You should probably consider the following situation: Pretend this thread was made by him, and he's talking about his relationship with Other Boyfriend. This is how Other Boyfriend broke up with him, this is how Other Boyfriend is acting towards him now, etc. What do you think of Other Boyfriend? What do you think your ex should do?
ok i.......would like to mention some of the stuff that we talked about in PM over tumblr a few days ago @gills so that other people can weigh in on what i personally thought was really questionable red-flag behavior on his part, so maybe you can get more input? this may help to help you figure out if ur actually painting him in an unfairly mean light or w/e :OO is it ok for me to mention the stuff you told me then about him?
There isn't an "unfair" light here - the behaviors are bad and cannot be justified. Even if he feels abused, hurt, etc, what he is doing/saying is objectively wrong. Sure, he should have a chance to state his position if he wants it but: "He only hits me because I deserve it" is ALWAYS wrong and yes, what he has done counts as "hitting" - intentionally inflicting pain. It cannot be justified.
@budgie i would tell him to dump his ass. but. um. thinking about anyone hurting him whether intentionally or not tends to send me on a really bad brainpath. like "fantasizing about violently hurting the people who hurt him" kind of bad. (note: i am very very nonviolent in actions but i know thinking this way is still bad. also this is not directed at anyone here.) and, just like all of you, i'd only be getting half the story. @rats you can talk about it if you'd like, i guess, but i think most of what i said in PM was more bad things. i'm saying i haven't talked about good things he did for me, like staying on call literally all day with me after a bad incident with parents, singing to me and reassuring me @Lissa Lysik'an but don't people sometimes behave in unhealthy ways when they're recovering? i've yelled at him before and told him to fuck off.
oops, forgot to respond to @Petra! the split with the friend group was pretty mutual; i doubt the split with other boyfriend was, other boyfriend sounded a lot like me, very dependent on him and clingy.
Sure, but you're only hearing that through him, who called you a- well, he called you something very nasty related to your disorder, I'm not repeating it. Like, if this guy hates clinginess so much, it seems weird he'd date two dependent people at once? And obviously I'm biased in the other direction from you, because I haven't been there to see any of the nice times. But I'm also less emotionally invested than you, and whole I can't say what your relationship was like before, what you're describing is definitely him using you as a... essentially as a disposable feelings-bag. And I know you know that but I also know it's hard to think it so I'm just repeating it in case that helps?
Not in that way. Unhealthy TO THEMSELVES. Hitting other people - physically, verbally, emotionally - is NOT what is meant by "unhealthy behavior associated with recovery". Drinking, drugs, 72 hour gaming binges. AND - recovering from what? Being abusive to people and they leave is not a justification for being abusive to you, who finds leaving difficult. It's just more evidence of being abusive. Sorry - no. No points are ever awarded for being abusive and, manipulative, regardless of "justification". He is hurting you intentionally and that is never excusable. Not even mental illness makes that excusable. Telling someone to fuck off is not the same thing as insulting and demeaning them and their feelings toward you. He explicitly insulted you for caring about him.
People sometimes behave in unhealthy ways when they're recovering, towards themselves and others. This does not obligate anyone else to stay with them. And if he'd decided to break up with you for yelling at him and telling him to fuck off, especially if there was a pattern of it, I'd honestly back him on it, because it's healthy to be able to say "This hurts me and I'm not staying around for it." Behaving badly towards you does not mean he never did good things for you. But doing good things for you also does not mean that he has never behaved hurtfully towards you. Has he even acknowledged that how he broke up with you was cruel? I don't really think either of you are in a good place to be in a relationship with each other right now. This is not a moral judgement on either of you; it's simply that he is (at best) clearly not in control enough of his BPD to avoid hurting you, to apologize promptly if he does, or to take steps to change these behaviours, and your DPD is making it very hard for you to acknowledge that he is not perfect and inclined to forgive and minimize what he does to hurt you.
Okay, I think the analogy is like this. If someone handed you a smoothie and it was 90% your absolute favorite flavors and 10% garden dirt and bug poop, would it be a good smoothie? If he is 90% awesome and great and 10% emotionally abusive and controlling, it's not a good relationship, especially if he's not willing to acknowledge and work on that 10%. If you can't tell him he's hurting you because you're afraid he'll leave you, it's not a good smoothie.
This does not sound mutual. imo none of this is balanced by "staying on call literally all day with me after a bad incident with parents, singing to me and reassuring me". When in your relationship was that event, anyway? Because honestly from what you're saying it sounds like he started out really nice, then pulled away once you started getting too 'clingy' for him, treated you cruelly after you broke up with him because he said he didn't love you (which is a perfectly reasonable reason to break up), and now that he's alone and regretting it he's trying to get you back because he knows you have DPD and that coming back to him is what your brain is pushing you to do.
