Is wearing makeup dis-loyal? BPD/Emotionaly unstable disorder roller coaster relationship.....

[eidetic]

OP, if you are still reading here, look past the victim blaming.

 

It is not your fault he is like this, and not your fault that he controls or puts you in the seat of less power.

 

This is not about you having low self esteem, or about you having maladaptive behaviors or some trick in your past that made this ok.

 

This is more about not being aware that a relationship could get this dark or strange, and to me that says you are probably both a gentle and a kind person. That should not be maligned and I'm sorry that it seems to have been maligned here.

 

BPD can be workable. Any form of abuse, IS NOT. If you are still reading here, I'd love to know if you are safe, physically, and whether you see any options for getting physical distance away from your partner. If you are living in his father's home, my guess is that the prospect of leaving this man and this home and this family feel very daunting to you. But if you have ever once considered it, your ask for support or input here tells me it is time for you to begin considering it more strongly.

 

If you continue to post, the forum grants access to private messaging. Once you have that, feel free and welcome to PM me, and/or others here who you feel seem to have the information you need.

 

Your situation is definitely showing up as an abusive one, and no matter how harsh or targeted any of the answers here, people are concerned that you should be and remain safe. Please do give update when you can.

[ThatwasThen]

Op; If you are still reading this thread... there is ZERO victim blaming from me. I am simply here to tell you to get the help you need to leave this man. I will post the links again to the site where you can begin your journey to reclaim your self if you're actually ready to admit that you could use the help. If you ask then I know you're not so lost that you would run away from this thread into the arms of a man that you are clearly not happy with.

 

There is a lot of rhetoric here about you being blamed when in fact, your thread is the perfect opportunity for you to look within and ask yourself why you stay with a man that is not emotionally or psychologically capable of NOT abusing you. If nothing else, luv... you are addicted to what he afflicts on you and you'd do well to get yourself the help you need to be brainwashed into believing that you deserve better then what this man dishes out to you.

 

There is also a forum for the family and love ones of those with BPD. I will also link you to that site if you're interested.

 

Again, please don't listen to those that say you are being blamed. it simply isn't so.

[abitbroken]

i was in your shoes and i will give advice contrary to what others said -- counseling, etc, won't really work while you are living with him because you will be doing self help classes and counseling to try to make yourself "better" so your relationship will be better. The only way you will get strong is to create safe space between you. The healing won't begin unless you go to mom and dad's and stay there, or otherwise physically get away from him -- and temporarily living with someone like your parents or a sister, etc, will also hold you accountable when you are tempted to run back. The healing didn't truly start for me until i was somewhere where he couldn't just come. Take an afternoon off work and don't tell him so that you have a head start on heading to your folks house or ask them to pick you up so he is not able to hurt you.

[ThatwasThen]

Op: You said thought of leaving him breaks my heart but i don't know if i can go on with the Jekyll and Hyde lifestyle.

You can't go on with it. Luckily you found this forum and you are getting unbiased advise from those that have been in your shoes and from those that have close ties with those that have been in your shoes.

 

Do you know what codependency is, Sophie? What the difference between caregiving and caretaking is? Why we all need to strive to have strong personal boundaries in place and how not to let others cross them? There is so much for you to discover that will help you to be free from your fear of being without him.

 

Your parents love you... talk to them and they will give you the support you need to do what you know you need to do. Get the therapy you need to help you overcome what he has caused in you and to come to terms with why you accept that kind of "love" for yourself. You can over-come.

[RainyCoast]

honestly the statements that posters who advocate for integrity, personal responsibility and control over one's life course have never experienced what they're commenting on or are speaking to "victim blame" sound ironic.

 

some people genuinely find the all the reason and resolve to use their freedom and capacity in creating their own experience - and those who do usually find it at lowest lows- and have the experience and understanding to compare the advantages of that to regressing into a helpless child role under the fantastic guise of being colonized by something or someone with more power over themselves (and their shower schedule) than themselves. and may wish unto others as they wish for themselves. it seems pretty obvious to me they believe OP would be happier if she genuinely understood the benefits of autonomy over dependency.

