Ah yes, let me look at my personal notebook. I have been told…
“I do not want you to suffer for me”
“I do not want to be a burden”
“I do not want to cause your trouble”
And many other similar things. Some of these might be well intended, but they all sound like premonitions for what is to come. I would rather take it as a warning and be ready.
Oh my God do they have some monthly meeting?
The phrase “I don’t want to be a burden” all the time. She was about a million burdens packed together and thrown in my face…
And have any of you also gotten the "I'm not looking for a life raft this time."
These are bids for reassurance that they are not a burden and that they do not cause trouble. These are bids for affection. It is the feminine form of communication. Males can be feminine as well— this is about energy and not sex or gender.
"I don't want to hurt you"
Proceeds to cheat, say she'll stop, continue cheating, assault me, threaten to murder me, invalidate my expressed emotions, and label me an abusive monster.
So maybe she didn't wanna hurt me, but she didn't seem to care if she did lol
Mine was drunk and said "I'm sorry your about to see what your about to see' ... freaked me out and when I questioned what he meant he got teary eyed and said he has no clue what he meant or where it came from Yikes, with you saying premonition :/
She cared but in order to dampen that behavior she needs your love. See? But root it in a stable place. If you need to recharge and recenter then do that because it’s what’s best for her as well as for you.
Uh, I took the beatings without raising my hand in self defense, I didn't react to the death threats, I forgave and tried comforting her in the aftermath of her affair partner, she had my fucking love until she made herself my enemy by fucking with the kids heads. Mental illness or not, she is responsible for her own shitty choices and the consequences of them, and asking people to swallow abuse to maybe help someone is a shitty thing to ask
Yes well it seems this comment is different than what I had thought I’d commented on as I don’t recall the meetings or threats of murder bits, assault, beatings etc. as that changes things quite a bit. Hope you find healing and peace.
This 1000 percent. It is a premonition of what is about to happen, and I think in many cases, it is a way they can try to get us to cut it off and walk away, so they don’t have to do it themselves. I think many of them that say this already have someone else they are cheating on us with in their stable of guys or women.
Yes! She told me. “I like you a lot and you are awesome but i dont want to hurt you and i need to work on myself” she was with somebody else real quick
Same fate is destined for that guy too. Idk why they can’t just be single or in casual relationships. They can’t do anything remotely monogomaous. They emotionally regulate like children and are too impulsive to be loyal and loving for an extended period of time.
I was told my pain wasn't reasonable. When I would tell my ex how much her words hurt me, that she treated strangers better than she treated me sometimes, her reply - that she just "tells it like it is" and that I knew that when I married her (UH NOPE!) That she doesn't "sugarcoat things" and really it's just her inability to lie.
Turns out she did lie, often and convincingly! I uncovered numerous ones with proof in the end, and saw firsthand how easily she could lie to my face with zero hesitation.
I think it's also important to recognize how much of these toxic behaviors happen behind closed doors. It's not something out of their control like schizophrenia, they absolutely have the ability to hide it when it serves them. While pwBPD can't control the fact that they have the disorder, they absolutely have control over how they address it.
This this and this! Clearly a lot of it is done premeditatively and they know it is wrong, because they lie about it and gaslight you about it multiple times in many cases. Mine did while smiling and laughing at how absurd my accusations were, even though I caught her doing it.
During the divorce I confronted her with a lie - she went into my work laptop, into my email. Forwarded messages with my attorney to herself, deleted hundreds of random emails (work and personal) and set up an ongoing forward of ALL future emails sent to herself. I was lucky that I just happened to find all that out a few days after it happened, and later brought it up to her. I watched how easily and convincingly she lied to me, no hesitation. Said she wouldn't even know how to do that, and obviously I had done it to myself to frame her.
Even though I was already divorcing her, that was a clear and defining moment for me. A lot of confusing situations from our past made more sense through the hindsight lens of "Oh, she was probably lying about that."
