Hi once removed,
Thanks for your reply
In broad terms, my partner said she was not happy and I was not meeting her needs. While we have discussed her needs and how we can work at meeting them, she also does recognise that the break-up was an attempt to push me away and that she engaged in a lot fo self-sabotaging behaviour.
We have planned to commence couples therapy in a few weeks so that she may be able to consider whether a relationship can work between us. While I am happy about this, I am also uncertain as to how any techniques provided to us will be impacted if our therapist does not know about my partner's BPD traits (although I hope that after a few sessions it may become apparent). Is this something I should share privately with the therapist or will that negatively impact my partner and the couples therapy relationship?
Implementing communication strategies is definitely hard. Right now I think we are communicating a lot better. However, our main issue is that my partner focuses a lot on actions and her interpretations of actions, while I focus on the intention behind things. To her, an intention could not be true if it is not reflected in my actions. While I am focusing a lot on how I can mould my actions to convey my intentions in a way she understands, I feel I am constantly left confused about how to act in a way that triggers her the least in a situation.
For example, we argued a couple of days ago because she wanted to raise an issue to talk about, but didn't want to talk about it that night as we have been trying to set limits to when we talk (we tend to talk quite a lot). I clarified whether she was sure it was ok to wait until the next day and we agreed to talk about it the next day on the phone (we had planned to text on her work break and then call later that night). When we texted I asked again whether she wanted to talk about the issue and she said she wanted to talk about it on the call. When we called, I asked whether she wanted to talk about it and she became frustrated. Ultimately, in checking, I had made her doubt my belief that she said it was not an important issue and could wait. Also, the way I had asked frustrated her and she would have preferred if I had raised it more generally, as it made it seem that I thought it was more important and she thought it meant I was only asking for me because I wanted to know and not for her. I know that in double checking I made her feel as though I didn't trust her, but it is something I am working on - as throughout our relationship she would say that things were fine and she was ok when things were not (she is working on this though). We worked through this matter and confirmed that we would make sure we clarify that we are on the same page about when we're talking about stuff. However, a couple of days after that she wanted to talk about another issue. We confirmed we were on the same page that we would talk about it when we called and I would only ask generally if she had not brought it up. Although, when we did call, she did not bring it up immediately so I spoke about other small things because I thought she may be hesitant to raise it. I did raise it eventually but she was frustrated because she said I had raised it too late into the call as we only had 20 minutes left to talk out of the hour (timed call as we are in a major study period with university). She said the small talk made her think she couldn't raise the issue. We discussed the issue but she became frustrated because to her it was exactly the same conversation as previously. However to me, it was completely different because I had previously learned the how she'd like me to ask something, and then in the recent conversation I had learned when it was too late to raise something.
I feel like we typically have conversations where I feel like there is absolutely nothing I say that could be interpreted in a way that is not triggering. I also feel that there are so many situations where everything is just a complete contradiction of what has previously been said. While my partner can understand my perspective on things, it is not something that makes sense to her.
Therapy is going really well. My psychologist is helping me to depersonalise the behaviour and to understand that things are not my fault. While my psychologist is not an expert in BPD issues, she initially suggested it is something I read into on basis of the relayed conversations. It is really helpful to be able to talk about the confusion I feel. Meditation is also helping calm the sadness I feel when I unintentionally trigger my partner or make her sad.
