Twisted facts in arguments

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

Of course we can relate Shop Girl.
  And the next step of detaching. Which I am soundly on the way. When they move to the next relationship. That initial pang of hurt. I had it. I had anger and I did leave a nasty email which I’m sure gave her great satisfaction. Now a year or so later I  87.33 percent know I don’t care anymore.
  And not looking for sympathy just stating the facts.
We are not perfect.
But these relationships are pure abuse.
Mental.
Physical.
Emotional.
Financial. 
  Good riddance.
No turning back.
That’s the only advice that I have earned to convey.
Get out. Get away.
Watch your back.

[Goosey]

Of course we can relate Shop Girl.
  And the next step of detaching. Which I am soundly on the way. When they move to the next relationship. That initial pang of hurt. I had it. I had anger and I did leave a nasty email which I’m sure gave her great satisfaction. Now a year or so later I  87.33 percent know I don’t care anymore.
  And not looking for sympathy just stating the facts.
We are not perfect.
But these relationships are pure abuse.
Mental.
Physical.
Emotional.
Financial. 
  Good riddance.
No turning back.
That’s the only advice that I have earned to convey.
Get out. Get away.
Watch your back.

[shopgirl26]

Of course we can relate Shop Girl.
  And the next step of detaching. Which I am soundly on the way. When they move to the next relationship. That initial pang of hurt. I had it. I had anger and I did leave a nasty email which I’m sure gave her great satisfaction. Now a year or so later I  87.33 percent know I don’t care anymore.
  And not looking for sympathy just stating the facts.
We are not perfect.
But these relationships are pure abuse.
Mental.
Physical.
Emotional.
Financial. 
  Good riddance.
No turning back.
That’s the only advice that I have earned to convey.
Get out. Get away.
Watch your back.

Solid, sound advice.

I had dental surgery a few weeks ago, was feeling vulnerable, and missed my ex.

Then I remembered the psychic incident. It went away.

I'll still have my moments of missing the good times, but the bad times far outweigh the good.

[Goosey]

I’ve walked home thru Jersey corn once just to escape her rants.
Miles of rows of it. (Yes we still have some farms haha.)
Lot of time back then to think but I wasn’t.
I was in the zone of anger and denial and panic and my own self doubt and self loathing and exhausted from trying to defend myself but still trying.
  No more of that nonsense.
Off that cycle.
Just a “oh well” is my new mantra.
Seems to work!

[Couper]

The what aboutism! It was so exhausting!

Did your ex latch onto a time from the past where you were wrong, and bring it up every single time you had a disagreement?

For example,

ME: "Hey, when you called me those names just now, you hurt my feelings."

HER: "Well, what about that time 5 years ago? Do you remember what you said to me?"

ME: "Can we stay in the moment here? I'm trying to tell you that you hurt me."

HER: "I was so upset 5 years ago! That was the meanest thing you've ever said! Everybody thinks so! How could you do that?"

Around and around we go.

You stopped too soon -- it really gets good when you say, "Fine, and five years ago you did {insert hurtful thing here} to me" and then they shoot back, "You can't hold something against me from five years ago, that's totally unfair".

... and no, you don't need to be psychic to know how that one is going to play out!

[shopgirl26]

You stopped too soon -- it really gets good when you say, "Fine, and five years ago you did {insert hurtful thing here} to me" and then they shoot back, "You can't hold something against me from five years ago, that's totally unfair".

... and no, you don't need to be psychic to know how that one is going to play out!

Couper, the best is when you say, "What about that thing you said to me 20 minutes ago?"

BPD: "That was 20 minutes ago! How can you still hold that against me? What you said 5 years ago was way worse!"

[Sappho11]

Oh God, these arguments...

My ex would forbid me from meeting new people. "I'm meeting men and women in a group setting and it's entirely platonic. You on the other hand want the right to stay close friends with your ex and with that fling you once had!"

Ex: "Don't you understand, those are people from my PAST, while in your case it's people from the FUTURE! That's much more threatening to a relationship!"

(In hindsight, there's probably a lot of narcissistic logic in that: "But my exes are depleted supply! You're meeting up with fresh meat!")

[Couper]

Absolutely.  It's an endless cycle and will last for as long as we're willing to feed it.  In my case, that's why I have simply stopped talking.  Not just when the situation develops (they still sneak in on occasion) but even in advance of that because just about anything as innocent as, "where do you think I should relocate this plant" will lead to what has been described above.

On another note, I think here and in other places, text exchanges keep getting mentioned.  While I am not a geezer, I can still remember a world before text.  Not just in my present situation, but in everyday life, I had created a policy from the beginning that I do not have arguments through text.  I'll wait to see the person or, if time or distance is a problem, I will pick up the phone and call, but I do not entertain confrontational text exchanges.  I equate it to someone hiding behind a wall and shooting spitballs at me.  Most people that initiate text wars are cowards.  One mistake with autocorrect or a poorly worded phrase and then they have the ammo they need to advance their cause.

