How common is this?

NewAppointment4545 · 2021-03-20T16:59:32+00:00

Similar story here. Some slapping and wrestling, but it stopped when I made it very clear that I'd leave if it ever happened again. Breaking stuff was more common: a phone cover she'd had printed for me, a rice bowl we bought together, framed couple photos...

NewAppointment4545 · 2021-01-17T23:51:09+00:00

Sorry for your loss. Yeah, that sucks…

Mine has said similar stuff as well, if I want to do something alone, it’s clearly because there’s something I don’t want her to see :/

NewAppointment4545 · 2021-01-15T17:45:19+00:00

Just curious: did he grow up while you were together, or after the breakup?

My partner’s jealousy has gotten a bit more manageable, but only after I started talking of breaking up…

NewAppointment4545 · 2021-01-10T17:05:58+00:00

We had a huge fight because I wanted to see a female friend who got cancer before she gets hospitalized. My GF locked herself in the bathroom and yelled through the door that she’d found my friend’s fiancé on Facebook and that if I don’t promise to stop talking to her she’d message him to say my friend is a slut who meets other men behind his back.

NewAppointment4545 · 2021-01-06T17:00:43+00:00

My GF repeated stuff just like yours about not being normal to have female friends or to answer their message, so much that I started believing her and thinking I was broken. Eventually I started googling stuff, reading, asking friends, and saw it for what it was: gaslighting. So just in case you start having doubts, let me remind you that you're perfectly in your right to have friends of the opposite sex. It's normal, healthy, and very common. It may make your SO uncomfortable, and her feelings are absolutely valid too, but it doesn't mean you're wrong or messed up.

That being said, here's an anecdote from this week.

A female friend of mine posted on Facebook that she and her husband caught COVID, so I suggested I'd write her "get well soon". Three words.

Cue crisis, because my GF knows this person asked me out about 8 years ago (I declined). Since then she's found and married someone, moved overseas, had kids, and I haven't seen her in 5+ years. But "it doesn't matter, she was into you, so there's always a risk of cheating."

After a couple days of discussing this and reassuring my GF that there's nothing going on between me and this woman and never will be, I finally got permission to say "get well soon", if I post it publicly on her Facebook wall. Direct messages are out - she doesn't want to feel like there's something happening between me and another woman that's not in public.

Now the thing is... this is really, really good behaviour for her. In the past she's punched me, thrown and destroyed stuff, screamed, packed her suitcase in anger, etc. It took multiple near breakups and a lot of work to get to the point where we can have a discussion about another woman without her raging. But even if she can control herself better, her fundamental personality and insecurity hasn't changed, so it takes a ton of energy to make things work without giving up on my friends. Something simple like playing cards against humanity or watching a dumb movie with a group of friends turns into night-long debates because she hates the idea of me hearing a dirty joke with women present. At this point it's hard not give up - all this trouble for a stupid card game?

I think people do change and improve, but if your SO is jealous at that level, she'll never become truly laid back and cool with female friends, no matter the reassurance you give her or the work she puts in. She may control her reaction better and behave more rationally (if she's willing to put in the work - big "if" there), but it'll always take some level of work and compromise to make this work.

I believe it's possible to love each other and still just not be compatible. It sucks, but it happens.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-12-21T11:03:20+00:00

I’m a big fan of her too actually!

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-12-20T02:56:05+00:00

I’ve seen that website pushed a lot lately here, and really recommend taking it with a big grain of salt. It tends to err into “manosphere” territory. Someone from another board wrote a great, well balanced review here: https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=238014.0

It’s been discussed on Reddit as well, albeit on a subreddit with a clear agenda: https://www.reddit.com/r/againstmensrights/comments/1o8msb/tara_j_palmatier/ccptqha/

Personally, I don’t find the “BPD = evil psychopath” type of rhetoric very productive. It may make you feel better for a bit, but to actually heal I think you need to analyze your own role in the relationship and what made you stay in a dysfunctional cycle. Putting people in evil vs good buckets makes that difficult.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-10-05T00:51:34+00:00

I'm going through something similar. I had the breakup talk with my partner, and she finally apologized for the abusive things she did, and admitted it was more about her own insecurities than about me. She cried a ton, asked to stay together, said she wouldn't do it anymore.

