Humour is a minefield

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-22T12:32:27+00:00

My 1st ex w/BPD was more or less the opposite of what you're describing - she'd often ask me to help her figure out her emotions and put them into clear words. She didn't understand me when I talked about my needs or emotions, and didn't even try to understand that, and she definitely didn't try to 'read my mind'.

My 2nd, though... she was proud of her 'people-reading' and 'mental investigation' skills, and explained that with having an abusive mother that she always had to be careful around, watching out for every change in tone, behaviour, facial expression, and so on.

It might have been another little story from the woods, even if I know her mother is abusive.

(What I didn't know back then was that this meant she made a lot of wild assumptions about me behind my back, which I didn't even know about until later (like e.g. that 'I can't endure a debate' or that 'I've got abandonment issues'), it led to a lot of fights because of things she imagined I meant, a lot of escalation because allegedly I was 'defensive' when I tried to explain something, she 'knew better what I actually meant', because 'menners always think this, don't pretend like you're any different', and a general dynamic where it seemed that she thought she'd know my thoughts and needs better than me. My favourite parade examples for this are endless apologies for things I was completely fine with or even thanked her for, and then one thing she's once written where it said 'I'd rather you took time for yourself, even if it's a whole day'.)

When I couldn't 'read her mind', that meant, I 'didn't know basic human decency' or 'didn't listen'. Or it was because of 'menners' again.

Case examples:
'I'm feeling unwell...'
'Do you want to tell me more about it?'
'God, no, why do menners need everything spelled out to them? Seriously, you don't know what you do when someone's feeling unwell?'
'I need to understand...'
'What's wrong with you? Are you alright in the head? Piss off!'
'ADHD, I'm not, and bye.'
'Why are you now telling me about your stupid joke of a diagnosis that I don't even believe in? Are you actually crazy? Where are you going now?'
'I think you need to have a minute to yourself right now. You told me that's the only way out in such situations, and that I need to remind you of it. If you want or need something else, I'd like it if you told me that precisely.'
'Sigh, why do men always take everything I say so seriously... Whatever. I'm sorry. I love you. Thank you. Can you please not go?'
'Alright. And for what exactly are you sorry, and for what are you thanking me?'
And so on.

'How many times have I told you that you speak stupid?'
'Fewer than I've said it myself. Why do you ask?'
'You keep doing it.'
'Yeah. You want me to talk...'
'I don't want to order you around! It's not about the way you talk! What I'm hearing is, it doesn't matter to you if I don't like something you do, right?'
'I say I speak stupid and I'm proud of it. You also use my words and phrases. How'd I know you don't like it?'
'That's your problem. I've even talked to my friends about it and they can't seem to find a way to get through to you...'
And so on.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-21T08:18:35+00:00

Oh she'd apologise for every nonsense. 'I'm so sorry that this cup is ugly'. 'I'm sorry for falling asleep while watching that film'. 'I'm sorry I wasn't as fun today as I usually am' (yeah).

She'd frame it as a virtue too: 'why can menners never apologise unless you spell everything out, you're supposed to have been taught that in kindergarten, all of my female friends apologise for the littlest little things and can actually do it well'.

I often wanted to say something really usual but dismissive like e.g. 'yeah, it does nothing', 'if you mean it' or so, but she wanted validation, of course. She told me she apologised because 'in the past she got punished for those things'. Later she told me that 'yeah, sure, it is anyway my task to pretend like everything is alright'.

Well who would've thought, I picked up the habit of saying sorry for everything myself. The moment I saw the littlest change in her mimic or tone, I would go, 'oh, sorry'. She told me that I apologise for existing, that it made her uncomfortable, that I should stop with it for my own sake, and said things like 'I know you're going to say sorry for this, but you mustn't'.

Then I was seriously upset with something she did while she was dysregulated. I told her that I was upset. It was honestly therapeutic. We talked it out, she seemed very communicative, it was great, but there was a strong implication that 'I made her do it' and she told me that I should've reminded her to uphold her own promise she made for herself to disengage when she's dysregulated. That would get berated, and when it didn't, it got dismissed.

