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Is It Time to Get Out?
NopeNotMyName
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Relationship thread time, folks! Obviously this is an alt.
The background on this is pretty simple: I've been dating a woman for the last year after the close of a long, long term relationship. When we met we were both in a "bad space" and beginning the process of recovering our lives and getting things back on track. Things are, and have been, pretty amazing on a 1-to-1 basis. We're very, very similar people and get along immensely well. The time we spend together is always great, be it out and about the town or staying in doing next-to-nothing. The sex is amazing. Amazing. The best ever.
At this point, about 15 months in, I'm beginning to have a number of concerns popping up in my head surrounding if she is someone with whom I should really continue paving my way forward in life.
We both began from a rather depressed state. We both were doing a lot of drugs (THC and alcohol) and generally felt pretty lost. I had gone from a decent, professional job earlier the year before I met her to essentially being unemployed after burning out and then finally taking a huge paycut to simply find work that I knew was temporary. She was working from home in her field, also not making a ton of money. We were both fairly bored with our jobs, but we also both knew that we needed to move forward with getting our respective selves back in order.
Over the first six months I ended up getting myself into therapy, finding a decent apartment and putting things back on track, personally. We had a rough patch around the holidays and got through it. She found a much, much better job about six months ago and I, as well, recently found a position which is far more in-line with where I wanted to be than before. I feel like I got things back on track, addressed my various flaws and issues, and was able to pull myself up from the ditch to feel a hell of a lot more like myself. At this point I feel like I'm doing great.
She, on the other hand, hasn't been as successful, in my opinion.
My main concern is that as much as I love her and as great as we work as a couple, I'm very concerned that she simply is incapable of addressing her shortcomings and growing as a person. The pattern of behavior is upsetting, to me, as someone who cares about her quite a lot. The basic issue is that she seems incapable of taking responsibility for her faults. When things are good, she'll trumpet how awesome she is to anyone who can hear, but when something goes wrong it's always someone else's fault or there's a reason why it's okay, for her, to come up short. While I jumped into, and made a huge effort at, getting into therapy, she has yet to make the first call even though, a year ago, we both identified it as necessary. This has all sort-of culminated in the fact that she received a poor performance review recently which was full of all the stuff that has been an issue with her job from the beginning: procrastination, frequently leaving early because she feels like it; being confrontational with people who she needs to work well with. All of this is traced back to a "my way or the high way" sort of mentality. When you toss in the fact that she's always right it gets harder to deal with on a day-to-day basis. After the first few weeks on common talks about how she's getting in trouble at work for going in late/leaving early she promised that she'd do her 9-5 head-to-desk grind. Yet every week there was some reason why she had to leave early at least one day.
Mostly, I think, I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experiences. I don't get stonewalled, but I can tell it is always difficult for her to take any sort of criticism. I try to push as best I can, but I'm always afraid of pissing her off when we should, by all accounts, be using our time together to smile and have fun (which is what we usually do). I just fear that long-term, I may be working with a ticking-bomb that will, professionally/personally explode sometime down the line. I worry that she may not be able to hold a job, for instance, if the current trend continues.
Any feedback is appreciated.
The background on this is pretty simple: I've been dating a woman for the last year after the close of a long, long term relationship. When we met we were both in a "bad space" and beginning the process of recovering our lives and getting things back on track. Things are, and have been, pretty amazing on a 1-to-1 basis. We're very, very similar people and get along immensely well. The time we spend together is always great, be it out and about the town or staying in doing next-to-nothing. The sex is amazing. Amazing. The best ever.
At this point, about 15 months in, I'm beginning to have a number of concerns popping up in my head surrounding if she is someone with whom I should really continue paving my way forward in life.
We both began from a rather depressed state. We both were doing a lot of drugs (THC and alcohol) and generally felt pretty lost. I had gone from a decent, professional job earlier the year before I met her to essentially being unemployed after burning out and then finally taking a huge paycut to simply find work that I knew was temporary. She was working from home in her field, also not making a ton of money. We were both fairly bored with our jobs, but we also both knew that we needed to move forward with getting our respective selves back in order.
Over the first six months I ended up getting myself into therapy, finding a decent apartment and putting things back on track, personally. We had a rough patch around the holidays and got through it. She found a much, much better job about six months ago and I, as well, recently found a position which is far more in-line with where I wanted to be than before. I feel like I got things back on track, addressed my various flaws and issues, and was able to pull myself up from the ditch to feel a hell of a lot more like myself. At this point I feel like I'm doing great.
