Why does it feel so good to hurt the ones we love?

VirginiaEsquire wrote: Is it possible that the pwBPD is trying to cause the person close to them to feel the pain that the pwBPD is feeling, i.e., to sort of work out their emotions through the other person by making them express what the pwBPD is feeling about themselves?

Yes. It's like throwing ball with emotions! *Catch!*
I often feel thats all what I can do.

Because they hurt me, & I'll be damned if they think hurting me doesn't come with consequences. Even if they don't realize they're being punished or what for, I try to train people to associate doing certain things to me with shortly experiencing something painful. Like slapping a child's hand when they reach for the stove. They don't know sh!t about stoves but they know it HURTS to even TRY touching one! I keep thinking that maybe certain people in my life will go, "Hmm. When I do this to her, something bad happens to me. Let me stop doing this."

If that doesn't work, then at least it gets the message across to the other person that I am not their doormat. I am not inferior. We are equals or we are nothing. Period. End of story. You are not going to have the power to break me down without knowing I can do the same to you. If I fear you, you will fear me. If you are a threat, you will know I am one too.

So it feels like I'm taking back the 50% of power, the equality I deserve in any relationship.

Havoctoria wrote:So it feels like I'm taking back the 50% of power, the equality I deserve in any relationship.

That's interesting. This sort of "50% rule" is very important for me as well.
Responsibility, what everyone deserves..
Like it's hard to let things just go. Im vindictive

Do you easily feel guilty?

Kiskiskis wrote:Do you easily feel guilty?

It depends. I don't feel guilty for the things most people think I should feel guilty about (and I shouldn't feel guilty about those things; they don't violate any of my codes), but for some reason I always feel guilty after winning an argument. If a person so much as re-evaluates their own opinion after hearing mine, I feel guilty and embarrassed. It's so weird.

So you are embarrased on behalf of that other person. Thats a bit strange.
I guess my guilt is as messed up as other emotions. I dont often feel guilty, not even when I know I should. But when I really shouldnt feel that - I do.

I don't know if I feel it on their behalf or not.

Guilt is strange. It took me a long time to even recognize the feeling. I just knew sometimes I felt... "icky". Something in the "Shame" category, but not shame, not humiliation and not embarrassment. I also knew I couldn't describe or imagine what guilt feels like. So one day I put the two together. Now I think I (subjectively) understand "guilt", but now I don't know why I feel it when I do.

Most people my age don't have this problem. There should be a "Reset" button for life. I demand a do-over.

I know how you feel kind of. I'm usually the one getting hurt but I strike back sometimes, selfishly.
When my girlfriend was in a 'bad mood' she was annoyed at me for no reason and mentioned the time I got jealous because of her liking other guys things and said "don't come see me i'll probably make you cry again" which to me was a horrible thing to say... even if she didn't mean it in a bitchy kind of way... I really felt like snapping at her and shouting at her but I managed to withhold myself. I could have said so many things to her.

You feel good because in your mind you lower the other person below you, they get hurt and you feel like you have won. Winning and excelling above others is a way to raise yourself above them in and inflate your own image. Its a vindictive need to retailiate. It makes you feel good temporarily, but hurting other person so you feel better about yourself is neurotic and not a healthy way of deailing with others.

When the other person does this to you and if its genuine criticism can you try to thinking about it and then talk it out with them and if its just insulting hurtful comments can try standing up for your self instead?

You know i never used to do this, but it is a bad habit to get into and unhealthy for the relationship if you want it to be healthy anyway.

Growing up i was always criticized, cut down, put down, even if i was good. I never would stick up to her, never say anything ever bc i thought if i did she would not love me anymore. I never verbally said i hate you, or u r a b even as a teen even as by then all of it was a fester bomb. Keeping all hut feelings abd anger to myself bc i wasnt allowed to express or feel anger

Well in relationship all of them, i continued this pattern and the criticism followed me now by my partner or friend. Never say anything back, swallow it down. Til i had mini blowups about stuff from now to a year ago things said n done to me but only alone. Neever was i angry tho, never angry when i should be.

