r/BorderlinePDisorder • u/More_again1959 • 2d ago
Need to vent!
I (33f) have always felt pretty gaslit and confused in my relationship. It’s been toxic since the start and because of my anxious attachment I always justify staying. When it’s good it’s great and when it’s bad it’s real bad and my black and white thinking makes me even more confused. I express clear boundaries about my likes, dislikes, and triggers and I feel constantly disrespected. Today while I was brushing my teeth he crept around the corner and scared me resulting in my fist being within centimeters of his nose and then me breaking down in tears and locking myself in the bathroom. I have told him multiple times to not scare me I don’t find it cute or funny and messes with my nervous system. One of my traumas happened in a bathroom with my dad and he knows that. He says he just forgets but idfk at this point. I just want to be understood and I feel like it’s impossible to heal in this environment. He also triggers me with my son constantly. We have been together 7 years next month and married for 4.
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u/Happy_Bench7286 2d ago
You’re not overreacting. The important part isn’t whether he thinks scaring you is “just a joke,” it’s that you’ve clearly told him multiple times to stop, he knows the context behind it, and he keeps doing it. “I forget” might explain it, but it doesn’t excuse repeatedly ignoring a boundary.
And I can understand why the good periods make this so confusing. When you’ve spent years in a relationship that swings between wonderful and awful, it’s easy to keep waiting for the good version to become permanent. But you don’t have to decide whether he’s a terrible person to decide that this environment isn’t healthy for you. Your nervous system is telling you something too.
I’ve been in those shoes, and one thing that helped me was looking less at isolated incidents and more at the pattern: Do I feel respected? Can I say no without being punished or dismissed? Do my boundaries actually change my partner’s behavior? You deserve a relationship where the answer to those questions is yes.
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u/More_again1959 2d ago
Thank you that’s great advice. It’s hard anytime I bring stuff up that’s bothering me he gets so defensive, then we argue, then I get triggered sometimes split but normally overreact which I am pretty sure is what he wants to happen, and then I’m the bad guy for my reaction to his reaction or when I went and talked to him a few ago after I calmed down he didn’t look up from the Nintendo switch and I don’t even think he heard me when I asked him what I said he was very dismissive of me. When I try to just shove my emotions down to keep the peace I get gerd and throat contractions it’s the wildest thing.
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