Actions speak louder than words...

Cliche? Yes. True? Absolutely.

An aspect of our relationship that was extremely damaging was that I would almost never do what I said I would. I would say something like...I will change or I'll do that for you and more often than not, I didn't follow up on it. I didn't change and I didn't do the things I said I would - even little things like posting a letter, getting petrol etc. I'd literally drive almost-ex up the wall. I'd procrastinate, apologise, delay, apologise and generally do things when and if it suited me, much to the frustration of almost ex. And when we'd talk about it, if he got a word in amongst my defensive excuses, I'd promise him I would change. And I might for a while, but then I'd always slip back into old habits. And of course, a few weeks later we'd be talking about the same thing again. 18 years of this does nothing for building of trust and confidence between two people.


The reason I'm thinking about this is because in the last 2 days, I've seen it in two other relationship scenarios. One involves a close friend of mine, who is married to a guy who has similar personality traits/dysfunctionalities to me. Needless to say, after 3 years being married, she's had enough and moved out. He wasn't treating her or her sons very well, taking them for granted and being generally inconsiderate (he didn't mean it of course, we never do), but nonetheless, the actions were there. She'd talk to him, he'd nod his head and say he understands now and promise change AND... when the fight was finished, he'd promptly go back to the way he was before. It was like nothing had ever happened. Just words, no change.

Now that she's moved out, he's treating his family better and things are better than they were before. But is she about to move back? No, because she doesn't trust him and no matter what he says or does, she always has that memory of what things were like before. And nothing can erase or make that memory better. It's there, period.

The other scenario was on TV. The guy didn't want to take the girl back because the experience she's created for him was that he wasn't as important as the things that she HAD to do. So even though she promised him it would be different this time, he wasn't convinced because she'd broken the promise so many times.

For me, I didn't get this. Even as I write this, I know how ridiculous that sounds. I always thought that if I said sorry or I didn't mean it, that would be enough to make things better again. After a long time (probably too long), that just didn't cut it anymore and he's had enough. So even though I have changed and he has noticed it, the trust in me is just not there because of the experiences he's had in the past.

Conclusion: it will take a very long time for him to see me as I am now and not the ranting, BPD afflicted lunatic he remembers me to be. It's hard to accept, but it's the way it is.

Good night.