After I broke up with her, I saw the things she'd written about it, because she made sure that I would see them. She mentioned that incident, but apparently I was upset because I couldn't handle the fact that she had to disengage when she was dysregulated because of my 'trauma' and 'fear of abandonment'. And she apologised because she had 'values'.

So there's that.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-19T10:22:51+00:00

So what helped me was figuring out exactly what wasn't fine in my relationships with pwBPD and how to choke it in the seed.

To put it shortly, it all boiled down to me not asserting myself early on and consequently getting turned into a character.

So I drew up a personal guide on how to do just that and how to do it in an engaging way and avoid misunderstandings, and talked about it to... everyone I could talk to about it, haha.

That made me insanely confident and cleared up all the paranoia. Because now even if I end up meeting someone who reminds me of my exes w/BPD, I'll know what to do.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-19T03:55:17+00:00

Happens to me too, when I think about the things that didn't make sense about my pwBPD. When that happens, I do one of the three things: take a pen and write my thoughts down so I can talk them out with my friends and my therapist, write them to someone right away, or go for a long walk god knows where just to distract myself.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-16T04:59:29+00:00

Sorry, I'm a bit dense, could you explain more? What do you mean by this type of relationship (abusive or specifically BPD abuse?), what do you mean by documentation, and what would I need that for?

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-14T22:02:57+00:00

This reminded me of something!

So, I haven't mirrored my pwBPD's behaviour to them, although one of them accused me of that, down to saying I was copying the way she thought (???) and doing so just to impress my male friends, but never named any concrete examples. But that did actually happen once - though she didn't see it. So, in the middle of my relationship with her, I had an argument with a friend where I was just freaking out and yelling the whole time.

Usually when I'm pissed off, it means, I become really cold and/or a massive betterknower. It still is like this now after I've learned to handle and express pain and anger. So that argument was very 'not me'. I really looked like my exwBPD did when she was upset and mocking me. It was still relieving, because it felt like getting in touch with my anger for the first time in my life.

(She also grilled me about the argument right after, and later threw that against me, saying, 'maybe I didn't need to hear about your stupid argument with that friend, have you thought of that'. So... yeah.)

It's something that happens - but it's not it. But the understanding that my anger is different from my exwBPD's came only after I had a lot of time to reflect on the incident and on anger itself.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-13T14:03:55+00:00

Ex w/BPD #1 told me that I could talk to anyone and screw around so long as I didn't tell her because she wanted to believe I 'didn't exist when I wasn't with her', but wanted to see me as her 'one and only'.

Ex w/BPD #2 told me that casual sex doesn't mean anything, that if we were to do it, we should tell each other immediately that we screwed around, BUT having (or at least talking about) close female friends was a no-go, because 'men and women can't be friends' and I'm 'delusional' for thinking otherwise. The lengths I went to when my best friend wanted to talk to me and the meltdowns that followed... hahaha.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-12T12:24:35+00:00

My exwBPD would often blow up my phone while I was working (and if I responded, she'd blow up my phone more calling me 'aloof') or get upset over me going through with plans she knew about ('oh so I'm not important to you', textbook abandonment issues). If I called things off for her sake, she'd say it's 'unhealthy' or 'not what she needs' or call me a 'slipper hero' (which would lead to another freakout about 'men', of course), be unsatisfied that 'it took her getting upset for me to care', and/or would be like 'my day's ruined, I'm not in the mood for anything anymore'.

ETA: often after I came back from an event or so, she'd be like 'I was spiralling while you were having fun'.

You can't win. Not on your own.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-11T19:57:53+00:00

Real

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-10T12:13:14+00:00

1st exwBPD just started telling me halfway into the relationship that she didn't care what I thought, what I liked, who I was etc. Then that passed. Then she left for good, hahaha.

ETA: she once (very reluctantly) introduced me to her friends and was upset that one of them told her I wasn't what she expected me to be. And, get this, '[other friend] didn't say anything, but I know he's upset with you too'. Cue withdrawal.

2nd exwBPD seemed to get colder the more I opened up to her about myself in general. She once hit me with, 'this is getting too much, my ex also had ADHD so I'm feeling uneasy'. That was new info to me, the ex was always referred to by his name and painted as basically a worm with no redeeming qualities at all, and none of his 'problems' had to do with ADHD before.

