Suicide theater, false reporting, and abuse. We are all aware of abuse, even if not everyone knows of the abuses that don’t leave bruises. False reporting is, as its name implies, making false claims of abuse. It has the power to ruin innocent lives, particularly when the false reporter is filing their claim with law enforcement or the court. Since the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard Defamation Trial, awareness is being raised on its existence. And unless we have the sort of money that Johnny Depp has, it’s nearly impossible to disprove the false reporter’s accusations. False reporters hurt all victims of domestic violence. They are the very reason the courts must do their due diligence on determining whether the abuse report is from a survivor or a false reporter.
Then what about suicide theater? Well, that one is a truth so controversial that we will never see it talked of openly on social media. At least not as long as the ridiculous censorship is happening. If social media threatens to ban us for even saying the word suicide, they will certainly shut down any truth-teller who raises awareness on suicide theater.
That’s why Don is sharing his story on my site, which is not bound by social media rules. Don is a survivor of an abusive relationship with a borderline personality disordered (Trauma Glossary 1) woman. This is the third in this series of interviews with him and his current (non-abusive) partner Taylor. Both survived abusive relationships before finding each other. In the first installment, they introduced themselves and Taylor spoke about her autism. Then last week, Taylor shared her story of her 13-year-long abusive relationship that she is now free of. I will link those at the end. Today it’s Don’s turn.
But What is Suicide Theater?
I’m not kidding when I say that suicide theater is a controversial truth. Even I felt a need to lead with a disclaimer before defining it.
Suicide Theater: *special disclaimer! * Suicide Ideation (see also Trauma Glossary 2) is not only a common problem in CPTSD, but there are those who have attempted suicide or talked about an urge to end their life when they were sincerely crying for help, NOT as a motive to manipulate, or worse, the ultimate act of vengeance, as you will see. Suicide theater is composed of three platforms. 1) Coercive Threat: “If you do/don’t (insert what the Cluster B wants) I will kill myself!” 2) Fake Attempt: they actively attempt suicide in some way but with an obvious safety net which insures they won’t lose their life (e.g., Swallowing a bottle of pills and promptly “passing out” within minutes before spouse/children arrive home). 3) Final and Ultimate Vengeance: they complete suicide, not as a means of ending their suffering, but to inflict the ultimate abandonment on you. It’s the final act of holding you responsible for their decisions to the very end. Their declaration of suicide is horrific abuse designed to keep you bound to them. The problem is, playing into this only further enables the Cluster B into more Coercive Threats or Fake Attempts. If their tactics work the first time, they will keep doing this.
And Now a Sit-Down with Don and Taylor
Jaena: In most cases our childhood programs us into tolerating abusive partners. Was this true in your case?
Don: My dad conditioned me to not expect anything for myself. So, I always kind of assumed that there had to be something I had done to cause this behavior.
Taylor: His father is the Cluster B (Trauma Glossary 1). He literally has all four to the max. I have never met someone like him before and hope to never meet another again.
Jaena: Yikes! And coming from a survivor of a 13-year-long abusive relationship, that’s really saying something.
Don: I’ve been paying my parents’ rent since I was 12 years old.
Taylor: And working in the logging business since he was eight, and being made to leave school at fifteen to work full time for them. Travelled to (hour away) living by himself in a trailer cutting trees. It’s been collaborated by everyone who knew the family.
Jaena: I almost asked how they got away with this but then I remembered that child protective services is a global failure.
Don: I didn’t have the self-esteem to date a good person. I was like well, it’s my unluck in life that I must be hurting this person because I can see they’re hurting a lot of people. It sounds horrible but it was sort of my mindset.
Jaena: I can see how having all these responsibilities flung on your shoulders your whole life would make you feel responsible for others. When it’s all we’ve ever known, it’s harder for us to see that it doesn’t have to always be this way.
Before Don met Taylor
We won’t see Taylor again until towards the end of Don’s story (and you will see why). For now, it’s just me and Don.
Jaena: How long were you in an abusive relationship?
Don: On and off for over three years. We started dating in 2016. I found out she had borderline fairly early on. The first time I had her come over to my house, she had these claims of all the people that beat and raped her before we met – her stepdad, her boyfriends, just everyone.
Jaena: I refer to that one as the lightning striking the same place one time too many red flag. When the stories have exactly the same abuse committed by multiple people over the years, it’s usually an indication that their story is a complete fabrication.
Don: I have windows on both sides of my house. So, I could see her reflection when I went to hug her. I could see she was smiling and grinning, like “Oh, I got him hook, line, and sinker” grin. You could see that and I’m like, I’ve seen that in my father with his tell.
