel his feelings, so he can feel understood, that his feelings were communicated. 

Imagine she has some self-image issues.  We all do, pwBPD seem to have them quite a bit since they struggle to adapt their "self" to whatever will get the most emotional supply.

She doesn't think you feel bad enough about something, and so she needs to make you feel the same bad emotions she feels herself, so she calls you bald or boring to make you feel her pain.  You let her know that the term 'boring" bothers you.  So now she knows what to poke at you with.  My husband has image issues and has absorbed me into them - if he feels fat, I get called fat (I am, but I've lost 16 lbs since august and dropped a pant size).  If he feels I am calling him stupid for not seeing the mayo (this happens a lot), he calls me stupid.  He thinks I am making him feel his feelings.  He can't take responsibility for them on his own.

It's hard to remember when they are attacking us, but SO much is not even about us when you look in hindsight.  It's about them not being able to communicate back and forth well - them not understanding or accepting what we say we are feeling.  Their "observations" tell them otherwise.

I joined a reddit thread for pwBPD.  Nons are welcome as long as no one is rude.  I have been asking what things like splitting are like from their point of view and was told that if they feel off, everything we do becomes off to them.  It doesn't matter how things were yesterday or even 20 minutes ago, if something pings that emotion, that fear of abandonment, uncertainty, fears of being wrong, therefore abandonable, every single thing we do, for asking "how are you" to how we set things down becomes suspect.  They suddenly KNOW we are up to something to hurt them, and are just waiting for it, looking for it, so they can explode with the Ahha -0 you're a jerk all along I know it no one can like me, you've been faking all this time, take the brunt of my outrage.  And we're left like, huh?  Why are they being so mean (my last several days)?

[JoeBPD81]

Thanks for the replies.

I don't miss friends and activities so much. I miss time without drama. And days without violence. If I had 10 days without her and the kids, I would probably be alone 9 days, if not 10. This summer I had many days without them, and I thought at first that I would take the chance to catch up with friends, and then I didn't.

We are both about to jump out of a window everyday from the conflicts with the kids. (BTW I got "transforming the difficult child, the nurture heart approach" and I'm reading it) She does take care of them more time than me. So when I leave, I feel like I'm abandoning my post. Some is in my head, some is how I get treated and the things she says. And mentioning her that I want all of us to meet someone, ups the stress for days.

The other issue. I know what she says is about her and not specially about me. She also says that. Now what, I let her bully and mock me in front of the kids? I pretend it's ok to not mind anyone's feelings but your own?

Maybe boring would have hurt me the same, but she used a word in our language that is kind of swearing. That we wouldn't like if the kids repeated it. And the kids do repeat most mocking she does. She tells them that only she can say those things (because hearing another person saying them, she realizes it's offensive, but not when she does). The kids haven't learnt to be respectful, and almost everyday they put us (mostly her) in uncomfortable moments.

The thing is, understanding where some behavior comes from, does that give her a free pass?

Your Honor, I shoot that guy, yes, but it didn't have anything to do with him, or the law, only with how I was feeling in that moment. So it doesn't matter. Don't I have a right to my feelings?

Then, a direct attack to me, and a prolonged mockery about my life, it has nothing to do with me, and I'm already paying for getting offended. But I talk about the pink dolphin of the Amazons, and somehow I'm a jerk and I'm offending her in a way she'll never forget.

I'm paying because she's making it about me not wanting her to be in a good mood ever again. It's like she baked a cake with some nails inside, and I ask her about the nails because my mouth is bleeding. And she gets angry and swears she'll never bake again. The problem is not the cake, or the baking, it's just the nails.

She's saying she doesn't want to be around me, that we are incompatible... She asked me to cancel some plans with the kids... She's telling me she is completely self centered, and keeping everything else outside.

I've been very anxious. I can take fake hate, and mockery about it when it's mixed with some appreciation and affection and trust... But one day real hate, and the next fake hate and jokes... It's not funny.

Yesterday, hours after we argued about all this, she texted me "You're awesome, you know. I keep telling you and it doesn't sink in." It helped my inner murderous dialogue, but it didn't last long. I tried to be polite for the rest of the day, but she kept saying things like "I hate your guts", and avoiding me, and making faces and turning around when she came close as if I was a stinking pile of old garbage.

So yeah she "keeps telling" me I'm awesome, once every 2000 "you s*ck". I wonder why it doesn't sink in...

[Radcliff]

How could you create more peace for yourself than you currently have?  How can you get some alone time?  Does she get alone time?

RC