She, on the other hand, hasn't been as successful, in my opinion.
My main concern is that as much as I love her and as great as we work as a couple, I'm very concerned that she simply is incapable of addressing her shortcomings and growing as a person. The pattern of behavior is upsetting, to me, as someone who cares about her quite a lot. The basic issue is that she seems incapable of taking responsibility for her faults. When things are good, she'll trumpet how awesome she is to anyone who can hear, but when something goes wrong it's always someone else's fault or there's a reason why it's okay, for her, to come up short. While I jumped into, and made a huge effort at, getting into therapy, she has yet to make the first call even though, a year ago, we both identified it as necessary. This has all sort-of culminated in the fact that she received a poor performance review recently which was full of all the stuff that has been an issue with her job from the beginning: procrastination, frequently leaving early because she feels like it; being confrontational with people who she needs to work well with. All of this is traced back to a "my way or the high way" sort of mentality. When you toss in the fact that she's always right it gets harder to deal with on a day-to-day basis. After the first few weeks on common talks about how she's getting in trouble at work for going in late/leaving early she promised that she'd do her 9-5 head-to-desk grind. Yet every week there was some reason why she had to leave early at least one day.
Mostly, I think, I'm wondering if anyone has had similar experiences. I don't get stonewalled, but I can tell it is always difficult for her to take any sort of criticism. I try to push as best I can, but I'm always afraid of pissing her off when we should, by all accounts, be using our time together to smile and have fun (which is what we usually do). I just fear that long-term, I may be working with a ticking-bomb that will, professionally/personally explode sometime down the line. I worry that she may not be able to hold a job, for instance, if the current trend continues.
Any feedback is appreciated.
NopeNotMyName on
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If you are fine with that situation, then stay the course. If you need someone who is going to have a better job or professional position in the future then dump her.
Or the third option is trying to get her to realize what she needs to do in order to improve. It will probably be tough if she has the attitude that it isn't her fault.
but they're listening to every word I say
Mostly, I think my concern comes from the third option. I have, over the last year, gone from not talking about things that are issues for her, to talking about them. She didn't get the ball rolling on going to a doctor until I forced the issue because not saying anything caused nothing to happen, but when we spoke about it it became a huge fight.
In a lot of ways I feel like she has a block in place which prevents her from having to deal with unpleasant things about herself. I bring something up; she gets defensive; the conversation turns to the object of her defense and away from the subject; we fight and then drop it, never actually talking about the issue.
To be clear, she is a smart, wonderful person. I guess I'm nervous about taking steps forward (such as moving in together) because I'm uncertain if she'll ever be able to get past all of this. i'm concerned, in part, because I used to be like that, too. I had a series of ego-killing, humbling experiences in college many years ago (thank god for that timing) which snapped me out of my self-centered point of view.
The cost/benefit is exactly what I'm doing, but can't seem to come to a real conclusion.
The closer you can be towards sounding the first way the better. Letting problems stew is going to make you tend towards the second.
I'd try helping her grow as a person. Then, if that doesn't work, ask yourself "Can I deal with the situation as is?"
but they're listening to every word I say
but they're listening to every word I say
She needs to first accept that she has issues and then take steps to fix them. You can't force her - and reminding her that she should engage with them will only make things worse if she really doesn't want it.
This is one of the sticking points, for me. When I press and press and force the issue it will get done and behavior patters will change, usually in small ways that can add up to large changes.
Is there any suggestion for having these conversations that may help to lessen the fighting? There's certainly light at the end, I'm just concerned it isn't worth the journey.
Which is not to say that people in happy relationships are perfect or that there's never any room for personal improvement; my wife has this habit where she'll take knives which I'm still using as I cook and put them into the sink with the dirty dishes, and it drives me up the wall at times because she does it so often that I'll run out of knives half way through making dinner. Sometimes I wish she'd stop doing that, and I'm sure she'd say that she wishes I'd stop forgetting to put dirty dishes in the sink so that she could feel less compelled to clean up after me when I cook. But if she never fixed that one bad habit, and if I never fixed mine, we would still both be perfectly happy to grow old and die in bed together.
So I guess I'd summarize my advice by saying that it's okay to wish your significant other would change something, and it's okay to want to help them change. However, if you cannot conceivably see yourself as being happy with that person even if they end up not changing after all, then you are probably not the person for her, and she is probably not the person for you.
