Are people afraid to communicate with us?
In the whirlwind turbulence of my relationships, both platonic and romantic, I’ve always landed in this situation where I’ve overwhelmed the other person, monologued too frequently about my pain and emotions, and the person blows up at me. It always feels like it’s with little warning. Historically, I try to take the dialectic approach that two things can be true—they should have told me that they needed a break, or that I was being inconsiderate AND I should have been mindful of the space I was taking.
But you don’t know better until you know and experience consequences of your actions. I feel betrayed in a way by all the people who never were truthful with me and explained the impact of my behavior. I figured it out way too late after I’d already lost pretty much everyone.
Should I feel compassionate towards people for being afraid to communicate with us? We can be very intense and volatile. I can see how it’s hard to tell someone you care about that their behavior and reactivity is too much. But I’ve never actually outwardly crashed out on anyone—ever. My BPD traits are very inward, with the exception of the emotion dumping. My behavior can be considered inconsiderate, but not abusive, or consciously malicious. I end up feeling like the worst person alive, because of how much I don’t want to hurt people.
I’m having a hard time grappling with the contradiction that both of these things can be true. If they were both true, how come I could never repair those relationships? Why could we not both come to the table with our part in the mess and meet the other where they were?
I’ve been told my an ex before that I should have just known better than to be so intense and intolerable of my emotions and monologuing with no prior explicit indication that it was a problem. I have a lot of shame around my BPD traits. So much.
Why can’t people just be upfront, in plain language and say “this is too much for me right now?” Or “I don’t have the capacity to go over this topic again”
Sure, it would have hurt my feelings, but I would have gotten over it eventually and learned, and saved that relationship potentially.
Idk.