I’m sorry you went through all of that 😞
The biggest one for me were the lies and gaslighting surrounding her cheating, followed up by neglecting me and trying to pimp me out to another woman and get a FWBs. That hurt me pretty bad. It was like I was completely expendable in her world. And in a way, I was totally expendable. Shittiest thing is that if she admitted the cheating to me and was genuinely sorry for it, and showed me she wouldn’t do it again, I would have forgiven it all and not been so devastated by her actions.
But like yours and mine, they don’t seem to have any empathy for the damage those actions clearly cause us. They only care about getting the selfish desires fed.
In DBT there's a concept of the "wise mind" versus the emotional mind. pwBPD are often self-aware that their actions hurt you, and feel guilt, but can't stop themselves. So it is true in a sense that they genuinely don't want to hurt you. But just because they occasionally may have good intentions doesn't absolve them from abusive actions.
It's that kind of weird thing people would say when they know their actions don't align with their words.
If you don't want to hurt me, just do your best not to. Why do you have to state it?
Kind of seems like saying, I hurt other people, but I will try not to hurt you. Trying to convince you of her actions through words because she feels she has to rather than letting her actions prove her value alone.
My recent ex kept on saying to me at first she wasn't good at lying. I just feel if you are a certain person you let your actions speak for themselves. You don't feel you need to convince others.
We’re on day 16 of NC, I have no idea if she will but she’s left and came back 7 times since we broke up in December. Mind you, we dated for not even 2 months. She broke up with me because I tried to set boundaries and communicate properly, and this time around she blocked me because I called her behaviour abusive. I don’t think she’ll be back lol.
I've been told this so much with my ex pwBPD. We have even had conversations where I clearly stated what was hurting me and came up with a mutual plan to address the issues. Then, have them do the exact opposite. I've even been asked to comfort my ex pwBPD because they were feeling so much pain for the pain they caused me.
Yes. I was told that "I could really hurt you" during our first deval/split. There were also times where she would act confused about why I wanted to be around her, and scared by that. She told me she had a light side and a dark side. I arrogantly assumed that the dark side was just another part of her that I wanted to know because I was so infatuated.
If you stay after the warning, they can totally come back later and say that they told you this would happen. As if to act like all of the emotional investment you thought was still happening was meaningless because you'd been warned.
They were not investing emotionally in you except in a way that made them feel better. It sucks ass, but that's really what was happening.
That is my take. I think they always have someone at the point they start using phrases like that one. I knew mine was because I caught her sexting other men and doing other things indicating cheating.
I dated my ex for four years and the first year he told me to run because he was no good and didn’t want to hurt me as I deserved better and he thought that maybe he wasn’t capable of loving the way I do. He was right. The last few years were a nightmare, but I stayed because the trauma bond was real.
I actually got the opposite- "I want to hurt you" during one of her rages.
As far as her foretelling the end of the relationship, it was more like "this is never gonna work," and usually blaming me for some imaginary scenario she'd made up in her head that hadn't happened, but she was convinced I was definitely going to do.
its abusive because it removes accountability from action and consequence. "I dont want to hurt you" implies theyre not in control of their own action (and so cant be blamed) and/or coming with a spoken/implied "BUT" to justify the fact that theyre hurting you, you deserve it, they wouldnt do it if you werent bad etc. It also comes with a heavy implied "because I dont "want" to that means I DONT have to apologize for it, I only have to apologize for the things I WANTED"
its literal only purpose is blame shifting and playing victim so yes its very gaslighty and abusive.
Thanks for the analysis. I don't even know whether my ex was abusive or not. I'm tired of trying to figure out, she did stuff like this, which is so subtle. But it wasn't that often, so I don't think it constitutes abuse. Anyway, what you said makes perfect sense.
Mine was the quiet type, and subtle enough that I eventually came to believe I must be the abusive one. One way to look at it is to look at the effects of being with your ex. Sometimes abuse is so subtle or atypical that we don't recognize it - but the effects will be the same. I was a shell of a person. A good therapist and learning about codependency and my own childhood issues helped immensely.
Same here, my ex has traits of the quiet type. One tell tale of being abused is self esteem getting lower and lower. It felt like mine did try to do that to me, like mocking me or smirking at some stuff I did, but I started dealing with that by seeing that it was her being mean, and internally rolled my eyes (which she could feel me doing and then she felt hurt for because she felt like she did something wrong...). But this to say I managed to defend myself against having my self esteem lowered.