And I do think she's worth it. I'm just hesitant of spending the next few years of my life hoping that things get better. The best I can ask for, here, are probably ways of approaching this that may have more success than the confrontational approach which has been the only thing that has actually led to a good result for her (and she wholeheartedly admits as such).
Oh I definitely got that. I had this paragraph in my initial post about how it's okay to want to change small stuff but big stuff is a no-go, but then I worried that the difference between small stuff and big stuff might be a judgement call sometimes or that you might skip parts if I made my answer four paragraphs long.
I think I also missed until your last post that she still is self-medicating (I'm looking back over your OP and I still don't see it in there for some reason -- I mostly see procrastination, refusal to accept short comings, etc). When you add self-medication to her constellation of behaviors, that makes an intervention-style encounter much more legitimate. It's absolutely okay to want or even need someone you love to stop a self-destructive behavior such as drug or alcohol abuse.
So here's something I'm noticing right now reading back through your posts:
The first thing that jumped out at me is that the language you use to summarize your primary concern is both confrontational and judgmental in tone. It's not simply that you're concerned about her self-destructive behaviors, you describe her as being "simply incapable," like she has some sort of intractable personal failing as a human being which makes the other behaviors a foregone conclusion. If you're approaching her with this attitude, you likely should not be surprised when any criticism towards her devolves into a fight; anyone is going to feel defensive when confronted with her issues like they're the result of her personal failings. And if you think she can't detect this sort of animosity after being with you for more than a year, you're wrong.
The second thing which jumped out at me is the way you juxtapose your own journey through recovery with hers. I'm wondering if some of the acrimonious attitude you have towards her current behaviors might not stem from the way you feel about your own past behaviors.
I don't bring either of these points up to invalidate your feelings about how your girlfriend behaves. Especially if she's still using drugs to self-medicate, you're allowed to dislike that. I do think you probably need to examine why you approach her behavior the way you do.
You're right that I approach it with a somewhat confrontational tone, especially here. I can say that it doesn't matter the tone or the approach, so far. I think a part of my language here is some of my exasperation and exhaustion. I think my language is ripped from closer to the point where we're fighting than when it gets brought up. Simply pointing things out, calmly, rationally and with care spins into the same loop.
I'll have to pay more attention to how I bring things up, for certain.
I think this is a big bullseye. When we first began dating we both agreed that it was a mandate on ourselves to pull ourselves from our respective low places. It has been difficult recently to see how much effort I put in against the very little she has done. In a way, I think I feel betrayed. It's like when you make that resolution with your best friend to go to the gym and every time they call and cancel for some reason or another.
Perhaps there's some resentment in there as well, as I feel like I did a lot of this because of her support and because I wanted to get better not only for myself but for her. To look back and forth and see that that same effort wasn't made makes me feel a bit like a chump.
I neglected, mostly because the OP came out of a lot of frustration earlier today, to say that she really has gotten better at many things. I will say that the progress I've seen is enough to warrant my attention and give hope for better tomorrows. I think that my fear is that I'll get stuck in this place where I have to provide the motivation for two less-than-motivated people. I sometimes feel like I neglect my own health/duty/enjoyment in order to try to take care of hers. Earlier in the relationship, before I knew better I would spend time doing a more-than-half clean of her apartment every weekend because she didn't do it herself unless I helped out (similar with other, small things). That was until I got so burned out on cleaning two apartments, etc. Since then these have been the sort of areas where things have become much, much better.
This has been extremely helpful. Part of why I came here was because I know that I'm not being anywhere close to objective.
Glad to hear it! My wife's a mental health professional who would be pissed as hell to know that I offer the occasional diagnosis over the internet based on an anonymous OP -- even if it's helpful once in a blue moon. So I should hasten to suggest that you might want to give your therapist a call and schedule an hour to talk about all of this:
I don't know a lot about couples who go through recovery together -- there are some pretty good reasons why AA frowns upon it when you fuck your sponsor. But I would imagine some of these feelings are not uncommon, and I would imagine that you're more than capable of working on them towards either a healthier relationship with your significant other or at least a healthy, recrimination-free break up if that ends up being the direction you want to go.
Our "mandate" was a pretty basic "get ourselves into our own therapies and get the jobs/lives we actually want to have". I think a lot of this is residual and is coming up now because I've put myself back into a really good place, and have been there since about February.