“If I had a dollar for every time she was going to kill herself, I’d be a wealthy man. It was a constant threat.”
Don: So, when she left, I sat down on the computer started Googling it. Never heard of borderline personality before in my life. I just put in the things I see, the traits I noticed, and I discovered borderline. That was like 7:00 in the morning and in the afternoon I was still sitting there reading about it and then she walked back in my door again.
She wasn’t invited back, she just came on in and she said, “Well that was fun”. So, I said Hey I’m gonna have to ask it. Do you have borderline personality disorder? Then she said, “I was diagnosed with it when I was younger but they were wrong. Then they thought I had bipolar but that was wrong. Turns out I just have post traumatic stress disorder.” And I said, You or the doctor? And she was like, “Well the one doctor, I was gonna sue him but the other one said it was PTSD.” But she didn’t actually find a doctor to agree with her. He told her PTSD but on her file, it still said borderline.
Jaena: How did you manage to see her file?
Don: When she was hospitalized two years later after doing a fake suicide attempt.
Jaena: Oh I see! The second platform of suicide theater.
Don: If I had a dollar for every time she was going to kill herself, I’d be a wealthy man. It was a constant threat.
Jaena: As someone whose borderline mother pulled similar stunts, I get it. She was using the first platform of suicide theater – which is the coercive threat – to keep you trapped.
“She kicked me in the face with her boot…”
Don: She was really good for the first eight months to a year and then it cracked. I noticed that she just thought I was an isolated person. She created this idyllic image of me and she was going to take this and run with it but farming is a pretty honest living. You can’t really hide from a lot of that. So, she crumbled quite quickly in that reality. And when she cracked it was a fast slope to chaos.
She came to my house one day and I was working on her car. When I came out from underneath the car, she kicked me in the face with her boot and not on accident. She kicked the tool case when she kicked me in the face and all these small sockets are everywhere. And then when I got up off the ground and stood up, she panicked, dropped to the ground, and started saying, “Don’t hit me, don’t hit me!” and I was like, What is going on here?
Jaena: Holy DARVO (Trauma Glossary 1) Batman!
Don: I said can you please pick up the tools and then I went inside to check the damage. My nose is split wide open and I’m trying to see if it’s broken. Then I sat down and she came in. She goes, “Are you really just gonna sit there and sulk?” I said, Oh I’m not sulking but I do need you to go home. Then she goes “Oh really, just because you got a little scratch on your face?” And she just starts in on me. I said, No seriously you need to leave my home. She goes “You can’t make me.”
“She said she had never acted that way before and it must be an anxiety attack.”
Don: Isn’t that a little ridiculous? We’re both adults. Like, just leave and she’s like, Wait, I know you can’t make me leave. I was like, I know I can’t make you leave either because I’ll go to jail. And so I told her, You’re only leaving me with one option, I have to call the police. She said she had never acted that way before and it must be an anxiety attack. She took an hour to calm down and asked if she could sleep on the couch. By that time, it was 4 am and she left for work at 7 am.
And then she was back at my doorstep halfway through my work day. She apologized and she told me I have to remember that she is still a young girl and that since I’m so old, I need to remember that she can’t be as mature as me. She was 26 and I was 34.
Jaena: Wow, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Their means of rationalizing their abuse is astounding.
Don Speaks on Behalf of Men in Similar Relationships
Don: They [borderlines] always claim to have been assaulted in some way, shape, or form. You know, some of them probably have because they make really bad decisions and so, maybe it happened but still a lot of it is lies. It gets them their way because the men can now be the savior of the poor victim. So, every time they behave poorly they can say to the guy, “Well you know, that’s the trauma from my assault.” But it generally ends in them [men] being held hostage for some fake abuse claim.
Men who are in these sorts of relationships are very beaten down men. And so – this is a terrible thing to say but it is the reality of our world – they’re not viewed as men, you know?
Jaena: Men who are abused are in a double-bind. If the the woman beats them and they do nothing, and then confide about it later, they’re met with ridicule. “You got beat up by a woman?”
Don: Or if they put up their hands to defend themselves, guess what, they’re going to jail for domestic violence.
Jaena: Exactly!
Cohabiting
Don: In 2017, we lived together. I’d seen the warning signs but again, I was coming from a pretty messed up family. I didn’t even realize I had no clothing that wasn’t ripped because she’s trying to rip my clothes off when I go to work in the morning. So, like I would walk outside and she’d go, “Don’t leave me!” and rip my clothes off me to drag me back in the apartment. As soon as I’d go in she’d go, “Get the hell out of here!” This was just back and forth that I had to keep up until witnesses showed up so that I could leave and not be accused of doing whatever bodily harm she does to herself after I leave.
