Appropriate way to disengage when pwBPD is splitting

[newlyawakened]

I have posted my story in this forum previously. Briefly I am in a a long term marriage with a pwBPD. I have reached my breaking point in the past and dont know what the future holds for my relationship. I am just trying to get along as best as I can in my current situation.

the issue I am facing is that I clearly recognize when my pwBPD is beginning to split and I consciously avoid JADE and DARVO and use other tools in the toolbox as best as I understand. I lend a patient ear to her outpourings without invalidating her feelings or accepting blame for 5-10 minutes to let her vent, and then try to disengage by leaving the room or situation under some pretext. The issue is that she calls this out as avoidant and escapism and her conflict increases with the belief that I am not trying to address her emotions. It seems the only thing that will calm her is me sitting near her and listening to the insults, frustrations, name calling for hours on end until she tires out. Am I missing something or doing something wrong - what is the appropriate way to disengage in such situations in a manner that when we return back the pwBPD has moved on from the splitting or their feelings?

[square]

Hey there,

The crux of this is that you cannot change her. There aren't any secrets to get her to calm down. You didn't cause it, you can't control it, you can't cure it.

Sitting calmly for hours on end taking her abuse isn't helping her, much less you.

So the question is not "how can I meet her needs" but "how can I meet my needs." You've clearly done a LOT of trying to meet her needs, only to end up in the same position again, over and over. How much effort has she spent meeting your needs, holding your hand while you spew venom at her, managing her own emotions so you can give full and unrestricted vent to your own? Not much? None, maybe?

You can't help her, and trying to only reinforces that she can insult you for hours and you just have to sit and take it.

You can't control her, and you can't make her think you have a right to disemgage. So accept that she doesn't want you to disengage. Accept that she will call you avoidant. She's not really worried about being seen as someone who would force you to sit and take hours of namecalling and insults, so you don't really have to worry about being seen as avoidant. Too bad. Big deal.

Unless you think her perceptions are more accurate than yours, which would also mean that her behavior is mature and justified, you can define for yourself whether you think disengaging from conflict makes you a bad person or not.

You can't change her. This is about changing you.

[GraceUnderPressure]

I've also dealt with the avoidant charge. Good job on being ready for JADE and DARVO - that's a big step and hard to do in the heat of the moment. I need to do a better job at calling stuff out myself, but at least I am often quiet and don't respond immediately.

I think it helps being clear that you won't tolerate name calling or insults, but will listen to her feelings and frustrations. You may have to cover this when things are calm.

It's helped me to express that I'm not responsible for her emotions, and she agrees in theory, but it doesn't always play out that way in real time. It's something you have to reinforce over and over, probably.

[zad7242]

Thank you for this question and the advice that followed. I got called avoidant yesterday for not responding to TikTok reels that prove how abusive I am.

[square]

Zad, I have to remind myself all the time to not worry more about what they think than they worry about what I think.

I think healthy people take feedback seriously - it's part of the mechanism that keeps us socially healthy. When people are upset with us, we actually step back and reflect on our behavior. This is very useful except when it comes to pwPDs.

The PDs I know are entirely focused on my behavior and how I wronged them. They care what I think of them only to the extent that it angers them and they try to bully me into changing my mind if I think they might have done anything wrong.

But they sure don't worry about it.

It's "how dare she think____," not "gosh, am I really ___?"

Because fairness is important to me, I can harness that by matching how much I worry about what behaviors I should change to how much they worry about what behaviors they should change.

Another thing that helps me is to remind myself that their opinions of me are mone of my business. I love that. It gives them so much autonomy and that's important to me. They are allowed to think whatever they want about me, and that's their business.

I don't demean or threaten or yell to change their minds about me, and I don't have to stick around for them to do the same to me. I can just give them the blessing of being free to have every thought and every feeling they have - without my participation.

I'm sharing this not because it comes naturally to me but precisely because it doesn't. But over time I sincerely have changed and feel significantly less wound up about this stuff.

[newlyawakened]

Thank you all for your kind comments and insights. This is very helpful particularly as I feel like I am slipping back a bit more into the fog with every incident - particularly the self-doubt that kicks in...what if she is right? what if I am truly the cause of this emotional trauma in her? this self-doubt happens mostly due to allowing oneself to be put down for hours on end.

Even if I keep internally telling myself during such episodes that the pwBPD is not well and the words are not true, the words still have an effect on me leading to self-doubt later. But if I examine each stated trauma incident with a clear logical mind when I am not emotionally bruised, I have no such self-doubt and it is clear to me that I am not the sole cause and main cause for her stated emotional trauma.

Square, thank you for these words.