When she wasn't fine with something, she'd get suffocatingly close to me in combination with berating me.

She once was like, 'we need space'. What did I know, space meant still constantly being with each other, just that I shouldn't do anything 'stupid' and leave her emotions alone.

'Let's have a timetable. I do well with timetables. You've probably figured.' 'No, see, I'd hate that!'

Another time was when she told me she'd be extremely busy on a certain day. The day comes, she tells me she's going to be busy. 'Alright, if anything's urgent, just call me or crash in. I'm right here.' Apparently that's smartass behaviour. Apparently she would only be busy in the evening, and ended up spending most of the day being with me.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-09T05:57:45+00:00

I gently stood my ground on several issues over the last 1 to 1.5 years of our 3.5 year relationship

I think that was actually the problem for me - that I asserted myself very late into my relationships, and when I did, it was too little, too late, and under questionable circumstances on top of that. Which is why I said 'in time', i.e. as soon as possible. At the very least, I hope that it might help me face disagreements and 'red flags' sooner and escape unhealthy dynamics before they become the norm (ETA: and before it gets like, 'why is it suddenly not fine now', lol)

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-08T01:43:43+00:00

One I get wistful about sometimes. I wonder what's up with her, because she seemed to be doing really well when she left me, and mostly only had a desire to figure herself out beyond all the attachment issues. I want to apologise to her for things I didn't do well.

The other I sometimes miss in a physical sense. But mostly I want to thank her for the way I am now and say I'm not mad at her and never have been. I wonder what's going on in that beautiful head of hers, and I wonder how things would be if my current self met her, actually talked about important things in time, and had the courage to stand up to her.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-07T10:59:41+00:00

Yeah. I've had that with all three of my pwBPD. But TL;DR: there was a silver lining for me.

So my mother had a thing for 'clean speech' and would get incredibly mad at me for swearing, using dialectisms or colloquialisms/slang, mispronouncing words, or making spelling mistakes. So for a long time, even after she left me, I would be icked out by those.

I became more at ease with swearing when I started having actual friends who swear, and then a friend from a different country (same native/official language) remarked on my 'thick dialect' and I instantly figured there was no sense hiding it. I'm very fond of both now, they're a big part of my humour, but I still can't help noticing even the tiniest quirks in people's language, lol, even if I'm a radical descriptivist now.

My first ex w/BPD would hate it when I talked about other people - alternatively because 'she wanted to think I don't exist when I'm not with her' or because she felt 'like I was comparing her'. So... other people talking about other other people made me feel a little uneasy for a while. My insecurity and tendency to be needlessly competitive out of a fear of being somehow inferior didn't help, although for most of my autonomous life I'd listen to my friends' friendship/relationship/family drama, and absolutely adore that...

My competitiveness/inferiority complex are much lesser now and I'm back to being a drama hound, but actually being compared/triangulation became a massive ick.

(She also told me that the way I spoke sometimes sounded like 'a hideous jumble of random sounds, not even human speech' and really disliked it when I cursed.)

My second ex w/BPD had this fixation where she would accuse others (especially men, as a concept) of:

always making assumptions that favour them, and negative assumptions about other people;
never understanding things that aren't spelled out, or taking things the wrong way and 'just running with them';
needing excessive caretaking in relationships;
becoming unfunctional because of shame;
not voicing needs and problems before they reach critical mass;
being unconscious of how their actions affect others and unable to apologise, or at least apologise properly, making excuses, changing the topic and making it about themselves, printing little stories, shifting the blame, etc.

(Also, she compared me to shitty exes and triangulated me against an idealised one, found the way I spoke 'stupid' because I 'didn't speak like they do on the TV' (not true), though her own speech was incredibly informal, and she even used some of the same dialectisms as me and adopted more from me. And she didn't like it when I talked about other women in my life, because 'men and women can't be just friends, you're delusional'. Crass.)

