Do you find your guard really goes down when certain behaviors show up

[Prototypian]

I find that on very rare occasions I get treated with respect and feel valued by my uOCPDw.   At those times it is a strange truly relaxing event for me.   My guard completely falls.   She very very rarely talks to me as a person.   I think that a text I sent saying "I've been in a wreck, I am being admitted to the hospital" would result in her calling me in two days asking where I am and me saying "I sent you a text after the accident" and her saying "oh, I must not have seen it".   That's a behavior and not what I'm talking about.   She puts me dead last to her public persona.   If a constituent texted asking what the city website address was she would respond for an hour with a personal call.   If I ask for time because I'm considering accepting a promotion that could include more travel and I want to discuss how that affects the family or would result in absolutely zero or completely 10 percent paying attention while she texted.

But every once in a while I get treated with deep respect.   My thoughts on kids college or the place I put my bar b q grill on the back porch is heard and she talks genuinely and we have a discussion and I feel good because the discussion is two ways and heartfelt.   I assume this is how real married couples interact when spending time together for many topics and interactions.   People get their significant others thoughts and for things that impact each other or that the spouse genuinely wants feedback on they work together.   

I'm not talking about BPD or a needy person.   I wouldn't care less what she thought of how I put my socks in my sock drawer or organize the tools.in my toolbox or what radio stations are in my car and is wouldn't waste time talking to her about such mundane stuff.   But I've literally been choosing between two major career jobs I was offered and I can't even get her attention to discuss the salary impact each would have on the family budget because of her volunteering or blogging or Facebook. 

But every once in a rare while suddenly I'm engaged with and I am talked to without the feeling that what my thoughts are could be the worst case scenario destroying life or that I'm 1/10 of the attention she has.   Today we were discussing our daughter and college and I actually felt like she heard.me on my thoughts, we discussed the problem and options and heard each others concerns and then made an actual decision together with compromise on both sides.   

I can probably name 10 times in 25 pluses years I've been treated like that with respect.   Most of the time it's lonely, makes me feel horrible and really annoys me because the things I feel we need to talk about can result in her having massive explosions at me and the other members of the family if we make a wrong decision in her opinion.

But these tiny times make me feel so good that somehow I assume things are changing and I'm going to matter and I get enough of a tiny taste of feeling like I matter that I stick around.

Does anyone else have this type of feeling where even a morsel of good behavior is enough to slow down your intent of leaving?

[Kat54]

yes absolutely they did. My ex and I would sometimes sit on our back deck, have a drink talk about the kids or the day. We had many many good conversations and when you get that part of them its great that its "normal" And you wish, and hope it could always be like that.  That's why to this day I do have some bad days feeling guilty thinking he is a good person, which on some levels he is. He only saved his good side for strangers who didn't know him, and on those rare occasions when we had productive conversations.

But...then I read back in my journals that I kept about all the bad incidents, conversations, the paranoia, the anger, lies and god knows what else. Unfortunately the bad conversations were dominant.  The constant hurt and disrespect beats you down.

[Poison Ivy]

Yes and no. I had good conversations with my spouse and I still do sometimes now that we're divorced, but I always knew or know during the conversations that they do not represent "normal" for us. So I value the good conversations but also feel sad that they're not something I can ever count on occurring again.

Here's one example that pops into my head: In 2015, when our marriage was already in deep distress, a family member on my side of the family was diagnosed with a serious illness. I was at the hospital with a few other family members when the health-care providers first gave the diagnosis. When I was driving home from the hospital, I called then husband. I was very sad about the diagnosis, and my husband was very supportive while we were talking. I really appreciated him taking my call (he often didn't at the time).

Then, crickets. He didn't get in touch with me to find out what was going on. As things turned out, I was okay on the "I am coping without needing to talk to him" level, because the initial diagnosis (cancer with 5-year-survival rate of about 50%) was wrong. But I sure noticed that the supportive phone conversation was a one off.

[Rose1]

The episodes of normality are always what threw me. You respond normally because that's how we are wired. In all cases exbpdh reverted when either he didn't get what he wanted or when something else interested him. It was always a shock. 

Example,  normal conversation with dd, she asks him in for a coffee, while there he steals backup disks to my computer. From her bedroom.  She didn't notice, but she did notice him going through mail and called him on it. Turned instant nasty.

But he turned on the charm with others and could keep it going for quite a long time.