@Petra i met other boyfriend once or twice over skype, actually! other boyfriend clearly adored him and he was definitely clingy similar to me, but if boyfriend told other boyfriend he couldn't talk at any given time he would post on all his social media about how he was going to kill himself because he was so lonely in an attempt to guilt boyfriend into talking to him. and i'm not if he does know how much i'm hurt; some things, yes, he has to know, but in other ways he may just be being blunt and not be entirely aware of how harsh it came off to me. @Lissa Lysik'an he's trying to recover from his own mental illness, from years of sexual abuse from a 'friend' and physical/verbal abuse from father. and i don't think it's fair to say that people who are trying to recover only hurt themselves and never lash out, because that has never been my experience. @budgie i think i yelled at him twice, both when i was splitting. the first time i said '"fuck you" and immediately apologized for it, the second time i was very sarcastic and rude to him and told him to fuck off, vanished for 20 minutes, then apologized. also, i'm kind of confused because some people are saying "he is unambiguously abusive, run don't walk" and some people are saying "it's not good for you two to be together right now and that doesn't make either of you bad, it just isn't the right time and you aren't in the right places to do this in a healthy way." for the friend thing: there had been tension in the group for awhile, he tried to address it, they yelled, he yelled, they all decided it would be best for them to part ways. i watched it happen. it was mutual. he is still upset about it because he and another person in the group were pretty much inseparable at one point, they considered each other brothers. that was relatively early on in the relationship. and it wasn't an isolated event, he did a lot of things like that. i don't remember when it was he started pulling away; he did tell me at one point that he thought he was too dependent on me, like i was on him, and it wasn't healthy for either of us. that was before the breakup. also i feel i need to clarify that i didn't say "i can't date you any more" after he told me he didn't love me, i told him i was cutting off all contact and that he should delete my phone number/skype/any other form of contact. i asked for him to cut me off and then regretted it.
I don't feel like I know enough to say that he's unambiguously abusive, but the fact that @rats says there's more that isn't in here is certainly inclining my opinion that way. I do feel confident enough to say it's not good for you two to be together right now, because at best your current mental health situations and coping mechanisms are unhealthy for yourselves and each other. If my SO told me he didn't love me, especially after calling me "well, he called you something very nasty related to your disorder, I'm not repeating it", I'd tell him the same thing, because I would need time alone to cope with it. If the next time we spoke he told me that he'd never loved me, I'd never speak to him again. Because you haven't said that he has, I'm going to assume that he hasn't acknowledged that what he said was cruel, which is a further tick in the "these two shouldn't be together" column. And I wouldn't count it if you prompted him. If I'd said something similar I would be agonizing over it and would apologize to my SO the first chance I got (and several times afterwards); needing to be prompted for it would just be an indication that he's only thinking of the impact to himself, and not of how his behaviour affects others. Talking about how much he misses you and sending you unsolicited nudes, too, just seems like more behaviour designed to bring you back to him, not behaviour intended to make restitution.
@budgie he called me that after he agreed to be friends with me, not before telling me he didn't love me. no, he hasn't acknowledged it. i'm still not sure he knows how much ALL of it hurt me--i mean,calling me a mean name was deliberate, maybe, but he was angry. the bluntness of how he broke up with me might not have been deliberate, in which case he might not think an apology is necessary. .....letting me come back to him at all practically counts as making restitution, in my book.
If you hurt someone you apologize, regardless of whether it was intentional. If you hurt someone in anger, you apologize, end of story. If you are not sure whether you hurt someone, you ask. And if you don't acknowledge that you did wrong, it's not making restitution.
Plus, I'd argue it's not really restitution if the reasons for doing it are all about his needs and wants and have nothing to do with yours. Which is... kinda transparent given how the chain of events has unfolded this far.
I still don't think it's appropriate, regardless of when in the conversation it transpired. Actually, like @Petra says, it's messed up to say you can be friends and then to insult you. Also, this is a good example of how at best your mental health conditions make you two bad for each other. He was angry. That means he should know that the situation was upsetting, because it was upsetting to him. That means he should understand that you might have been hurt as well. The most benign explanation I can come up with is that it literally does not occur to him that a situation that hurts him hurts you, and that's fucked up. The other (frankly more likely) situation is that he doesn't care that it hurt you, which is even more fucked up.
im away from home rn so this will be brief for now: - right after the breakup occurred, the ex-bf was venting on social media about how "this was [gills'] loss" and "im the best he'll get so now he's screwed" (paraphrasing) and various other similar things, which is more typical of someone who's been broken up with someone, not someone who does the actual breaking off - struck me as kinda counter-intuitive, a little weird and blamey to gills?? - major red flag for me was the description of how he treated an ex boyfriend (again, gills' ex was the one who broke things off, so this struck me as majorly vindictive) - said ex boyfriend was majorly suicidal, and on his birthday, gills' ex gifted him a bottle of bleach with "DRINK ME" or something to that effect in big sharpie letters {edited to fix pronouns!!}
i am sorta uncomfortable with the implication of "he should know that hurt you" because...well, maybe he should have, but maybe he didn't. i've been in plenty of situations before where i accidentally hurt someone and had no idea they were hurt, and they were anry because it was obvious to them and to other people but i truly just. had no idea. also, he didn't reach out to try to be friends with me. i reached out to him and he allowed it, he was clearly still angry, so that's why he called me a name. also @rats just for accuracy's sake, the bleach bottle had the shia labeouf Do It meme pasted on the side, not drink me. (also i know this was likely just an accident but i'm a trans guy and would rather not be referred to by female pronouns)
