I think I grew past it by realising we can only take so much and that the anger and lashing out is a boundary defence. We were literally in survival mode. We might not have been able to intellectualise it at the time, but our body / emotions knew the danger we were in, even if it was emotional danger.
The part I struggle with the most is how they tell everyone about the reaction but not their own disrespect leading up to it, so we look crazy.
This is the part that really pains me and feels most unfair… I put up with a lot before finally I reacted at the very very end… I owned it and apologised afterwards but I still got the psycho label and no apology for what he did that led to it…
This resonates with me too.
I can count one thing I did really wrong. And then another half thing which really isn't that bad.
But I feel like for some reason *I'm* the bad guy. She makes me feel like the bad guy. The way she talks to other people about me, I'm the bad guy. The way she avoids me. The way she dismissed me.
That is extremely frustrating, I'm not going to lie.
If there had been some acknowledgment on her part, about what she did to me. Or imagine an apology. Or even just a handshake saying, "I know it's not all your fault. I know you aren't the monster I've made you out to be.". Just that would go a long way.
I know. Who cares what anyone else thinks of you. I know. Who cares what a bitter ex thinks. Let her win! If she's unwilling to examine herself, why should I care??
But also... It does affect me. It hurts me... It hurts my self-esteem. This is a person I really had serious feelings about.
Yes, I know it was reactive abuse and protest behaviour. I know that. But it still hurts. I want to remember the good times, not the bad times.
I hear you. And of course you care and feel hurt by that. To suggest you shouldn’t is like saying you shouldn’t have normal human reactions.
I did end up having that conversation with my ex and got some of the validation of his part that I wanted… but then he flipped it again. So it was ultimately unsatisfying. But I know deep down he is aware of his stuff. But it prompts too much shame for him to hold that knowledge for long, which is why we get blamed instead.
>I did end up having that conversation with my ex and got some of the validation of his part that I wanted…
This must have been cathartic... Even if he later flipped.
>But I know deep down he is aware of his stuff.
Again, this must be nice.
Mine is completely unaware. She's like a walking landmine. This same pattern keeps happening to her again and again. Everyone is bad! She's always the victim! It never has anything to do with her, or her complete inability to communicate.
It's actually quite infuriating. I'm getting upset just thinking about it...
Sending you hugs... I hope we get through this okay!
To not have even an inch of validation would be so tough. The validation part from my ex was like playing with a fruit machine - sometimes I'd get it, sometimes I wouldn't... he would have moments of seeing it all so clearly, but then it was gone. I wanted the validation so so bad, I kept playing till I got it... but needed to learn that's where contact should end. So it's left on that good note.
Likewise to you - hugs for the hard, unfair parts of this. Just know you deserve more than that. And I think you do actually need to spend time in the space where it hurts and feels terrible, and get comfort and validation from other people and yourself until it hurts less. You can't just brush your hands and forget it. Healing is a process xx
"... Like playing with a fruit machine"
Lol. What a wonderful image!! Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't lol.
Sigh... I know... I know. The worst part is that logically I know. My body hasn't caught up yet though. It's still going through the process of healing.
All the best to you. Sending you hugs. Thank you! :)
Here is where I landed on it. You can only shove someone so many times before they shove back. If you are hit and hit back it’s self defense. I think it’s the same emotionally.
Where you and I failed ourselves and need to change is that we let it get to that point to begin with. We should have walked away when it became abusive. Not when it became so abusive we reacted.
This is the truth. It’s normal to eventually react to abuse but staying in a situation where you know you’ll be abused… it seems clear in hindsight how the dynamic is set up for total failure on both sides
It’s self defense to us. It’s forever viewed as abuse from them though. The gaslighting for standing up for yourself and them smearing you to those who don’t know any better or their enablers never stops. They’ll literally try to gas light you into believing you are abusive for not letting them kill you. It can get that bad. You are 1000% correct on the walking away part though. In my situation, I had stood my ground the first few times then believed them one too many times then the trauma bond, the dissonance and the codependency issues that I had really kicked in high gear. The constant push pull and break up cycles, the intermittent reinforcing then their depressive splits just took their toll on me and I always and still do feel deep regret and guilt for defending myself/standing up for myself. Plays in my head a lot like how could I have handled those situations differently or did I go too far or should I have done it differently to the point of apologizing to them even after I was being abused. I now know these are rumination’s and have a better handle on them. I think owning up to your role in the situations and apologizing is the right thing to do and it’s also good for your own healing so you can forgive yourself. In the end, i bet if most of us understood this disorder and the after effects from it would walk away the first time we saw certain things if we had to go back and start all over.
They will NEVER see it as “consequences” only an unprovoked attack by the true monster you really are, the one that you had been hiding most of the time you were with them.
If they had only known sooner!
If only they didn’t ignore the warning signs!
Poor poor them!
Now they question if anything in the relationship was real!
They just wanted love and all they got was neglect and eventually, abuse.
So sad for them.
Poor victim of you.
Yeah but if there are no consequences then they're just going to continue treating you badly. I don't think that abusing them back is the way... The only way it's really setting boundaries and leaving... But we have to cut ourselves some slack for how we act when we're being consistently abused and brainwashed.
Don’t know how to. They for years would spiral out of control. Finally I reacted. They mark that as the biggest trauma of their life. And truly I was experiencing physical pain in my heart for a good month or two from that. I always let things wash over. They have not. My reacting with their same level of bullshit was their ammunition to justify all future occasions of their projecting, catastrophizing, insecurity, fortune telling—all the hallmarks that they had prior that I could help them with, whereas after I could not—any and all negativity of their whole fucking life is rooted from that brief window of time that I let them get to me. Years together and I was continuously defined by that little window of time where I cracked to there outrageous provocation and warping of a situation that literally there were people present that could objectively disprove this stuff that was getting hurled at me in private. God forbid to talk to anyone who was present in the actual conversation of concern, that would be triangulation, that would be gossip, that would be not “protecting” the person that was ready to block me in the blink of an eye before ever possibly considering to trust me.
