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BG, here's a question for you ...

Recognizing and applauding your realization that "this is who I am and if they don't like it, tough noogies" did you ever get to a place where someone you really cared about said "I don't like when you do this thing" and you re-evaluated your "tough noogies" approach?

For me, I had a lot of the "screw you if you don't like who I am" and it was like this major chip on my shoulder. Almost like a double dog dare to see if they'd insist I change just so I could tell them "piss off, like it or leave it!"

But then I came to realize that I played a role in things too. That I could stick to "this is who I am no matter what" or I could re-evaluate my approach to that based on my desired outcomes. With my husband (before we were married) he might say "I don't like when you do this thing" and I had the choice: I could remain steadfast in my choice to do those things with the likely result being that he walk away from our relationship or I could examine how my doing that thing was impacting our relationship & decide whether I wanted to keep doing that thing (whether that thing was more important than our relationship) or if there was a middle ground (if I could achieve similar results while doing that thing in a slightly different way) or if I would need to decide to value the relationship more than the thing itself.

I guess what I'm getting at is the correlation between their words to me (which I might have seen as an ultimatum in the past, "forcing" me to change who I am because they insist upon it) and my getting the results I really want.

"If I do this thing, I increase the likelihood that the other person will get tired of being around me and want to walk away. Is it more important to me that I hold to this way of doing things, of presenting myself, or is it more important that I work on salvaging the relationship?"

I haven't said it in a long time but recovery work is very much like the pendulum on a clock - from one extreme to the other, from one side to the other side, before settling in somewhere in the middle.

With Borderline, we spend the bulk of our time morphing into the people we think others want us to be so when we get into recovery, we think that we have to be the exact opposite - find this Genuine Self and hold onto it for dear life, refusing to change at all. Ultimately though, I think healthy happy living comes when we learn to bend a bit in the wind rather than remaining absolutely rigid or flow with every slight breeze. It then beomes a matter of weighing the options - hold strong, bend a bit or give in entirely - depending on the results desired.

For the most part, I would agree that we can generally say "this is it, like it or lump it" when it comes to strangers or general acquaintances. The closer in our circle people get, however, there becomes a steeper trade-off. If we tell them to lump it, we risk losing them from our circle and the choice then becomes ours. They've told us "When you do that, it comes across this way and I don't want to be around that" so we now have information available to us, we have the power to make an informed decision.

We always retain the ability to choose to continue in our initial path. We can continue to say "tough noogies" even when someone says "If/when you do this, it makes me not want to be around you." They share information but we still have the power to make a choice.

Do you think you've made ANY changes in your behaviour toward / with / around your husband?

Yes, Ash, there has been a middle ground for me. I think I was being a bit too black-and-white in my statement here!

To tell you the truth, I have not had friends come to me and say things like "I don't like when you do this or that." It really has not come up. The only friend who did something like that was my ex-friend, who accused me of "using my depression" to gain sympathy. We are no longer friends. We clashed too much, about that and other things. My H is another story. He has said things to me and I take what he says under consideration. It depends on what it is. He is overly sensitive about how I come across to other people so it depends on what he's talking about.

Mostly my issues center around me being friendly to people. For instance, I can be in Starbucks (or the supermarket, or anywhere) and start up a conversation with someone. My father was that way, my grandfather was that way, and so is my sister. It makes my H uncomfortable - he's not used to it. I don't do this all the time, and I am very selective in who I might talk to. But my H ends up putting me down and making it out like it's a character flaw. I don't see it as a character flaw. I have decided to celebrate the fact that I can be a friendly person. I am tired of feeling put down because of it. It's part of who I am. In fact, in the past, some family members used to laugh at me about it - make fun of me. I did not appreciate that! Talk about invalidation! So I am very sensitive to that.

I had a very good friend many years ago who did have some constructive criticism for me. She had a therapy background and knew me pretty well. So I listened to what she said and most probably applied what she said to help me change.

My H and I try to help each other. As long as we can talk respectfully to each other, we will each listen. We are each learning to respect each other and be aware of what the other one wants/needs. We've been doing this for the past few months and as far as I can tell, it's working out okay. We have such different personalities that we struggle with dealing with how the other thinks/feels. I know he has baggage from when he was a kid, so I try to take that into consideration.

Sorry - I tend to talk in too black-and-white ways. I have not had to use the "tough noogies" approach with anyone. What I think I should have said was that as I am learning who I am and what I want, I have more self-esteem and feel comfortable being who I am and being in my own skin. I am trying to enjoy myself more. I have more self-confidence.

My anxiety and depression issues get in the way, but I am doing the best I can right now.