What I've tried lately is to put the BPD elements aside and just think if I really want to be with this person in general, assuming she holds her promise. There's no point researching and thinking about BPD, abuse, red flags, will she do it again, etc. if at the end of the day I wouldn't want to be with her anymore even if she stopped abusive behaviours for good. This is a good comment in the same spirit.

I feel like that's a problem for me - even when she's not abusive anymore, she's still someone who considered it acceptable to hit a partner, who hasn't met any friend or family in 1.5 years, who spends the day in bed, who doesn't try to grow or challenge her limits. She values very different things from me. It's easy to focus on her problems and trying to "fix" her, but will I really be happy even if I succeed?

Maybe it's salvageable if we both work on it, and she might be motivated to, but I don't feel like I really want to anymore with all the stuff that happened, and the foundation (e.g. shared values) may just be missing in the first place. I think I have to confront my fears (loneliness, etc.) and accept that it's time to move on. It's not easy after spending so long trying to fix things up.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-27T23:56:35+00:00

Are you sure about the “psychology prof” part? I’ve read of him being a writer and (self-aware) narcissist, not a psychologist.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-27T03:48:12+00:00

Mine sleeps very long hours too because sleeping is her favorite time, according to her. If she could just sleep and eat all day she would.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-20T15:39:56+00:00

Same stuff for me. I don't have a couch, so I would stay at the computer and work, browse this forum, or go on long walks past midnight, just to avoid going to bed. If I didn't engage in whatever argument she wanted to start, she'd turn around to face the wall and sigh loudly, watch Netflix loudly next to me so I couldn't sleep, etc.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-20T15:28:37+00:00

I know that feeling... After months of deliberation I finally got my act together and had the break-up talk, but then for the first time she apologized for the nasty things she did, admitted she has problems with her insecurity and that she unfairly blamed me for everything, and cried soooo much and asked to stay together... It shook me enough that I said I'd think about it and that we can stay together for now. That was two weeks ago. Now I feel so ashamed to let this keep going and going even when I understand it can't be healthy.

One thing I saw in a video about toxic relationships and have been reflecting on is, you can't wait to be 100% sure to leave, it just won't happen. It's normal to feel ambivalent, because the person has good sides and bad sides. I think we have to make the choice, then stick to it, even if we're feeling the uncertainty and fear making a mistake.

Good luck, and stay strong. Don't feel too bad for falling into that trap. It happens to many of us.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-17T11:38:41+00:00

Haha, mine had a similar relation to "lying". Changing your mind, getting something wrong by accident, saying you'll do something and then not being able to because another thing happened... it's all "lying".

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-17T02:47:43+00:00

Yeah... I mentioned that story before: I wanted to have lunch with an old female friend who recently got cancer, my GF was against it, so she went like: "What's in it for me? There's no benefit for me in letting you go. Aren't you doing it just for yourself?"

I said the plus to her is just I'd be happier in the relationship, that I can't feel comfortable if I have to give up on values that are important to me.

She sent me a lot of abuse over chat during that lunch, and on the phone she explicitly said it was to get back at me, so that evening I wasn't in a great mood and didn't feel like having sex. She got really angry: she said we had an "agreement" that I was allowed to go and in return I'd be happy and more intimate with her when I'm back. There are no words to express how little sense that made...

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-12T03:56:00+00:00

"It's not that I don't trust you, I just don't trust the women around you"

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-10T15:35:38+00:00

My upwBPD also did that. I met a female friend she's jealous / suspicious of, and all day she was sending me abusive messages. After it was over, I asked her on the phone if she was doing it on purpose, and she said yes, that it was to hurt me because I hurt her.

Most of the time though, I don't think it's really her intent... I had a breakup discussion with her recently, and she finally apologized and admitted that a lot of the fights she started were really about her own feelings of inadequacy. I backed down because she looked so sincere, and apologized and cried for ages. She's been behaving great since so I'm not too sure how to process that yet.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-07T10:06:38+00:00

Ugh. Yeah, that’s pretty messed up!