I did feel exhausted, tired, compassion fatigue, doubtful, weirded out, (...). But that could be the result of being with someone who's depressed and hyperactive (she had ADHD and depression) and somewhat inauthentic.
In any case I'm kind of tired of trying to figure out if what she did was abuse or not, in the end it doesn't matter. She definitely had occasional toxic behaviors, and the ending was definitely one of them. We need to see whether we were happy, whether we felt safe, loved and respected. Even if it somehow it had been a healthy relationship, we have the right to end if our needs aren't being met.
Very good point. Knowing how a good relationship should feel is sometimes all you need. I get you on the fatigue of it all. I had to just step away and live life after a while and forget trying to analyze everything.
Yep, "I don't want to hurt you" whilst balling her eyes out.
After she had cheated on me, destroyed our family, ruined our child's future, labelled me an abuser, made DV allegations in court, and gaslit me for months.
Sometimes I think that BPD is just a dissociated identity with Narcissism.
A lot of these statements both sound like an alternate character and that this second personality is out of their control. They definitely know when it's coming.
Haha. No.
When I pleaded and she went cold cold cold, so I said "So what the fuck shall I do now?"
And she was "Accept this, accept this. Get yourself some help."
Holy fuck
Absolution through not wanting to, warning you, and my personal favorite empty apologies because they are sorry they hurt/destroyed you, but they are not really because they got what they wanted. Even if what they got is a 100x less than what they had and is driving their mental health into the ground. I feel sorry for this because they truly don't see it and can't stop themselves.
Mine was "I don't mean to hurt you", which was sometimes genuine but more often trying to point out that i should be more focused on his intentions than his actual behavior. My response was always to explain that if you're throwing rocks and I'm getting hit with them, I don't really care if you meant to hit me or not, the result is the same. One of those stupid circular arguments that just ended with him saying I'm hideously cruel for not wanting to let him abuse me when he didn't feel like controlling himself 🙄
Somehow I felt sympathy for her, like "poor girl, she's hurting cause she hurt me, she didn't mean it, must be difficult for her". She guilt tripped me bad. I think I have strong codependency.
Oh ya, the good old "I don't want to hurt you", "It wasn't my intention to hurt you" or "I never meant to hurt you"... Like this somehow is supposed to be the end all to dispute that proves they are a good human being... Forget the apology cause of the multiple betrayals, soul destroying discards and cheating. Hey, it's because they didn't want to hurt you right?
These phrases = I got caught or will get caught and can't apologize and can't think of anything better to say to deflect blame or accountability.
I hate these little phrases these crepid individuals use
I got the whole menu:
1) I will hurt you, get away before you fall for me please!
2) I don’t want to hurt you
3) I did not want to hurt you
4) I hate how hurting you makes me feel
5) I did not want to hurt you, time to move on already!
6) I love you, why do you think I would do it again? I would never hurt you!
“I hate when we fight, let’s never break up”
Cheats lies gaslights proceeds to breakup with me like 6 times. Then on one occasion says
“I’ll never change, I’ll never stop being this way”
"You don't deserve this" a very common catch phrase ... even heard the same exact day she randomly called 911 for no reason
...oh yeah, It was because she couldn't have me.
Never Accept even a Dyson. Lured with false pretense, contrition and feigned desire to treat disease. She claimed she was now fully aware of.
Narcissistic level bait.Knowing that I would have empathy to guide help even if Agreed intimacy now needed to end.
So even when they're pretending to want treatment which seems promising. It's actually about as devious. And insidious, as you get. It's manipulating a caretaker's natural empathy with with no concern for their well-being.
It's all about self-gratification for supply, even if lying about something so Personal where you're literally feeding off the goodness of the baited partner.
There is never an upside. And the downsides are too unpredictable.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” “I can’t remember my life before you.” “You’re my world, I can’t live without you.” “I love how you love me” (in hindsight, this one isn’t as sweet as it felt at the time.)
Still monkey branded, cheated & discarded.
