1 of 10

Write now Article Tools

Page 4 of 6

trust my judgment or memory later on, because she was so totally sure it happened the way she remembered it. Writing stuff down is for your own personal sanity, your own personal reality check. You'll never win an argument I got to where I stopped trying. At the end, I just wanted to make sure I was still sane.

Sense of entitlement because of all the awful things that happened to her in her life, she was entitled to whatever she wanted, and the hell with the finances or whatever. In fact, complaining that something could not be afforded was an affront to her esteem, thus making her even more entitled to whatever she wanted.

Controlling the emotional climate the whole household revolved around her mood. This, presumably, is not unlike living with an active, abusive, alcoholic parent. If she was in a good mood, great. If she was in a nasty mood everyone would watch out and tiptoe around. That's why the book "Stop Walking on Eggshells" particularly enticed me, because simply the title itself described what we were doing in our household.

Validation of feelings this took a while to figure out. Basically anything that questioned her at all invalidated her feelings. I believe she got this from talking to a counselor. It was right, and she hung her hat on it, so to speak, but it reached ridiculous levels. As an example: we were calling a photographer for a family portrait or something, which she wanted. She made the call, we were both at the table. She asked a bunch of questions about cost, available appointments, print sizes, etc. I passed her a note that said "ask him about turnaround time" (meaning, how long from the session until we get the prints). That's all I did. Not only did she not ask, but when she hung up she was absolutely furious. It escalated to where she threatened to leave us and never see the children again (knowing that children are important to me, she felt this would hurt me to have it happen). I asked how she could not see her children, and her response was that to do so would remind her of me and how much I hurt her.

Note a couple of things from this example. First, it started with a simple question "ask him what the turnaround time would be". To me, it was just a reasonable question to ask a photographer. To her, though, I was invalidating her judgment and, in her mind, insinuating that she didn't know enough to interview a photographer for an appointment. To me, I thought I was working with my partner and that was the only question I interjected

• << previous page
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about How to deal with people with borderline personality disorder?
We want to hear your view. Write now!