Triggers in new relationships after having a partner with possible BPD?

[eleven_11]

Hi everyone, I found this forum googling discussions among people who are or were in a relationship with a person with BPD.
Sorry if there are some mistakes - English is my second language. Also sorry for the long message but I wanted to give as much information I could. I would like to hear experiences of people who had a relationship with a controlling personality and a PD and know if they had issues dealing with triggers in their next relationships with stable people.

In 2018 I started a relationship with a person I stayed with for about a year and a half. I will call her B. She was not diagnosed, but thinking back to all her behaviors, reading a lot and talking to a therapist after breaking up, I am sure she had some personality disorder and her behaviors and how it made me feel ticks all the boxes for BPD and mental abuse.

I was then single for 1 year and then in late 2020 I met my current partner whom I now live with - I will call her P. We have been together for 2 years now. While she is stable, caring and we can talk through anything together, and I've felt peaceful and with no anxiety in the first months with her, lately I have experienced some moments of huge anxiety, feeling suffocated, feeling the urge to run out of the house and not able to breathe whenever we have a discussion or I feel I need some space for me.

I'm having a hard time understanding if this is due to an objective situation that I'm not comfortable with and makes me feel smothered by her, or if I still have PTSD from my previous relationship. I know I should probably go back to therapy, but I also would love to hear experiences from other people who were in a relationship with a BPD person and if any of this resonates with you and any thought/suggestion in general regarding how to handle the burden in the new relationship with the current partner.

With my ex, B., it was a never ending emotional rollercoaster. She would go from being caring, affectionate, funny, easy going, and not making a big deal of daily problems, to being incredibly mean with me, getting suddenly angry for a tiny thing that didn't go as planned. She didn't have any sense of boundary, calling me while I was working or going to attend a course, and I felt it was better to just be on the phone with her and not cut it short, or else I would later have to deal with hours of discussions, or more likely a silent treatment - She used to either get angry or completely shut down when she was disappointed by something (where "something" could be that I couldn't stay 1 hour on the phone when I was visiting my mom for an evening). So I was constantly checking my phone and being late at things. If I didn't answer the phone or she called me and I was unreachable because I was on the phone with someone else, she may then call me back and just be silent for half an hour on the phone. I remember spending the whole day of my uncle's birthday, whom I had visited with all my siblings to his town, in a room on the phone with B. arguing on I don't know what; all the bigger arguments seemed to lead her to wanting to leave me and so I felt I had to stay on the phone until I somehow said the right thing to make her calm down, or she could leave me and disappear in a minute.

Meanwhile, she traveled around the world for work and I was completely fine with her disappearing for 48 hours while she was busy with her own things or hanging out with her friends. She would also twist facts - For example, she moved to France for 6 months and the first thing she told me was that she wasn't able to host me in the new place because it was a kind of closed community building and guests were not allowed; one month after, I was a terrible person because I still hadn't visited her and she "gave up on that hope". The examples could go on and on.

A huge issue between us was that she was extremely jealous of my previous ex, whom I had broken up with 3 years before, and whom I had stayed good friends with, since it was a peaceful breakup and the main reason was in fact that we had turned to be just good friends and nothing more, and it made more sense to let each other free to find a real partner and save the beautiful friendship part of our relationship. I was honest and open with B. about this from the start, and she said she was ok with it, and actually it showed that I was a loyal person and that I had stable and mature relationships in my life. This, in her words... In reality, the first time I went to visit my ex, it was a complete nightmare. I ended up spending 2 minutes with her and the rest of my time in a room crying on the phone with B. who couldn't cope with the fact that I was there and suddenly went to the "let's break up" part, with no middle steps. I still remember the pain of not having the possibility of being listened to and heard, of suddenly feeling extremely guilty for something that I knew had nothing malicious and also that we had agreed on.

This also happened with some friends - I was visiting my best friend for a weekend and B. kept on calling and calling me while she knew I was there just for two days and I needed some healthy time with someone to get my mind off of things. But my needs were never listened to, if they didn't involve her, but spending healthy time with someone else.