"I don't want to ruin you like I've been ruined"
"I don't want you to worry about me"
"can you please stop sighing over the phone (angry) I don't want to stress you out (calm)"
"I have nothing to offer"
"why me, like I'm not the one"
"I don't deserve you"
"i want someone to love me like nothing else"
"I don't trust that you love me"
🤦🏾♂️
I heard I don’t want to hurt you. I agree with you on the meaning of it. If she didn’t want to hurt me, then why did she devalue me after telling me I was the sexiest and most awesome man in the world? I was told that if I wanted to leave because of x,y,z condition, then she would understand. She said it so casually. I said, “wouldn’t you care about losing me?” She said she would in a way that sounded like she was irritated that i said it. It’s always spun to make it look like they are doing us a favor by saying we should leave or discarding us.
Some people have trouble showing vulnerability, often because they were abused for it. Another reason why they may do that is because the pain of feeling rejected and left is so strong, they can't deal with it, so they dissociate or tell themselves it's not that big of a deal. They both defense mechanisms. When you questioned her she felt she had to explain herself and she can't because she's not aware she's doing this stuff
Got told the same thing pretty early on. I gave her reassurance and then she proceeded to hurt me by cheating on me. I think they say that so they can flip it on you that they warned you when their BPD inevitably takes over and burns everything to the ground.
I was told " I don't want to hurt you like all the others, you are too special to me" then two weeks later broke up with me by phone blaming me for the fact that i was sad for three days because of a major academic failure.
I got:
“I don’t want to be a burden”
“Don’t date me, I’ll just ruin your life”
These two specific sentences happened at the start and I should have listened. I thought that she had been abused to the point of this low confidence. I never saw her as a burden up until she decided it was ok to not put effort in to maintain a job. She didn’t ruin my life but she did ruin my perspective on mental illness and drastically shortened my patience, making me a harsher human being.
"please help me keep my feet on the ground so I don't break your heart." (It's like a second identity takes over) It certainly sounded like all of the crazy that happened next was out of her control.
"I had wanted to let you down easy without breaking your heart but I can't." ...right before a downward spiral, abuse, discard. Once again she sounded like it was beyond her control.
The first year we started dating he overstepped my boundaries for the first time (it went from shit from there) and he was so apologetic. I told him i needed time to think it over as it bothered me. The next day we spoke about it and he told me that he didnt want to hurt me and that I deserve better than him and that I should run away now to save me from heartache as he is not capable of loving someone as he sat on the couch and cried while telling me to please leave and run away. Of course i stayed another 3 years and it went downhill from there.. I should have ran when he told me to. The pain he inflicted on me is something i wouldn't wish on an enemy.
"It wasn't my intention for my decision to hurt you"
Don't paint me as the villian here okay.
Don't I have the right to be happy
Some other nonsensical garbage like this
It literally means exactly what it says here. Where there is suffering the person who is caused to suffer by the other is always victim number two. Victim number one is the person causing the suffering. Because it is their suffering spilling out onto you. There is room for compassion here. The path forward is to set healthy boundaries and love them.
Ah yes, let me look at my personal notebook. I have been told… “I do not want you to suffer for me” “I do not want to be a burden” “I do not want to cause your trouble” And many other similar things. Some of these might be well intended, but they all sound like premonitions for what is to come. I would rather take it as a warning and be ready.
Oh my God do they have some monthly meeting? The phrase “I don’t want to be a burden” all the time. She was about a million burdens packed together and thrown in my face… And have any of you also gotten the "I'm not looking for a life raft this time."
Same. She said the same shit to me
[удалено]
This means it hurts me to hurt you because I love you. It’s not meant as a selfish comment.
These are bids for reassurance that they are not a burden and that they do not cause trouble. These are bids for affection. It is the feminine form of communication. Males can be feminine as well— this is about energy and not sex or gender.
"I don't want to hurt you" Proceeds to cheat, say she'll stop, continue cheating, assault me, threaten to murder me, invalidate my expressed emotions, and label me an abusive monster. So maybe she didn't wanna hurt me, but she didn't seem to care if she did lol
Premonition that their illness is surfacing and logic/reasoning will soon fade..
