Is my Girlfriend Borderline?

Friend:

I just broke up with a woman I believe is borderline. 

I thought from the beginning she was too much; I even told her (and all my friends) she was raising major red flags by being too nice at the beginning, like she was trying to buy my love with kindness. Then at some point she started to snap unexpectedly. At the first sign of conflict, if you can call it that (it was more like her feeling contrary in a random sort of way), she would lose it and, if I called her out on her rudeness or tried to calm her down by inviting her into a civil dialogue, she'd call me names. If I protested she'd get even worse and a couple of times she shoved me because I did not, to use her terms, "back off". She blamed me for "provoking" her and over-reacting.  She'd say things like "If you would just let me be, give me space, I'd be fine..." And it was true... for a while. But her moodiness always got the better of her and she'd have another outburst for some random small thing and I would be pushed away and blamed again. Maybe someone else could keep their cool and handle her; I sure couldn't.  Is she borderline or abusive or what?

Me:

I don't know about labelling her, but she sounds really fragile and yes, her behaviour would qualify as abusive even if her intention is not.

Friend:

I saw her as fragile too; and quite endearing when she was sweet. She wasn't always mean. Sometimes she would feel bad about her behavior and try to make improvements in how she communicated.  She became less verbally abusive overall. Still, she would regress suddenly and violently and withdraw more and more frequently from what appeard to be sheer overwhelm-- with life, with me, with herself. I found it very sad!

Me:

Sounds like you empathized with her.  Must have been hard for you?

Friend:

Oh... it was terrible for me. I could never predict when she would blow since she was unable to say directly what she needed or what went wrong.  Actually she always looked like everything was peachy keen (I'd even say she was chronically over-chipper) until WHAM! like a child having a tantrum, she'd lose it. She could not seem to identitfy or get ahead of the irritants in her life and prevent letting them get the better of her and, when I would try to help she'd get even more upset, tell me to mind my business and accuse me of not "reading the signs", of prying or trying to be her mother. The list of insults and criticisms never ended and in fact was getting longer by the day.  I could never do anything right. It made it hard to relax around her; and that is when I started to realize I couldn't do it anymore, even if I loved her. 

Me:

How did it end?

Friend:

She got moody yesterday and lost it on me in a restaurant, telling me to "shut up, stop talking and back off", and again blamed me for not acting the right way when she was feeling irritable. Something in me finally broke. I had already warned her I was reaching my limit, feeling like I had to walk to eggshells all the time, and that I was runing out of steam. I had invited her several times into therapy with me but she wouldn't bite... Yesterday on the way home in the car I told her, "You're right. I am intense, I do react. I care about you and feel badly that you are triggered. But I want us to talk civilly. I will not let that expectation go.  If you want to be with me, you need to stop abusing me. This won't go away on its own.  We need help"  She told me to f**k off; that I was heavy, negative and critical, that she just needed her space but I was too stupid to get that.  I quietly drove her home. When she opened the door, she simply said she was tired of fighting with me.  And that was it.  Didn't even say goodbye..

Me:

Well you let her know that if she stayed with you, you had expectations that would not go away.  You chose, and allowed her to choose, a path forward. You have gone your own directions now I guess.  It is very sad and I am sorry for you both. I know you will get over it.  I am not sure she will, but I hope so.

Friend:

I have faith in her.  She can do it.  Maybe just not with me.

mind the gap

A colleague is counseling the husband of my friend.  He has not met with my friend but apparently feels qualified to diagnose her as “borderline”.  My colleague (a psychologist) thinks my friend has abandonment issues and has in fact suggested that her husband end the marriage for his own mental health.

This infuriates me.  As a couple/family therapist I am trained to look behind the client’s narrative at the hidden perspectives it may eclipse.  Even with that training, I can only hypothesize, speculate and surmise about someone’s perspective if they’re not in the room.  There will be gaps.  If my advice is based on a bias, as in the case of my colleague, it will be misguided, if not harmful, to my clients and their significant others. 

Without the input of persons’ attached to our clients, therapists cannot see the big picture.  We are not qualified to give third part diagnoses or relationship advice based on assumptions which fill in the gaps. 

We should get out of the way.

getting sober

I had the good fortune of speaking to the wife of my dear friend today.

She told me about what it was like for her as her husband struggled with getting sober.  She was really happy he was committed to the process, she said.  She was very proud of him.  But she felt unhappy.  “I’m always waiting. I’m always second. Before it was to his addiction and now it is to his recovery. I’m as imprisoned by his addiction as he is.” 

My friend's wife was beginning to understand the meaning of co-dependency; when you enable someone just by waiting for them to change. She came to the conclusion that she couldn’t do it anymore, “I will lose myself”, she said, “I have lost myself. I cannot wait any longer.”  She wasn't going to leave him, just stop waiting for him to get on with her life.

