stay with me?

@hankster wha....?? what are you talking about?

you're right, I don't tend to get angry easily but how did you figure that from what I wrote?

Hey darlin.....

I'm thinking this is the situation I'm gonna be in. Maybe I shouldnt think that so early in the process. I'm hoping she will be there when I need her. As best as I can remember, she did mention helping me thru a highly-emotional issue when it happens. I just dont know what that will entail. Why in theeeee hell do I think so much?

a) you didn't get mad at boyfriend b) the sub stuff c) I'm the same way!! hey ya know the hankster may be living like a nun now, but she was quite the girl in her day! we did the open r/s thing too, ya know! funny story, bf (2nd mr hankster) thought it was fine to bring people home, so okay, I brought someone home and shut my bedroom door, bf comes home later. this was in california. there's a very minor earthquake that night, but it sets bf's stupid windchimes in MY room a-jangling. bf gets upset and starts crying because he thinks we're having such a great time in there, we're making the apartment complex bounce! i'm not proud...

oh but I WAS mad at him yesterday for not valuing our date-day agreement. but generally no we don't get into screaming matches all that often. We talk. I say this is bothering me, he points out all the ways that it's my fault, I take that for face-value, get mad at myself then and in the case of yesterday rage at MYSELF for ruining our precious date-day that I had looked forward to all week.

But I know he's supportive of me. I know he loves me. And I know I put tremendous pressure on him all the time which is why I need another relationship in my life. I know it's good for him to get out and spend time with other people too. I think that's healthy and I was glad he went out on a date Saturday night since I knew that Sunday he was gonna spend the whole day with me. But then it didn't happen. He went out with his guy friend instead. Then I fell into crises.

I'm not mad at him now. I'm hurt. I want him to recognize how that hurt me and how it was a thoughtless thing to do but I know he didn't do it intentionally and then I want him to offer to make it up to me by offering me another date day later this week. Except that he's already told me he has a massively busy week this week. That's still okay as long as I'm at the top of the list for a date. If he decides to go out with any of his other girlfriends before me this week there's gonna be some serious **** coming down. I love him but I will totally leave his *** if he doesn't treat me right and he knows this.

This is why I don't want to marry him officially. I like having the power to leave quickly and easily. As soon as we get married I feel like he can stop being on his best behavior with me and will fall into a pattern of taking me for granted. I am NOT into that.

*this* is his best behavior?

that's what I meant by not getting mad, you took it out on yourself instead. is that what happened with ex-T too? you say you had a happy childhood, but then where did this reaction, this "having to excuse the other's behavior," come from? Doing DBT, I discovered that "deserve" in a positive sense was not in my vocabulary! I deserve crap happening to me, but I don't deserve happiness. That was a real eye-opener for me. We had a sentence-completion exercise, and it was like, I can't do this. Of course the idiot leader was all, well the word means blah blah blah, i'm like, I KNOW what the word means, b!

Lilly, this part of what you wrote really describes my relationship with my husband before I went to therapy. It wasn't until I was in therapy that I realized what was really happening and how much it contributed to my depression. As I changed and stopped allowing him to blame me for everything, our relationship became much more difficult. We're in marriage counseling now. Please know that this behavior by your boyfriend isn't going to change and it constitutes NOT being supportive. We all deserve better.

SADNESS ALERT.


OK, the title of this thread is making me think about my beloved Bette Midler and her song Stay With Me, from the movie The Rose. Bloody hell, what an emotional, beautiful, sad song.

hi lilly, i'm so sorry you are having such a hard time with the men in your life currently. you did stay safe last night and that is great. progress not perfection ya know. i wanted to mention that i've heard that a lot of Ts will refer out clients who they believe have bpd. this is quite common from what i hear. they seem to feel the clients need specialized treatment, like dbt, and since they are not trained in it they don't feel equipped to help the client in the best fashion. i wouldn't be surprised if that is what happened with your ex-T. i would think it's also perfectly acceptable to send him an email or contact him in some other fashion and tell him you are having a hard time understanding why he terminated your therapy and ask if he would explain it clearly to you.

all the best.