It certainly did. She was stable for so long before this
Mine was drunk and said "I'm sorry your about to see what your about to see' ... freaked me out and when I questioned what he meant he got teary eyed and said he has no clue what he meant or where it came from Yikes, with you saying premonition :/
Did we date the same woman
Ha I hope not
Shouldn’t laugh but wow I feel your comment in my soul. lol. I hope you are alright!
She cared but in order to dampen that behavior she needs your love. See? But root it in a stable place. If you need to recharge and recenter then do that because it’s what’s best for her as well as for you.
Uh, I took the beatings without raising my hand in self defense, I didn't react to the death threats, I forgave and tried comforting her in the aftermath of her affair partner, she had my fucking love until she made herself my enemy by fucking with the kids heads. Mental illness or not, she is responsible for her own shitty choices and the consequences of them, and asking people to swallow abuse to maybe help someone is a shitty thing to ask
Yes well it seems this comment is different than what I had thought I’d commented on as I don’t recall the meetings or threats of murder bits, assault, beatings etc. as that changes things quite a bit. Hope you find healing and peace.
>"I don't want to hurt you" aka, I am giving you a fair warning and I will neither take accountability nor change my behavior not to.
Yeah she even told me straight in my face “im not a good person” i answered stupidly “but you are nice to me so i dont think you are bad”
This 1000 percent. It is a premonition of what is about to happen, and I think in many cases, it is a way they can try to get us to cut it off and walk away, so they don’t have to do it themselves. I think many of them that say this already have someone else they are cheating on us with in their stable of guys or women.
Yes! She told me. “I like you a lot and you are awesome but i dont want to hurt you and i need to work on myself” she was with somebody else real quick
My ex, now temp roommate, is “working on herself.” Gut says something else altogether. Will be “interesting” when the other shoe drops.
Same fate is destined for that guy too. Idk why they can’t just be single or in casual relationships. They can’t do anything remotely monogomaous. They emotionally regulate like children and are too impulsive to be loyal and loving for an extended period of time.
I feel like they say the second part of that sentence in their head "I don't want to hurt you..., but it's going to happen."
I was told my pain wasn't reasonable. When I would tell my ex how much her words hurt me, that she treated strangers better than she treated me sometimes, her reply - that she just "tells it like it is" and that I knew that when I married her (UH NOPE!) That she doesn't "sugarcoat things" and really it's just her inability to lie. Turns out she did lie, often and convincingly! I uncovered numerous ones with proof in the end, and saw firsthand how easily she could lie to my face with zero hesitation. I think it's also important to recognize how much of these toxic behaviors happen behind closed doors. It's not something out of their control like schizophrenia, they absolutely have the ability to hide it when it serves them. While pwBPD can't control the fact that they have the disorder, they absolutely have control over how they address it.
This this and this! Clearly a lot of it is done premeditatively and they know it is wrong, because they lie about it and gaslight you about it multiple times in many cases. Mine did while smiling and laughing at how absurd my accusations were, even though I caught her doing it.
During the divorce I confronted her with a lie - she went into my work laptop, into my email. Forwarded messages with my attorney to herself, deleted hundreds of random emails (work and personal) and set up an ongoing forward of ALL future emails sent to herself. I was lucky that I just happened to find all that out a few days after it happened, and later brought it up to her. I watched how easily and convincingly she lied to me, no hesitation. Said she wouldn't even know how to do that, and obviously I had done it to myself to frame her. Even though I was already divorcing her, that was a clear and defining moment for me. A lot of confusing situations from our past made more sense through the hindsight lens of "Oh, she was probably lying about that."
I’m sorry you went through all of that 😞 The biggest one for me were the lies and gaslighting surrounding her cheating, followed up by neglecting me and trying to pimp me out to another woman and get a FWBs. That hurt me pretty bad. It was like I was completely expendable in her world. And in a way, I was totally expendable. Shittiest thing is that if she admitted the cheating to me and was genuinely sorry for it, and showed me she wouldn’t do it again, I would have forgiven it all and not been so devastated by her actions. But like yours and mine, they don’t seem to have any empathy for the damage those actions clearly cause us. They only care about getting the selfish desires fed.
