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Adrian

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  • #229565
    Adrian
    Participant

    Colton,

    While I’m unhappy things aren’t working out for you, I’m at least happy that I can help in whatever way possible. So please feel free to write if you ever feel like asking a question or anything. I’ll continue monitoring this thread, though I’m away from home/PC a lot of times and my answers might be a bit slow, just like they were this week-end. And keep in mind that, her words aside, you don’t sound like a bad person to either one of myself, Anita and Riris – and you’re taking the steps to try and fix whatever needs fixing which means a lot. She may call you whatever but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. Sometimes people throw names and insults around just to hide their own inner inadequacy.

    Hope things turn out fell for you!

    #229557
    Adrian
    Participant

    Just saw your latest reply. There were times when each of us were ill but that was before everything started breaking down. So the first times we took good care of each other. Later on, it was more like “you can’t be feeling that ill”. Same for the chores. We divided them up some time in the beginning and were good. Until she started not doing hers and complaining that I should be doing more because “taking out the trash is a man’s job”. Which was a non-argument because we were talking about doing the laundry, not taking out the trash, and I had been covering with the laundry because she never got around to it. She didn’t even care that I was too busy covering hers – like watering the flowers (her flowers which she had moved in with) which she always said she’d but always forgot about. Almost all of those plants are still alive in my apartment today (one died for whatever reason) and I actually took more in. I guess I won a new hobby just because she hated hers too much 🙂

    #229553
    Adrian
    Participant

    Colton,

    Sorry about the late reply, I was away from civilization for the week-end 🙂

    Yes, all of those things happened. For example, one time she went on a trip for a couple of days and I cooked some vegetables that were dying in the kitchen because she bought them to make something but didn’t feel like doing it. Which was not ok because I should have let her do it (no chance with wilted vegetables… no point in explaining, either). Another time she was driving on a dirt road and I heard a long tearing sound. I didn’t say anything because it was a difficult road and there was no point telling her that she must have clipped a stone. You can imagine who was to blame for the scratch – she actually spent a whole evening recounting where we’d passed while I was driving to tell me where I might have done it. I’d park the car perfectly and she would get angry that I was too close to another one – I actually showed her there was more than enough room and all she said “it doesn’t matter, I got this wrong this time, there was definitely another time when you were too close”. Because we had different work schedules I changed mine every day so I’d come home one our earlier – the only caveat was that there were 2 minutes in the evening where I had to check whether anything urgent had happened in the interval I was no longer at work, part of the deal for this arrangement to work. There were probably 5-10 occurrences in one year where I took more than those two minutes, with 15 being the max. Of course, I spent “all evenings working and not paying her enough attention”. And trying to discuss these things was, in the beginning, met with tears and talk about how she’s not good enough for me or anger. Later on, it was mostly anger, and the rest accusations about how I wasn’t doing a good enough job and I hadn’t shown enough interest in our relationship. I became everything from a bad cook (and most people I know actually appreciate my cooking), to a bad driver (I haven’t had one accident ever and most people I’ve driven around appreciate my driving style), bad boyfriend – you name it. I “lived inside a shell” (although she wouldn’t feel like doing anything when given free time), was “too different”, “spoiled” (there was no argument that she brought for this except for the fact that my mom is the type of person that’s hyper-concerned about everything), etc. After we broke up, I actually pulled up some ancient conversations from when we met (chat history can be useful sometimes) and spent time reading them to see whether we were actually that different. Either she lied in the beginning or simply changed.

    The point is, all of those rules and scripting, as Anita pointed out already, were a result of her own fears, anxiety, feelings of inadequacy and others. A lot of them got projected on to me, some of them got exacerbated – like the quick check of e-mail for more together-time with “working all the time”. In fact, I tried to get home earlier so we’d spend more time together and she wouldn’t worry that I was actually out with some girl at work she felt I was cheating with. So neither solution worked. It can’t work unless she also accepts that she has to put some effort into it.

