Mod Note: Part 1 of this thread is here: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=340569.0;allEven though I have learned so much about BPD in the past few months, I still can't get over how all your BPD SO's are just like my mom. All my life I thought my mom was a one of a kind quirky, difficult, high maintenance mom who was sometimes just "impossible". It's just so surprising to me that so many of the traits that I thought were always peculiar to her, are so common to other's SO's. It's remarkable to me how BP's use money to get attention and focus on them.
Holy moly. I definately relate to this. We always thought my MIL was "quirky," "difficult," and "sometimes impossible." We often used those exact words to describe her. This was obviously before we learned about BPD. This thread kind of creeps me out because I feel like in some ways, we are all describing the same person!
My MIL jokingly (but not) insisted on paying, got hurt if I refused a used piece of furniture I didn't need, and had parameters about how to use furniture I'd accepted.
Goodness gracious! This is my MIL as well! When we moved to NYC, we asked my MIL if she wanted to come with us. (Knowing what we know now, we probably wouldn't do this again, but alas, here we are.) When she said she wanted to come, we had several parameters in place.
1. This is our apartment. She pays a portion to contribute to rent, but we are the heads of the household. (We only have her contribute to rent because she had certain requirements like an elevator and we could not afford those amenities. My husband and I would be okay with living much more simply otherwise.)
2. We told her that we will likely run the house differently than she did and she has to be okay with taking the back seat to all of that.
She agreed. She said she was tired of running a household anyway.
As we were preparing for the move, she would not stop ordering things she thought we needed. We asked her to stop. Moving all that extra stuff to NY was going to cost a lot of money, but she kept insisting we needed to buy all that stuff before we left. It was as if towels don't exist in NYC.
We kept reminding her that this was our apartment and we were excited to create a home together, but it fell on deaf ears. She even ordered multiple sets of sheets for our bed without considering if we wanted them. (Nevermind the fact that she didn't buy herself any sheets and were sent on a mission to get some for her when we got here.) When I told her to stop buying sheets for us, she seemed insulted.
She also offered us some furniture that she had in her house for us to use. We didn't want it. We were okay with not having a lot and purchasing things that met our taste/needs as we settled in. She kept insisting and we told her that we didn't need it initially, but she finally said she was paying to ship everything because she couldn't live without those things. We decided to use it until we could afford to replace it. She agreed to that plan.
However, fast forward a year, we begin to settle in and have financially recovered from moving. We started to replace pieces of furniture and she could not comprehend why we wanted to do so. She was offended. She cried. She tried to convince us to keep using it. She could not remember agreeing to it. She moved ALL OF IT into her bedroom in addition to what was already there.
At that point, she had also started saying that we told her she had to move with us because we could not afford NY without her. (On the contrary, it would be substantially cheaper without her.)
For a while, we kept saying the same things. She is "quirky," "difficult," "impossible," but now we realize it has always been much more than that.
So I am really connecting to the topic of how money is used to manipulate and have the bpd's own needs met. I wonder if to a BP, money = power?
I've also been thinking about this a lot. I've been telling my husband about this thread and he was struck by how much of it sounded like his mom. We were both saying that with my MIL, it is often as if things of value, money, gifts- when those things are rejected, her reaction is often so intense it feels like we are doing something as extreme as directly hurting her child. Where we see a rejection of physical or monteray gifts, it is like she sees it as a betrayal to who she is. She doesn't have an identity or worth unless she can provide those things.
Since she has become "disabled," she really struggles with an inability to buy and pay for things. This time of year is especially difficult because she cannot buy expensive gifts and she does not understand that we love her because she is family, not because of what she can/cannot buy.