I really have no idea what its all about. I assume its to get something he wants or perhaps a moment of clarity. Who knows?  It never lasted.

I should say we were married for 22 years but the last 5 felt like I was living in enemy territory. For some reason he turned against me and from  that time it was game on. Plus lots of very disrespectful  oggling of other females in my presence etc. But very happy to have his  clothes washed and food on the table, just not happy to contribute. Complaint if it wasn't up to standard, but i needed to work because he decided he wanted to dabble in employment. Very self indulgent and it just got worse.

[SparkStillLit]

The only time I finally let down my guard was when updh did several years of introspection and working on himself and actually ACTED like a decent human being. I actually relaxed after a while and stopped being so hypervigilant. Then eeevvverrrrr sooooo sloooiwwlllyyy all the bad (and a few worse) behaviors started creeping back in past all my defenses that I'd worked so hard on and gone to therapy and everything. I finally noticed, but the horse was long, long gone. And here I am.

[stormbrewing]

Yes, I had conversations like that with my stbxupdh on very rare occasions. While it felt relatively 'normal' and quite nice at the time, the other shoe always dropped. What I mean by that is that one of the following would happen usually within a week after the conversation:

• The conversation would come back up, and he would deny ever having agreed to a course of action
• He would use that 'concession' as currency to give him something he wanted, implying that he never agreed with me but "couldn't be bothered arguing about it" (despite the conversation being very civil and seeming constructive at the time)
• He would go ahead and do/plan/say something entirely different to the decision we had made together, as though the conversation never took place at all

I learnt pretty early on that questioning these backflips would result in nothing positive. Part of the issue was that what we agreed on in private was then taken back in public, throwing me a curveball when I was least able to try and deal with it.

[Free2Bme]

j,

If I subscribe to the idea that in marriage two are one, then it follows that when one 'wins' the other 'wins' as well.  So, whatever benefits the  object of love (SO, child, loved one), is what I am motivated by.  We should seek their greatest good (pro-social), this endears people to one another and builds bonds.

Of course, we all have our selfish moments and we offend those we care about; we apologize, self correct, forgive and grow closer.  However, there are people that are not wired this way.  They are consistently bent on what serves their own interests, even to the detriment of 'loved ones'.  (anti-social)

It seems like when your W behaves toward you with reasonableness and respect, she gets a positive response from you, yet it seems she only rarely does this. 

I wrestled with this with my updH, it was maddening.  I came to the conclusion, either they are not capable, or they're not willing. 

If a spouse is capable of showing respect/reasonableness, evidenced by these incidents, then. why only rarely......?
If a spouse is not willing, this points to someone not motivated by promoting the greatest good for  a 'loved one'.
If there is a pattern of antisocial behavior, with a conscious understanding, then it is willful abuse.

This reduced me to begging dog status, just waiting for a crumb to be tossed my way.  When I finally got real with myself, I could no longer excuse H behavior, I knew it was purposeful.  This was a game changer for me.

With regard to my faith, it is my belief that H abandoned the marriage (and me) when he chose to behave antithetically to the greatest good of spouse/children.  IMO, he broke our marriage vows.  It was a non-marriage.

[Poison Ivy]

 

Appropriate framing of behavior helps me: It's not that my ex-husband wouldn't or couldn't do certain things; it's that he did or didn't do those things. I removed intent and ability from the picture and focused on what my ex did do or didn't do.

[Simon]

Yep.
Intermittent Reinforcement.

She probably thought that you were in danger of standing up to her, or wanting to get away from the abuse, so fed you a little morsel to get you hooked again.
Probably done it loads of times, which is why you're still there.

Poison Ivy hit the nail on the head.
It's not that she couldn't or wouldn't treat you right all these past years.
It's that she didn't!
You've accepted that this tiny amount of effort on her part is all that's required.

I think it was Tara Palmatier (Shrink4Men) that said something along the lines of "The abuser being nice, or more precisely, a rare absence of abusive behaviour, can seem wonderful. But with a normal partner, you could have that sort of behaviour almost all the time!"

Sad to say, but if, after years of being treated poorly by your partner, you still fall for it, that is all the effort you are asking for.
Would she be happy with the same lack of attention or lack of interest from you?
I'm going to say she wouldn't.
You've chosen to accept this, and I feel for you.
I hope you see the light one day.