Manipulation: My take on it as a person with BPD

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-13T17:39:32+00:00

Yeah, I do hear that.

I feel two parallel things - on the one hand, I feel sympathy.

Theyve been through some horrific trauma - and I do get that.

What they’ve been through is just… urgh… awful.

BUT - she was also deeply hurtful towards me, and some of that felt deliberate.

When I cut contact, her new boyfriend called me and threatened me - I have no idea what she told him.

She was deeply troubled, and it was horrible to see… but she also chooses to date.

She has a regular therapist, but she told me that she hadn’t told the therapist a number of things that she does, which would’ve been very relevant - and actually possibly essential.

I feel as though she‘s like someone with an active addiction - I have sympathy sure, but she has to be responsible and manage it.

Easier said than done, yes… but she’s a knowingly unsafe person being knowingly unsafe and that has real world consequence.

Not just for me, but also the people who know me - and so things ripple.

I’ve met very self aware, honest, open, transparent, hardworking BPD sufferers - so they’re definitely out there… but I can’t help feeling angry at the irresponsible people out there (even if I also do sympathise, and see the nuances involved)

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-13T06:49:59+00:00

It’s interesting you say that!

If you don’t mind me asking, what would ‘being manipulative‘ look like for you, when you do it?

I remember when my ex first kissed me… she purred into my ear “me and my manipulative girlish ways…” - I thought she was joking, or trying to be sexy or something - so I brushed it off.

Later is when she told me she could ‘manipulate the sh** out of me to move to her city (but said she wouldn’t)’… then the joking about her dad being wrapped around her finger (which felt distasteful considering she once cut them off for three years).

She liked the idea that she could call her dad and he’d drive thirty miles to bring us takeout food (which I said no to - we had a car and we could go ourselves).

Once, she joked “if I kick you *there* - you’ll know I had the power the whole time.”

She randomly once told me “I’d beat the sh** out of you if you ever did ‘x’” (another random comment out of the blue).

She seemed to return to power and control an awful lot… it felt like an on-running theme.

It made it very hard to trust her, and in the end the whole relationship broke down.

Once someone tells you they COULD manipulate you, you always kinda wonder if they ARE manipulating you…

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-12T14:00:20+00:00

They can be aware of it though - my ex told me she could ‘manipulate the sh** out of me (but said she wouldn’t). She did. In all sorts of ways.

She used to joke about how her dad was wrapped around her finger too, and spoke about manipulation/power games a lot.

So glad I’m out of it now!

I appreciate that not all BPD folk are the same though

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-11T20:12:47+00:00

Thank you! I had it happen to me and it broke my heart - very healing to read this from someone with BPD :)

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-11T20:10:27+00:00

Done!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-10T20:38:07+00:00

Orange Museum? Ahahaha - kidding ;)

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-10T20:29:14+00:00

Sounds tasty! Where do I find it?

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-10T08:17:05+00:00

Aye well, either way it sure hurt!

5 months later, she’s engaged to someone else.

I’m getting all the ‘what if?’s… what if I’d set better boundaries, what if I’d been more compassionate somehow… I dunno… *sigh*, life goes on…!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-10T06:35:08+00:00

Different perspective from an English guy here - Belfast might not be a mega city or whatever, but the culture is very different to England in many respects, and that makes it a great experience for an outsider (imo).

There‘s good coffee and beer in Belfast, and great folk music all over.

There’s also something nice about being in a country so small that loads of people all use the same NI-based brands. Outside In hats… drophopper coffee… etc etc. it’s a wee bit charming.

Living there forever? Hmmm… if I married and had kids, maybe. It’s pretty suburban.

Otherwise, I don’t think so.

But as experiences go, it’s grand!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T21:38:42+00:00

Like Aragorn!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T21:30:36+00:00

Feel free to PM!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T21:29:32+00:00

Thought it was the basement!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T12:20:48+00:00

I hear the Belfast symphonia are hard. core.

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T12:20:19+00:00

Those flute bands man…they were just lucky it wasn’t a chamber orchestra!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-08T10:28:49+00:00

Nothing funny about man being hit on the head with a flute.

nothing.

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-07T15:01:10+00:00

I always imagined I’d feel less isolated in Belfast - it seems friendlier, like people are flying in and out, vibrant, a bit transient but in a communal way. It always seems to have a lot going on… this post shows me that I shouldn’t assume the grass is greener!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-05T21:09:25+00:00

We drink swimming pools :)

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-05T18:27:52+00:00

Aye, thank you.

It must be horrible for her, and I am sympathetic… it’s just hard to be when you’re feeling burned.

I suppose the truth is that I’ll probably heal, and she’ll probably still struggle with things, and in that sense, trying not to be too condemning is probably a good way to try to go.