Jaena: Her history of false reporting has been a real concern throughout your story. Could you maybe share an example?
Don: She would take like a beer bottle and smack it into her head until she’d be bruised and then try and pass that off as being beaten up by leaving out information. So, people would go, What happened to your face? And she would go, “I don’t know but he’s at work now.” And it’s just stuff like that.
But the people knew me were like, Oh, I know she’s difficult and I can see that you would never beat her. And I go, “I have no reason to hit her, I can just leave.” My mother had it pretty rough, I know what she went through and the last thing I’m ever gonna do is behave like my father. So, the option for the guy is always just leave but leave with an audience so that you don’t go to jail for what they create while you’re gone.
“Then I moved out and broke up with her.”
Don: I started paying attention to see how many days I could go where I didn’t have a bruise or an open cut and I couldn’t make it a day. If one had healed up and I was without marks, it’s like she noticed and I would be clawed, punched, or scraped.
Jaena: So, all this time, she’s abusing you, threatening to false report you, and using the coercive threat of suicide theater to keep you trapped. You sound like you’re in the part of your story where you’re becoming aware of what she’s doing and you want out. Am I wrong here?
Don: We only lived together for like, four to six months. Then I moved out and broke up with her.
Jaena: That would only be a year, maybe year-and-a-half after you started dating her. So, I know this three-year relationship isn’t yet over for good. What happened?
Don: Her fake attempt.
Jaena: Oh, platform 2 of suicide theater!
2018: The trigger for platform 2 of Suicide Theater
2) Fake Attempt: they actively attempt suicide in some way but with an obvious safety net which insures they won’t lose their life (e.g., Swallowing a bottle of pills and promptly “passing out” within minutes before spouse/children arrive home).
See also suicide theater’s full definition at the beginning of this article
Don: We broke up months before her birthday. She invited me to her birthday party and I went without a gift. When I didn’t get her a birthday gift, she asked why and I said, “Because we aren’t together.” I went home after the party instead of spending the night with her.
She proceeded to drink alcohol and take sleeping pills until she woke up in the hospital. To ensure she didn’t actually die, she let all the tenants in the apartment (4 other tenants) know, “Don’t come by, for it is my last day. Don’t worry about me.” So they went and checked and called 911 when they found her drugged out. She hadn’t locked her door to ensure she was found after her “subtle” announcements of her impending doom.
I think the only reason it almost happened [almost lost her life] was because she was too drunk to realize what she was actually doing. Then she forgot and she preps to do a suicide attempt, took some sleeping pills, was so drunk she forgot it again, and then did it again, and then did it again, and then finally she had enough stuff in her system – the sleeping pills to overwhelm the vodka – and the neighbor found her sleeping and she was put in the hospital.
6 Months in a Psychiatric Hospital
Don: I will say it might have helped get her in there for a while. To that point I was like, this is community service. When the doors are closing in behind you and she has to stay in the glass compartment, there’s a little bit of a smile. Like, yeah you’re gonna be here a while. You’re finally gonna be held accountable for your actions. Because there were no limits: neighbors, friends, family, grandparents just because she perceived slights against her glorious supernova black-hole personality.
Jaena: Okay so, there’s a lot to unpack here. First, she’s showing violence to others. Was this in front of you or did you start researching and asking?
Don: I began to see the violent outbursts within six months of knowing her. Then, after she was hospitalized, I asked all her friends and they said they had never seen her this bad before. So, this was probably the first suicide theater.
Jaena: At least platform 2 of suicide theater. You had been experiencing platform 1 of it all along. Platform 1 of suicide theater tends to be kept between the disordered and their victim. Platform 2 is when they make it more public and the community is shocked because they’re hearing about this for the first time, while the abused person has been hearing about it every day.
Don: Like she tried to commit suicide because I broke up with her.
Jaena: Exactly, because you didn’t do what she wanted in platform 1. So, she had to “punish you” with platform 2.
The “damned if I don’t and damned if I do” of the classic double-bind
Jaena: Did you visit her in the psychiatric hospital?
Don: Yeah, when she got committed she said, “You’re abandoning me while I’m in here.” And then she was telling everyone that the reason I was showing up at the hospital was to manipulate her, even though she was telling me “I can’t believe you would leave me here”. So, I realized yeah, maybe I am to blame and I try to help and then I don’t know, it’s making it worse. I pull back and then it’s, “You’ve left me again”. I then realized too that she had cut out all of my family and friends.