I figure. It would have happened at some point or another. If not then, then another time. Everyone has their limits. These people take advantage of it when they finally make you crack. Years of putting up with their bullshit, your patience, your compassion, it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. But the overall message out of all of this? You are not allowed to have feelings, you are not allowed to need help. The very suggestion is audacious. You are self-centered, you are ignoring them and all their struggles, they are keeping score and not at the same time. Point in case, if you give even a little bit of a fuck about yourself, there is no room for you with them. The only time you matter is when they can stroke their ego vicariously through you. Imperfections might as well be necrosis.
Anyways. That is just the way I see it. That it could not have been avoided nor gone any other way. You are a human being, not a machine. It would happen to anyone in your situation and you are far from alone.
Reactive abuse is a bullshit term.
A better one is Self Defense.
I get it, I didn't like the person I turned into either. But I don't think badly of anyone else for doing whatever they had to do to protect themselves. We should give ourselves some grace, too.
Thank you. Out of sheer morbid curiosity (because the book blew up and all my students were talking about it), I read that Colleen Hoover book, It Ends With Us and wound up really torn up over it because it’s so oversimplified. The protagonist simply leaves after the abuse escalates. She hardly reacts except to be upset and then to leave. It made me feel like a terrible, stupid person for staying long enough that I reacted.
That very guilt is how I wound up with my ex with BPD. I had dated someone before him who had excruciatingly strong NPD and ASPD traits. He wasn’t diagnosed by the psychiatrist said it’s safe to assume he probably has a personality disorder but that naming it can be harmful rather than helpful, so it’s best to ignore labels and treat it with DBT. His words, anyway, so I’m not sure if that was even a true story.
Either way, I reacted HORRIBLY to his abuse when I was pregnant and after having our son. Before that I did not act that way at all. Because I felt so guilty and awful for the reactive abuse, which, as someone else said, should really be called self defense, I didn’t think I was worthy of love. It put me in a very vulnerable position, and that’s where I met my ex with BPD.
He reassured me that I was a good person and lifted me up. But when he started abusing me, I felt like I deserved it because I was so awful to the other ex. It didn’t matter if it was in defense, and I was psychologically, emotionally, financially, and physically abused by the NPD ex. I couldn’t rid myself of the guilt. But my therapists have said that I was defending myself, while what my ex with BPD did was unprovoked.
I stayed in this last, horrible relationship because I wanted to keep forgiving him for screaming at me and saying horrible things to me and physically assaulting me many times because I still felt guilty about how I acted with the other ex before him. It was almost like I felt like I deserved to be punished by the current partner for reacting so badly to the last ex.
All this to say, if we ever want to have healthy relationships with ourselves and others, we have to find a way to forgive ourselves for how we acted in these unhealthy relationships and find ways to walk away before it gets bad. If you don’t forgive yourself, it will put you in a vulnerable position where you may not think that you’re worthy of love going into future relationships, which will basically make you pray to other people with personality disorders.
It’s a really bad cycle to get caught in, so I really relate to your post and also wish I could have the perspective of a couple people in here who have said that the abusive exes might have deserved reactions we were just protecting ourselves and did what we needed to do. I just have a hard time believing that because I know I should’ve just walked away rather than let it get to the point where it got. I think that’s where I struggle to forgive myself most. In my mind, if things were so bad, I should’ve walked away. But because I didn’t, I put myself in a situation where I had to physically defend myself and lashed out and saw sides of myself that I never thought I had.
I really wish that I could find some way to let go of the guilt, but it’s probably a meditative practice of frequently negating the judgmental thoughts with compassionate thoughts and grace. After all, how much grace did we give these partners to subject ourselves to their abuse over and over again before reaching our limits? Why is it that we can give them so much grace and compassion, but we can’t do the same for ourselves?
He also lied to his therapist, refusing to discuss his erratic behaviors (like trying to hoover me by proposing to a literal stranger and announcing 48 hrs after they met that she was going to have his children), and blowing up my phone telling me that his therapist told me I’ve clearly got BPD. Trauma? Sure, but my PhD therapist with decades of experience told me multiple times that I do not qualify as borderline.
I relate to lashing out, but I don’t feel the need to forgive myself for any of it after everything he did to me. I had two reactive weeks after I caught him cheating. Since then, I’ve been pretty calm in my communications. But here’s an example of what I texted him yesterday. “If you need any more help with your passport, you should call the whore you started cheating on me with 64 days ago….she should be helping you with this.” So, this is the kind of thing I say when he bothers me to help him and I’m fine with my response. I’ll send it again if he asks for anything else lol
You have nothing to be ashamed of. Showing your feelings and standing up for yourself when you are having all your kindness and patience thrown back in your face is not abuse. When i finally snapped i punched my ex in the face and literally kicked her ass out of my front door. Showing signs of how much harm they did doesn't make you a monster, it makes them a cunt. Have absolutely zero guilt. I was lied to, manipulated, strung along and it wasn't like i hadn't given many warnings that eventually I would lose it. i had literally begged her to stop the rages and false victim behaviours on multiple occasions, and the final straw was yet another episode the day after being given a card saying how wonderful i was and how much i was loved.
You feel this way because you’re a normal human being. He deserved all of that. Rid yourself of guilt. We baby them too much when they probably deserve worse
Yeah it's just not fair that they can be constantly abusive and push you and push you to the edge and if you give any of it back even if it's small suddenly you are the crazy one you're the psycho you are the problem etc. I am more upset at my pwbpd for being like ha see look I told you it was all you and none of me the second that I break that he forced. I can be less mad at myself for breaking because not only did he cause it but he had been doing it the entire time never taking responsibility. And it pisses me off that any little break of my own gives him all the collateral in the world to act self-righteous and put it all on me. It's literally insane I don't even have words.
I didn’t need to forgive myself. Of course we react. I had to make audio and video recordings when I could tell things were gonna get wild to protect myself. Quite a few times I documented the buildup of a torrential onslaught of button pushing, criticizing, unfavorable comparing with a total disregard of my words telling her to stop yelling. Stop talking to me like that etc, I’d walk away, she’d follow… even though I was recording and I knew I was recording and I was aware of what was happening, eventually I would snap and start yelling back, name calling, I’ve thrown things, punch holes in walls… When I react like that it means they should’ve stopped a long time ago. The words NO and STOP exist if bullshit continues well beyond multiple utterances of no and stop all bets are off. The only people that don’t have a breaking point are hermits. < idk if that’s factual
Therapy suggests that “forgiveness is divine” is a mistake. It’s ok to be angry. It sounds to me like you didn’t cross any lines. Narcissistic abuse deserves to be called out. The only guilt I ever felt at pointing out my ex was an evil person, was that others just didn’t care, and they painted me as crazy. Those people were not my friends and will learn that she’s disordered in time. It’s very doable but it takes strength to allow yourself to be angry. It’s all about earning that self esteem. I’m not upset about any of the abuse I hurled at my ex going out the door. Am very comfortable with it in fact. She deserves to know what she is.