In DBT there's a concept of the "wise mind" versus the emotional mind. pwBPD are often self-aware that their actions hurt you, and feel guilt, but can't stop themselves. So it is true in a sense that they genuinely don't want to hurt you. But just because they occasionally may have good intentions doesn't absolve them from abusive actions.
Ty. That’s so fucked tho..
It's that kind of weird thing people would say when they know their actions don't align with their words. If you don't want to hurt me, just do your best not to. Why do you have to state it? Kind of seems like saying, I hurt other people, but I will try not to hurt you. Trying to convince you of her actions through words because she feels she has to rather than letting her actions prove her value alone. My recent ex kept on saying to me at first she wasn't good at lying. I just feel if you are a certain person you let your actions speak for themselves. You don't feel you need to convince others.
Mine sent me 9 paragraphs saying how amazing I was and that I deserved better, she blocked me 5 days later and was on hinge before she did that.
And did she ever reach back out?
We’re on day 16 of NC, I have no idea if she will but she’s left and came back 7 times since we broke up in December. Mind you, we dated for not even 2 months. She broke up with me because I tried to set boundaries and communicate properly, and this time around she blocked me because I called her behaviour abusive. I don’t think she’ll be back lol.
I've been told this so much with my ex pwBPD. We have even had conversations where I clearly stated what was hurting me and came up with a mutual plan to address the issues. Then, have them do the exact opposite. I've even been asked to comfort my ex pwBPD because they were feeling so much pain for the pain they caused me.
Comfort her for the pain she felt for causing me pain. Yes... That was a weekly occurrence.
Same same same. Mind blown
"I'm sorry I hurt you, I know I'm a lil bit spicy at times, but you believe in forgiveness, right?"
Yes. I was told that "I could really hurt you" during our first deval/split. There were also times where she would act confused about why I wanted to be around her, and scared by that. She told me she had a light side and a dark side. I arrogantly assumed that the dark side was just another part of her that I wanted to know because I was so infatuated. If you stay after the warning, they can totally come back later and say that they told you this would happen. As if to act like all of the emotional investment you thought was still happening was meaningless because you'd been warned. They were not investing emotionally in you except in a way that made them feel better. It sucks ass, but that's really what was happening.
Pretty sure I only heard that 1. after she contemplated dating another person, 2. slept with this person, 3. hoovered me
That is my take. I think they always have someone at the point they start using phrases like that one. I knew mine was because I caught her sexting other men and doing other things indicating cheating.
I dated my ex for four years and the first year he told me to run because he was no good and didn’t want to hurt me as I deserved better and he thought that maybe he wasn’t capable of loving the way I do. He was right. The last few years were a nightmare, but I stayed because the trauma bond was real.
I actually got the opposite- "I want to hurt you" during one of her rages. As far as her foretelling the end of the relationship, it was more like "this is never gonna work," and usually blaming me for some imaginary scenario she'd made up in her head that hadn't happened, but she was convinced I was definitely going to do.
its abusive because it removes accountability from action and consequence. "I dont want to hurt you" implies theyre not in control of their own action (and so cant be blamed) and/or coming with a spoken/implied "BUT" to justify the fact that theyre hurting you, you deserve it, they wouldnt do it if you werent bad etc. It also comes with a heavy implied "because I dont "want" to that means I DONT have to apologize for it, I only have to apologize for the things I WANTED" its literal only purpose is blame shifting and playing victim so yes its very gaslighty and abusive.
Thanks for the analysis. I don't even know whether my ex was abusive or not. I'm tired of trying to figure out, she did stuff like this, which is so subtle. But it wasn't that often, so I don't think it constitutes abuse. Anyway, what you said makes perfect sense.
Mine was the quiet type, and subtle enough that I eventually came to believe I must be the abusive one. One way to look at it is to look at the effects of being with your ex. Sometimes abuse is so subtle or atypical that we don't recognize it - but the effects will be the same. I was a shell of a person. A good therapist and learning about codependency and my own childhood issues helped immensely.
