Tells, red flags

[Hazy111]

I phoned a friend of mine to catch up. I hadnt done so for ages. He doesnt have a land line, just a mobile (cell).

The funny thing was his girlfriend answered again, which always throws me. She chats to me and hands the phone over. Once she said when i rang him, "Do you want to talk to Saul? "  It got me thinking again about her.

I mentioned it to him once and he just blew it off as no big deal. But i see it as a clear lack of boundary.

He doesnt live with her, but she has her own home and  lives close by about a twenty minute walk.   

I mentioned a few years back about where he was spending Xmas. I assumed it was with her.  No he explained, she  always has her husband over at Xmas with the two daughters.   I knew she wasnt divorced , but i still think this is strange.  He says he (the husband) still comes round from time to time to do jobs around the house?   I asked him arent they going to get divorced?  He said they werent going to, cos of tax reasons regarding the house??   Which sounds very lame.

Ive met her a few times and shes been pleasant enough to me , but he has fallen out with his SIL as his  girlfriend got into an argument  with her . Therefore its been  difficult between him and his brother and nephews who hes close to. (To be fair I know his SIL is very hard work, i suspect  BP.)

Shes still a smoker, even  into her 50s. Every suspected BP i dated, smoked ( oral fixation) Strong marker for insecurity.

Theyve been a few other incidents that dont quite add up. But if hes happy then so what.  I dont talk about to him about the relationship.

But he went through a very difficult situation a  years back with i suspect another BP, who he was on the verge of moving in with after 10 years ands he sold his home in preparation , when she suddenly  pulled the plug on him and he was left frantically having to rent a place.

[1footouttadefog]

I am not sure where you are going with this.  A friend is dating a potential of person. 

Other than the awkwardness of her answering the phone how is this impacting you. 

Alot of non married or non cohabitating couples get cozy about answering each other's  phone.  She may be a little bossy or insecure about his calls from other women and is marking territory by answering the phone.  As long as she is cordial no harm done. 

If he is willing to have an atypical holiday because us is settling for a woman who is not entirely available to him that is his business.  He thinks it's worth it at least for now. 

She smokes, alot of folks smoke.  If he still enjoys her it's his deal. Unless she is smoking around you no issues. 

You admit his SIL is a problem.  If he wants to side with his gf it's sad he is loosing contact with the rest of them, however the SIL is causing that not the GF.  He could visit without her if he was not being stopped at the SIL end of things.

Seems like you need to re evaluate your feelings for this guy.  If you have specific concerns for his safety bring them up perhaps, otherwise you might loose a friend by criticizing his partner. 

[Hazy111]

Alot of non married or non cohabitating couples get cozy about answering each other's  phone.  She may be a little bossy or insecure about his calls from other women and is marking territory by answering the phone.

The Queen has learned how to win special treatment through persistence and intimidation.

The common denominator among borderline Queens is emotional deprivation. As children they felt robbed; consequently, they feel entitled to take what they need.

She may perceive others, as a threat to her own survival unless they relinquish their needs for hers.

Christine Lawson the "Borderline Queen"

Maybe i should have added, that i asked  "Do you answer her phone when it rings ? " He just laughed. He didnt reply.

Yeah maybe shes just a little bit bossy and a little bit insecure and probably a little bit Pd. Just a little bit not too much.

I dont have a problem with it. Its just Im of the opinion its much more common than people realise. His last girlfriend he arranged to move in with her and he sold up and everything and she then dropped him like a stone 10 years in. Said "she never really loved him. " So thats alright then. Hes scrabbling around looking for somewhere to live.

His mother has real issues ( most probably PD)  and therefore i believe inevitably hes unconsciously attracted to similar women . Its his unconscious template for females.

[takeadeepbreath]

I'm with you Hazy111, how prevalent PD might be.  Current statistics in the U.S. have the prevalence rate of the population having any type of PD as 9% or 10%.   1 out of 10 people.  Yeah . . . I don't think so.  If they double that figure to 1 out of every 5 people, I might start listening.

[Hazy111]

Takeadeepbreath, Im of the opinion its much higher than 1 in 5 , id say its the norm .

Freud once said ( long before PD had been accepted as psychological  condition) that neurosis (as it was called then, ) was the norm not the exception for the human condition. I think he was right.