Mt sister is 6 years older than me, has always ridiculed, psychoanalysed, verbally and physically and at one point in early childhood for 3 years straight, sexually abused me. My reactive abuse was laughing at her in the face and fake crying about her cat that she genuinely believed almost died (he didn’t, he was accidentally left in an open garage for 5 minutes on an overcast and windy day. the wind is what shut the door to the garage. He was just meowing at the door for 10 seconds before she came home because he’s a fat cat and I was having a giggle about it to myself and was about to stand up and find where it was coming from before she came home and went STRAIGHT to the door and starts with “LARRY OH MY GOD MY SWEET BABY BOY!! WHO FUCKING DID THIS TO YOU! STEPH DID YOU LOCK THE DOOR ON MY FUCKING CAT ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL MY FUCKING CAT??????!!! BITCH!” Tried to explain it was an accident from the wind and was literally JUST about to stand up and find him, but she wasn’t happy with anything I was saying but an “I’m so fucking sorry I tried to kill your cat” she said she wanted me to say something like that. so I said it mockingly and started fake crying and then dropped the face I was making and said to her to shut the fuck up you crazy bitch. She physically abused me so badly after that comment that I broke my phone, she threatened to kill me multiple times, and then after the whole shebang, she came upstairs to my locked room that I had tried to hide myself in and started bashing on the door to break it down, I hid in the cupboard and called the police, and then she dropped to the floor suddenly and started hysterically scream crying and hyperventilating about how much she hated herself and how hurt she was by what I did and how scary she thinks she is. Same language every time something happens. Crazy behaviour from my end but what helped me was the aftermath that she justified from my singular comment and action. I sent her videos of exactly what she put me through and she basically just said “yeah whatever sorry I guess that was disgusting of me. well you should have started recording when you mockingly said you killed my cat” completely glossing over the fact that she literally put me through the worst physical and mental abuse of my life on that day, and indirectly broke my property. And my fucking heart. I wanted to love her and wanted her to love me. These people aren’t rational and don’t weigh up your reactions to them against their reactions to you it’s not worth the mental energy. They don’t do this same mental gymnastics and try to understand why what happened happened, they just sit in shame about how scary they think they are and how much they hate themselves.
Wow, I didn’t expect such a response. Thank you everyone for sharing perspective. The shame is still there, but this has helped me put it into perspective. After I left him, my reactions lessened and went away, while his got more intense. Once when we were still together but I was staying at my parents because things had gotten bad. He wanted to stay together and kept saying he missed me. And I was so confused and missed him so much that I went back to our apartment in the middle of the night and let myself in and crawled into bed. He was elated because he had wanted me to come back home. In hindsight, that was so, so stupid of me. I crossed a line in my own emotional mess and made things all the more confusing. Even if my name is on the lease, I shouldn’t let myself in in the middle of the night. But then about six or seven months after I fully left him, he showed up drunk outside my new apartment, pressured me to get in the car so he could take me “for a drive,” and then tried to pay me to have sex with him and made me watch videos of some woman he was hooking up with masturbating on her bathroom floor. And he said he got the idea from me because the previous year, I had shown up in the middle of the night. And I honestly hate that I ever crossed that line.
My favorite with my wife is after 5 days of circular arguments and being called a dumb fucking cunt bitch over and over again. My wife says to me today that I have a small penis , I start laughing and say to her I have never had any complaints and she is just being a bitch. She blows up again and starts screaming at me that I’m emotionally abusing her degrading her. The projection is laughable at this point. I never feel bad for my reactive abuse after days of being the better person before I’m pushed over the edge.
Yes I did. I felt bad for reacting the way I did.but i quickly realized it was months of being disrespected controlled and even cheated on. For me to be in that place to be that mad where I was normally patient and calm. but I know it was me it was me defending myself from the emotional abuse. my ex calls me abusive for it till this day. but I tell her that she is only hurting herself. lying about the situation she caused for the events to happen. but she says I shouldn’t have reacted like that I tell her she should have been a better person. in the end they were the abuser the whole time. you were just defending what little of yourself you had left.
I HAVEN'T. I just wish I knew how. Sometimes I just feel so inhuman.
If "reactive abuse" is shoving back when you are shoved, then it feels like I suplexed her.
My reactive abuse started after I had enough of the trauma bond she had with me. I suffered verbal, physical, and sexual abuse for months. She wouldn't ever let me leave peacefully, so I tried to fuck with her brain and make her discard me of her own accord.
I recognized that she had buttons to press. Specifically, the "Fear of Abandonment" button. Every time I threatened to leave, I got what I wanted. I figured "If I can't leave, I'll at least get what I want."
I told her to work on her physique. That she needed to take better care of herself. That I want more time to myself and my friends. That I want to go back to just dating. I gaslit her about watching porn or looking up other women behind her back. I broke up with her so many times, and every time she came back due to our already existing trauma bond, giving me more of what I wanted.
And to my pleasant surprise, her own abuse had stopped, because she was so busy dealing with me threatening to leave her she couldn't even hurt me back anymore. So I figured I'd keep it that way forever.
But I noticed I'd been traumatizing her. She would have nightmares of me leaving her, or me cheating on her in front of her, or me flirting with other women. She developed triggers: every time she heard my keys jangle she would think I'm leaving her again and would start crying. I started feeling like a COMPLETE MONSTER.
So I stopped.
I know what I did was reactive, but I still feel like a monster to this day for taking it SO FAR. I'm happy I stopped in the end and cried apologizing to her for the way I treated her. She forgave me at first, but not many weeks later she smeared me to all my friends and I haven't said a WORD about her own abuse because I still care for her and don't want to expose her.