Most of it is probably frustration over watching her continue to suffer veiled as all the specific crap I was railing about in the OP. It kills me that she feels like crap all the time and it kills me that I can't seem to help her without going through a song-and-dance-with-raised-voices-and-resentment fight. The confrontations have been successful and she has thanked me for the effort. It just takes 3-4 hours of a day to get to a positive point. And on the other side, last fall she was doing similar things to get me to get my ass in gear. It all comes around.
Again, thank you all, Jebus/Sky/Sammy, for your words. I feel better and more calm and a bit less worried than I was feeling. H/A is the best, as always.
You just have to try as hard as you can to be as objective as you can. At the end of the day, though, you have to take care of yourself, and if someone in your life is holding you down from improving yourself, well, you have to do what you have to do.
I scheduled what I thought would be a fun day for us on Saturday, which morphed into a mopey collection of us both feeling awful. We were going to head out and do some shopping (she loves it and I don't hate it, at all), get a nice dinner at a Japanese steakhouse and then, if we felt up for it, go see a movie. It was a mostly standard dinner and movie sort of deal. The area I wanted to head out to was about 45-60 minutes from her place (30 from mine) and the first issue was that she didn't want to go so far away (she wasn't driving and we had plenty of time). The area is one that I know immensely well, even if it isn't around the corner from her apartment.
We have always had a wonderful history of some of the best sex either of us have ever had, due to my traveling, a shared, nasty cold we had over one weekend and the little scuffles we've been getting into we'd had sex once in the last month (before this it was 3-4 times a week). I ended up, when we got to the shops, making a few offhand comments about buying her something sexy. Suffice she got upset and accused me of objectifying her, which had a pretty chilling effect on my mood. We've never really had much of an issue, and this was a new reaction. We ended up just going back to her place and watching movies and smoking weed. Things were good after that.
After this weekend and a lot of thinking and talking, I'm beginning to really come about to the conclusion that this may not be the best of situations for me. I love her, and we get along great as long as we're doing what she wants to do, how she wants to do it. Currently, she outright refuses to come to my apartment in part because she's from further south than I am, and since I have fixed heat it isn't always the toastiest at my place. She tends to keep her heat around 74-77 from October to April, and is freezing otherwise. This means that we're always at her place, which is pretty much a pigsty (things grow in her sink routinely). She had made an effort to come to my apartment over the summer, but she mostly just wants me to come to her, always. It was always a concession for her.
I feel like I can't deal with it anymore. I think I'm getting confrontational because she's hurting herself with her bad habits which I've put up with for the last year. After a pretty crummy performance review at work on Friday, a part of which was concern over her time "out of the office" (having cigarettes, coming in late and leaving early), I finally spoke to her this morning and she told me that she got into work late. I don't know, but that somewhat drives me up the wall. The work day before she got specific feedback that that sort of behavior wasn't acceptable, and then she goes ahead and does it again. I'm seriously worried that she's going to get fired over shit that she has complete control over.
I don't think that this stuff would be as worrisome if she wasn't both so convinced she's right/the victim all the time and if she actually put in the effort to meet her responsibilities. I can understand this, completely, as I had a tough time over this last winter and actually was called out on excessive absenteeism and a few other things. I don't think she even knows about that as I just made a huge effort to fix the issues and avoid problems. In the end, I bounded up and put myself in an even better situation, eventually, with my work. I don't know, but I feel like a responsible adult will make the effort to not get fired, especially after what happened to her on Friday.
At this moment I just feel like there isn't anything I can actually do. It worries me because we're talking about moving in together, and if she willingly loses her job that effects me and not only her in that situation. I'm also not hugely interested in being the only person who cleans/cooks/etc. while she gets stoned on the couch.
I think a lot of this is just rambling, but I appreciate the feedback. Am I overreacting? I just worry so much that I'm being inadvertently taken advantage of or being a doormat.
The way you describe it, she seems to be a bit immature. Keeping her place a pigsty, coming in late to work all the time and not caring if she will get fired? Huge red flags. You cannot move in with this person.
If she continues on this way, the cons of the relationship will outweigh the pros and you will end it.
But if she doesn't want to change and sees no problems with her behavior, you can't do much either.
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I think it's time for you to move on.
You should be in a relationship with someone as they are, not with someone for who you think they might be some day. Basically, dont date someone with the goal of changing them.
I know, YOU changed. So you now feel like she should too. But at what point does that stop? You start working out and get ripped, so now you expect her to become a model?
It seems more noble because you arent talking physical, but are discussing aspects of her personality, but its still the same concept. If you dont love her for who she is, if you need her to be better, then YES, get out of the relationship. I dont think expecting someone to change is the basis for a healthy relationship.