It was a terrible year and a half, I had to take anxiolytics for 2 months in order to get some sleep and stop the never ending over thinking going on in my brain. It was the first time in my life I had to take any medication. I couldn't distract myself, whenever I spent time with my friends I would just talk about all of our issues, I filled notebooks and notebooks with notes trying to understand if and where I did something wrong to make her behave like this, if it was my fault. We broke up and then got back together a couple times, until she moved to another continent and this was a forced end.

I was miserable for two months, since she had drained me of all my energy and self esteem, I was still overthinking, I had become isolated from my friends and gave up on many of my personal hobbies. I was totally lost. After going to therapy a few times, I started forcing myself to attend courses, travel, be social again, meet new people, and I felt so much better and started to see everything from a more objective point of view, realizing that I hadn't done anything wrong and that she had mental issues to address on her side. I came back to life. I felt really good and happy when I met my current partner. I thought that nightmare was behind me.

As I was mentioning at the start, lately I have experienced a great anxiety, I constantly feel I am suffocated, and these last nights I again had trouble sleeping. I wake up at 3 am and my brain starts over thinking and I get scared that I am in a similar situation again. While rationally I know my current partner, P., is stable and it's nothing like with B., I feel that I have been cutting out big parts of my life because of this relationship. She didn't ask me to, but I am starting to think that I am avoiding potential problematic situations to prevent discussions and making her upset, projecting how I felt with B. on her.

For example, in these 2 years I only went visit my previous ex (my dear friend) and her sister twice for a short visit, while in the 3 years after breaking up with her and before meeting B. we would hang out much more often. P. also says she completely understand that it's an important friendship, but she is jealous and even if she's ok with me talking to her and she even came with me to spend a weekend with her and her sister and enjoyed the time with them, she does get visibly serious and not really happy whenever I mentioned I talked to my ex or she texted me something. I understand that being ok with your partner being ok with an ex is not for everyone, but after all I've gone through, this is something that I don't want to feel guilty about anymore, since there's nothing behind it other than wanting to be friends with two people, my ex and her sister, who have always been there for me and that are those rare people that recharge your energies and make you feel seen when you spend time with them. At the same time, I see it doesn't make P. happy, even if she accepts it rationally, so I tend to avoid calling them too often and when I visited them the last time, I cut my visit short of one day to show P. I cared about her. But I feel this is not right. I should be free to spend the 3 days as planned with them. Probably P. would be fine with it even if not the happiest person in the world, but I feel I still bear that sense of guilt and fear from how B. would react. I do understand that it's not easy for her, despite what I know I feel inside me towards my ex (friendship) and towards P., and I am sensitive, and she also told me she really appreciate it that I show I understand and I don't give it for granted that she's ok with it. For example the time we visited them, we didn't stay at their place like I would normally do, but I reserved a super nice hotel in the countryside, in the woods, half an hour from their house, in a place I knew P. would love and to give her some independency. She appreciated it. So I'm making steps to meet her half way in this, but at some point if she says she's ok with it I feel she should also make an effort in not showing so openly that she's upset if I receive a text from her, especially if it triggers me.

I am also getting really suffocated by smaller things in my daily life with P.. We both work from home and after Covid everything is still a bit different from before, I lost my old habits of hanging out with new people a lot, going to the gym, and other social things I did on a constant basis before. I feel like we've been in a bubble where the two of us spend a lot of time in the house and hang out, but don't have many social events to take part to individually. I talked to her about it and she agrees it's good to do something else with other people, but for example I mentioned playing tennis again and the first thing she said is "Cool, I'll come see you play". This thing got me a lot of anxiety because I felt smothered and controlled. We talked about it and she said she meant she would love to come see me play sometimes, not that she would come every time... So again I can't tell if these are all triggers because I haven't recovered from my trauma with B., but I also don't want to attribute everything to that while overlooking possible actual problems in my current relationship.
I also told P. I would love to go back to spending some time working abroad (I am a freelancer and can work from anywhere, and before Covid I used to spend a month in a new town every year), and she suddenly said yes let's do it as I was meaning together. And of course I'd love to do that with her as well, but what I meant in that moment was also having again that experience on my own, and I felt suffocated thinking I could never have that again in my life. I know that I could and should talk about this to her calmly and rationally, but when these topics come up randomly in our talks and I get super anxious whenever me mentioning my own project or a desire for myself that doesn't involve her, she turns it into an experience for both of us.