As someone very perceptive on this site said " once you see it you cant unsee it" and it leaves you with a very unsettling view of humanity.

This site deals with a lot of people who know people who are at the extreme ends in their pathology. But i believe PD is a range of conditions and behaviors that have a core degree of traits and most people suffer from it. I know thats not a popular position, but DENIAL is the greatest tool in the PD armoury.

Its interesting you talk about the US I read once research done on past US Presidents and all scored higher than normal on the "psychopathy scale".. Before people jump down my throat,  i dont believe this is unique to the US.

[escapingman]

Its interesting you talk about the US I read once research done on past US Presidents and all scored higher than normal on the "psychopathy scale".. Before people jump down my throat,  i dont believe this is unique to the US.

My guess is that the majority of world leaders in the past and now would have been PD to a certain extent. Who else could get that high up the ladder? Knowing what I now know, following UK politics I am baffled anyone would be voting for and having any faith in the current highly narcissistic prime minister. 

[Hazy111]

Couldnt possibly comment

[j.banquo]

Even one of the things you mention her doing is so manipulative, she probably attempts to control everything about his life. It has also got to be so much worse when there aren't any "witnesses." Who knows what she's like then...

Theyve been a few other incidents that dont quite add up. But if hes happy then so what.  I dont talk about to him about the relationship.

He's Probably Listening

In 2000, when my sister & her family were visiting, I heard a slap coming from a room where my niece (a toddler then) was alone with my brother in law. I called my sister and said "what is going on in your marriage?" She said everything was fine, and they were really happy.

In 2005, she called me and told me about how extraordinarily emotionally abusive he was, that she was getting a divorce, and that I was the only person who ever expressed concern about her marriage. She said she had never forgotten, and that it helped her decide to get out.



Guys Forgot How to Handle Being Vulnerable, But They Still Are

It's harder with other guys, like: my best friend's (now ex) wife stabbed him through the hand with a car key. She's maybe 5' 2" - who'd believe she was assaulting him? He and I are so close (and socially functional), we were roommates for 4 years straight with no conflict, ever. While I expressed a little concern ("dude, it's weird she's calling you to go downstairs and carry her the 20 feet to the house because it's drizzling out"), he never talked about it, not until he was safely out.

I wish I'd pushed harder before he got married (plenty of red flags), but I honestly thought that it was none of my business. With women who are even just acquaintances, I would've said something. That's horrible, because so many of my male friends are survivors of extreme abuse, usually by multiple people throughout their lives, often women, and they never tell anyone, let alone report it to the police. It's worse for my friends who are gay or who've been abused by another guy. It's a massive "hidden" problem, just like eating disorders in men is.

I always used to go straight to "it's fine" when anyone brought up anything at all painful. A lot of guys recoil from a caring gesture or question from another guy, since we're supposed to be tough and be able to handle anything or we're complete failures. It can come off as an insult, especially when there's an ongoing abusive relationship.

Just this past year I realized how bad it was to be "stoic" all the time, and to keep the worst and hardest parts of my life from the people closest to me, but I've also been in therapy for 20 years.

I mean also, for the first 18 years of my life, telling "someone" about bad, painful, or hard things resulted in punishment and rejection every time, and then "someone" would also make the situation far worse than it already was. That's pretty common, so we have that to cut through too when talking about this stuff.

How I Approach Other Guys Who Are In Abusive Relationships

A guy I dated (now a friend) lives with his over-the-top emotionally abusive mom, it is non-stop for him when he's home. I've known him about a year now.

I've decided to print out tons of articles about emotional abuse and PDs, put resources on a thumb drive, and give them to him. I may well lose him as a friend, but if I'm his friend at all, I have a responsibility to do that.

If it's a topic you can bring up without it affecting you psychologically or emotionally, bring it up with your friend, trust me. He will never, ever forget it, and there is no statute of limitations on acts of love and good advice. Even if he can't face it for 20 years, it'll help him the same then as it would now.



Smoking[/]

Shes still a smoker, even  into her 50s. Every suspected BP i dated, smoked ( oral fixation) Strong marker for insecurity.

This is a long aside, but It's pretty important to me because I have Bipolar II (stick with me here), a diagnosis often given to people with Borderline in particular, and I've experienced people running for the hills when I tell them this about me. It's because of their past experiences with unbelievably toxic people who were misdiagnosed.