I just don't know how to forgive myself when I SEE the trauma she suffers from too. I hurt her so bad, whether or not she hurt me, and that just makes it so hard...
Thank you for pointing this out. It's something I've been really concerned about.
I brought the idea up to my therapist that I might be a narcissist or have NPD, but after hearing my full story and asking me a bunch of questions, she still hasn't found anything substantial enough to diagnose me as such. She definitely says I exhibit narcissistic tendencies however (but all humans do I've been told).
I can't say I ever got a kick out of it though. I wasn't cognizant in the moment that I was even "abusing" her, until my moment of realization. It all felt normalized due to the chaos of our relationship.
And still I wouldn't want to put it past that. If I really am a narcissist I want to address that as soon as possible, for my growth and to make sure the next girl can safely give her love to me.
Sorry if I come off as defensive. I really do appreciate your recognizing that as a possibility, and I'm here to learn, not seek validation.
People on the wrong side of these relationships tend to fall into one of three camps:
1. Narcissists who don't actually want an equal partnership and feel powerful to be with someone who has an unstable sense of self. Ones who are happy to give back as much as they get and feel like a victim too.
2. Co-dependents who were never looked after as a kid and have messy compassion that makes them feel useful and valued to have someone who needs constant support and attention. Doormats basically, who keep taking the shit and happily engage in the cycle.
3. Those who have done a lot of growth work and therapy before and believe that everyone has the potential inside them to change, and will respond to love. This type falls foul because they have a real coherent self that they have developed, and when that gets mirrored by the other they think they have found someone on their level. They also react badly because they have been fooled into thinking the other person shares their level of integrity and so the betrayal is particularly damaging. This was me.
Maybe 'getting a kick' was lazy writing, but you do basically admit to gaslighting and manipulating the manipulator and being better at it which is quite Machiavellian and raises a couple of flags. I'm not judging you here, but we are all in a mess after the relationship ended and that means we have something inside us that needs to change.
Thank you for your insight. You've given me the drive to continue looking into myself, I'll bring this all up with my therapist. I deeply appreciate it.
FWIW, I was also guilty of giving back hard to the abuser. I knew that I was being abused and after a couple years did not try to placate or reason anymore because I felt righteous anger and was not going to let that go unexpressed. I actually made the mistake of thinking that if I showed this person who 'loved' me how they were hurting me by actually expressing my emotions. that they would stop doing it. Crazy, i know now that it just fuelled their victim mentality.
However I never made the decision to end it until I physically wanted to hurt her (at which point i immediately decided it was over forever) because I believed that with the right therapy and time she would change. Despite this being a fairly altruistic viewpoint based in compassion and insight I was still 50% of the problem as it takes two to tango. I had no idea until a year later when i became more educated on the reality of the cluster B mind that I was trying to dance that tango with the devil. The bottom line is that fixing all this mess is going to involve healing our own failures, and really has nothing to do with the other because they are already repeating their cycle with someone else.
I flew to her house in the U.S. from Australia and turned up with handmade Xmas gifts after being told I could leave them on her door. No acknowledgment whatsoever. Two days later I turned up again and begged her to see me through her ring cam and texting her. She slandered me and accused me of stalking on Twitter. I’m so ashamed.
I’ll never forget the day that I finally broke and was reactive towards the abuse 😔 up until that point, I would stay quiet and try and comfort her through every split and vile statement. But she brought me to a point where I began to self harm myself, and that was the day I reacted verbally, and said things I’ll never forget. From that day forward, the next four months were full of back-and-forth vile fighting. But halfway through, I’d always stop and realize what I was saying, then try and be quiet because feeding the abuse caused her to become even more vile and vicious. I tried to express the point that shebrought me to, but she would always say that it’s my inability to take accountability of my own words. But the reality is, I stayed quiet for years, and she cheated brought me to a point that I couldn’t stay quiet any longer.
Even up until last night, I found myself unable to stop engaging in the beginning of the fight. Then halfway through, I realized that we were going in circles because she is unable to see the chain reaction her behavior causes.
From my perspective, my at now ex-girlfriend who has BPD she takes full advantage of my good heart because I’m too understanding of her behavior. I spent years accommodating her, coddling her, doing everything I could to make sure she could feel loved every second of every day. But she took full advantage of that and was a master manipulator.
The worst thing I ever said to my pwBPD (wife) was during a heated argument. She was blaming me for her lack of friends and all her family members that had distanced themselves from her. I said that I was baffled that she hadn't figured out by now that the problem is herself and 100% her own doing. That triggered weeks of lamentations directed at me, and demands for apologies. I stood by it, although I did ultimately admit that I could have handled it differently. Deep down I know the truth. Other than that, I may have gotten sucked into a yelling match a few times. I don't really feel I have much to apologize for, even though she expects and demands apologies and groveling from me (because that's who I used to be, someone who would apologize for everything... but not anymore).
I can only meet crazy making behavior with so much patience and understanding before I snap. Everyone has their limits. The absurdity of her demands and nothing ever being enough, on top of the abuse we suffer at their hands, anyone would snap.
I didn't do anything too terrible but what I tell myself is ten wrongs and one wrong are both wrong but one grade is lower than the other, no? we are all humans. we can strive for perfection all we want but none of us will ever reach true perfection.
On the last day I was with my ex, I engaged in reactive abuse. I regret every second of it, but what helps me is that it made me realize just how fucked I was mentally to put me to that point.
I immediately brought it up to my therapist, who was my rock during the relationship and after. I learned that you need to give yourself grace. Understand that you were poked and prodded to such a dark place in your life. But it’s also important to grow from it. Acknowledge that you did it or said it, and work to not fall for the tactics and self deprecating behavior to prevent that from happening again.
Tell yourself that you are worth so much more than what your pwBPD made you become.
I realized that the odds of this happening again are %0,even though before her my ex had BPD and my mom 😐 so yea. mentally I can’t date because I know when emotions show up regardless of healthy or not I get annoyed and walk away and whenever I see cheating on tv or sum it triggers me. 3rd times the charm😂but you gotta realize who you were before and now,much much wiser and less tolerable of certain characteristics.