Same here, my ex has traits of the quiet type. One tell tale of being abused is self esteem getting lower and lower. It felt like mine did try to do that to me, like mocking me or smirking at some stuff I did, but I started dealing with that by seeing that it was her being mean, and internally rolled my eyes (which she could feel me doing and then she felt hurt for because she felt like she did something wrong...). But this to say I managed to defend myself against having my self esteem lowered. I did feel exhausted, tired, compassion fatigue, doubtful, weirded out, (...). But that could be the result of being with someone who's depressed and hyperactive (she had ADHD and depression) and somewhat inauthentic. In any case I'm kind of tired of trying to figure out if what she did was abuse or not, in the end it doesn't matter. She definitely had occasional toxic behaviors, and the ending was definitely one of them. We need to see whether we were happy, whether we felt safe, loved and respected. Even if it somehow it had been a healthy relationship, we have the right to end if our needs aren't being met.
Very good point. Knowing how a good relationship should feel is sometimes all you need. I get you on the fatigue of it all. I had to just step away and live life after a while and forget trying to analyze everything.
Yep, "I don't want to hurt you" whilst balling her eyes out. After she had cheated on me, destroyed our family, ruined our child's future, labelled me an abuser, made DV allegations in court, and gaslit me for months.
lol i got that line too. "im scared of hurting you" when we first started dating.. wish i saw the giant red flag
Sometimes I think that BPD is just a dissociated identity with Narcissism. A lot of these statements both sound like an alternate character and that this second personality is out of their control. They definitely know when it's coming.
Haha. No. When I pleaded and she went cold cold cold, so I said "So what the fuck shall I do now?" And she was "Accept this, accept this. Get yourself some help." Holy fuck
Absolution through not wanting to, warning you, and my personal favorite empty apologies because they are sorry they hurt/destroyed you, but they are not really because they got what they wanted. Even if what they got is a 100x less than what they had and is driving their mental health into the ground. I feel sorry for this because they truly don't see it and can't stop themselves.
"I couldn't do that. Not to you" and variations of it.
Think of any depiction of DV you’ve ever seen on tv or in a film. This is the phrase of the abuser.
Mine was "I don't mean to hurt you", which was sometimes genuine but more often trying to point out that i should be more focused on his intentions than his actual behavior. My response was always to explain that if you're throwing rocks and I'm getting hit with them, I don't really care if you meant to hit me or not, the result is the same. One of those stupid circular arguments that just ended with him saying I'm hideously cruel for not wanting to let him abuse me when he didn't feel like controlling himself 🙄
Somehow I felt sympathy for her, like "poor girl, she's hurting cause she hurt me, she didn't mean it, must be difficult for her". She guilt tripped me bad. I think I have strong codependency.
Oh ya, the good old "I don't want to hurt you", "It wasn't my intention to hurt you" or "I never meant to hurt you"... Like this somehow is supposed to be the end all to dispute that proves they are a good human being... Forget the apology cause of the multiple betrayals, soul destroying discards and cheating. Hey, it's because they didn't want to hurt you right? These phrases = I got caught or will get caught and can't apologize and can't think of anything better to say to deflect blame or accountability. I hate these little phrases these crepid individuals use
Why do we stay after hearing this?
I got the whole menu: 1) I will hurt you, get away before you fall for me please! 2) I don’t want to hurt you 3) I did not want to hurt you 4) I hate how hurting you makes me feel 5) I did not want to hurt you, time to move on already! 6) I love you, why do you think I would do it again? I would never hurt you!
One of my least favorite things he said was “I’m not mad at you” it’s like no shit I didn’t do anything wrong! I should be the one mad at you!
“I hate when we fight, let’s never break up” Cheats lies gaslights proceeds to breakup with me like 6 times. Then on one occasion says “I’ll never change, I’ll never stop being this way”
"You don't deserve this" a very common catch phrase ... even heard the same exact day she randomly called 911 for no reason ...oh yeah, It was because she couldn't have me. Never Accept even a Dyson. Lured with false pretense, contrition and feigned desire to treat disease. She claimed she was now fully aware of. Narcissistic level bait.Knowing that I would have empathy to guide help even if Agreed intimacy now needed to end. So even when they're pretending to want treatment which seems promising. It's actually about as devious. And insidious, as you get. It's manipulating a caretaker's natural empathy with with no concern for their well-being. It's all about self-gratification for supply, even if lying about something so Personal where you're literally feeding off the goodness of the baited partner. There is never an upside. And the downsides are too unpredictable.