I'd be careful with this assumption in general though, just because it won't be accurate. For one, a shocking percentage of people with Bipolar Disorder and even more with Schizophrenia smoke - I think it's 60% and 80%. It's because they're under more stress than healthy people, so they have literally less cognitive ability to choose healthy things, plus some substances in tobacco have an antidepressant effect. Plus a stimulant effect, and common meds for both those disorders are really sedating. It also used to give me a way to handle social anxiety; you were  able to take a "smoke break" whenever you wanted up until 2000-whatever.

I quit smoking over a decade ago, but started again around January 6th, 2021.

FWIW, the actual last thing I am right now is insecure. I have a healthier and more accurate sense of self than I ever have before, and recently made a commitment to pay real and consistent attention to the people I love in my life. I always feared (for good reason) that would drive friends away; turns out it doesn't, yay. I also don't care what anyone thinks of me as long as I'm not doing harm to person or property, psychological or otherwise. That feels amazing, and I never even knew it was possible.

Common Misdiagnoses In Psychological & Psychiatric Health

Most medical professionals have too many patients, and most in the "mental health" field don't even use assessments that have been proven in replicable studies to be accurate. It's disastrous, since with some of these common misdiagnoses, the drugs you'd use to treat one of them are the worst thing to give to someone who actually has the other thing.

Borderline is frequently diagnosed as Bipolar even though they don't even look the same at all, like - at all. Similar words are used to describe the symptoms though, and since Bipolar is often easily treatable, they go with that diagnosis. They even do it on purpose at places like Kaiser, because it's cheaper to treat something that's treatable with meds. I'll just leave that topic out of this.

I've encountered many PD people who have been diagnosed with Bipolar. They come at me talking about how they can handle it without medications, and maybe it doesn't even exist. They also - not in these words, but - they even say "maybe all of the centuries of work by scientists and doctors that has gone into figuring out how to treat diseases that were completely untreatable until the 50s' or so is actually a scam or a conspiracy." Like - people with Bipolar do not try to attack roommates with cast-iron frying pans, that just doesn't happen.

The worst part of that is that they aren't even wrong - they don't have Bipolar, so of course they think it doesn't exist when someone insists they have it, so the situation is entirely impossible and twisted.

"Mental Illness," Violence, and Abuse

It's a myth that people with psychiatric disorders are more dangerous and violent than people without them. In reality they aren't, but we are way, way, way, more likely to be victims of violence. Plus, when someone is sick, they have a diminished ability to fend off an abuser, and they might be dependent on one. We make excellent targets. One of the best types of target a person can find.

Back to misdiagnoses - CPTSD, ongoing abuse, and a history of abuse can look exactly like panic attacks, anxiety, depression, Bipolar, and/or ADHD. If you try to treat someone with past or especially ongoing trauma for the other things instead, that patient is not going to get better from any combination or type of therapy or meds, because something that looks very similar but is treated entirely differently is going on.

I cannot tell you how many times someone responsible for treating me has asked me if I have a history of trauma, I say "trauma like what," they rattle of a list of very specific things all having to do with physical abuse or like living in an active war zone, and I accurately say "no, none of that."

[Hazy111]

jjffhh,, you write very well...

I too smoked and before i smoked i used to suck my pencil at school and before that i iused to suck my thumb   and guess what it s a real strong marker for C- PTSD. Trauma. My mother i believe was a uBPD  "hermit /paranoid" type . When I read "Understanding the Borderline Mother" by Christine Lawson, everything began to make sense plus other books and a shed load of therapy... I was i think the "GC" and left with a schizoid/avoidant personality ,narcissistic with a small .   

Re my friend, unfortunately he is of the school that all this psychological stuff is  a waste of time. I believe he is also a schizoid/avoidant type. I dont mention it,  but he has a similar friend who has never had a girlfriend. He doesnt live with his current girlfriend,, "the perfect schizoid compromise", as its called. Not heavily emotionally/physically committed. So its up to him. Ive never heard him complain about her.  The Xmas stuff suits him, as he as always spent Xmas with his mother,,, i know hes 58.   Its just i know stuff and i recognise it for what it is.  I did give him a copy of "Understanding the Borderline Mother " years ago when he was splitting up with his last GF. But he said it wasnt her. Hmmm. I have to respect his boundaries..