Then came abusive relationship s. I took it for many years the verbally mentally abusive stuff. My first i raise my voice, he say if u ever yell at me again ill leave, if you become fat ill keave. So never did i raise my voice. I did get fat, but he didnt. Go. When i realized what it was i left. About 3 years of abuse. He still scares me to this day.

My husband now we had horrible things he used to say. He finally got to me one day after 3 years, i blew up and got out of the car and walked down the highway! I was. Enraged nad, i had not actually felt like that but once in my teen years. I felt so ashamed it came out, that i said did it. He said it was good to see anger in me. ( i thought u r crazy) well that genie never went back in the bottle. Oh i could not control what i never felt and it came out in everybody. They ask me to change back, no i can't.

There were a total of four times i hit my husband bc i felt threatened and he boxed me in. One time he hit me to stop me from keeping hitting him. Well i learned something. I can use my mouth to say dont crowd me, dont get in my face. Before i never knew i could do this. I always hit bc i was afraid and that he would hit me. I was very ashamed, and am still today.

We had horrible fight, he say cruel things, insults. Finally i start doing back, include sarcasm even when he maje comments. This is bad, hard to stop. I usually say something very true and it is the most hurtful thing. Of course i regret bc i have wounded himand he wont forget.

Finally i learned that i have bpd, i come to accept it myself. He too accept that about me and we each try not to do our old ways. I tell him kwave me alone and mostly he does. I tell him i don't like how you are talking to me, treating me right now he stops. If i hear one thing i ask is this what u mean, bc i hear cruel things that often not said at all bc i have a problem with any criticism. Well just that alone cut down our fights the severity and duration and working on ny reaction. I don't have to react and storm off, i can listen and talk later. Say u know this hurt me when... or u r making me angry irritated frustrated bc i feel u r not listening to me.

This communication has been extremely difficult. Sometimes i revert when extremely triggers me. But our relationship has really turned around past two years. We have broken up or i have left rather during a extreme trigger event/ hallucination delusion 3 x once a year for past three years.

I am not leaving again. We have been seperated the lounges three months. He through this last time and i decided, we will both be healthy do our own work on our selves and stuff together. We will not insult or do old ways. He really tries to get my bpd, but only when i explained my thoughts did this start to really affect things, this was extremely difficult and he always didnt always taje it well but then i see him stop doing it and stop talking when he is triggered something, leave ne alone when i ask. Or i keave til i am calmer.

Or he does. We started creation of boundaries eacaeachand our own alone time to release tension stress and allow individual seperation and this helps even more. I no longer see it as a abusive relationship. But a healthier relationship. I know we were both equally abusive to eachother. Bc i did not stop once i started, it went on for about since 4 years.

I know he has npd, bpd or hpd. But i want it to work, it is extremely difficult and heartbreak alot. But i love him so deeply, and obviously he does me (even though i don't always believed him when he says it) otherwise he would have not stuck around for the nightmare times. So i figured a way to maje it work. But i had to fully understand him too bc we speak different languages it seems half the time. He thinks im talking about him when i say i feel isolated trapped and like i don't know how i got here or who i am, but as i said no, not you or anything to do with you, i don't want you to do anything or fix it but listen when i say i feel this way and y. I make myself feel this way and i dont like it. Im figuring it out myself. That actually ended the beginning of a fight bc he felt i was blamed him. Actually I was just conversing w him! That made me realize he does what i do! He hears opposite what i say! What craziness! Now i get him. Now we both get eachother, it only took almost 9 years! And lots of screaming crying and frustration.

I don't enjoy hurting him overall, but at the time its ocurring and hes said i am cruel when i wasnt and he heard or thought i said something i didnt. A brutality honest statement at that moment does feel good. I do regret it later tho. I do apologize for it, but its really always there. Just like every thing he says is there in mine.