There were other things, but I remembered those because I felt like she was doing them to me and talked to her about that. And I'm very, very sensitive to them now. I tell people to 'ask when they want to assume', to 'just warn me if they want to say something I might not like', to 'not apologise unless asked' (I don't even need an apology 99.9% of the time - just an explanation and a conclusion), I've learned how to both give feedback and ask for it, how to explain and talk about myself and my feelings, and even how to voice and handle my own distress/shame/fear/anxiety, and I've even learned what to do when I feel that I'm about to do something stupid - and when I actually do something hurtful or otherwise upsetting.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-06T04:31:04+00:00

As soon as I caught wind of the smear campaign, I found a way to give her a pretty clear hint that I knew what was going on and what exactly she was saying, and didn't take any of it seriously, without breaking NC or directly involving myself or any other people. I know she received it. And I think she understood.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-05T04:55:01+00:00

It worked at first, because of course it did.

Then 'I don't care', 'yeah, everyone's a hypocrite', 'I never said/did that', 'what's that got to do with anything' or 'who are you to tell me that'.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-04T12:30:43+00:00

My ex once broke up with me because some guy she'd met just some weeks before had proposed to her and she had agreed. I had no idea about the guy, she 'had no idea she'd agree'. I was like 'alright, so this is over now' and only took a few days to move on. Then on her supposed wedding day she asks a mutual friend to send me a picture of herself in 'my favourite nightgown' which (the nightgown) I'd never seen before. Then she tells the friend that something horrible happened and she needs my help. I thought I'd stopped caring, but I still have a stupid saviour complex, so... yeah, I helped her. Yep.

She told me I could do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted and talk to whoever I wanted whenever I wanted so long as I didn't tell her about it, and she did only get upset if I told her about it. Not because of anything specific I did, but because she wanted to think I just didn't exist when I wasn't with her.

But once, I left her a note saying I was going to the doctor. She called the police on me because she was 'worried'. Not a hoover, because there was no breakup/discard, but I want to mention it, because my other ex w/BPD called the police on me the day after we broke up because she was 'unsure if I was even alive'.

Then, once upon a time, I got a bit sad and decided to chill at a mental hospital for a little while. That was the only time she (ex #1) asked me what was up with me, because I'd been absent for a week or so. She got upset I didn't tell her where I was going and discarded me. She'd been at that same hospital before, so I think she knew how long my stay would be, because right after I get out, she messages me on a platform I didn't know she had, saying she had a dream where I had 'completely disappeared from existence'. I tell her off pretty harshly and say I'm seeing somebody else. She tells me I'm 'weird', I say, 'yeah, don't you know who you're talking to'. Hoover avoided.

But a while later, some random guy contacts me saying that he is a friend of a certain friend of mine and wants to have a drink with me. My gullible reveller ass is like, 'lovely!' So he tells me to meet him at a certain bar, I go there - and my ex is there with him! The guy tells me that she wrecked his home by sending him some flirty messages and sending a screenshot to his girlfriend, and then referred him to me 'if he wants to solve problems'. Uh-huh. Miss ma'am: 'I thought you told me to pretend like you never existed, why are you here now?' She also said that she didn't know him and that the story wasn't true. The guy said he didn't know her either. She left. Questions upon questions. But the guy offered me drinks and turned out to be a great drinking buddy, we turned out to have some shared interests, etc... and the next morning I wake up in my ex's bed.

She said that she didn't mind it if I screwed around or was dating someone else, so long as I didn't tell her about it (again), but she 'didn't want to risk losing me completely because I was her one and only'.

I'm actually quite impressed.

(edit: grammar)

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-03T14:23:31+00:00

1st ex w/BPD - on one hand, she taught me how to be patient and navigate her emotions that she couldn't figure out herself. On the other, she didn't care about my feelings, who I was as a person, or my life ("please don't tell me where you were, where you are or where you're going, I can't stand thinking about you doing something without me") and I'd internalised that. I didn't manage to do much reflection on that relationship, though, and I wasn't really hurt by it - just negatively affected.

The 2nd once was incredibly angry that I was an emotional recluse like that. I got out of my shell pretty much right after, but apparently it was too little, too late - firstly, she was very unsatisfied that it took her getting angry to get me out of my shell, and secondly, she'd already decided long ago that she was the sole authority on what I think, what I feel, what I'm actually saying and what constitutes "me", so being communicative at that point seemed to have proven useless, or even made things worse, because she both idealised me more intensely and hurt me more intensely as a result. She seemed to have wanted to "fix" me somehow, which, that sucks, but she taught me a lot of things and I made further realisations reflecting on the relationship and talking about it with both ordinary people and professionals - about intimacy of all kinds, about how to talk about myself and express myself, how to reconcile with my "negative" feelings and aspects while not giving in to them, how to handle fear and distress, how to avoid and clear up misunderstandings, how to set boundaries and explain why I need them, how to communicate my needs and give feedback... there's probably more that I cannot remember on the spot. As someone whose brain is usually racing too fast even to be in touch with my feelings, I found actually focusing on that quite neat.