Interesting with regards BI polar . I dont know too much about it. i know a few celebrities in the UK  have recently come out about their condition and they were people i always thought as of narcissistic. I think comorbidity  is very common...but Bi Polar gets sympathy ,,,narcissism PD doesnt  and its very easy to disguise, unless you live with them. 

I now think back about three guys i knew and i would strongly suspect Bipolar .

I think PD is massively undiagnosed and BiPolar  and Schizophrenia etc  can be the go to. How many health professionals therapists are PD? I suspect some of mine were.  Its a great form of narc supply!

BTW people who are violent and dangerous , are by definition PD, SURELY??. PD is a psychiatric disorder. Cluster B.  They lack empathy, impulse control and are easily triggered into rage (NARCISSITIC RAGE). 

Good luck with your recovery...you write well with insight and compassion.

[j.banquo]

Trigger warning: mention of self-harm ideation, but not intent or action

jjffhh,, you write very well...

Thanks Hazy - really though I just went to a high school that forced everyone to write constantly in 11th grade, they even call it "the writing year." You even have to write essays for math class.

I did give him a copy of "Understanding the Borderline Mother " years ago when he was splitting up with his last GF. But he said it wasnt her. Hmmm. I have to respect his boundaries..

I'd say you've done what you can as a friend, then. I barely said anything to my sister, and never brought it up again. All you can do is invite someone in, you can't take them all the way there.

If it had looked like it were escalating at some point, I would've said something. It's horrible that he hit my niece; that said he almost never did that, and it was always a spanking-type thing. Again, horrible, but not something even Child Services would look at twice, so there was nothing else I could even do.

I think comorbidity  is very common...but Bi Polar gets sympathy ,,,narcissism PD doesnt  and its very easy to disguise, unless you live with them. 

I see what you're getting at there and it would make sense for them to be comorbid. I have a lot of friends who are psychologists or another type of therapist, and it's no more common with narcissists than it is with anyone else (I'm swear I'm not a know-it-all, I'm just a nerd whose favorite thing is learning new things, and I even like being told I'm wrong when I am, so I can learn more).

I was going to launch into that, but it's so off topic I did it somewhere else.

I think PD is massively undiagnosed and BiPolar  and Schizophrenia etc  can be the go to. How many health professionals therapists are PD? I suspect some of mine were.  Its a great form of narc supply!

You'd probably know if a therapist was - I had one. She would spend stretches of time talking about things from her life that were in any way related to what I'd been saying. She said things out loud like "I'm trying to figure out why you're resisting treatment" (not an appropriate thing to say, but also completely false). The last time I saw her, I forget what I was saying or what I was feeling, but she said "I just want to rip your eyeballs out," so I got up, opened the door, and slammed it as she said "wait, come back!"

Another one - totally different, not a therapist, but same general profession. She's a neuropsychologist. Her entire sense of self-worth and identity is wrapped up in her status as an "expert." I brought up concerns that my inability to focus could be related to my experience growing up having to pretend to be female (being transsexual is really confusing for a kid, lol), and really I might not have adhd. She responded that her doctoral thesis was all about that, and that treatment never helped and all the transsexual people were just as depressed as they had been before the treatment. It's so false, it's a bold-faced lie.

BTW people who are violent and dangerous , are by definition PD, SURELY??. PD is a psychiatric disorder. Cluster B.  They lack empathy, impulse control and are easily triggered into rage (NARCISSITIC RAGE). 

Yeah I'd say most of them, no question. Not always though, it can happen from severe acute stress or trauma, sleep deprivation, a psychotic episode that happens to include delusions of persecution (that actually is only violent very rarely, it's just that that's the only time anyone who doesn't experience psychosis hears about it), or ongoing trauma. I was/am famous for having been a violent child. Which always means that something is very wrong in the child's life, the adults around me were all complete morons or something, but they weren't. It's a mystery.

Ongoing trauma: I was a "violent" teenager too, except I realize now that I wasn't. I'd punch holes in walls, but not ever in front of people, not ever. And anything like that, like hitting a table with my fist but not in a "break it" way more like "make a loud noise and I can't get a word in edgewise" - I bet it wasn't provocation I was reacting to, I think I was instinctively fighting for my life most of the time.