dont over think it . i find 35 feels more 11 to me regardless of all the math provided <| sep |> I really love your whole post , though this part in particular stood out to me . Yeah I recently learned about that facet of BPD . The general literature on BPD tells you about their behavior , but not the real why . I ' m still learning a lot , but lately it feels like I ' m starting to see the picture , like building a puzzle without having the box . Things become obvious . She ' s also big into moving goalposts , so part of me thinks no matter how well I perform socially in her mind , there will always something to get upset about and always something to try and make me feel worse . That ' s a defense mechanism . There is no real goal post and there is no real problem . People with BPD will complain about every flaw to feel better about themselves . The problem is that nBPD will be listening to the complaints and try to address the issue when actually the underlying problem is the BPD ' s lack of sense of worth . I ' ve been adressing my BPD wife ' s concerns indirectly . When she complains about WHATEVER , I try to find how that whatever could make her feel insecure and then I deal with that insecurity . Last week she complained that I ' ve been coming home late a lot lately , so instead of saying Oh but I ' m busy and I gotta do this and that , I told her that I miss her when I ' m running late not true . She immediately felt better and dropped the topic . When I told her I ' d go to my work place ' s Christmas party alone , she said she didn ' t want to have to watch the kids on that evening because she ' s always babysitting It wasn ' t true . I told her I would love to go to HER workplace ' s Christmas party with her Hell no ! . She declined but was happy to let me go by myself . Why ? She felt valued . If she wanted me to come to her Christmas party , then why not ? It ' s a normal obligation . It ' s a lot of work and it feels manipulative , but these people need constant reassurance similarly to a child . Once you start thinking of it that way reassuring a child , it feels much easier to say things you don ' t really mean .