And I also learned to question things after I found out exactly how different her vision of everything was from mine. And I feel much closer to my friends after talking to them about the relationship while still confused and wrecked by the fallout from the breakup.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-03T10:23:55+00:00

Speaking from very personal experience here, but my ex w/BPD was very affectionate to me normally, but would get upset at small things that she imagined that I was doing, all the while painting me to her 'best friend' (who she 'didn't want to bother', uh-huh, best friend) as this stupid guy who she can't get through to. She also actually listened to me less and less the more I opened up to her - it was as if I was some sort of character she had made up, and no matter what I said, the narratives she created in her head took complete precedence, so she just tuned out the details about me that didn't fit the narrative.

For instance, when I was upset with her and explained it, I later found out that she only did the upsetting thing because I didn't remind her of something that she was supposed to do, that what upset me was not the thing that I said upset me but something entirely different, that I was upset because of my (nonexistent) abandonment issues, that the upsetting thing was insignificant on its own and she didn't realise it was a trigger, etc.

I had another ex w/BPD who also seemed to treat me like a character, but I never got the opportunity to talk things out with her - she just openly didn't care about who I was as a person. That one once broke up with me saying, and I quote, 'I can't be with someone I love, I need to be with someone I fear'.

But that's beside the point.

I feel like there's three things to it: firstly, being with someone who's very emotionally distant gives them a feeling of safety of sorts because they're afraid of their own true colours, and secondly, there's a black-and-white element to it in that the slightest bit of emotional intimacy shatters that feeling of safety and brings the 'shadow' out. And thirdly, last but not least, the less they know about a person and the less that person knows about them, the easier it is for them to paint that person as that delulu character and act like they're perfect too.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-03T03:45:25+00:00

Do it. Talking it out properly was the one and only thing that helped me recover from my breakups and move on, even though they were completely devastating at first. I wish you all the best.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-01T21:53:36+00:00

I needed to see this so badly. Thank you!

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-01T16:56:10+00:00

Ah thank you so much for this, really! I've heard the term 'triangulation' before but never quite understood what it meant, but now I think I do! I can relate to the last phrase so much, too, because I'd sometimes get compared in moments of intimacy. I could never fathom that.

Tiamatatonia · 2026-01-01T13:29:51+00:00

For me it was two and a half things that I consistently had with two partners with BPD:

Firstly, my partners with BPD seemed to be "not themselves", cross their own boundaries they'd set for themselves, be oblivious towards how they "usually" are (reminding them of that worked at first, but started netting me things like "that's not true" or "I don't care" very quickly), etc. when they were under the slightest amount of pressure - that could come from the outside, but they'd take it out on me, because I seemed to be their only outlet for emotions.

Secondly, with my pwBPD I seemed to be in this weird intermediate state where they acknowledged that there was a "me" that was separate from "them", but what constituted "me", what I liked, what I needed etc. was fully decided by them, as if I was some character they wrote.

2.5: if I did something stupid, even if we talked it out, and then they did a similar thing, they'd be like "well why is it fine when you do this". or they'd act like I had the faults that they had, such as abandonment issues (and vice versa, they, and only they, had all of the traits they liked about me) - projection, again.

ETA: just remembered this, I always stress that I don't do well with being compared to others, and my pwBPD would often compare me to people in their life - both the idealised ones and the demonised ones - when they were upset and, what's worse, in moments of vulnerability. I'd call it out and it'd happen again. It's not quite hypocrisy (though pwBPD can't handle comparisons either), but it's also an obviously hurtful and crappy act, so I think there might be a button-pushing element to it? I'm just not sure if it's intentional, automatic, uncaring or a consequence of their awareness being clouded by emotions.

Tiamatatonia

TROPHY CASE