Often codependents are reenacting something learned in childhood, maybe a struggle for independence which leads to a lifetime of waiting for others to set us free.  The funny thing is: when you stop waiting for others to change, they start taking more responsibility for changing themselves. You leave the prison together.

take heart

A dear friend is struggling with an addiction.  He has remarkable self-awareness but still slips and falls sometimes.  Like we all do...

Today he was angry at himself.  He said he didn't know why he kept failing. He knew what his goal was, he explained, but felt like a "loser" for not being able to reach it.  "I want to win", he said, tearing up, "I have been working on this for years and I should know better".

Rarely have I seen such ruthless honesty, and I found him brave.  He didn't choose his life, his challenges or his addiction- but he was facing them all and choosing freedom.  I had only admiration for his quest.  Yet he was so hard on himself.  Talk about setting yourself up for failure.

Then I realized that part of the "loser" mentality was framing sobriety in terms of a battle you win or lose.  I saw something else and told him: courage.

The root of the word "courage" is heart, the ability to face obstacles especially when you feel pain or fear.  It is not winning.

It's keeping on keeping on.

calling all men

The other day on Facebook, someone posted a sexist comment on a friend's timeline, something to the effect that he was sending him a dozen naked pitounes for his birthday.  Beyond the comment being insulting to the man, I thought it especially humiliating for his wife.

The comment was met with a few likes and guffaws by men but the large majority of the man's friends remained silent.  Only his wife attempted a humourous reply to the effect that pitounes would be promptly disposed of.

I was outraged and wanted to get up on my soapbox. But I knew it would do no good, just as the wife's comment did no good. I felt helpless and simply "liked" the wife's comment.  Weak.

I spoke to a male friend and asked why other men didn't speak up.  He said it was the woman's battle to fight, that she needed to defend herself; that it would take something away from her dignity if men intervened on her behalf.

Hm.  I imagined the woman flailing her skinny arms about in protest while a dozen churlish men laughed in her face.  It didn't look very dignified to me, let alone a battle she was winning.

We think it is the victim's battle to fight oppression.  It is not.  It is the bystanders'. The victim's cries can be strong and rational and brave but, unless others stand with her and outnumber the bully, the oppressors win.

You need power to fight power!

When it comes to sexism, men have the power.  Period.

Men, without you as allies, feminism will remain a muzzled and muted truth.  Would you please flex your muscles and mouths and stand up for us!

stunned

That is the word a friend used to aptly describe her response to losing her elderly mother: stunned, like by a bee that at first pricks and burns you, the sting of death soon numbs and even renders unconscious.

From the old French estoner, astonished... stoned!... it's hard to think or even breathe. Stunned.  An anaphylactic reaction to unprotected death.

They talk about the stages of grief, healing and "acceptance"; yet there is no recovery of how things used to be.  It is more like a gradual coming to (if you come to at all, because some never do); waking up to life with missing parts. You're "in shock", they say, as though you are missing something.  But, really, it is a new normal.

We think of grief as a chapter in life, as though loss were a moment on the continuum of something greater, but birth and death both dissolve in a mystery somewhere in the heart of that numbing, dumbing, stunning fact "your mother is dead".  That is the unavoidable truth.

communication; two sides of the mirror

There are two parts of good communication: sending and receiving.

Most people think receiving, otherwise known as listening, is the hard part and, in a way, it is; because in order to really listen, you have to put yourself aside.

Mirror listening is one way to do this.  By pausing to reflect back the messages we receive ("You said X, Y and Z"), we remain present to the person who is sharing an experience without being swallowed by our own.  We show the speaker we "got" him or her instead of contaminating his message with our own reactions in the form of interruptions, questions or comments, or any other verbal and non-verbal reactions to what is being shared.

By eliminating reactivity, mirroring connects people in conflict, and tension just melts away.  It is very soothing to be heard in this way.
 

But listening is just one half of good communication. The other half consists of course in successfully sharing or sending a message.

Any thought or feeling can be shared but, if we want to maintain connection to another human being, we must take great care in how we share, using a form that neither hurts nor offends the person we are talking to.  (It is in fact the form, not the content, of the message which is most important).

This can be done using I-statements which indicate that we know that everything we share (every thought, impression, feeling or reaction) belongs to me and me alone, and is a mere reflection of my own subjective experience, and not a fact I am imposing on you or something you have to agree with.  (Questions and you-statements, i.e. "why are you asking me now?" or "you are talking too much" instantly deflect attention away from me and can create conflict and disharmony, especially when experienced as attacks or criticism, which they usually are).

To show you humbly acquiesce to the reality and separateness of another human experience, it is necessary to both put yourself aside to mirror someone else and use I-statements to describe what is going on in yourself.

There are two sides to good communication: sending and receiving.  But the hardest part is humility.