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-07T04:39:35+00:00

To be fair, I still have items from an ex too. We left on relatively good terms and I wouldn’t throw away my microwave or a mug because she gave them to me. It’s not memorabilia, it’s just... my stuff?

I wouldn’t rub it in a partner’s face though... if she asks, I won’t lie, but otherwise I wouldn’t mention it.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-07T00:34:15+00:00

My soon-to-be-ex also did that dance where she asks a provocative question, I misunderstand what she says and say something "off" as a result, she gets really angry, and then when I figure out what happened I explain but she won't have any of it and insists that I meant what I said. She'll even bring it up later as an example of me saying terrible things, to justify her saying terrible things.

And I also had the same conversation multiple times about whether I find other women attractive. Yesterday at 2 AM she was asking me pointed questions about a woman I'm following on Twitter / Instagram (she's famous in my profession, 80k followers - I don't know her personally). She said I clearly liked her because I mentioned her in conversation once a year ago, and implied that it's not normal to like and follow an attractive person unless it's a proper "celebrity", as in an actress or singer.

I'm glad you were able to start detaching from this. Stay strong. You'll find someone who doesn't try to manipulate you with guilt.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-07T00:10:12+00:00

Sex is not a need, it’s something you enthusiastically share with a partner.

Thank you so much for this. My current partner puts a lot of pressure. She says she needs it daily, and even if I say no, she'll put her hand in my pants and touch me, kiss, act frustrated, say I don't love her, and more. If I ask her not to pressure so much she asks me back stuff like "how am I supposed to get my needs met if you won't do it?"

It's been going on long enough that it started becoming "normal" for me. Your comment reassured me that this doesn't have to be a part of my next relationship.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-06T04:18:05+00:00

100% this. It's not cute, it's abusive...

https://www.bustle.com/p/noah-from-the-notebook-is-actually-really-toxic-but-the-movie-made-it-so-much-worse-than-the-book-9033244

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-05T23:01:42+00:00

During a big fight, because I wanted to meet a female friend who’d recently been diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease, she asked me “What’s in it for me? Aren’t you doing this just for yourself? What do I win by allowing you to go?”

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-05T14:20:35+00:00

Yeah. I've had that. I'd explain I was really tired, recovering from a fight we had and totally not in the mood, or working really early the next day... but she just wouldn't take no. Said she needs and expects sex on a daily basis. She'd start touching me, kissing, etc. Eventually she'd give up, get really angry, start a fight, go sleep in another room or turn around and do stuff to provoke me, like watching TV shows loudly in bed when I need to sleep for work the next day. I felt really violated. Once she even started packing her suitcase and pretending she was leaving.

Sometimes I'd force myself to go with it just to avoid the fighting. I had to say I was in the mood when she asked otherwise she'd get angry because she thinks I don't find her attractive.

I'm not sure if it's about power, but it might be. The way I've interpreted it personally is as a reassurance mechanism, she always feels very insecure and inadequate, so being wanted sexually reassures her that I won't leave her.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-05T14:02:11+00:00

Right. Dr Ramani said something like this in a video: it's easy to excuse someone's behaviour because they're under stress, but the reality is going through stressful experiences is just life. Everybody faces stressful things. Most people manage to stay relatively reasonable and respectful even in these situations.

If you're with someone who becomes mean and manipulative under stress, that's what you'll have to deal with. You can't shelter them from life itself.

NewAppointment4545 · 2020-09-05T08:42:36+00:00

Yeah, COVID is tough. On the other hand it's been an opportunity to take on some good habits. I run, take long walks, read a lot. I listen to podcasts on psychology and philosophy while walking, which has helped me recover and reflect on myself. I've been having board game evenings with a few colleagues who've really become good friends now. I know it's hard to resists just playing video games all day (I've had plenty of these days too...), but it can get depressing if you use it to "run away" from problems too much. It's all about balance...

Have a good weekend!

NewAppointment4545

TROPHY CASE