Jaena: Ah! So the six months of a controlled setting when you are around her is bringing fresh clarity.
Don made a decision that we don’t have to make in the USA. So, before sharing the next portion of his story, we have to understand Canadian law and procedures.
Canadian Procedures
Jaena: (Slight spoiler alert) You ended up living with her again but as a suicide watch type of guardian. Before we make progress in your story, can you help us understand how this came about?
Don: She was bad enough that basically, they wouldn’t let her out of the hospital without a shepherd. And so, in the USA, it would be like a a power of attorney. If your mother or grandmother had dementia and now she needs someone to pay her bills and watch over her, it was sort of like that, only for her health.
Jaena: Okay, now I understand. Having a Grandmother who recently passed away from dementia, I am forever grateful to my uncle for being the person who did exactly that. Please go on.
Contractually bound to his abuser for months
Don: The issue was that they wouldn’t let her out after a while and so, they needed people to sign her out. So, she got in a house, a big old Victorian home and there were five people in there, all over the age of 55 up to 70. They were all men and they all thought she was this poor broken fragile angel. And so, they were signing her out that she had to be chaperoned and then she just went crazy on them – she put a 70-year-old man through a garage door. Then they started saying to me, “Don, can you come back? I don’t get why you guys broke up. You just come back and help her. It’s really, really bad.”
I made a mistake and came back. She immediately started to behave again and they said, “You have to stay here man, like we’ll help as a team”. So, we formed a care team and the hospital helped arrange it as well. Through that, I ended up becoming like a trustee for her help. There were time limits on it and so, I desperately needed that time limit to run out because I noticed that her behaving better was just a ploy to try and get me back. When I would leave, she would find a new patsy to fill that role. It didn’t need to be me but…
Jaena: You were her primary attachment figure (Trauma Glossary 1), the so-called “favorite person”.
This is Jaena openly addressing the mental health professionals
Jaena: She put a 70-year-old man through a garage door and their response to her abusive behavior was to reward it? No wonder, even the age of quacks, I mean psychiatrists who believe they can help them, these abusers still aren’t practicing personal accountability. If throwing an adult temper tantrum gets you your way, where is the desire to be a better person?
If you, the so-called “trained professionals” really want to help these abusive people who happen to have a mental illness, then have them experience consequences for their behaviors. To coddle them is to enable their abuse. Take off your blinders because you’re throwing way too much focus on one piece of the pie – those poor abusers with a mental illness. For once, look at the big picture and all the chaos and destruction they cause. Rewarding abusers for being abusive is to simultaneously create an unsafe environment for everyone else.
And finally, how dare you guilt-trip their victims into taking care of their abusers. The victim is not a qualified professional. Nor is the victim qualified for helping their abuser when they are implementing suicide theater. But because you don’t know what to do with them, you continually pass the buck off on their victims. It’s the very reason you people continually publish your gaslighting articles and videos pushing to destigmatize borderlines and encourage others to feel sorry for them. You know perfectly well what happens to the brain and body on trauma and yet you refuse to put two and two together. Who causes all the problems we have in Trauma Glossary 3? The very abusers you insist on coddling.
I strongly suggest you figure out what to do with them yourselves and stop flinging the responsibility on the shoulders of their victims.
Don Meets Taylor While on Suicide Watch
Jaena: So, you’ve become your abuser’s trustee due to her suicide theater. Where are we in the timeline?
Don: I was on suicide watch from March to August of 2019. I met Taylor in May – so, during my suicide watch.
Jaena: Help me set the scene. Where were you when you met?
Don: My neighbor-friend’s chicken barn. He was letting me use it to fix my truck.
Taylor: I was looking for a sperm donor. So, it wasn’t supposed to be a relationship. It was supposed to be: Get me pregnant, I’m too old to get to know someone at this point. He’s got really good genetics. [To Don] I take the time to see if you’d be a good dad. So, I just want to be able to raise this kid on my own while I’m still young enough to conceive. We knew all the same people but didn’t know each other.
Don: And her autism will make her say exactly what she’s thinking.
Taylor: We met, we chatted, and I tried to have sex with him just for fun.
Don: Taylor walks in and says hi and gets her friend to take my friend out of the the barn. We meet and she goes, “Okay hey, wanna have sex?” and I go, No.
Taylor: I go yes.
Don: And then I’m like, No actually. She asked me a couple more times and then she goes, “Okay fair enough.” She leaves it at that.
“Her and Taylor were texting each other for four months…I thought I was texting Don.”
Don: And then she turns to me and she says, “But seriously, we’re both adults here. I like you. What do you think of me?”
