I have known this person (37M) on and off for almost 3 years now. He was told he might have BPD by his psychologist before, but has never been diagnosed officially by a psychiatrist. However, he started his first diagnosis session last week.
Over 3 years, I notice there's a pattern of behavior in him:
- Whenever he is under a lot of life stress and anxiety, he flips from such a loving, caring to a cranky and mean person.
- Which leads to situations whenever I bring up a need/ concern (valid needs/ concerns btw, for example, him STILL talking to women he slept with, or me wanting to have a scheduled call), he would frame it as "making demands" and get terribly irritated with me.
- And then I would raise a concern of how his action makes me feel uncomfortable/ hurt, he'd DARVO, blaming me for making “too many demands” that spikes up his anxiety and adds extra stress to his life. Oh, and don’t forget the usual trope “there’re already too many things happening in my life and I can’t afford having conversations like this/ I can’t risk losing my mind by talking to you”.
All in all, it's to guilt-trip me, avoid accountability for facing the hurtful impacts of his actions on me, and for having to handle my needs. Basically, I'm the perpetrator and he’s the victim.
Yesterday I pointed out this pattern of behaviour of his and how they are abusive to my view, how closely they are related to BPD, and urged him to work on them. He asked for time to think more clearly bc now he's anxious and afraid, also bc he thinks I'm trying to hurt him and "condition his behaviour", i.e., control him. Like ffs....
Then he texted me apologizing but it'd come in the formula of "I'm sorry but [something happens that makes me act like that, so basically my reactions are not my choice and I'm not responsible for them]. And then trying to save his self-image by appearing self-pitying and/or self-aware, but doesn't propose any tangible actions to solve the issues (see the picture).
My therapist said that to frame a behaviour as abusive or not, the motivation behind the behaviour must be related to attaining power/ control. I feel like BPD people, knowingly or inadvertently, use these tactics - DARVO, blame-shifting, self-pitying - to gain control over the situation and steer it in the way they want, which is avoiding accountability and shame. I particularly want to highlight the self-pitying trap - I used to spend 2 years trying to soothe and validate him whenever he turned to this tactic, and in the process of doing that, my empathy ass was willing to back down, let my concerns die, which is exactly what he wants in the first place.
I 90% want to get out of this relationship. I honestly don't think he's gonna come back showing any willingness to do the work on his issues. Also, the hanging-in-there state of waiting and the discomfort of uncertainty are giving me a lot of distress. He used to "take space" like this before - it took a month.
Should I tell him that I want to end the relationship in a couple of days? Or should I cling to the 10% hope that he'll change and wait for him? How long should I wait?