Dear Colton:

It is clear to me that a whole lot of things bother your girlfriend, a lot of things trigger her and she feels distress. She made the rules in an effort to remove lots of those triggers, if you do this and that.. she will feel okay, if you don’t do that and the other thing, then she will feel okay. And so, to cooperate with her in trying to minimize the events that trigger her, you have to abide by her rules. But she will get triggered anyway because the triggering is automatic. If it is not this one thing, it will be another. There are just so many rules a person can follow and still attend to life otherwise.

But not only is she triggered often, feeling distress, she also gets aggressive, offensive, insulting and then she denies that she did and accuses you of this and that. So she doesn’t see or admits that she has a problem.

What this leads you to, if you continue with her, is one way to hell. You get more rules, more anger, more abuse, more denial and you become sick and sicker. She doesn’t get better no matter how well you do with her rules, and you get worse and worse.

The absolute worst is if and when she becomes a mother. Her child will suffer a whole lot from his or her beginning of life. If you have a child with her, you pretty much guarantee your child will live a life of misery.

If she was motivated to attend psychotherapy for herself, individual therapy, for a long time, many months, then she would learn to endure her distress and not react to it by abusing others. She would look into her past to determine the origins of her distress and will be able to understand that it is not you who is causing her distress, but her past experiences in life (way before she met you) that are being re-activated again and again.

There is nothing you can do to heal her or change her, she has to want to go to therapy and work very, very hard there for probably a few years before she is able to no longer be abusive.

anita

Dear Colton:

You are welcome. “Through numerous times of getting angry and blaming I have never seen her look inward, the problems always come from the outside and she is reacting with honest emotion”-

regardless of any issues you might have, it is as clear as can be,  to me, that her issues are harmful to you big time. I think that what she suggested about what may be an issue for you from the time before you met her, you already started looking into, looking inward, haven’t you?

But she doesn’t look  inward. I have a suggestion, will you google the DSM-4 entry on Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and tell me what you think of it in regard to your girlfriend?

* a personality disorder is not something a person is born with, it develops over time during a difficult, sickening childhood. In some cases there is healing, in many (the more extreme, I suppose) there is no healing throughout one’s lifetime.What characterizes a personality disorder is the inability or unwillingness to look inward.

There is no personality disorder more harmful in the context of an intimate relationship than this one.

I am not a psychiatrist or a professional of any kind and this is not a diagnosis I am making. Yet, I think it may be helpful to google it, as it is, after all, information that is available for anyone.

anita

Dear Colton:

It is a good thing that it was therapeutic for you to talk about the death of your father with your mother and sister. Maybe it was therapeutic for them as well. The word “therapeutic” means getting healthier. It will be a shame if you continue to get sick in this relationship you are in. Better exit it, prevent further deterioration of your mental health. Prevention is wise.

She is suspicious of you: “She became enraged and said I was being sneaky… She thought I colluded with my sister to get my sister to say something to her that would  in turn manipulate her… She thought it was strange how I liked to leave for work earlier than what she thought was appropriate. Made her think that I may be going somewhere else beforehand”.

She is angry at you: “She became enraged… She snapped at me… She began getting angry a lot at small things…She became very upset… She always gets upset… Through numerous times of getting angry”.

She abuses you emotionally (disrespectful, cruel, punishing, aggressive): “drove 80 mph to her house to drop me off at her truck and said she didn’t want to see me… she made fun of the way I initiate intimacy..You haven’t learned a new technique?’…You have weird genetics… taking it (anger) out on me… said my input wasn’t any good… she became louder and louder and wouldn’t hear me… lately it has been nothing but mean things being done towards me, judgments and the inability to do anything right, belittling”.

She abuses you cognitively: “I never really thought it was an issue but it is what she says may be the reason I am feeling so bad. She has suggested a few times that I talk to someone about it… she said.. the only reason I was upset was because my pride was hurt… I walked out of the room and she came out and said I was getting angry again”-

Reality is that she has a huge anger problem. When you understandably get angry following her emotional abuse of you, she blames you for having an anger problem. She explains your behavior in whatever way suits her with no regard to what is true. What suits her is to deflect personal responsibility for any wrongdoing on her part and place it with you. I call it cognitive abuse because you start doubting your own thinking/ your ability to evaluate people and situations correctly. You get confused, doubt yourself repeatedly and feel guilty.

She is dishonest, double standards: “She always gets upset when my friend who is a girl texts me once every two weeks… She communicates with three ex boyfriends and has a friend.. who texts her 15 times a day”

She is dishonest otherwise: “She has told me that her exes are aware that she is in a good relationship and happy”- she is not happy. The relationship is not good. I don’t know what she told her exes.

More of my input: the benefit of you staying in the relationship with her is that, if she continues to be focused on you, she will not be hurting another man a whole lot. You will be saving another man from getting hurt badly. If you stay with her and make sure she doesn’t get to be a mother, you will be protecting potential new life from getting badly hurt. That is all.

If you choose to extricate yourself from this relationship, you will need to do it cautiously. “there was physical abuse at one point in another relationship and there is a restraining order there”- that one point may happen if and when you try to end the relationship with her. You will need to plan such exit.

anita

Dear Colton

It’s hard, but now you know what you’re up against. Take care of your emotional well-being from now on. Single or not in the future, let your emotions digest from this experience. And take all the time you need. I wish you all the best.

Riris

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.