For me keeping my independence in a relationship is fundamental, especially after experiencing that sense of being lost in life after breaking up from a codependent relationship, and I value this for my partner as well. I always encourage her to do things that make her happy, she travels for work and I am always completely fine with it, if I feel a bit lonely I never put it out on her.
P. is very affectionate and verbal (which I am not too much) and often says things like "I missed you" if I have been away for half a day, or that she would love to be there when I do something on my own. Inside me I know she is stable and she means it in a loving way. We talked about it and she said that when she says "I missed you" it's in a light way, it just wants to be a verbal manifestation of love, of the fact that she's happy I'm back, instead for me that is something super heavy to say to me, because it makes me feel some negative feelings connected to the fact that I was somewhere else. Same as whenever I cuddle my dog and she says "I want a hug too". I get super frightened that I'm with a clingy person that needs more affection that I would spontaneously give. But then I think that this could all be just tender display of affection and again it's my previous traumatic experience that makes my mind go on alert mode?

Rationally I know that the best thing to do would be to start doing a course and hang out with friends without her sometimes to regain some space and independence, and see if this feeling of being smothered goes away, but something makes it hard to do and I can't tell if it's because of our relationship, and actually she would make me feel lacking or guilty if I did, or she would be jealous if there was some nice girl in my social life, or instead I just get kind of paralyzed because of my abusive relationship with B., and I am scared to find myself discussing again over and over what I feel is good for me and I have the right to do. I find myself thinking that she could get jealous if I hang out with other girls of our age, even if I never found myself in this situation and I can't know how she would react. Yet, I didn't have all these fears with my ex-ex girlfriend. I never second guessed myself about planning something with other people and was never scared of her jealousy. Can the relationship with a controlling and jealous person like B. change my expectations with new partners, or is it a sign that I am not as free in my current relationship?
Whenever we start talking about these things more seriously, my mind immediately goes in a place where I can't talk calmly and anxiety and a deep sense of injustice and struggling takes over, so these talks end up in fights where I just feel I need space, while P. would want to talk everything through until we understand each other and feel better. I also feel guilty after making my point clear on some things or asking her some more distance when I feel uncomfortable, and then again I start asking myself if I behaved badly with her, or was I right to state my point and I feel guilty again projecting how I felt with B.? Whenever I was exhausted and tried to make my point with B. in a non-tender way (arguments, frustration), she would suddenly start crying and acting like a baby and then I either had to swallow all my frustration and my point and console her, or I had to just go away and then she would make me feel super bad because I left here somewhere crying. Now that I know about BPD more, I see the pattern of behaving like a child trapped in an adult's body, and also the manipulative pattern, but back then I had no idea of what's going on and I somehow ended up being the bad person whenever I got frustrated or angry for something. I feel now I don't see it as a legitimate thing to do with a partner, and whenever I do it in a bit excessive way (as you do when you are having a fight over something), I then feel like a terrible person. Actually P. doesn't make me feel bad about it. She still listens to my point and understands that in a worn out, angry moment one can not be as calm as in other situations. And still here I am questioning myself about the right of getting angry sometimes, and keeping my frustration inside me, hiding it, until I explode.