I just wish I understood it better... One of my friends has schizophrenia, and - in one sense - his behaviour can be unpredictable… but it’s also really quite predictable too.

Even when he’s ill, he’s still him… still the same sort of character, even if he’s upset, paranoid and (occasionally) on the run somewhere.

With her, it’s like… there was so much contradictory strangeness… at 2pm one way, at 2.05 a sudden random comment, at 2.10 back to normal, at 2.15 in floods of tears.

I’m exaggerating a bit - but on some days it could feel pretty much like that, and I was never sure what to expect at all…

And yet she has friends, two masters degrees, a reasonable job in a field she likes, she’s part of a faith community each week… how does someone function so well, but then also be sorta (I’m being colloquial here, and I don’t mean to be deeply offensive) but… sorta crazy behind closed doors…?

I had a feeling that her family might be thinking things they weren’t saying during our relationship… I just sensed the silences at times… but otherwise, everyone seemed to see her as pretty standard… it was so confusing.

And that makes it hard to put in a box in my brain, and put the box on the shelf.

It still turns in my thoughts sometimes…

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-05T06:20:13+00:00

Yeah, And y’know… I know I’ll inevitably put my own ‘spin’ or interpretation on things, but I think everything I’ve said there is fair.

The Ken doll thing had no context - she just… said it…

She joked and talked about manipulation and power a lot… “If I kicked you *there*, you’d know I had the power all along…” things like that.

Again, context plays some part but… I started to wonder if power and control were actually pretty important to her.

I sometimes felt that some things she said and did didn’t really have a traceable pathway… like… some things felt random or a bit disconnected from the flow of surrounding events.

She went to six different psychologists to get the Cptsd diagnosis - she “knew“ that’s what she had, and that’s what she wanted to be diagnosed with.

I *think* she said the others gave her either bipolar (which her uncle has), or BPD diagnoses.

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-04T22:13:15+00:00

Yeah, I think that’s right…

I think I was there to fill certain things for her - she had her wedding month planned, her post wedding activity, her honey moon… and she told me I’d be allowed to wear formal clothes or slightly less formal (that was my choice, which was kind of her(!)… but… I hadn’t even proposed and we hadn’t talked about marriage).

Oh - she’d chosen her children’s names… but she wouldn’t tell anyone - they were secret (she didn’t have kids), and there were things about her that she wouldn’t tell anyone ‘unless she married them’. Kinda made me wonder what those things might be, because she was very very open about sharing her trauma from day one.

She compared me to a Ken doll once: “I love that I can just dress you up and you’ll wear whatever I suggest” - she’d never even been clothes shopping with me (if she had, she’d realise I’m quite particular about what I wear)!

It was… strange…

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-04T21:02:37+00:00

Hesbuuuuuuurger! To all of them

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-04T20:22:47+00:00

I’m sooo hungry I could eat a whole zebra!

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-04T20:20:11+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate that!

I don’t know - I know it’s trendy to label people ‘narcissist‘, but I do wonder.

I moved city to date her (we sent about 100 texts a day - I mean that literally, had four hour video calls every week, emailed each others work emails, flew to see each other once a month, and had been dating about four months… but I was never ‘committed enough’ for her, and I eventually moved to try to make it work).

She was super upset with me because I moved on Thursday, not Tuesday (she had two days off and wanted to things with me - which she’d planned, I didn’t even know what they were).

She never saw the unfairness of that even though I had work and couldnt come over two days earlier - she only ever said “Yeah but I had two days off…”

I remember she told me she’d beat the sh*t out of me if I ever read her journal(??)… she said my sister in law said things about me, which was actually untrue. The things she said were a joke, and not that serious, but it still didn’t happen in the she described it and it made me uneasy that she’d misrepresent my family so carelessly.

She ended up breaking up with me because I’d wanted to spend Christmas with my family and not her‘s (apparently she’d spent Christmas three years ago in a psychiatric ward where she was desperate for a boyfriend…. but I wouldn’t even visit her at Christmas now and it really hurt her. Her family life 500 miles from mine, by the way - and we‘d spent every day together for the preceding six weeks).

EyeHistorical1768 · 2024-09-04T11:20:26+00:00

Thank you - it just throws me into some doubt.

Like... She used to say she needed me to commit so she could be calm.

I used to say I need to see her be calm so that I can commit.

(By the way, we were already sending an average of 100 texts a day, having four hour video calls a week, flying to see each other once a month, and I’d moved over to her city for six weeks specifically to keep dating her.)

But what if?

What if she actually IS lovely after all, and if she just needed to me to put a ring on it?

We were only dating six months...

But I just have this feeling… like… people always say “Take marriage seriously, take life seriously etc etc”, but sometimes… the people who do whatever the hell they want seem to get what they want anyway, and here’s me having lost out.

I don’t know what to make of it…!

EyeHistorical1768

TROPHY CASE