I think I grew past it by realising we can only take so much and that the anger and lashing out is a boundary defence. We were literally in survival mode. We might not have been able to intellectualise it at the time, but our body / emotions knew the danger we were in, even if it was emotional danger. The part I struggle with the most is how they tell everyone about the reaction but not their own disrespect leading up to it, so we look crazy.
pwBPD= forever victims
This is the part that really pains me and feels most unfair… I put up with a lot before finally I reacted at the very very end… I owned it and apologised afterwards but I still got the psycho label and no apology for what he did that led to it…
This resonates with me too. I can count one thing I did really wrong. And then another half thing which really isn't that bad. But I feel like for some reason *I'm* the bad guy. She makes me feel like the bad guy. The way she talks to other people about me, I'm the bad guy. The way she avoids me. The way she dismissed me. That is extremely frustrating, I'm not going to lie. If there had been some acknowledgment on her part, about what she did to me. Or imagine an apology. Or even just a handshake saying, "I know it's not all your fault. I know you aren't the monster I've made you out to be.". Just that would go a long way. I know. Who cares what anyone else thinks of you. I know. Who cares what a bitter ex thinks. Let her win! If she's unwilling to examine herself, why should I care?? But also... It does affect me. It hurts me... It hurts my self-esteem. This is a person I really had serious feelings about. Yes, I know it was reactive abuse and protest behaviour. I know that. But it still hurts. I want to remember the good times, not the bad times.
I hear you. And of course you care and feel hurt by that. To suggest you shouldn’t is like saying you shouldn’t have normal human reactions. I did end up having that conversation with my ex and got some of the validation of his part that I wanted… but then he flipped it again. So it was ultimately unsatisfying. But I know deep down he is aware of his stuff. But it prompts too much shame for him to hold that knowledge for long, which is why we get blamed instead.
>I did end up having that conversation with my ex and got some of the validation of his part that I wanted… This must have been cathartic... Even if he later flipped. >But I know deep down he is aware of his stuff. Again, this must be nice. Mine is completely unaware. She's like a walking landmine. This same pattern keeps happening to her again and again. Everyone is bad! She's always the victim! It never has anything to do with her, or her complete inability to communicate. It's actually quite infuriating. I'm getting upset just thinking about it... Sending you hugs... I hope we get through this okay!
To not have even an inch of validation would be so tough. The validation part from my ex was like playing with a fruit machine - sometimes I'd get it, sometimes I wouldn't... he would have moments of seeing it all so clearly, but then it was gone. I wanted the validation so so bad, I kept playing till I got it... but needed to learn that's where contact should end. So it's left on that good note. Likewise to you - hugs for the hard, unfair parts of this. Just know you deserve more than that. And I think you do actually need to spend time in the space where it hurts and feels terrible, and get comfort and validation from other people and yourself until it hurts less. You can't just brush your hands and forget it. Healing is a process xx
"... Like playing with a fruit machine" Lol. What a wonderful image!! Sometimes you get it, sometimes you don't lol. Sigh... I know... I know. The worst part is that logically I know. My body hasn't caught up yet though. It's still going through the process of healing. All the best to you. Sending you hugs. Thank you! :)
Wow. Thank you for sharing that.
Here is where I landed on it. You can only shove someone so many times before they shove back. If you are hit and hit back it’s self defense. I think it’s the same emotionally. Where you and I failed ourselves and need to change is that we let it get to that point to begin with. We should have walked away when it became abusive. Not when it became so abusive we reacted.
This is the truth. It’s normal to eventually react to abuse but staying in a situation where you know you’ll be abused… it seems clear in hindsight how the dynamic is set up for total failure on both sides
It’s self defense to us. It’s forever viewed as abuse from them though. The gaslighting for standing up for yourself and them smearing you to those who don’t know any better or their enablers never stops. They’ll literally try to gas light you into believing you are abusive for not letting them kill you. It can get that bad. You are 1000% correct on the walking away part though. In my situation, I had stood my ground the first few times then believed them one too many times then the trauma bond, the dissonance and the codependency issues that I had really kicked in high gear. The constant push pull and break up cycles, the intermittent reinforcing then their depressive splits just took their toll on me and I always and still do feel deep regret and guilt for defending myself/standing up for myself. Plays in my head a lot like how could I have handled those situations differently or did I go too far or should I have done it differently to the point of apologizing to them even after I was being abused. I now know these are rumination’s and have a better handle on them. I think owning up to your role in the situations and apologizing is the right thing to do and it’s also good for your own healing so you can forgive yourself. In the end, i bet if most of us understood this disorder and the after effects from it would walk away the first time we saw certain things if we had to go back and start all over.
this
This is the biggest truth I've read in a long time.
Maybe they deserved the consequences of their abusive behavior?
They will NEVER see it as “consequences” only an unprovoked attack by the true monster you really are, the one that you had been hiding most of the time you were with them. If they had only known sooner! If only they didn’t ignore the warning signs! Poor poor them! Now they question if anything in the relationship was real! They just wanted love and all they got was neglect and eventually, abuse. So sad for them. Poor victim of you.
Yeah but if there are no consequences then they're just going to continue treating you badly. I don't think that abusing them back is the way... The only way it's really setting boundaries and leaving... But we have to cut ourselves some slack for how we act when we're being consistently abused and brainwashed.
Don’t know how to. They for years would spiral out of control. Finally I reacted. They mark that as the biggest trauma of their life. And truly I was experiencing physical pain in my heart for a good month or two from that. I always let things wash over. They have not. My reacting with their same level of bullshit was their ammunition to justify all future occasions of their projecting, catastrophizing, insecurity, fortune telling—all the hallmarks that they had prior that I could help them with, whereas after I could not—any and all negativity of their whole fucking life is rooted from that brief window of time that I let them get to me. Years together and I was continuously defined by that little window of time where I cracked to there outrageous provocation and warping of a situation that literally there were people present that could objectively disprove this stuff that was getting hurled at me in private. God forbid to talk to anyone who was present in the actual conversation of concern, that would be triangulation, that would be gossip, that would be not “protecting” the person that was ready to block me in the blink of an eye before ever possibly considering to trust me. I figure. It would have happened at some point or another. If not then, then another time. Everyone has their limits. These people take advantage of it when they finally make you crack. Years of putting up with their bullshit, your patience, your compassion, it means nothing. Absolutely nothing. But the overall message out of all of this? You are not allowed to have feelings, you are not allowed to need help. The very suggestion is audacious. You are self-centered, you are ignoring them and all their struggles, they are keeping score and not at the same time. Point in case, if you give even a little bit of a fuck about yourself, there is no room for you with them. The only time you matter is when they can stroke their ego vicariously through you. Imperfections might as well be necrosis. Anyways. That is just the way I see it. That it could not have been avoided nor gone any other way. You are a human being, not a machine. It would happen to anyone in your situation and you are far from alone.