What happened to the commitment she made? She needs to realize that sometimes the problem isn't everyone else, sometimes it is yourself.
Just be honest with her. Shit needs to change or it is done. Word it a little nicer and more diplomatic than that
but they're listening to every word I say
he was miserably failing at his university classes (although to be fair, i had failed one semester already), and as a result instead of fixing himself up and changing his major, he instead decided to change schools. At the new school, he'd be starting over again at a complete 4.0, which was his to lose, with all of his credits transferred. This meant, to him, that the classes that he was in at the time that weren't going to transfer were meaningless and so he stopped going. Big problem #1.
Transfer complete, he now went to another university about 30 minutes south of where I was. And that's where the other issues started to come in. If there was any time that we wanted to see each other, I had to drive to him. He refused to come up and visit me at my campus because he might get a ticket, but it was fine for me to drive to him and risk having my car towed.
There were lots of little things that added up like this, and eventually even though I loved him, I ended the relationship because we were just simply not going in the same direction with our lives anymore, and we were going to be absolutely miserable if we stayed together.
These things happen. You are both very young and there is plenty more time for you between now and the end of time. use this time of your youth to find some happiness. Enjoy yourself.
On a sidenote: I get her on the drugs thing. I have never smoked weed, and I have no desire to. I have worked with people who did and some of them actually required the marijuana to be able to function and others became utterly stupid and useless while high. If you want to do the drugs, then do the drugs if that is part of who you are. But if she doesn't like it, then that's her right as well. Relationships are a compromise though, not ultimatums.
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This is the best piece of advice in the thread. All of us have fallen into the trap of staying in a crap relationship thinking "everything would be awesome if only s/he would..." but it just doesn't work that way. Every day you'll get a creeping sense of resentment coming in that she isn't the person you think she should be, it'll get to the point where the relationship tears itself apart. The unfortunate truth is that true lasting change and personal improvement is a trick few people manage to pull off and hanging around counting on it to happen is foolish in the extreme.
On Monday I had my first therapy session in a month, due to my extensive work travel over the last few weeks. We had a chance to talk about a lot of the stuff that has been brought up here, as well as that my ex has recently announced that she's getting married. That's not something that I've shared here, and it has a good deal to do with why I've been feeling the way that I have about my relationship. It was a topic he wanted to discuss a month ago, but I really wasn't ready and hadn't processed it (it had happened the day before my previous session) quite yet. I think a good deal of my anxiety about my current relationship comes from the compare-and-contrast with my ex, who I was with for seven years.
I went from there to my girlfriend's place (I always do after therapy simply due to the closeness of the two locations) and we ended up having a very calm and rational conversation about the issues we have been facing. I had a chance to really express the things that I've been concerned about and she had a chance to air her own grievances.
The conversation we had was productive. The point that made it productive was that we explored her defensive response to hardship and trial, essentially where she explained to me, point blank, that when she is confronted with something that is less-than awesome about herself she does default into a defensive position and tends to take things very personally. The flip-side of the coin is that she internalizes her own shortcomings and failures and really beats herself up about them, just not in front of other people. The constructive side of the conversation was really just that we didn't fight or get upset with each other, and we were able to agree that if our relationship is going to work, she needs to let me in more and allow me to support her even when that means she's exposing a vulnerable side to me. I know it isn't easy for her, but I think that, in retrospect, a lot of my concerns as brought up here are all tied into being shut-out from her own struggles which make me feel powerless and useless. I end up feeling like she doesn't own her failures because she won't let anyone see that she's owning her failures. As someone who is supposed to love and support her, it's pretty impossible to do the latter if I can't be shown that there's something wrong.
And I'm confrontational about a lot of this stuff. I'm confrontational because there's only so much "nice" prodding I can do to be let into her actual thoughts and concerns when I'm presented with a firm wall and the absolute assertion that she's awesome, period. It's frustrating, and such was certainly spoken of at length.
The issues with responsibility are partially because her defense mechanism dictates that she needs to make the world think that she's awesome, especially when there are personal failures at work. It creates a sort-of zero-sum view for an outsider where there is a huge disconnect between the negative events and the positive persona she projects. I feel that she doesn't address issues because she immediately shifts to "I'm awesome, see?" mode and then uses it as a shield to prevent her from getting hurt. I feel like I better understand her, and hopefully this conversation and our future ones will help to break down the disconnect and make me feel more at ease.