 

of course, there is also always the route of doing one's best regardless of how others see it, until it is no longer experienced as one's objectively best on a deeply personal level- true, advice often can't compare to experiential insight. to suggest people haven't had the learning grounds or the willingness to wear certain shoes, and that they are well-nigh treading upon OP in their slippers with their conviction that her best exceeds a passive voice by far, is quite a surprising thought coming from people who supposedly understand dis-empowerment and abuse.

 

there is no merit in telling people they are being criticized and blamed when prompted to recognize and abandon the behavior that repeatedly lands them in the mercy of others.

[eidetic]

Not sure if you're pointing at me, RC, but I'm sure our experiences are comparable.

 

Either way, responding here is in effort to assist OP out of what sounds like a terribly uncomfortable and even dangerous situation.

[Hell_On_Heels]

honestly the statements that posters who advocate for integrity, personal responsibility and control over one's life course have never experienced what they're commenting on or are speaking to "victim blame" sound ironic.

 

some people genuinely find the all the reason and resolve to use their freedom and capacity in creating their own experience - and those who do usually find it at lowest lows- and have the experience and understanding to compare the advantages of that to regressing into a helpless child role under the fantastic guise of being colonized by something or someone with more power over themselves (and their shower schedule) than themselves. and may wish unto others as they wish for themselves. it seems pretty obvious to me they believe OP would be happier if she genuinely understood the benefits of autonomy over dependency.

 

of course, there is also always the route of doing one's best regardless of how others see it, until it is no longer experienced as one's objectively best on a deeply personal level- true, advice often can't compare to experiential insight. to suggest people haven't had the learning grounds or the willingness to wear certain shoes, and that they are well-nigh treading upon OP in their slippers with their conviction that her best exceeds a passive voice by far, is quite a surprising thought coming from people who supposedly understand dis-empowerment and abuse.

 

there is no merit in telling people they are being criticized and blamed when prompted to recognize and abandon the behavior that repeatedly lands them in the mercy of others.

 

No, love. I'm not trying to say that at all. I'm trying to say that victims of abuse, especially severe and/or long term abuse, don't have the same reality. It isn't the same world, the thought process and filtering is all different. Because of that, because the victim already internalizes so much blame and so much "wrongness" or "badness", it's extremely difficult for the victim to comprehend the concept of self.

 

Those of us who came from relationships like that are trying to explain that we couldn't find ourselves, much less improve on ourselves. We couldn't explain to anyone why we stayed, not even to ourselves.

 

I'm not saying the advice is bad or mean or anything like that. What I'm saying is I'm not sure if the OP can hear the message, and relate to it, act on it. I do truly apologize if anyone feels offended, criticized, or chided. There are certain experiences that seem impossible to explain, like childbirth, the death of a loved one, and this. We try to articulate it, we try to express it...but I'm not sure we can capture and share the full experience.

 

I was born into abusive relationships. Nine parents in 16 years, with every type of abuse. My father died when I was 16, forcing me to live with my mother until she threw me out of the house at 17 for having a glass of wine. Being thrown out was probably the best thing that could've happened to me, since that is the point where I started to find me.

 

It's so very fair to say I was an extremely messed up person. I did messed up things. Well meaning friends couldn't understand it. They cared about me and often said I needed to fix my self esteem. I had no idea what that was or what that meant...I couldn't touch it, I couldn't fit their words into my world.

 

All I can tell you is that there was a tiny piece of me well hidden, a piece that demanded a better life for me. I believe everyone has this. I believe that with an intensity that seems scary when I share it.

 

It took years of therapy, of self examination, of mistakes and success...I'll never be "normal" but I've made a lot of progress. I'm learning to be friends with the weirdness that remains, choosing to identify that as me, as my battle scars.