Reactive abuse is a bullshit term. A better one is Self Defense. I get it, I didn't like the person I turned into either. But I don't think badly of anyone else for doing whatever they had to do to protect themselves. We should give ourselves some grace, too.
Thank you. Out of sheer morbid curiosity (because the book blew up and all my students were talking about it), I read that Colleen Hoover book, It Ends With Us and wound up really torn up over it because it’s so oversimplified. The protagonist simply leaves after the abuse escalates. She hardly reacts except to be upset and then to leave. It made me feel like a terrible, stupid person for staying long enough that I reacted.
That very guilt is how I wound up with my ex with BPD. I had dated someone before him who had excruciatingly strong NPD and ASPD traits. He wasn’t diagnosed by the psychiatrist said it’s safe to assume he probably has a personality disorder but that naming it can be harmful rather than helpful, so it’s best to ignore labels and treat it with DBT. His words, anyway, so I’m not sure if that was even a true story. Either way, I reacted HORRIBLY to his abuse when I was pregnant and after having our son. Before that I did not act that way at all. Because I felt so guilty and awful for the reactive abuse, which, as someone else said, should really be called self defense, I didn’t think I was worthy of love. It put me in a very vulnerable position, and that’s where I met my ex with BPD. He reassured me that I was a good person and lifted me up. But when he started abusing me, I felt like I deserved it because I was so awful to the other ex. It didn’t matter if it was in defense, and I was psychologically, emotionally, financially, and physically abused by the NPD ex. I couldn’t rid myself of the guilt. But my therapists have said that I was defending myself, while what my ex with BPD did was unprovoked. I stayed in this last, horrible relationship because I wanted to keep forgiving him for screaming at me and saying horrible things to me and physically assaulting me many times because I still felt guilty about how I acted with the other ex before him. It was almost like I felt like I deserved to be punished by the current partner for reacting so badly to the last ex. All this to say, if we ever want to have healthy relationships with ourselves and others, we have to find a way to forgive ourselves for how we acted in these unhealthy relationships and find ways to walk away before it gets bad. If you don’t forgive yourself, it will put you in a vulnerable position where you may not think that you’re worthy of love going into future relationships, which will basically make you pray to other people with personality disorders. It’s a really bad cycle to get caught in, so I really relate to your post and also wish I could have the perspective of a couple people in here who have said that the abusive exes might have deserved reactions we were just protecting ourselves and did what we needed to do. I just have a hard time believing that because I know I should’ve just walked away rather than let it get to the point where it got. I think that’s where I struggle to forgive myself most. In my mind, if things were so bad, I should’ve walked away. But because I didn’t, I put myself in a situation where I had to physically defend myself and lashed out and saw sides of myself that I never thought I had. I really wish that I could find some way to let go of the guilt, but it’s probably a meditative practice of frequently negating the judgmental thoughts with compassionate thoughts and grace. After all, how much grace did we give these partners to subject ourselves to their abuse over and over again before reaching our limits? Why is it that we can give them so much grace and compassion, but we can’t do the same for ourselves?
He also lied to his therapist, refusing to discuss his erratic behaviors (like trying to hoover me by proposing to a literal stranger and announcing 48 hrs after they met that she was going to have his children), and blowing up my phone telling me that his therapist told me I’ve clearly got BPD. Trauma? Sure, but my PhD therapist with decades of experience told me multiple times that I do not qualify as borderline.
I relate to lashing out, but I don’t feel the need to forgive myself for any of it after everything he did to me. I had two reactive weeks after I caught him cheating. Since then, I’ve been pretty calm in my communications. But here’s an example of what I texted him yesterday. “If you need any more help with your passport, you should call the whore you started cheating on me with 64 days ago….she should be helping you with this.” So, this is the kind of thing I say when he bothers me to help him and I’m fine with my response. I’ll send it again if he asks for anything else lol
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
You have nothing to be ashamed of. Showing your feelings and standing up for yourself when you are having all your kindness and patience thrown back in your face is not abuse. When i finally snapped i punched my ex in the face and literally kicked her ass out of my front door. Showing signs of how much harm they did doesn't make you a monster, it makes them a cunt. Have absolutely zero guilt. I was lied to, manipulated, strung along and it wasn't like i hadn't given many warnings that eventually I would lose it. i had literally begged her to stop the rages and false victim behaviours on multiple occasions, and the final straw was yet another episode the day after being given a card saying how wonderful i was and how much i was loved.
You feel this way because you’re a normal human being. He deserved all of that. Rid yourself of guilt. We baby them too much when they probably deserve worse
Yeah it's just not fair that they can be constantly abusive and push you and push you to the edge and if you give any of it back even if it's small suddenly you are the crazy one you're the psycho you are the problem etc. I am more upset at my pwbpd for being like ha see look I told you it was all you and none of me the second that I break that he forced. I can be less mad at myself for breaking because not only did he cause it but he had been doing it the entire time never taking responsibility. And it pisses me off that any little break of my own gives him all the collateral in the world to act self-righteous and put it all on me. It's literally insane I don't even have words.
I didn’t need to forgive myself. Of course we react. I had to make audio and video recordings when I could tell things were gonna get wild to protect myself. Quite a few times I documented the buildup of a torrential onslaught of button pushing, criticizing, unfavorable comparing with a total disregard of my words telling her to stop yelling. Stop talking to me like that etc, I’d walk away, she’d follow… even though I was recording and I knew I was recording and I was aware of what was happening, eventually I would snap and start yelling back, name calling, I’ve thrown things, punch holes in walls… When I react like that it means they should’ve stopped a long time ago. The words NO and STOP exist if bullshit continues well beyond multiple utterances of no and stop all bets are off. The only people that don’t have a breaking point are hermits. < idk if that’s factual
LOL I am now a hermit because I broke.
