False accusations and apologies?

[itisi]

Hi all,

One of the biggest issues I’ve faced with my pwbpd traits is false accusations against me. I’ve learned a lot over the past year or so and am navigating it pretty well now, but I have a question about apologies.

I know that healthy relationships need healthy apologies and those are not supposed to be based on the other person’s feelings or offense (“I’m sorry you feel hurt”, etc). Apologies like those are considered red flags.  And it’s also considered a red flag when you refuse to apologize altogether. But a lot of our arguments stem from false accusations against me and I am not willing to apologize for any action I have not done, and that’s also what my therapist told me a couple years ago when I was seeing her. But then that ends up looking like a red flag against me because it’s not an “appropriate” apology, it’s considered like a narcissistic one or something.

Of course I do apologize in normal situations when I have done wrong, and even if I handle a situation poorly and get upset and say something mean or something like that, I will give an appropriate apology. It’s just confusing as to how to give “appropriate” apologies in circumstances of false accusations. I hope this makes sense!! Any advice is welcome and appreciated

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[kells76]

That's tricky for sure.

Reading through your past posts, I'm guessing his false accusations are about you being unfaithful somehow?

Couple of thoughts about approaches.

One option (not for all situations) might be to "find the validation target" as it were (the possible kernel of truth in the feelings behind his words) for an apology. I'm not saying to find something in the content of his words to validate, necessarily. If he's saying "you just need to apologize for sleeping with the neighbor" and you didn't, I'm not suggesting trying to placate him by twisting the situation into something that matches what he said: "well, I guess I did go to the neighbor's house to borrow a hammer so maybe that was like being unfaithful so I'm sorry I did that".

More like -- behind those words, he is feeling something. Lonely? Not paid attention to? Afraid?

Again, I'm not saying you made him feel that way. Far from it! He's in charge of his own feelings. He is feeling them, though. There is a slight potential for the approach of: "Babe, you know, I'm still learning how to hear your feelings better. Even though I didn't sleep with the neighbor, I do apologize if I didn't hear you very well when you felt lonely". (Again, this is assuming that there was a moment when sure, you didn't do a great job listening, and you reflect back and agree that you could've listened better. Don't twist what happened to yourself just to generate justification for an apology).

That's not for every situation or partner. You'll know best if it's an approach that could work for the two of you.

The other thought is that BPD relationships challenge us to grow ourselves and strengthen ourselves in big ways. We have to be OK with being a self that can handle the discomfort of being so misunderstood... because we have a strong core self with values and integrity.

You may need to become OK with feeling the discomfort of how different your relationship is from a "generally normal" relationship. You might wish you had a relationship where you not apologizing for things that didn't happen, is OK. But you're in a relationship where you having integrity may be seen or described as "narcissistic", a "red flag", cold/harsh, or any number of things. Can you be okay if your partner has his own independent thoughts and feelings about how you act, and can you be okay when his thoughts and feelings about your actions are so very different from your intentions?

...

Does he pester you incessantly for apologies for things you didn't do? Or is the dynamic more that he'll demand the apology once or twice, then withdraw/isolate? Or something else?

[itisi]

Does he pester you incessantly for apologies for things you didn't do? Or is the dynamic more that he'll demand the apology once or twice, then withdraw/isolate? Or something else?

Thank you kells76 for the insight and advice.

Yes, his accusations are often about faithfulness but also can be just about anything.

To answer your last questions, he doesn’t pester incessantly. It’s more of withdrawal and then in any discussion he will almost always say that I “never apologize” (not true at all). And he will also tell me to not apologize for his feelings. I am trying to learn how to validate his feelings without admitting to things that aren’t true, but I think that I still need to learn how to do so better and practice more.