 

The one thing that truly helped me was acceptance, bold statements that I was not to blame, and even more bold statements that blame is useless in terms of progress. Obviously, I've needed a lot of expert professional input and skills as well, but the thing that unlocked my mind was that I was not to blame for what happened, and that I am not responsible for fixing it.

 

That's where I'm coming from. And that is the message I pass on to any abuse victim I meet. Again, my posts were not trying to judge anyone. I am trying to explain that to the abused mind, certain things are almost impossible to grasp. I remember thinking that my friends may as well have been speaking in a foreign language.

[ThatwasThen]

I'm not saying the advice is bad or mean or anything like that. What I'm saying is I'm not sure if the OP can hear the message, and relate to it, act on it.

Well, if the advice is never given then you can bet your life's income that they will never relate or act upon it.

[RainyCoast]

good thing self-reliance and personal responsibility don't even remotely equal taking blame ;-).

 

while i can't relate to the fear that a poster might, god forbid, choose to put to use the two cents of someone else on a public forum, i contend that it isn't "helpful" to decide for other responders what their motivations are,

 

and tell a person with the opportunity and freedom to move from " they/he/she/life are doing this to me" to "what am i doing, and what can i do" that autonomy, insight into their own fragmented self, and the illustrated chance to choose behaviors that elicit outcomes better than their repeated flight into helplessness, powerlessness and always the same old frustrating experience

 

must equal them accepting the blame for someone else's behavior and internalizing the treatment they've received.

 

not a single person on here told her to own her boyfriend's behavior, and not one diminished the inappropriateness of it, and not one doubted

she experiences it as intensely distressing- how could they, given her continuous, ample verbal, emotional and behavioral portrayal of everything that's

beyond frustrating about it.

 

what she is being told is that while the chances to control what others or life throw at us are rather too weak to count on, the freedom to create her own experience to a magnificent extent

is gracefully and gratefully very much present in her case, and that if she can understand why she chose to not use it until now, she can also choose to live without self-imposed limitations.

 

i understand for some people the pain of what they have experienced at the hands of others is still very much present in their memory, and nobody is stopping them from extrapolating on it as empathic self-disclosure.

 

but the kind of countertransference that encourages her to eschew all self-exploration that might result in a sense of personal liberty and power over what she chooses isn't the only view a victim can and should get. nothing personal, but self-sabotage, admitted insecurity of a rather irrational and juvenile kind, repeated regression into helplessness and conscious returning to experiences recognized as painful, persistent splitting and lack of self, voicelessness and a resignation to doomed mistreatment are maladaptive, are predictably present and displayed by repeated victims, and no amount of projective identification will place them outside, just as they will not be replaced with self-enhancing components by an abuser.

 

while i doubt she currently has interest or insight enough to select a different day to day experience, other victims read these forums, and the view that the reason they keep returning for more mistreatment is that they are simply too "gentle and kind" isn't a balanced one.

 

i should hope after all, that victims aren't reinforced in their propensity to believe acts of self-reliance, self-preservation, and personal strength are proof of them being bad ;-).

 

different strokes for different folks. hopefully the discourse leaves abused people with the realization one can choose to make a frightening, courage-sapping memorial ground of the aggression and restriction suffered at the hands of others, or they can choose to make a monument of their own freedom to treat themselves better.

[LaHermes]

Quite so, RC.

 

"hopefully the discourse leaves abused people with the realization one can choose to make a frightening, courage-sapping memorial ground of the aggression and restriction suffered at the hands of others, or they can choose to make a monument of their own freedom to treat themselves better."

 

The trauma bonding and utter mental exhaustion and confusion brought about by constant abuse is worse than battle fatigue. So, I say, think "survivor" not "victim".

[RainyCoast]

Quite so, RC.

 

"hopefully the discourse leaves abused people with the realization one can choose to make a frightening, courage-sapping memorial ground of the aggression and restriction suffered at the hands of others, or they can choose to make a monument of their own freedom to treat themselves better."

 

The trauma bonding and utter mental exhaustion and confusion brought about by constant abuse is worse than battle fatigue. So, I say, think "survivor" not "victim".

to be fair, i'm sure the end goal desired for the op was the same on all sides. perhaps just a matter of different people arriving at it differently.