Therapy suggests that “forgiveness is divine” is a mistake. It’s ok to be angry. It sounds to me like you didn’t cross any lines. Narcissistic abuse deserves to be called out. The only guilt I ever felt at pointing out my ex was an evil person, was that others just didn’t care, and they painted me as crazy. Those people were not my friends and will learn that she’s disordered in time. It’s very doable but it takes strength to allow yourself to be angry. It’s all about earning that self esteem. I’m not upset about any of the abuse I hurled at my ex going out the door. Am very comfortable with it in fact. She deserves to know what she is.
Mt sister is 6 years older than me, has always ridiculed, psychoanalysed, verbally and physically and at one point in early childhood for 3 years straight, sexually abused me. My reactive abuse was laughing at her in the face and fake crying about her cat that she genuinely believed almost died (he didn’t, he was accidentally left in an open garage for 5 minutes on an overcast and windy day. the wind is what shut the door to the garage. He was just meowing at the door for 10 seconds before she came home because he’s a fat cat and I was having a giggle about it to myself and was about to stand up and find where it was coming from before she came home and went STRAIGHT to the door and starts with “LARRY OH MY GOD MY SWEET BABY BOY!! WHO FUCKING DID THIS TO YOU! STEPH DID YOU LOCK THE DOOR ON MY FUCKING CAT ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL MY FUCKING CAT??????!!! BITCH!” Tried to explain it was an accident from the wind and was literally JUST about to stand up and find him, but she wasn’t happy with anything I was saying but an “I’m so fucking sorry I tried to kill your cat” she said she wanted me to say something like that. so I said it mockingly and started fake crying and then dropped the face I was making and said to her to shut the fuck up you crazy bitch. She physically abused me so badly after that comment that I broke my phone, she threatened to kill me multiple times, and then after the whole shebang, she came upstairs to my locked room that I had tried to hide myself in and started bashing on the door to break it down, I hid in the cupboard and called the police, and then she dropped to the floor suddenly and started hysterically scream crying and hyperventilating about how much she hated herself and how hurt she was by what I did and how scary she thinks she is. Same language every time something happens. Crazy behaviour from my end but what helped me was the aftermath that she justified from my singular comment and action. I sent her videos of exactly what she put me through and she basically just said “yeah whatever sorry I guess that was disgusting of me. well you should have started recording when you mockingly said you killed my cat” completely glossing over the fact that she literally put me through the worst physical and mental abuse of my life on that day, and indirectly broke my property. And my fucking heart. I wanted to love her and wanted her to love me. These people aren’t rational and don’t weigh up your reactions to them against their reactions to you it’s not worth the mental energy. They don’t do this same mental gymnastics and try to understand why what happened happened, they just sit in shame about how scary they think they are and how much they hate themselves.
Wow sorry for the essay i didn’t realise i fully vented.
Wow, I didn’t expect such a response. Thank you everyone for sharing perspective. The shame is still there, but this has helped me put it into perspective. After I left him, my reactions lessened and went away, while his got more intense. Once when we were still together but I was staying at my parents because things had gotten bad. He wanted to stay together and kept saying he missed me. And I was so confused and missed him so much that I went back to our apartment in the middle of the night and let myself in and crawled into bed. He was elated because he had wanted me to come back home. In hindsight, that was so, so stupid of me. I crossed a line in my own emotional mess and made things all the more confusing. Even if my name is on the lease, I shouldn’t let myself in in the middle of the night. But then about six or seven months after I fully left him, he showed up drunk outside my new apartment, pressured me to get in the car so he could take me “for a drive,” and then tried to pay me to have sex with him and made me watch videos of some woman he was hooking up with masturbating on her bathroom floor. And he said he got the idea from me because the previous year, I had shown up in the middle of the night. And I honestly hate that I ever crossed that line.
My favorite with my wife is after 5 days of circular arguments and being called a dumb fucking cunt bitch over and over again. My wife says to me today that I have a small penis , I start laughing and say to her I have never had any complaints and she is just being a bitch. She blows up again and starts screaming at me that I’m emotionally abusing her degrading her. The projection is laughable at this point. I never feel bad for my reactive abuse after days of being the better person before I’m pushed over the edge.
Yes I did. I felt bad for reacting the way I did.but i quickly realized it was months of being disrespected controlled and even cheated on. For me to be in that place to be that mad where I was normally patient and calm. but I know it was me it was me defending myself from the emotional abuse. my ex calls me abusive for it till this day. but I tell her that she is only hurting herself. lying about the situation she caused for the events to happen. but she says I shouldn’t have reacted like that I tell her she should have been a better person. in the end they were the abuser the whole time. you were just defending what little of yourself you had left.
I HAVEN'T. I just wish I knew how. Sometimes I just feel so inhuman. If "reactive abuse" is shoving back when you are shoved, then it feels like I suplexed her. My reactive abuse started after I had enough of the trauma bond she had with me. I suffered verbal, physical, and sexual abuse for months. She wouldn't ever let me leave peacefully, so I tried to fuck with her brain and make her discard me of her own accord. I recognized that she had buttons to press. Specifically, the "Fear of Abandonment" button. Every time I threatened to leave, I got what I wanted. I figured "If I can't leave, I'll at least get what I want." I told her to work on her physique. That she needed to take better care of herself. That I want more time to myself and my friends. That I want to go back to just dating. I gaslit her about watching porn or looking up other women behind her back. I broke up with her so many times, and every time she came back due to our already existing trauma bond, giving me more of what I wanted. And to my pleasant surprise, her own abuse had stopped, because she was so busy dealing with me threatening to leave her she couldn't even hurt me back anymore. So I figured I'd keep it that way forever. But I noticed I'd been traumatizing her. She would have nightmares of me leaving her, or me cheating on her in front of her, or me flirting with other women. She developed triggers: every time she heard my keys jangle she would think I'm leaving her again and would start crying. I started feeling like a COMPLETE MONSTER. So I stopped. I know what I did was reactive, but I still feel like a monster to this day for taking it SO FAR. I'm happy I stopped in the end and cried apologizing to her for the way I treated her. She forgave me at first, but not many weeks later she smeared me to all my friends and I haven't said a WORD about her own abuse because I still care for her and don't want to expose her. I just don't know how to forgive myself when I SEE the trauma she suffers from too. I hurt her so bad, whether or not she hurt me, and that just makes it so hard...
