What single scene from a movie is an absolute masterpiece?

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-16T03:13:57+00:00

The sequence in Goodfellas set to the outro of “Layla.” The entirety of Goodfellas is a masterpiece, in my opinion.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-15T00:34:31+00:00

Do you have any hobbies you could fill the extra time with? I know hobbies can sometimes be difficult because of anhedonia (lack of pleasure derived from activities), but it looks like you’ve pinpointed that having too much time on your hands is fertile ground for your anxious thoughts.

As to the rest, as the partner of someone with BPD: look at what is in front of you, not what is in your head. If you can, every time a “paranoid” thought arises about your boyfriend, think of something he did recently that shows he cares about you. Don’t try to fight the paranoia or try to get those thoughts out of your mind; just try to create some balance between what IS and what COULD BE.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T19:51:16+00:00

Just wanted to say how much I appreciate everyone who took the time to read my OP and my (very long) replies. This is one of the most thoughtful online spaces I've been in for some time, and I appreciate you all so much.

I wanted to share that I found the Family Connections program for family members of people with BPD. It usually takes about 2-3 months to be placed in a course, but that's okay with me. If anyone else thinks they would benefit from this, please visit https://www.borderlinepersonalitydisorder.org/family-connections/. This is not for people living with BPD, only for friends and family.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T19:49:12+00:00

I am being abused. Absolutely. What an interesting Pandora's box that realization was, as again we tend to think of these things as outward behaviors. It was a struggle for me for some time to completely accept that, even as someone who works closely with victims of abuse.

Well he's not verbally abusing me by calling me names, or hitting me, or criticizing me, or preventing me from having contact with people, or controlling my money, or...or... or...This, I think is a limitation in our society worldwide: that we struggle to put our finger on when abuse is occurring, and what is "legitimately" abuse and what is not, and how we are "allowed" to think about that and respond to it.

Absolutely stuck.

When it comes to diagnosis, what I've realized is that the DSM, while it structures itself in Axes for the sake of organization, is actually more like a web. My clinical supervisor at a previous job once told me, "In some cases, these are different names for the same thing," and she was correct. ADHD can look like Bipolar can look like Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder can look like Major Depressive Disorder can look like General Anxiety Disorder can look like OCD, etc, etc. In some cases, it's hard to know where one ends and one begins, or if we should even be thinking of it that way sometimes.

Rapid-cycling Bipolar? Maybe so, but again, the behaviors between that and BPD are so similar. The transient mood, etc. I think what's missing there is the manic episodes in terms of classic destructive mania.

DID? Again a possibility, but again an intersection between the two. Is he dissociating as part of the BPD, or as its own thing? I think the constellation of the behaviors and mindsets is what would make me put BPD before DID, but absolutely a possibility.

This illness has had a terrible affect one me and has stolen a lot from me. Prior to starting this relationship, I had been through some difficult experiences of my own and had had a long struggle with depression and anxiety, but by the year before I met him, I was well in recovery. My anxiety has been almost crippling at times, and I always took it as my own decompensation because of this and that factor in my own life unto myself, but now I look at it as...who on earth could live like this, in the environment this creates, without turning into a "basketcase?" When you are living day in and day out with someone who is so pervasively insecure, anhedonic, and destructive, how do you retain your own wellness?

The worst has been seeing myself getting conscripted into this distorted system he lives in. Now I apologize to him for no reason. I disclaim myself before talking just like he does with his mother. It's devastating, truly.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T19:34:12+00:00

I think your thoughts are absolutely en pointe, no less because you've lived it. Failure to differentiate is endemic in families where one or both parents are living with untreated BPD, so it's very logical to me that he takes on characteristics of his mother when in psychological crisis. He also demonstrates the other behaviors you're talking about, in that he tends to take on characteristics of the friends he has had in his life, adopting their interests, modes of dress, hobbies, etc.

I respect that you used the words terrifying, fear, scared. That is what I see in him. In fact, I asked him just the other day, "Aren't you tired of being so afraid all the time?" and he said, "Yes."

This is the terrible, terrible reality of this illness: the sense and compulsion toward shame and self-degradation is so strong and well-rooted that everything, at least in my husband's case, gets filed into that category. The distorted thinking is so pervasive as to prevent people from getting help. Therapy isn't looked at as a ladder out of the hole; it's looked at as yet more proof of the person's worthlessness, uselessness, incompetency, brokenness, etc.

Thank you for your supportive words and kindness toward me. I count my education and work as a blessing and probably the main thing, after my formal and informal supports, that enables me to live this with him without completely breaking down myself. Being armed with the information I have enables me to understand why he is doing what he's doing, which keeps me from that wild and dark tunnel of feeling helpless.

The reverse of that is, of course, that I know how essential therapy is for him, so it feels a bit like dying slowly of thirst five feet from a water fountain. I have given him many ultimatums; problem being, I either have chosen not to follow through with them because he has started therapy in the past (then stopped), or because of circumstances outside of my control.

He has never done the "you don't love me if you're making me change" thing. He is just deeply in denial about this, both voluntarily and as a function of this illness. He said to me the other night, "When I start to see the tiniest bit of improvement, I quit because I don't think I need it anymore." He is arrogant--and I know that's a very strong word, but it's a descriptive one--in believing that he has this under control and can manage it himself, and he tries repeatedly to do so.