[LaHermes]

Mmmm, maybe, RC.

[eidetic]

Phew.

 

The point is, for OP and for any future readers,

 

If you are in a destructive situation like this, GET OUT OF IT. That is the *first and most imperative* action.

 

All the self review and rebuild can come later, upon your being physically and psychologically SAFE.

 

Scary that OP hasn't commented in a while.

[LaHermes]

Yes, Eidetic.

"Scary that OP hasn't commented in a while."

 

[ThatwasThen]

I don't think its scary. She's had a lot to read and absorb, after all she didn't even have the self left in her to recognized that wearing makeup was NOT disloyal and had to ask strangers on a message board.

 

Hopefully she is looking within as to what she can do to get her self away (and this time stay away) from the man that has her imprisoned mentally and emotionally due to his own mental illness.

 

I hope she has enough courage to ask for the links to the folks that can help her with getting the strength to do something other then stay and accept and enable. At the very least the link to the BPD Family website will give her group support for those who are enmeshed in similar.

[LaHermes]

"Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime. (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively) (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (CDC) 2010).

 

Not all of those people can be too stupid or too lazy to get out. And still, that bias isn’t surprising. People who haven’t been there can’t see it clearly. You can’t possibly understand how quickly a smart person can lose their ability to make rational choices when the way they think is muddled by fear. It happens very, very quickly."

 

 

[ThatwasThen]

"Nearly half of all women and men in the United States have experienced psychological aggression by an intimate partner in their lifetime. (48.4% and 48.8%, respectively) (National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (CDC) 2010).

 

Not all of those people can be too stupid or too lazy to get out. And still, that bias isn’t surprising. People who haven’t been there can’t see it clearly. You can’t possibly understand how quickly a smart person can lose their ability to make rational choices when the way they think is muddled by fear. It happens very, very quickly."

 

]

I don't think anyone is arguing that ^^^^

[LaHermes]

And your problem is, TWT?

 

Just an informative part of an article I posted up. A law against that?

 

Geeze, what is wrong with everyone here.

[ThatwasThen]

I don't think anyone is arguing that ^^^^

... And no one is implying that the Op is "stupid" or "lazy" but rather codependent and unable to believe that she deserves better then what he gives her. It's also about misplaced guilt and the inability to say 'no' when a 'no' is called for. (he runs after her crying when she does get enough nerve to leave then manipulates her back through guilting.)

[ThatwasThen]

And your problem is, TWT?

 

Just an informative part of an article I posted up. A law against that?

 

Geeze, what is wrong with everyone here.

I think you misunderstood, Hermes. My response wasn't a dig at you or your post at all. Sorry if it came across that way.

 

I just didn't like that words used "stupid and lazy" and was pointing out that no one was arguing the general context of the quote.

[eidetic]

"Codependent" "unable to believe" "misplaced guilt" and "inability" are not the issue here so much as things for the survivor to consider AFTER getting to a place where they are physically safe and not daily psychologically battered or manipulated.

 

The situ is painful to look at and there's no doubt it's been confusing and painful. OP's partner sounds both brilliant and badly confined by his own inertia and condition, but the bottom line is to GET OUT of that situation and get safe, get some rest, get some support that can offset all this to carve space for peace and healing and self review to even begin.

 

Regardless whether we hear from OP again, to her and to any future readers, this intensity and level of undermining is not normal or healthy. And regardless the differences in this community's language and approach, its unanimous that we know you deserve better. It's fundamental that your partnerhood is grounded in safety.

 

As for leaving and why anyone might not at first instance of any code red, the neuroscience and physiology of trauma response enters here. It has little to do with psychology or rational thought or even emotion. It's the body's natural response to shock: fight, flight, freeze, or faint. The physical brain is doing whatever possible in the moment to ensure you survive what is happening. The thinking feeling mind may take days to catch up, or depending on the trauma and the frequency of repeat incidents, it may take years. And that is one reason anyone might not leave.