Any thought would be much appreciated. If you were in a relationship with a BPD person, or in any other kind of mentally abusive and controlling-manipulative relationship, did you experience these issues n your next relationship(s)? How did you, or do you, cope with triggers, and how do you alleviate this on your partner's side? Should I ask her to understand what triggers me from this past relationship and to help me, or should I be able to overcome these triggers completely and it's not fair to ask anything to P.? I know I am not the easiest person as well, but I wonder if these kind of triggers ever go away or it's a good thing to know the partner's triggers and work together on how to handle them.

I feel I can't stand any bit of jealousy-clingyness and not respecting boundaries anymore - I have actually been a bit like this even before B., but I feel my reactions to those king of behaviors now are extreme.

For sure moving in together with P. so soon and all the social distancing months/year didn't help in any way giving me time to adjust to the new relationship while keeping my personal boundaries and spaces. We moved to her flat downtown and I am also struggling living in a city because I've always lived in the countryside and having a garden made me feel really good and happy, and while we are actively talking about moving out of town, I feel a strong sense of injustice about being sacrificing a big part of my needs for her right now - Although rationally I know I agreed to come here at the start of our relationship and she is open to discuss moving somewhere else. But I suddenly get really impatient about getting what I know I need to get the happiness and peace I know I deserve and that other people took away from me before. So I feel bad imposing my priorities to her because of lacks in previous relationships, but I feel I would get more and more frustrated if I don't feel my needs are valued as well, and I lost trust in words, so until I don't see the actual facts I am afraid I will never be able to have what I need around me and this makes me feel almost desperate at times.

Thank you for any thought and suggestion.

[bloomie]

eleven_11 - thank you for sharing with us. This is a lot to sort through and you have been through a truly traumatic relational experience. I am so thankful you have broken free and are rebuilding your life!

A litmus test of the health of relationships, for me, is how well boundaries and limits are negotiated and handled. How independence and separateness is tolerated, supported, and welcomed. How the space around each of us as unique and separate individuals is figured out and honored. It can be very tricky when we have a partner who has a very different (not wrong per se) beliefs and views of what close intimate relationships looks like.

I am wondering if it is a game changer in your current relationship to consider to live separately until you can sort through the discomfort that comes from determining what it is you need and want in your life and intimate relationships versus identifying triggers from the past.

It also might be helpful to think through if you are triggered like this in behaviors with friendships, sibling relationships and other close connections?

I feel I can't stand any bit of jealousy-clingyness and not respecting boundaries anymore - I have actually been a bit like this even before B., but I feel my reactions to those king of behaviors now are extreme.

If there are boundaries being crossed then it is understandable that would be uncomfortable and something you would want to address kindly with your partner. Are you able to communicate what does/doesn't work for you? For example, is it important to clarify that not all plans, outings, hobbies will automatically include both of you. That might be a fundamental misunderstanding between you that you may be avoiding addressing because of fear of push back or going through what you went through before.

It seems like part of the work in sorting out if this is trauma talking or not a great fit for you is going to require some risk in talking things through and seeing how a bid for more independence on your part is received. Since you are having such strong physical responses to some of this the time to address this is sooner rather than later for your own health.

I would also say that living together and working at home and having very little time away from each other is a lot of pressure to put on any relationship. There are those that seem to thrive with that, but count me in as another who is very independent and finds that really isolating and stifling.

[eleven_11]

Hi again bloomie,

Thank you for taking the time to read my super long post and replying here as well!

Yes, for sure temporarily living in separate houses could be helpful for my own path towards clearness. On the other hand, I don't want to take drastic actions that may look like a step backwards in our relationship, and maybe I could go through some middle steps before, trying to get some space for me during the weekdays as well. The plan when we potentially move to another house out of town is also to have some more space and I want to have my own personal room to work and hang out in, plus the garden, and I think it could also be very different from the flat we are in now, which is originally her flat, so I kind of feel like a guest at times and tend to ask permission to change things, invite people over etc, so all of this is really not good for my seek towards more independency. Moving in to a new, bigger house, and settling in both from scratch, could hopefully be a game changer as well, still making our relationship go forward. But your idea is for sure a potentially good one and have considered it myself multiple times.