The PDs I know are entirely focused on my behavior and how I wronged them. They care what I think of them only to the extent that it angers them and they try to bully me into changing my mind if I think they might have done anything wrong.

You have a good way of stating your observations clearly and succinctly. My experience with my pwBPD exactly matches what you observed.

However, the main reason for me to be wary of disengagement in such reason is not what she thinks of me, its the subsequent additional trigger that become for escalating threats. I need to train myself on sticking to boundaries under escalating threats. My fear, anxiety and panic takes over and I feel like I am not ready for any further escalation at that point of time and cave in.

[square]

What kinds of threats?

If threats against herself, you can call emergency services. If the threats are made in good faith, professionals need to be involved and you are demonstrating care and concern by involving them.

If they are not made in good faith, that will be exposed.

If the threats are against you, then you need to do what you must to stay safe and make a plan to get out of there. It really stops being a question of managing a challenging relationship and becomes a matter of your physical safety.

Unfortunately, there aren't any secrets to managing a PD who is willing to go to violence to control you. You already are the expert in how to handle things so you are as safe as you can be with a violent abuser - but safety is an illusion that comes at the cost of continued abuse (verbal, financial, etc.).

[newlyawakened]

She started trauma dumping on me again this morning - out of the blue - after she woke up feeling normal. I acknowledged her feeling and disengaged from the room on the pretext of work. I don't know how the rest of the day is going to go. we have a road trip coming up and her trauma/ anxieties peak up before such events.

What kinds of threats?

Threat could be in the form of a non-cooperative strike, in the middle a long planned highly anticipated important event or vacation which will be disrupted if she is not cooperative. It could be wanting to turn back home instantly in the middle of a long road trip. It could be threat of self-harm if there is no other leverage at the moment. It seems to be whatever gives her most leverage at the moment, to get me to engage and be a willing recipient of a trauma dump until her frustration bucket is empty.

[MaxedOut]

NewlyAwakened, the last 2 or 3 years with my ex had that threat escalation pattern to them. And they started more frequently veering into suicidal behaviors. It is awful.

And it was a pretty important turning point realization for me: If I maintain a boundary (respectfully) she will escalate to the point of taking a bunch of pills to regain control and/or to be able to blast at me until she felt better.

I didn't want to believe that but had a few incidents of working to be really clear and respectful but firm (e.g., refusing to talk about something when she was being abusive but just temporarily like "let's talk about this tomorrow."). I implemented steps in the books Emotional Blackmail and other guides on effective communications with similar trait folks. And saw the end point was the same.

It is an awful position to be in. I had a few work trips I had to cancel, like your travel mention and plenty of plans that went drastically sideways. Lots of times when I had to take time off or shift things because she was "in crisis" (many were non PD mental health issues but I realized over time, a substantial number were PD meltdowns).

And the feeling of entitlement for trauma dumping on me and taking negative emotions out on me. Ufff. I used to have to do a little mental check-in before getting out of bed each morning (well, not the ones when she'd get me up for whatever upset). She was sometimes aware it wasn't cool to hit me with all the ick first thing in the morning but often not. And she didn't really get that  it's not ok to just pollute your partner with all that stuff.

And so much dumping and abuse about other people she was splitting on. I remember a prior friend texting me about how awful my ex was being on texts. I had seen the string and remember thinking "You have no idea. First, those aren't what I'd consider bad texts from her. Second, you are getting a few mean texts and I will be dealing with days of total rage crisis, little sleep, shifting my life around to deal with stuff, and this will probably culminate in her taking a lot of medication (then needing a ton of support. third: The verbal abuse that will get pointed at me will make the texts look like nothing. I'm the one here, so she will take 95% of the anger for you (which will morph into anger at all sorts of things and people) out on me."

[MaxedOut]

Zad, I have to remind myself all the time to not worry more about what they think than they worry about what I think.

I like this bit from Square. I also found it was pretty disarming to just responded affirmatively to "accusations" about disengaging. When it's hurled at you as a character slight our natural tendency is to check ourselves or deny the implied motivation or whatever. It can suck the power out just to agree when true ("Yes, I did 'run away.' I didn't feel safe when you were throwing things so I removed myself from the situation.")

[newlyawakened]

My pwBPD split and trauma dumped on me the entire ride (few hours) few feet away from my face, saying horrible things to insult me. I tried hard to disengage, but when it goes on for hours and you eventually get sucked in. Also I had to balance between the boundary setting vs escalatory behavior, since I was driving and became a captive audience. Overall I felt I did better than previous instances by being more aware, using a breathing technique to reduce anxiety and probe her mind a bit - the last bit uncovered a lot of emotional manipulation. Next day she was calm and cheerful like the previous day did not happen.