 

But for anyone who needs the info, if you are in a situation that sounds anything like this, JUST LEAVE. It doesn't have to be forever or final if you don't want that. But it needs to be for right now, and for as much time as you need in order to get some distance and clarity on what your needs are and whether those are being met.

 

Think of it as the house on fire. Don't stay contemplating: MAKE CONCRETE ACTION. This is trauma time and you're at risk.

 

OP, your partner has his father to lean on. It's possible or even probable that some of his unpleasant or stranger behaviors originate from early relationship with that very person. You can love them still, but focus on moving your being out of that situation for now. Get home and tell your family what has gone on.

[LaHermes]

Sophie has disappeared....

[ThatwasThen]

"Codependent" "unable to believe" "misplaced guilt" and "inability" are not the issue here so much as things for the survivor to consider AFTER getting to a place where they are physically safe and not daily psychologically battered or manipulated.

Yes, but you will never talk someone into actually leaving if they don't believe they deserve better. They don't know they deserve better until it is pointed out to them that they do and the reasons why they don't think they do.

 

The situ is painful to look at and there's no doubt it's been confusing and painful. OP's partner sounds both brilliant and badly confined by his own inertia and condition, but the bottom line is to GET OUT of that situation and get safe, get some rest, get some support that can offset all this to carve space for peace and healing and self review to even begin.

She will get out when she gets that she needs to. Right now she doesn't know that she needs to. I do agree that she needs the support once she's out. Calling the hotline to get advise on how to get out and finding out what resources are available to help her with understanding why she subconsciously thinks she deserves only what she has.

 

Regardless whether we hear from OP again, to her and to any future readers, this intensity and level of undermining is not normal or healthy. And regardless the differences in this community's language and approach, its unanimous that we know you deserve better. It's fundamental that your partnerhood is grounded in safety.

Amen.

 

As for leaving and why anyone might not at first instance of any code red, the neuroscience and physiology of trauma response enters here. It has little to do with psychology or rational thought or even emotion. It's the body's natural response to shock: fight, flight, freeze, or faint. The physical brain is doing whatever possible in the moment to ensure you survive what is happening. The thinking feeling mind may take days to catch up, or depending on the trauma and the frequency of repeat incidents, it may take years. And that is one reason anyone might not leave.

my question has always been "why do you stay?" I think how the responder answers is very important. It's not a dig, it's not a show of blame... its a question that you'd do well to answer, Op without using the phrase "I love him" or "it's so good when he's not being bad." What actually is left?

 

But for anyone who needs the info, if you are in a situation that sounds anything like this, JUST LEAVE. It doesn't have to be forever or final if you don't want that. But it needs to be for right now, and for as much time as you need in order to get some distance and clarity on what your needs are and whether those are being met. Think of it as the house on fire. Don't stay contemplating: MAKE CONCRETE ACTION

I think that's akin to saying "just say no to drugs" when you are sorely addicted. As we all know, there is more to why someone becomes addicted then just the drug itself. We also all know that those that don't know enough to leave a burning home just hide in a closet. Often young children do this because they have never been taught what to do.

 

. This is trauma time and you're at risk. OP, your partner has his father to lean on. It's possible or even probable that some of his unpleasant or stranger behaviors originate from early relationship with that very person. You can love them still, but focus on moving your being out of that situation for now. Get home and tell your family what has gone on.

Yes, do tell your family exactly what you've told us. I hope they have the means to get you the help and guidance from professionals that will keep you safe from men like him for good.

[boltnrun]

OPs often disappear when their threads degenerate into "discussions" between posters that become salty.

 

It doesn't help the OP for us to argue amongst one another.

 

I do hope Sophie confides in her family and chooses to leave this unhealthy relationship. Mental illness can be a reason for bad behavior but it should never be used as an excuse for it.

[ThatwasThen]

It doesn't help the Op either though to be told that a discussion that pertains to her is arguing when there is no arguing going on.