It also might be helpful to think through if you are triggered like this in behaviors with friendships, sibling relationships and other close connections?

Not that I can think of. I have to say I am not super close with my siblings - I mean we all get along, but we all live in different cities and there's a very big age gap between me and them, so they're not close relationships that could make me feel smothered. I do get triggered by the sense of injustice and not feeling heard when some family issues raise. I also don't have any particularly clingy friend, and no friendships where we hang out super regularly or there are particular expectations or resentments. My mom makes me indirectly feel smothered in the sense that she lives alone and is quite old and mostly relies on me for company and help in many ways since I'm the only female daughter and the only one living in the same town. But it's more of a burden I've felt for long time. I'm also quite sensitive and empathic and I have a strong sense of guilt inside me, so it's always a struggle to make my own space and defend my priorities when I know she needs me. But I think I've never been triggered in the sense that I snap or panic because of her. It's also possible that this sense of burden with my mom has a role when I get triggered by my partner, because she the trigger probably adds a drop to a full bucket?

Are you able to communicate what does/doesn't work for you?

We have talked calmly about our different perceptions in relationships in the past, and especially in the very beginning, when we were in lockdown for Covid and I wanted to make clear that in my normal life without a pandemic I'd want a much more lively social life and independency. She listened to me and always said that she was fine with it, even if personally she doesn't give that as much weight to it or doesn't think about these things too rationally or on a hypothetical level. She does go swim alone and sometimes to hike in the mountains alone, and she loves this, but she says that if I joined her in these activities it wouldn't feel like a burden and she would always be happy to do anything together. As I am writing all this I feel like she is actually just a very nice, loving partner and all the fears are in my head...

The problem is that in practice I never really "tested" how much freedom I can have without small or big repercussions, because be it the social distancing's aftermath, be it the new busy life (I am working more than before, we got a puppy which also drained our energies and times for some months, we both have widowed moms and no siblings in town and this also demands time and energies), I never really had much free time and energies to set my mind to do something on my own constantly, especially involving new friendships of the same sex, and such. So everything is very hypothetical right now as far as all this goes, and I kind of tend to be skeptical rather than optimistic to protect myself and not trust words until I see actions, I guess.   So yes, what you suggest really makes sense - risking a bit more in order to really understand if we have a compatible perception of our relationship.

More recently, since I've been letting my frustration and fears grow inside me for a while, the topic came up only when I was already triggered by something and I kind of snapped, so the 2-3 times I brought my issues up with her in the last 5-6 months it didn't come through really nicely or in a constructive way from my side, as I was kind of yelling out my rights and demanding some space and all she could reply was that she never denied me any space and I can just go ahead and do what I need. So I feel really bad thinking that all that she says may be true and I am just projecting things on her from my past and preventing myself from living and thinking more serenely. Also, since I bring up these topics in those moments of frustration, I think now she associates me doing something on my own as a need to escape from her and I for sure need to find a way to normalize our talks about these matters for both of us' sake.
This is something I am not really good at in general, I have to admit, since in my family we have never been used to talk out our problems and my mum tends to make any argument end by saying "let's not argue". I keep everything inside me and then as soon as I get triggered I pour it all out and not in the best way, since I'm feeling every emotion in that moment.

I feel bad when I think of everything I need to tell her because part of the issues I have to bring up a regard her verbal and affectionate approach throughout the day that make me afraid that she is too clingy for me, and I don't know how one can tell this to someone so that it doesn't come out as a terrible thing to say.
She is really good in separating her own stress derived from work, her mom, etc. from her behavior with me. She never ever acts stressed out with me, even if I interrupt her work for some reason, to the point that sometimes I don't realize she was doing something urgent/important and me interrupting was not in the best moment. She would never deny me a hug or 5 minutes whenever I need it. I am not as good in separating everything, and if I am stressed out from work one day, or late with a deadline, I have that as a temporary priority and I can act a bit cold and annoyed if she interrupts me for something - unless it's an important thing or she really needs help, of course. So I don't know, I feel like a bad person because in certain moments I need my space and focus and I get easily irritated, while she is always kind and welcoming with me no matter the situation, and I can't tell if my feelings are legitimate anymore.