I had an employee that was chronically late and, on yet another morning, he screwed up my schedule by rolling in at his leisure.  When he finally showed up I told him it was time he grew up and got his act together.  He got very aggressive, broke out into a pity party about how hard life is (he was living five minutes away very comfortably with his parents and had most of his expenses taken care of) then he said, "We'll pick this up next week!", kicked the door open, and stomped out.  Five minutes later (after he got home) he starts blowing up my phone with a barrage of texts.  School is hard, girlfriends are hard, I'm not fair and should show him more grace.  I just ignored it.  He had my attention when he was standing in front of me.  He wasn't entitled to more of my time to, once again, do things at his leisure.  Now not only was my schedule screwed up, my workload was screwed up because he wasn't there doing the work I had laid out for him.  

He said we'd pick it up next week, right?  He never came back.  I must not have owed him any money because I don't remember him coming back for his check and I wouldn't have wasted the stamp on him because he's coming back next week...  I would have said, "It's here, come pick it up."  That was the end of him and his father worked next door to me for a few more years and he would come up to visit him, but never walked across the lot to close the loop.

Right before all of that, he had a piece of used equipment he wanted to sell me and left behind.  Something in the hundreds, not thousands.  He could come reclaim it if he wanted.  I just waited and some weeks later he emailed a price.  It was fair enough.  Knowing it was really his parent's and not his, I sent a check to his address on file (his parent's house)... in his mother's name.    

[LovelyRita50]

After the initial "channeling" of my dead relatives, my BPD tried to convince me (and did a damn good job) that our apartment was haunted by my grandmother. Every time the lights flickered, she'd say, "Nana's here."

And it's like, do you think my dead grandma would be contacting you? It was like this competitive thing, like she was trying to take ownership over my grandma and her memory because she was "channelling her." Now I realize how sick that was.

I can't believe my BPD ex convinced me that there was something wrong with me for not believing. She managed to convince me that I was emotionally abusing her by not believing.

ShopGirl, this is kind of blowing my mind. My pwBPD thinks she can see the future. I am a naturally skeptical person, so I have privately chalked it up to basic intuition combined with confirmation bias. (She remembers when she anticipated something correctly but doesn't remember the times she was wrong.)

Except, after we met and I told her about my late husband (who died unexpectedly in July 2016) she got really quiet and eventually told me she'd had a premonition the day before he died that someone who would become very important to her in the future had a husband who was about to have a heart attack. Her "vision" told her she needed to somehow find and warn me, and she now felt guilty for not succeeding.

OooKAYYYYYY! I had lumped this in with her other weirdness before reading your post. Now it seems like something sinister, like she was trying to turn my loss into something all about her. I'm going to run this by my therapist in a few days and see what she thinks.

[EZEarache]

ME: "Can we stay in the moment here? I'm trying to tell you that you hurt me."

HER: "I was so upset 5 years ago! That was the meanest thing you've ever said! Everybody thinks so! How could you do that?"

Around and around we go.

Absolutely! So I really haven't implemented too many boundaries. My ex was/is pretty high functioning, but this fight was happening, non-stop towards the end of our relationship. The one boundary I've ended up implementing was not discussing anything that happened more than two months ago. She hates this SO much. However, the fighting seems to have subsided as a result of it, and now we just focus on our baby.

[shopgirl26]

Absolutely! So I really haven't implemented too many boundaries. My ex was/is pretty high functioning, but this fight was happening, non-stop towards the end of our relationship. The one boundary I've ended up implementing was not discussing anything that happened more than two months ago. She hates this SO much. However, the fighting seems to have subsided as a result of it, and now we just focus on our baby.

EZEarache, that is so smart! I wish I'd thought of that.

Ultimately, our marriage ended after my ex spent 4 days calling me names, throwing my abusive childhood in my face, mocking me while I was in tears, and calling me "a dog with a bone" for still being hurt after she sarcastically apologized. But she never took accountability for any of it. Instead, in her mind, our marriage ended because of a thing I said in a fight we had 3 years ago. She sent me hate mail calling me an abuser and referencing that fight. For the past 2 years of our marriage, I was living in the moment, and she was stuck in the past.

I wish I'd thought of that boundary you put up. But she would have freaked if I had put that boundary up anyway.

She had 2 stock lines she'd use to shut down any conversation where I put up boundaries or expressed a need or something she'd done that hurt me:

1. "if it wasn't this, it would be something else. It's always something. You're always criticizing me! I never know what will set you off."

2. "What about that time that you ______?"

And then suddenly I'd be defending something I did or said 5 years ago and didn't remember.