    As for the tipping point, I actually thought about breaking things off for a couple of times but just rewinded the good things in my head and thought there might be sense in trying to improve things. In the end, fights occured more and more often and she just showed less and less respect. She actually tried to push me at one point but I’m well-built so there was no chance that would succeed. After that, one week later, I just tried taking her hand into mine, non-violently, and she started screaming that I wanted to physically assault her. On one hand, I’m disappointed with myself for getting into fights in the first place. On the other, I tried constructive discussions for a lot of times and at some point I just couldn’t except the constant insults and demeaning. There were a couple of moments of regret from her side about the way she acted but now that I think of it that was probably more of her own fears of being abandoned or some form of hot/cold attraction – aka trying to seem open from time to time so I’d be accepting of all the other bad things that happened. In the end, we just broke things off because of her bad behavior. We actually kept in contact for a while because she wouldn’t grab her stuff from my place and that would be another carousel of love/hate/regrets/no regrets to the point where I simply became immune to anything she said and just blocked her out forever.

    #228849
    Adrian
    Participant

    Colton,

    I’m a first time poster here, on this forum, and the only reason I’ve decided to post (I know, I should reach out to people more 🙂 ) is because your story seems very similar to one I’ve lived through. I can recognize all of that behavior. In my case, it didn’t happen from day one, it actually took a couple of years before things started getting messy – up until that point, I had never had these issues. The only possible sign was that she accused me of infidelity twice – which could never have been the case especially since we spent almost all of our time together outside of myself going to work. And please trust me that I could never do something that demeaning to another human being after seeing the results of infidelity upon some of my closer friends.

    I don’t know if this was the way your girlfriend behaved from the onset. I’ll just repeat that with us there were no clear signs of this for a good amount of time – if this is the same in your situation, you’re not alone. Once her behavior degenerated, however, I tried my best to repair things. I actually misassumed it had something to do with her work-related stress (she hated her job and was trying to find something better) so I tried offering support, talking, suggesting couples therapy, searching for more things to do together, trying to support her in any activity that would help her relieve stress, anything that could improve things. Any discussion lead to the same: it was always either myself to blame or, extremely rarely, some reference to her internal struggles and issues (these, unfortunately, only led me into thinking there was a point in fighting for this relationship). In the end, nothing was ever enough and the work I’ve had to go through trying to hold the ship together was destructive to myself both physically and mentally. I was also going through the loss of someone I cared for at that point, was constantly fighting work-related stress as well as a medical issue – all of these relationship issues and constant demeaning did nothing to improve my overall well-being as you might imagine.

    It was one month before we finally broke up that I remembered about BPD – I’m not a medical professional, either, but the disorder was known to me and I could have seen some clear signs had I not tried explaining everything via stress and other external conditions. At first I thought I was a cold-hearted, vindictive bastard for trying to pin things like this on the poor girl for rejecting me because I wasn’t doing enough (I know, I know…) but her behavior when we parted ways only made me reinforce this opinion. I’ve gone from being accused of more fake infidelity through being accused of trying to “destroy her life” or to convince her to commit suicide. I’m not saying this might be the case with you, just explaining that things become more clear with time and distance.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that you should be confident about your own self-worth and your own perception of reality – it’s hard to forget that you’re a strong and discerning person when being abused and accused constantly. You’ve chosen to reach out for advice which shows, to me, that you’re willing to do something to save this relationship if it is truly worth saving. I see no such signs from her part.

    Once you’re feeling confident enough, try to find some alone time and think well of her behavior – there might be more signs to the toxicity of this relationship there than you can recognize right now. Things you might have actually taken the blame for which were of no fault of your own just to try and get things moving from a bad moment or situation. Things you enjoy and have given up to not cause her further distress/anxiety. Think well and hard and block all happy thoughts regarding the relationship at that point – you’re not trying to evaluate the pros and cons, just to understand the degree of her misbehaving. Looking back, I found many more instances of that in those final 6 months of three years than I was aware of or I’m now willing to admit 🙂

    And if you ever feel afraid of ending things if you think you’ve had enough – don’t be. Just don’t be :). It caused me great pain when things finally broke and her behavior towards myself was abysmal. It took me a while but I finally realized all that pain was much less than what I would have faced had I continued living that toxic relationship. Since then, I’ve overcome my medical issues, lost a lot of pounds gained because of illness/stress/laziness, have traveled much more than before and started doing new and exciting things, exercising often and, generally, having a lot of fun. Things I never did in that time because she’d always find a reason not to (and, sadly, things we weren’t doing that she blamed me for when we broke up). This is how I remembered who I truly was and how much that toxic relationship had taken away from me.

    Be strong and please reach out if you feel like discussing things further.

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