When Love Turns Into War

[ACycleWiser]

Abandonment Fear smashes you both together in an intense romantic fusion, giving both of you all you ever wanted.

but as time goes on rising bouts of Engulfment Fear cause a push and pull motion that starts to act like a bone saw. The deeper we get in the relationship, the deeper the cut becomes for both sides.

Now, throw in some object inconsistency and poor emotional self-regulation - which was self-regulated by the intensity of the honey moon phase - and you will find that the saw not only cuts back and forth, it starts moving in other directions too. This is the moment you get triangulated in a manage a trois between friends, co-workers, family and even your very children, and as time goes by also "the guy(s) you should not worry about".

Of course all this growing instability does not do a good service to "the perfect couple" idea that you both started with, and the solution to try and restore the relationship to its initial promise is opposite from now on: as the BPD activates their onboard splitting machinery to slowly "unsee" the good you brought to the relationship, the partner becomes ever more motivated to re-enact the good times that he wishes to "see again".

Both partners end up totally frustrated when their failing strategies to revive the relationship only seems to make matters worse. The high of love slowly gets replaced with the high of high conflict and trauma bonding.

Every normal relationship will have it's rough times and be impacted by external and internal challenges,  this will take the partners time and attention away from the r/s, but to the BPD person the impact of any such "crises" is much more destabilizing, reducing their capacity to self-regulate even further.

Ultimately this will overload the capacity for the relationship to regulate itself, and with abandonment and engulfment fears climaxing, the ultimate doomsday device is unleashed into the dynamic: the partner is being split black and with that also receives the destructive load of blame shifting and unwanted qualities the BPD wishes to discard itself of... with such an overpowering defense activated, the actual discard of the partner is only a matter of time.

I am the last person to claim i was perfect in this relationship, i have my trajectory of growth ahead of me as well.
And i did not wish my exBPD to be perfect either, my biggest wish would be that she could be her true imperfect self.

We had something and we destroyed it.

I am not blaming her, or me. It was really not an issue of the people in the r/s, it was the dynamic described above that was brought into it through trauma defenses and immaturity on both sides.

[grumpydonut]

and as time goes by also "the guy(s) you should not worry about".

Haha, very well put. I also think a lot of their behaviours start to rub off onto us. I know that the girl I once loved, I now hate more than anyone I have ever hated. If that's not black and white thinking and splitting, then ?

[imtiredofthiscrp]

Both partners end up totally frustrated when their failing strategies to revive the relationship only seems to make matters worse. The high of love slowly gets replaced with the high of high conflict and trauma bonding.

this part. no matter how much i try to make it better, i end up making it worse. as much as we both want them to be different right now, i trigger them. and in turn their rage and outbursts trigger me. then we're both shameful and upset.

theres no high of love anymore. we havent even really been intimate in a while. we hold hands, but we barely show affection. the high is the conflict, the lows are really low.

i dont know if it was the type of fight we had this time, i think it scared both of us, or what has changed but i just feel like this might finally be the acceptance of the situation i've needed. the bottom line is, they are who they are and they are not going to change in a week because they said they want therapy or want to be different, even if they truly mean it. i have also not changed how i'm responding even though i have been in therapy. i believe we do both care a lot about each other, but we need to now care enough to allow each other to heal.
 

[Couscous]

imtiredofthiscrp,

I have noticed that my reactivity began to decrease once I went almost NC. My T says that while it is possible to make changes while in a high-conflict r/s, progress is much, much slower. I now am beginning to think I was addicted to the adrenaline rush more than anything else. 

[ACycleWiser]

imtiredofthiscrp,

I have noticed that my reactivity began to decrease once I went almost NC. My T says that while it is possible to make changes while in a high-conflict r/s, progress is much, much slower. I now am beginning to think I was addicted to the adrenaline rush more than anything else. 

yes, the high of love gets replaced with the high of high conflict. The thing is something in us did not really know the difference...