I Hopefully we'll find a middle ground where I feel free and seen, without her having to give up an important part of her behavior having to censor many verbal and non verbal interactions, which is my bigger concern. I also don't know if she really knows how I felt in my previous relationship. I talked about it to her many times, but I tend to tell things in an anecdotical way, without letting my emotions come through too much (my therapist used to tell me this as well). It may be helpful to maybe let her understand how deeply that experienced hurt me and where my triggers come from. I'm not sure this is a right thing to do though, which was also one of my questions in the first post - Is it right to actively involve the partner in this healing process? I wish I knew the trauma was still there before committing to this relationship, and now I feel really confused about what to do.

[eleven_11]

I was now thinking about a nearly panic attack I had last spring and it actually spread from an argument regarding the house where my partner mentioned that I wasn't willing to make many compromises compared to her (which we then agreed was not true, but I won't get in the details in another extremely long post or I'd be challenging your patience here ) and I have to say that probably another relationship played a big role in my reaction there, not the one with the pwBPD.

It was a very long relationship (10 years) in which I always adjusted my life to the one of my partner who never wanted to leave her small hometown and always said that I simplified everything too much and that in life you can't just choose where to live without a real reason (like if being happier was not a real reason). This was a constant issue throughout our whole relationship, until I finally had to break up, despite other aspects of the relationship being really good, because I didn't feel I could have my own life in that tiny town and I couldn't be with a person that was not willing to change something in their life to meet me half way after I had fully adapted to her own needs moving for her during those 10 years. Those scars still hurt.

This current partner is from my same hometown and has lived in many different cities abroad and the first thing that I thought when I met her was "finally someone I can make life plans with according to our needs". I think that argument where suddenly she was telling me that the scenario I was depicting her, of a house a bit outside of town with a garden, was me being selfish and not willing to find a middle ground. This made something inside me break again and I suddenly couldn't breathe.

So, probably it's not just the toxic relationship that left deep scars on me. I am almost 40 years old and never really had my own place with my own life plan being able to focus on myself, except for the one year in between relationships. I guess my current partner is facing a situation she hasn't created, but at the same time I can't erase what happened in my life so far and forget how I feel and ignore my urge to build a life project that looks like me for much longer.

For sure the toxic relationship in between also played a role in that panic attack - the frustration and sadness came from the first relationship, but thinking back in all these occasions of triggers what I strongly feel is a sense of self-compassion, like I think of the "poor me" that has always given everything and more she could in relationships and then can still be called selfish and utopian when trying to defend how she'd want her life to look like. I also did my good part of self-analysis, auto-criticism and I clearly see all my faults in my previous relationships as well, but still I find myself very often feeling compassion towards myself for everything I have always gave up on for someone else. It's really hard to juggle this and a balanced relationship with my current partner, but I feel I want to do everything possible to make it work better because I know she is a great and rare person to find.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Welcome to the Forum, Eleven.  There's a lot of good information here if you look at the toolbox, posts, etc.

I do think it's possible to get sensitized and hypervigilant around certain triggers after having an abusive/ traumatic relationship with someone.  It's also possible to fall into a similarly unhealthy relationship and be picking up on something real.  Or fall into another PD relationship and be in the FOG, so that it's difficult to recognize.  It can go different directions, I've found.

Many of us find that working with a trauma therapist can help with restoring some balance and healing and clarity.  One of the warning signs I've noticed for myself regarding a relationship slipping into unhealthy territory is that it takes up an inordinate amount of space in my head and i spend so much time thinking about it and problem solving it that my other interests and relationships suffer.   

That brings to mind a quote I heard long ago.  "Relationships are work.  Bad relationships are too much work."

I hope you find some help and support here.