I didn’t know it, but apparently I had anger issues. It really bothered me too. AFter all, who wants to be thought of as an angry person. We were in the process of separating and we were discussing what was wrong with the relatiosnhip and I was told that I had these anger issues and I needed help. To be honest, I didn’t see it but if it was there, I wanted to root it out and address it. I had recently started seeing a counselor and so I brought it up to him. I guess he didnlt know me very well because he seemed surprised. So I asked my business partner. He sees me every day and so if anyone would see it, he would. But when I told him, he laughed. He then said I was one of the least angry persons he had ever met. On the contrary, he didn’t think I was angry enough! After I thought about it for a while, I realized I couldn;t come up with any real examples that would support this accusation. Now I did have plenty of times where I was frustrated and exasperated at my BPD partner’s behaviors. But there’s a difference between frustration and anger, isn’t there? Well not to a BPD. What I witnessed, or what I think I witnessed, was just one example, of many, of projection. Taking one’s own issues and projecting them onto someone else. After one very long night of no sleep because I was woken up constantly to “discuss” the relationship, I finally broke down and said I couldn;t take any more of this and that it was embarrassing for me to say that I felt abused. To which I was immediately met by the retort that she felt abused by me. Projection is simply taking all the negative traits a BPD has and throwing them onto their partner as if their partner is wearing a velcro suit. Perhaps if they just sling it onto you, it’ll stick and they can walk away from it and disown their bad habits and behaviors. And so we, as partners, get accused of all sorts of bad behaviors and traits and we we struggle and struggle to understand why we are being told these things. But yet again, we make the mistake of thinking that we are part of the equation. How silly of us! It’s all about the BPD partner’s need to feel better about themselves. Projecting their bad behavior onto someone else is a cleasning process. We mistakingly think it’s about us and our role in the relationship when, in fact, we’re just the closest piece of velcro they could find.