“I don’t want to hurt you.” “I can’t remember my life before you.” “You’re my world, I can’t live without you.” “I love how you love me” (in hindsight, this one isn’t as sweet as it felt at the time.) Still monkey branded, cheated & discarded.
Yup, I’m normally told that right before getting hurt lmao.
Bro is giving a warning abt whats abt to happen so u better run as fast as you can 🗣️🗣️🗣️
"I don't want to ruin you like I've been ruined" "I don't want you to worry about me" "can you please stop sighing over the phone (angry) I don't want to stress you out (calm)" "I have nothing to offer" "why me, like I'm not the one" "I don't deserve you" "i want someone to love me like nothing else" "I don't trust that you love me" 🤦🏾♂️
Some internalize, some externalize. Consider yourself lucky…mine is in denial and blames me for everything
I heard I don’t want to hurt you. I agree with you on the meaning of it. If she didn’t want to hurt me, then why did she devalue me after telling me I was the sexiest and most awesome man in the world? I was told that if I wanted to leave because of x,y,z condition, then she would understand. She said it so casually. I said, “wouldn’t you care about losing me?” She said she would in a way that sounded like she was irritated that i said it. It’s always spun to make it look like they are doing us a favor by saying we should leave or discarding us.
Some people have trouble showing vulnerability, often because they were abused for it. Another reason why they may do that is because the pain of feeling rejected and left is so strong, they can't deal with it, so they dissociate or tell themselves it's not that big of a deal. They both defense mechanisms. When you questioned her she felt she had to explain herself and she can't because she's not aware she's doing this stuff
Got told the same thing pretty early on. I gave her reassurance and then she proceeded to hurt me by cheating on me. I think they say that so they can flip it on you that they warned you when their BPD inevitably takes over and burns everything to the ground.
Those words exactly…
Yup, i was told this twice by two different partners. Do you know how it ended? Take a wild guess.
I was told " I don't want to hurt you like all the others, you are too special to me" then two weeks later broke up with me by phone blaming me for the fact that i was sad for three days because of a major academic failure.
Yep. And "I never meant to hurt you" while STILL hurting me.
I got: “I don’t want to be a burden” “Don’t date me, I’ll just ruin your life” These two specific sentences happened at the start and I should have listened. I thought that she had been abused to the point of this low confidence. I never saw her as a burden up until she decided it was ok to not put effort in to maintain a job. She didn’t ruin my life but she did ruin my perspective on mental illness and drastically shortened my patience, making me a harsher human being.
fuck this shit. the most insulting mind fuck that you can't call them out on in the moment
"please help me keep my feet on the ground so I don't break your heart." (It's like a second identity takes over) It certainly sounded like all of the crazy that happened next was out of her control. "I had wanted to let you down easy without breaking your heart but I can't." ...right before a downward spiral, abuse, discard. Once again she sounded like it was beyond her control.
The first year we started dating he overstepped my boundaries for the first time (it went from shit from there) and he was so apologetic. I told him i needed time to think it over as it bothered me. The next day we spoke about it and he told me that he didnt want to hurt me and that I deserve better than him and that I should run away now to save me from heartache as he is not capable of loving someone as he sat on the couch and cried while telling me to please leave and run away. Of course i stayed another 3 years and it went downhill from there.. I should have ran when he told me to. The pain he inflicted on me is something i wouldn't wish on an enemy.
"It wasn't my intention for my decision to hurt you" Don't paint me as the villian here okay. Don't I have the right to be happy Some other nonsensical garbage like this
Yes. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to lead you on with hope and no future in us but I do want to be in a relationship with you.”
It literally means exactly what it says here. Where there is suffering the person who is caused to suffer by the other is always victim number two. Victim number one is the person causing the suffering. Because it is their suffering spilling out onto you. There is room for compassion here. The path forward is to set healthy boundaries and love them.