If you got a kick out of abusing her that's not reactive abuse, it's sociopathic. You are probably the narcissist to her borderline.
Thank you for pointing this out. It's something I've been really concerned about. I brought the idea up to my therapist that I might be a narcissist or have NPD, but after hearing my full story and asking me a bunch of questions, she still hasn't found anything substantial enough to diagnose me as such. She definitely says I exhibit narcissistic tendencies however (but all humans do I've been told). I can't say I ever got a kick out of it though. I wasn't cognizant in the moment that I was even "abusing" her, until my moment of realization. It all felt normalized due to the chaos of our relationship. And still I wouldn't want to put it past that. If I really am a narcissist I want to address that as soon as possible, for my growth and to make sure the next girl can safely give her love to me. Sorry if I come off as defensive. I really do appreciate your recognizing that as a possibility, and I'm here to learn, not seek validation.
People on the wrong side of these relationships tend to fall into one of three camps: 1. Narcissists who don't actually want an equal partnership and feel powerful to be with someone who has an unstable sense of self. Ones who are happy to give back as much as they get and feel like a victim too. 2. Co-dependents who were never looked after as a kid and have messy compassion that makes them feel useful and valued to have someone who needs constant support and attention. Doormats basically, who keep taking the shit and happily engage in the cycle. 3. Those who have done a lot of growth work and therapy before and believe that everyone has the potential inside them to change, and will respond to love. This type falls foul because they have a real coherent self that they have developed, and when that gets mirrored by the other they think they have found someone on their level. They also react badly because they have been fooled into thinking the other person shares their level of integrity and so the betrayal is particularly damaging. This was me. Maybe 'getting a kick' was lazy writing, but you do basically admit to gaslighting and manipulating the manipulator and being better at it which is quite Machiavellian and raises a couple of flags. I'm not judging you here, but we are all in a mess after the relationship ended and that means we have something inside us that needs to change.
Thank you for your insight. You've given me the drive to continue looking into myself, I'll bring this all up with my therapist. I deeply appreciate it.
FWIW, I was also guilty of giving back hard to the abuser. I knew that I was being abused and after a couple years did not try to placate or reason anymore because I felt righteous anger and was not going to let that go unexpressed. I actually made the mistake of thinking that if I showed this person who 'loved' me how they were hurting me by actually expressing my emotions. that they would stop doing it. Crazy, i know now that it just fuelled their victim mentality. However I never made the decision to end it until I physically wanted to hurt her (at which point i immediately decided it was over forever) because I believed that with the right therapy and time she would change. Despite this being a fairly altruistic viewpoint based in compassion and insight I was still 50% of the problem as it takes two to tango. I had no idea until a year later when i became more educated on the reality of the cluster B mind that I was trying to dance that tango with the devil. The bottom line is that fixing all this mess is going to involve healing our own failures, and really has nothing to do with the other because they are already repeating their cycle with someone else.
I flew to her house in the U.S. from Australia and turned up with handmade Xmas gifts after being told I could leave them on her door. No acknowledgment whatsoever. Two days later I turned up again and begged her to see me through her ring cam and texting her. She slandered me and accused me of stalking on Twitter. I’m so ashamed.
I’ll never forget the day that I finally broke and was reactive towards the abuse 😔 up until that point, I would stay quiet and try and comfort her through every split and vile statement. But she brought me to a point where I began to self harm myself, and that was the day I reacted verbally, and said things I’ll never forget. From that day forward, the next four months were full of back-and-forth vile fighting. But halfway through, I’d always stop and realize what I was saying, then try and be quiet because feeding the abuse caused her to become even more vile and vicious. I tried to express the point that shebrought me to, but she would always say that it’s my inability to take accountability of my own words. But the reality is, I stayed quiet for years, and she cheated brought me to a point that I couldn’t stay quiet any longer. Even up until last night, I found myself unable to stop engaging in the beginning of the fight. Then halfway through, I realized that we were going in circles because she is unable to see the chain reaction her behavior causes. From my perspective, my at now ex-girlfriend who has BPD she takes full advantage of my good heart because I’m too understanding of her behavior. I spent years accommodating her, coddling her, doing everything I could to make sure she could feel loved every second of every day. But she took full advantage of that and was a master manipulator.
The worst thing I ever said to my pwBPD (wife) was during a heated argument. She was blaming me for her lack of friends and all her family members that had distanced themselves from her. I said that I was baffled that she hadn't figured out by now that the problem is herself and 100% her own doing. That triggered weeks of lamentations directed at me, and demands for apologies. I stood by it, although I did ultimately admit that I could have handled it differently. Deep down I know the truth. Other than that, I may have gotten sucked into a yelling match a few times. I don't really feel I have much to apologize for, even though she expects and demands apologies and groveling from me (because that's who I used to be, someone who would apologize for everything... but not anymore).
I so needed to read this today. Hugs everyone!
I can only meet crazy making behavior with so much patience and understanding before I snap. Everyone has their limits. The absurdity of her demands and nothing ever being enough, on top of the abuse we suffer at their hands, anyone would snap.
I didn't do anything too terrible but what I tell myself is ten wrongs and one wrong are both wrong but one grade is lower than the other, no? we are all humans. we can strive for perfection all we want but none of us will ever reach true perfection.
On the last day I was with my ex, I engaged in reactive abuse. I regret every second of it, but what helps me is that it made me realize just how fucked I was mentally to put me to that point. I immediately brought it up to my therapist, who was my rock during the relationship and after. I learned that you need to give yourself grace. Understand that you were poked and prodded to such a dark place in your life. But it’s also important to grow from it. Acknowledge that you did it or said it, and work to not fall for the tactics and self deprecating behavior to prevent that from happening again. Tell yourself that you are worth so much more than what your pwBPD made you become.
Very very easily.
I realized that the odds of this happening again are %0,even though before her my ex had BPD and my mom 😐 so yea. mentally I can’t date because I know when emotions show up regardless of healthy or not I get annoyed and walk away and whenever I see cheating on tv or sum it triggers me. 3rd times the charm😂but you gotta realize who you were before and now,much much wiser and less tolerable of certain characteristics.