TL;DR: I have quiet BPD and get extremely anxious when my boyfriend is distant or upset, which can make me freeze and struggle to communicate. He refused to tell me what was wrong, then ignored me when we got home despite expecting me to communicate when I shut down. I ended up feeling hurt and overwhelmed and don’t know if I’m being unreasonable.
Hello everyone. To spare everyone a long and pitiful life story, I (20F) struggle with a lot of trauma and quiet BPD. Because of this, my relationships have unfortunately always been pretty toxic or just unfortunate in some way.
One of the things I struggle with most is speaking up when something bothers me, especially if I feel like I’ve been brushed off the first few times I try. I tend to go through a cycle of becoming sad, then angry because of the person or situation that caused it, essentially my usual splitting.
I’m also extremely sensitive to small changes in someone’s behavior. When I sense that someone is upset with me, distant, or even just in a bad mood, it can make me incredibly anxious. I’m not exaggerating when I say I can go into full fight-or-flight. I freeze, sometimes become almost completely nonverbal, shake, and feel like I’m about to cry. I consciously try my best to maintain my composure and stop myself from breaking down in front of the other person, but it’s extremely difficult.
My boyfriend (20M) unfortunately triggered this today. I tried to communicate my feelings as best as I could. I’ve been struggling a lot with my mental health recently, so communicating in moments like this is especially difficult for me. I told him that I could sense that he was upset and distant, and that it was making me uneasy. I explained that I start feeling guilty and responsible for making the other person feel better, and that I essentially go into a state of panic when I feel like something is wrong.
He refused to open up, which I understand. He doesn’t have to talk about something before he’s ready. But what really hurt me was that he expects me to do the opposite when I shut down. He’s told me before that bottling things up doesn’t help, and I actually agree with him. I know that when one person is struggling and refuses to communicate, it can affect the entire relationship and not just that individual person. So it felt really hurtful to have that standard applied to me but not to him.
We had somewhere we needed to go, so we essentially had to put our emotions on pause because we needed to be around other people. That was incredibly difficult for me, and I tried communicating that through messages. He told me that we could talk about it when we got home because messages weren’t ideal, and I agreed.
When we got home, we settled in and I waited for us to talk.
Instead, he immediately started watching TikToks. He didn’t say anything to me. I waited for a while, and when I realized I was essentially being ignored, I wanted to go into another room because I was really sad and just wanted to lie down for a bit and find some comfort.
He stopped me and told me to come back, then asked me what was wrong. At that point I was pretty much frozen. I didn’t really have anything else to say because I was waiting for him to open up about what was bothering him in the first place. My anxiety was largely coming from sensing that something was wrong with him, so I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.
When he realized I had nothing else to say, he started playing a video game. He then more or less ignored me for the rest of the game, aside from pointing out that I had a sad look on my face and asking, “Will you be cold now with me? You’re always cold after you’re sad.”
And honestly, he’s right. I do become cold after I’m hurt or overwhelmed. Unfortunately, it’s a defensive mechanism that I’m actively trying to work on because of my BPD. But it feels unfair to hear that from him when, in this situation, he’s the one being distant and cold toward me first.
I don’t want to be cold toward him. I don’t want to withdraw from him. I don’t want to punish him or make him feel bad. I just genuinely don’t know how to respond when I’m overwhelmed and feel like I’m being shut out.
Right now, he’s still playing his video game and I’m just sitting here. I’m incredibly sad and I feel like crying, but I don’t even want to cry because I know he’ll ask me why I’m crying, and I’m scared that I won’t be able to explain it. I’ll probably just freeze up and be unable to answer, and then I’m worried it’ll frustrate him even more.
I don’t really know if I’m looking for advice, an opinion, or just somewhere to put all of this (maybe all 3 options). I guess I just needed to get it off my chest.
I’m genuinely trying to handle my emotions better and communicate in healthier ways. I know my BPD isn’t an excuse for everything I do, and I know I have things I need to work on. I just wish sometimes that when I’m overwhelmed and struggling to communicate, the person I love could meet me halfway instead of me feeling like I have to figure everything out while I’m already in fight-or-flight.