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They Walk Among Us - Yes, I'm Talking Nut Jobs
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They Walk Among Us - Yes, I'm Talking Nut Jobs In the time between , in my consulting business, my mind begins to wander, well, all over the damned place. Lately, it’s been drifting toward past relationships and, in particular, my one and only marriage. I’m over the marriage, put it in the past tense, and moved on, blah, blah, blah. But you see my ex has undiagnosed Borderline Personality Disorder. In fact, I’m the only one who truly recognizes her condition, being in the unique position to see her current and past behavior. For those who aren’t familiar with borderline personality disorder, you can read more here: http://Senior Sizzle.com But the short version is that those with BPD do everything they can to prevent abandonment. This includes manipulating (i.e. lying, gaslighting) their partners in order to keep them from leaving. Their emotional state is in constant turmoil. I’ll preface by saying, despite some parts of the story appearing to be, this is not a ‘woe is me’ story. Rather a precautionary tale for those who don’t realize that true nut jobs walk among us and can damage you in ways you’d never believe possible. I certainly didn’t have a clue this was the case, when I met my ex. Hell, I didn’t know what the hell BPD was. Surely, those people would be locked up or labelled or something, right? Anyway, I’ve thrown in some amusing (in retrospect) instances that will likely blow your mind. What sucks about BPD, is that it’s incredibly difficult to diagnose. In fact, I was dating a therapist who had been married to a BPD’er and didn’t figure it out until after the relationship ended, which is what happened with me. She also shared that when a patient at her practice is suspected of having BPD, they are interviewed by multiple therapists because of how adept they are at manipulation. My first somewhat humorous story revolves around confirmation of the presence of BPD. I figured things out by good old digging around. I found the DSM and compared to my ex’s behavior; BPD was the landslide winner. It was solidified by research on the effects of of Borderlines, which seemed as though they’d just written a description of my step-. I compared notes with the aforementioned therapist I dated and it was as though we’d been living the same lives. The humor comes into play when I talked to the therapist I’d been seeing during my divorce. I kept throwing supporting information at him but he refused to diagnose C as a Borderline. Not seeing her, ethics, blah, blah. Then, toward the end, I wound up having a rather lengthy email conversation with her where everything she wrote screamed ‘I’m a Borderline’. I showed that to my therapist, who blurted out, ‘Wow, she’s a high functioning Borderline.’ I looked at him and said, ‘gotcha!’ The Courtship When I met C, she seemed like everything I wanted in a partner. Admittedly, I’d never experienced a true partner in previous relationships so I really had zero clue what I really should be looking for. But C was beautiful, smart, and thought I was the best thing since sliced bread. I was her savior from the other horrible guys she’d dated. And she’d dated a lot of losers, the most extreme example being her second husband who had done time for armed robbery. (Under the heading of ‘some people don’t change’ this would be the same scumbag who I, later, wound up showing the business side of a Glock to convince him he shouldn’t be following ‘our’ to their bus stop.) Truly, these should have been warning signs (not almost shooting her ex; that came later) but I defy most men to have a gorgeous woman praise them as their knight in shining armor and think ‘hmm, something ain’t right here’. It’s just not gonna happen! Hell, most guys are insecure to begin with, so they eat that up like a fat wolfs down cake. I know I did. The relationship progressed incredibly quickly. On her side, the BPD was forcing her timeline. On mine, I was at an age where I decided it was time to settle down and C was amazing. It was almost as though I said ‘yep, you’ll do nicely’ and that was that. The Relationship So, all was right with the world. As time went on, there were little warning signs. I caught her lying to her in order to manipulate them. Hmm…she wouldn’t do that to me though, right? Her treatment of me changed over time as well. In the beginning, I could do no wrong but, seemingly overnight, I developed a dizzying array of character flaws. Every misstep was categorized and thrown on the pile. The general message from her to me was ‘I love you regardless of how useless you are’. Pretty effective at making someone feel really lucky they have such an understanding spouse. As time passed, my self-esteem dropped precipitously. When there were differences of opinion, with respect to our relationship, I would try to be accommodating. There was a part of me that thought ‘she’s been married twice before so she knows better than me’. Hah! Dumb shit! In general, every disagreement we had was seemingly my fault. When having a disagreement with a partner, my preference is to sit down, as soon as possible (sometimes one or both parties needs to let the steam vent before they can have a productive discussion) and have a frank and respectful discussion. But she wouldn’t discuss differences of opinion between us, ever. And when I would become agitated at her avoiding the discussion, I would somehow find myself apologizing for yelling at her. To be clear, I raised my voice less than half a dozen times, during my marriage, but apologized for yelling no less than fifteen times. And she was the master at this type of manipulation. She was also a black belt of the ‘I told you X’ to cover herself. I thought I was the worst husband in the world for not paying attention to my wife (adding to the shame). This was until I wound up taking notes from our conversations (for reasons too lengthy to get into here). Sure enough, her story (in this case, our relocation from PA to RVA) would change almost daily, yet she’d claim that whatever today’s story was had been her position the whole time. More manipulative fun in the second installment, coming soon. |
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you are a knight in shining armor. trying to rescue women. that is the only behavior you should focus on. your own.
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Oh, believe me when I say that I recognized that behavior for what it was. Admittedly, it was after the fact... I talk a bit about the self-awareness I gained as a result of this situation.
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