I feel a lot less concerned about the relationship itself, but I'm still moving ahead gingerly. I love her, and we get along very, very well. I have never "clicked" with someone as well as I have with her, and there's a reason why I haven't jumped ship yet.
Overall, this thread has been absolutely wonderful. I want to thank you all for giving your advice and helping me to better pinpoint my concerns.
As it stands, I'm still concerned. At this time I've been let in enough on Monday to make me feel stronger and better about the relationship. Things seem to have shifted back to a better place, and the resentments we were both carrying around about the other have been constructively brought into the open and discussed without too much hostility. I'll be taking things slowly and short-term, but I'm back off from that ledge of impending relationship doom. I know, and have always known in the back of my mind somewhere, that she's working on these things and in a lot of ways making progress that's been hidden from me. I was concerned because she presented all of this all "not a problem because she's awesome" when in the end, she's been torturing herself about these shortcomings relentlessly. As long as I can be there to provide support and love, I think I'll feel much better due to being a part of the process and not just another person she feels like she has to hide everything from.
Again, thanks to all of you. I really appreciate the time and effort in giving me feedback.
Might help to read up on some of it to help understand how her self defense mechanisms work - and just how painful it can be sometimes to suffer from some of those traits.
These two links sum the behaviors up really well (and again, she may not exhibit all of them or to the extreme of some of these).
http://www.psychologydegree.net/wp-content/themes/EduNetwork/psychology-resources/pdfs/7-Anonymous Account of the Borderline Personality Disorder.pdf
http://www.bpdcentral.com/images/Ihateyou.pdf
If she admits that she has issues that she is working on - that's a huge step, especially considering most borderlines assert that "there isn't a problem." They put up a good front, but are really suffering inside.
It's tough stuff, but it seems like you guys are talking which is important. Best of luck.
(I'm not a therapist/psychologist, but I have worked with borderlines in the past and have family in the field who constantly work with them as therapists).
For example, I have a had time cleaning my apartment until it has totally exploded. I tell myself I am going to, but I don't. So instead of just telling myself to do it more I figured out an alternative way to get myself to do it. Went out and bought a whiteboard, and write the things I need to do on it. Then it actually gets done. I mean, it is on the whiteboard so I have to do it. Makes it more official or something. Techniques like this might do wonders for her.
but they're listening to every word I say
I think these two paragraphs give a pretty good explanation of what's happening on both sides of the street that created the recent dynamic in your relationship. She's inherently defensive because she's already bringing a lot of self-judgement into the equation, which predisposes her to deflecting away even subtle criticisms or self-inspection. Meanwhile, when you feel shut out, your predisposition is to ratchet up the intensity of your criticisms to the point of confrontation so that she's no longer capable of deflecting. This, in turn, makes her feel even more judged, which makes her more defensive, which makes you more confrontational. It's a bad cycle to get stuck in, but it's definitely manageable now that you've identified the problem.
In the future, I recommend remembering that in order to break the cycle, you don't have to push harder; rather, you have to make sure she knows that she is capable of confiding in you without fear of judgement. I strongly suggest reminding her every so often that even when you were both at the lowest points in your respective lives, you both still loved one another, and you're not going to stop now just because she still has a few things to work on.
Matter of fact, if you can find a good way to put that sentiment down on a card in your own words, you should send it to her tomorrow with flowers.
She is overdue for some flowers. And we both now have a better understanding of the bad situations we get ourselves into.
But I'd also like to just note that one of the points I'm moving forward on pretty tenuously is that we've both identified that my "confrontational" style is something that is necessary in some cases and not in others. This is going to be a challenge, but in example the doctor issue wasn't resolved until I pushed and pushed. My challenge will be separating the small from the large. I'm taking steps back, and I think that we're simply more on the same page now than before. She has been opening up to me so much more, which had led to me being able to be supportive instead of mystified.
I've conflated symptoms with causes, in part because I couldn't get to the causes. Cleaning is a good example. It isn't necessarily a deal-breaker to me, at all, but it is something that I get a bit worried about when it seems there's no intent to try to better the situation. Now that I have a clearer idea of what's happening behind the "I'm fine" mask, it becomes far easier to allow that not to be something that eats at me and causes stress and frustration.
Sky, I'm not sure of the BPD, but those two links had some good information about how to deal with the very sort of cyclical arguments we get ourselves in. I'm going try to to keep some of that in mind going forward.
Again, thank you all very much!