Please help me understand

[sunshine702]

Can someone that understands Borderline Personality Disorder please help me explain.

Don't worry nothing has changed I still want out.  I see myself like Seabreeze in a year but right now I am still in the what the hecks!!

And you are all right it shouldn't really matter in the end but today it does.  Because my gas lit life none of it feels real!  I feel along for the ride.  We put together a beautiful house on his family land his dream and now that we are here I can go. And I will. But darn it hurts and I am confused.  I am being told this is over him and me toxic which I believe but I also think there are people "in his head" so to speak. 

I feel this is over his mom and after Gerald dying my partner became the husband.  He defends his mom at all costs and with so much anger it is scary and me zero.  I have post after post about is here about him being mad at me for telling his mom something or wanting me to have him ask her difficult things about the field and him not.  That I can't seem to have unfaslit conversations about heck even if people are coming to dinner without him saying I attack him!!

Is this not a relationship and instead a trauma bond?  I never really fully understood that concept.

Last night I tried have a conversation about some text messages I sent about the landscape money.  I was willing to negotiate what every one thought was fair.  I did not understand he has blocked me and did not get any of it. 

He had an earbud in I did not realize he was on the phone exactly.

His mom had called him about her friend of 60 years - she is 75 so this is someone from childhood her age dying likely back home in Chicago.  His level of anger at me for interrupting you would have thought I killed the woman. Yes that is sad but I did not do it!!  I blame her (and him) for pushing me out to fulfill her emotional console needs by her son who didn't know this friend.

He does not come to my defense like that ever.  If I am asking for my needs I am always rude or disrespectful or playing the victim every conversation.

I am understanding so more because of you guys I appreciate.

[Rebel13]

Hi sunshine, glad to hear you are still on your path. Now that you have your own place, I'm wondering if diminishing contact with your ex partner could help? It doesn't sound like there is much to work with there. Maybe you could use email to negotiate any final details about your leaving, and spend more time focusing on where you want to go next in your life?

Still sending you good thoughts and best wishes!

[square]

When your husband was growing up, he was explicitly and vigorously groomed to believe his self worth could only come from pleasing Mother.

To not please her would be a personal extinction - he would become nothing, have no value, and cease to exist. He does not have a concept of a Self beyond the feedback he gets from Mother.

Other people in his life, including you, are side characters. NPCs, really. They can be useful but they cannot make him real and fulfilled, only Mother can.

When you ask him to ask her to move some junk out of the yard, that's a HELL NO because

1) he gets NOTHING out of it (pleasing you does not add value to his life, cleaning up the yard does not add value to his life).

2) most of all, to do so would add toward his very annihilation. Displeasing Mother will make him a nonperson.

There really isn't any calculation there. There is no chance he would choose to gain something of zero value to him at a cost of *everything*.

If he is on the phone to Mommy, you are just in his way. He is trying to fulfill the vast yawning void of his soul while you are, in his mind, yammering about nothing. Whatever you are saying has no significance whatsoever to him and Mommy has all the significance. Only Mommy can make him real.

You were sometimes useful in his efforts. You contributed money and labor that he could turn around to Mother and get some desperately needed life from her.

Sunshine, it's messed up as hell. The man is broken. It's not you, it's him.

[sunshine702]

And this is why I FOG.

Love you guys!!! 

[Rose1]

Look up emotional incest. When exbpdh and his mother were in the room no one else existed. His mother told me I wasn't family.
However I was useful as a servant but unfortunately somewhat broken😄. She didn't tell me that, it was obvious in the things I could "help out " with. Help out meant not paid even if I helped out for 50 hours a week.

Ex was ok with all of this because it made him look good. He wasn't ok with me breaking the servant model.

In reality mother's approval meant all. At 50 he went home to mummy too. By that time I pretty much figured they deserved each other.

I spent way too much time allowing them to emotionally and verbally abuse me and try and get to me through my kids after he left.

They were very good at making public scenes. They didn't like this turned against them though. Really I should have just ignored their stuff much much earlier. NC is awesome.

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Sunshine, My exBPD/NPD was not around his mother, so I haven't experienced that.  But the outrageous splitting.  First so wonderful - then awful, and back and forth with the split becoming more intensely against me each year.  One of the things I read (maybe in Stop Caretaking?) was if you are their spouse, the splitting black will go to you, you will be blamed for everything.  That one point helped bring me Out of the FOG.

I didn't feel like celebrating when I left, though I know many do and I can understand why.  It was hard for me.  Now with the perspective of some years, I'm so glad I did. Going NC was also hard to do and he tried to hook me in every way he could.  But I finally did it and made it stick.  It was the beginning of being able to move on.

I'm sorry you're having to go through this and glad you're taking the steps you are.  I hope you keep sharing with us. 

[sunshine702]

He still sees this over that I yelled at him over dinner (I didn't yell I was frustrated at the misunderstanding and no one keeping me in the loop!). and would not Stop attacking him.  Any conversation ever is seen as an attack.

Sigh

Yeah I must be split black. The "stop attacking me" must be that.  This is like a lot of our fights where I "ask wrong"

"Ask wrong" "stop attacking me" "you're rude" "you lie" and if I try to make my case I am "playing the victim"

[sunshine702]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh34JyezcCw

[Lookin 2 B Free]

Trying to reason with a pwPD doesn't work.  They have disordered thinking -- they use emotional reasoning rather than logical reasoning.  Logic is totally irrelevant to them. 

My experience of listening to emotional reasoning is "You're here and I feel bad therefore you're doing something awful. You're always awful.  I see that clearly now.  Since you're so awful, whatever I feel like doing to you (which is abusive though they wouldn't label it that) is justified and you deserve it."

The fact that the thing they're accusing you of could not possibly have been done by you because you weren't even there has no bearing.  This is not about the facts.  It's about their terrible emotional distress which is happening all the time with pwBPD and has to be blamed on someone else, and you're the one there.

The tools are not about engaging so you can get them to see reason.  That is not a tool with pwPDs. That's like banging your head against a brick wall over and over and hoping the bricks will break.  The tools are about disengaging enough to calm things down a bit and get out of the line of fire.  Being as provocative as a gray rock. 

Once you truly give up the "If only I could get them to see" position as a losing cause, everything changes. It can be hard to get there.  Who wants see that about their partner, and their relationship and it's future?  It's the giving up of hope which brings up feelings of loss and grief.  But that's a step to getting your freedom, getting your life back, whether you stay or leave. Because then you have unhooked yourself from the endless and all-encompassing job of trying to make something happen over which you have no control and will almost certainly fail if you are dealing with a true pwPD.  At least that's been my experience. 

[Poison Ivy]

 

[MaxedOut]

Sunshine, I just downloaded Dr. Ramani's new book (It's Not You) and might be worth your time. With her videos some resonate and some don't given the differences in NPD and BPD. I am finding her books really relatable and it tackles a number of the emotions and thoughts I see in your posts. I am getting a lot from it! She mentions approaching it with a broader set of personality disorders in mind, and while some stuff like grandiosity is not on target, it's really the more shared PD traits that are more the focus and the advice on healing seems spot on regardless of PD subtype.

[sunshine702]

Yeah I bought a copy of it and freaking LOVE her!   I wish she was my personal therapist.

So one of the things is the level of disconnect.

He acts like there was a major breach.  Like I came home and ATTACKED him throwing his things in the yard.  It is crazy making as I advocated for myself but I don't think I was even yelling just trying to be heard that I was a bit hurt and confused. 

I feel wobbly like I have been told black is white all my life so I don't trust myself to call green by the name green. 

This all started I started to see through his Narc mom and talk about it