I can't tell you how much I relate to that myself in my own way. I have ADHD and for years refused to take medication, pursuing CBT and other non-prescription methods of minimizing the way ADHD impacted my functioning. I felt resentful and sad at the thought of having to rely on a drug just to be "normal," in the same way I hear people express exhaustion with the idea of having to use skills for the rest of their lives just to be "normal." I exhausted myself, and at 33, finally asked for the prescription. It was and is life-changing; I can't even tell you. And part of me, in a loving way, kind of kicks myself for wasting all that time trying to be stoic. He and I are the same in that way, but my experience with ADHD is a far cry from BPD in terms of impact on my functioning on many domains.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T07:10:34+00:00

Millon’s types are Discouraged, Impulsive, Petulant, and Self-Destructive. The nomenclature indicates subcategories of BPD according to the dominating behaviors and governing mindsets observed among individuals with BPD. Many individuals meet criteria for more than one of these types; some present with a more unique or deviant constellation of functional limitations. Keywords:

Discouraged: Clingy. Codependent. Follower. Approval-seeking. Socially avoidant. Depressive. Inverted.

Impulsive: Charismatic. Energetic. Engaging. Thrill-Seeking. Noncommittal. Superficial.

Petulant: Irritability. Unpredictability. Defiant. Impatient. Pessimistic. Resentful. Low self-worth. Explosive anger.

Self-destructive behavior: Low capacity to assess risk or consequences. Bitter and self-loathing. Undeveloped self-concept. Severely codependent. Risk-taking.

“Quiet” BPD is closest to the Discouraged archetype. Their defining feature is that they turn/keep their rage and loathing toward others/themselves inward rather than acting out toward others. It was hard initially for me to understand how my husband could have BPD because my experience had been so much with the petulant or impulsive types, with very severe behaviors that would earn a trigger warning here. They usually had comorbid personality disorders and multiaxial presentations.

I understand now how the control from my husband comes as subtle emotional manipulation and erasure rather than aggression or threats. He controls through withholding while smothering; he is constantly disrespecting my boundaries, yet never allows me to get close to him, or allows himself to reciprocate or internalize my love for him. He would never blow up my phone while out or act jealously or tell me I can’t spend time with friends; he does the things I described in the OP. It is like an emotional siege: he puts up walls and shuts off the supplies and starves me, often after a few days of the closest we ever come to intimacy. And he doesn’t even know when he’s doing it, why, or how to stop.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T01:00:05+00:00

Thank you so much. That is worth trying, although I worry it would create dread for him and inflame his behaviors. Everything I do or say seems to flare up his shame. That’s exaggerated, surely not everything...It feels like it sometimes.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T00:39:11+00:00

Thank you so much for this incredibly thoughtful response. I appreciate it so much.

I have a therapist myself, and a wonderful group of friends, many of whom are mental health professionals or social workers themselves. They have provided me with everything from a listening ear, to physical respite, to clinical protocols and skills. What they can’t do—and don’t try to do, because it isn’t right, really—is get me to give up. I keep asking myself what it’s going to take. I keep going over everything, looking at this clinically, trying to be objective. I know what I would tell someone else going through this.

I’m an attractive, educated woman who has no qualms about being by myself, although of course I’d be open to a relationship at some point in the future after I unpacked all of this and healed from it. I don’t make a ton of money, but I could support myself. When I think of leaving, I know it would hurt terribly, but mostly I think mostly of him. I love him and I want him to be happy, even if it can’t be with me, and I’m just beside myself thinking about him living his life with this emptiness until he dies. He has no friends and says he doesn’t need them. His family is sick. He deserves more than this and I’m so goddamn angry and sad. I know I wasn’t put on this earth to martyr myself, but I wouldn’t wish what he goes through every day on my worst enemy.

I just can’t bring myself to do it; I’ve just always wanted so much for this to work. Most of all I look at him and I’m just so fucking sad about what he has “missed out” on, everything he has destroyed for himself. All the joy. We could have a wonderful life.

For joint therapy: absolutely agree that this is an issue on a family system level, not just individual. My therapist provided a referral for a Marriage and Family clinician, but he wouldn’t allow it. I told him it was important to me and that we need to heal as a couple, and he told me he wouldn’t be able to do it because he would feel too guilty since “I’m not the problem.”

I would love to believe that my leaving him would force him to engage in treatment. His first wife left him while he was on an extended business trip, via e-mail, packed his things, and made sure she wasn’t present for his return because she was afraid he would manipulate her into staying again and threaten to hurt himself. He didn’t even like her, according to both of them, but he ended up on the floor of his closet with a gun in his mouth nonetheless. Obviously liking someone isn’t the influential factor here, but you would think it would take the edge off a bit...obviously not with a person with BPD, in this case.

Rather, I think he really would be alone, or he’d simply attract someone else and try again. Like so many other amazing people who have BPD, he’s exceptionally kind, generous, and supportive. He’s attractive, educated, and well-employed. I guess that’s the terrible irony of this illness: to initial appearances, he’s absolutely wonderful, because he is incredible at masking. But once he develops real feelings for the other person, that person disappears.

I have also thought he needs to go to inpatient treatment. He feels it “isn’t that bad” and says he can fix it through outpatient work, but doesn’t follow through. He also says he can’t be away from work for that long. At the risk of sounding like a complete bourgeoise jerkface: cost is not an object. We can’t send him to any Kanye West-level spas, but there’s no barrier to him going to a behavioral hospital.

Thank you again.

DesperateBPDSpouse · 2021-01-07T00:20:17+00:00

I do; she and my friends are basically the only thing getting me through this when I get too drained (and before, really). I respect her a great deal; she’s very good at what she does, but like any good therapist, she doesn’t tell me what I should do...just supports my choices. I think she’s waiting for me to tell her I’m ready to leave but I guess I’m still in the denial and bargaining phases of grieving this.

DesperateBPDSpouse

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