I said, “You’re very attractive. But I’m going to be contractually bound till the end of August for suicide watch with this crazy lady.” And I sure as heck wasn’t gonna give her more options to manipulate some other woman. I said, “Just for now, I can come over and help you on your farm or something.” So, we exchange numbers.
Taylor: So then after he left I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna send him a text saying This is what I’m looking for. I’m getting older and I don’t have time to build a relationship with someone. Will you sign a contract with me that you are not responsible for this child in any shape or form? I just need a sperm donor and I didn’t want to do a sperm bank because I was concerned that you’re not getting sperm that you think you’re getting.
Don: I would leave everything open for her [crazy ex] to check just so that she couldn’t feed her little fantasy. So, my phone would always sit open – no lock on it – so that whenever I was home she could check. She couldn’t be like, “You’re doing this, you’re doing that.” I could just say, You wanna know what I’m doing, check my phone. So, I also worked two jobs so I would be sleeping during the day. I walk in and I’ll be sleeping and she grabbed my phone. Her and Taylor were texting each other for four months.
Taylor: I thought I was texting Don.
“She would delete all their conversations right back to where I left off with Taylor.”
Taylor: So, I sent this message [asking Don to be her sperm donor] and I get back this reply, “I’ve always wanted to have kids but don’t want the responsibility. This is my dream come true. Yes, I’m interested.” He never saw my message and he never saw his response. It was her response.
Don: She would delete all their conversations right back to where I left off with Taylor.
Taylor: She asked for nudes and I was sending her nudes. So, I was having this full-blown Internet relationship with someone and I thought it was Don but it was her. I’m assuming we’re on the same page but then every time I was talking to him he’s like, “Why are you being so pushy?” And I was just like, Jesus Christ this makes no sense. So, in my head I’m like, He’s playing games with me.
Don: You know, sometimes I’d get Taylor’s texts while I had my phone. I’d be like, “LOL yeah, I can help you with your farm but I don’t want to have any physical contact with you until after this date [end of August].” And then she’d be flirting a little bit and I’d do “LOL”. Then I get home, go to bed, and my ex would talk with her.
So, Taylor would be on the phone with me the next day and she’d be like, “Why don’t you come over? We’ll do this this and this.” And I go, Hey back up. It’s very clear that I have a timeline here. I don’t think you understand how tricky it’s gonna be for me to leave this relationship. This person’s crazy.
Taylor: And I think, Huh, well that’s weird because you had no problem with it last night.
Comparing Phones
Don: My ex was so easy to live with during that period.
Jaena: When she was texting Taylor as you?
Don: Yes. In September, we [Don and Taylor] started an intimate relationship. I was now moved out of my ex’s place and no longer responsible for “keeping her safe”. However, some of my stuff was still there as I had to be careful removing it – witnesses, etc. Sometime in September, Taylor’s friend stopped by.
Taylor: I had shown my friend – the same one we met through – the text where Don said that he was interested in being my sperm donor. I showed her the messages because she was like, There’s no way Don would agree on this.
Don: So, she suddenly decided she couldn’t talk to me or Taylor anymore because it was working. We were getting along and so, it took her until September to get over that. She [Taylor’s friend] came over while I was working at the other neighbors’ farm. She says, So you like her? I said, “Yeah I do.” Then she goes, Well that’s good, but I thought you spent your whole life trying not to get a girl pregnant. And I’m like, “Yeah well nothing’s different here.” She goes, Really, because Taylor showed me where you said you’re going to be her sperm donor anyway.
Taylor: This is again the difference between autism and BPD. When I realized there was a massive miscommunication I go into solution mode, which is let’s sit down and actually compare our text messages. And he saw that there were way more texts on my end than there were on his.
This is Jaena – again – openly addressing the mental health professionals
Jaena: Don’s ex has shown a distinct pattern of consciously and maliciously manipulating. First with suicide theater, and then to conveniently act up so that she could manipulate Don into being contractually bound to her post-platform 2 of suicide theater. Then every day while Don is sleeping, she is posing as him to Taylor and she also happens to have enough control and foresight to delete all these conversations. I just want to highlight this because there are far too many articles written by these so-called “trained professionals” claiming that borderlines cannot control themselves and that they aren’t even purposely manipulating others. Well, explain this story, geniuses.
Once again I am challenging you to take off your blinders and see the big picture. Notice the chaos and destruction these patterns of behavior are causing in other people’s lives. Do you even care about those they are hurting? Think outside your mere textbook understanding and observe the lived experience of those affected by those you insist on coddling. The one in this story spent four months posing as Don to Taylor. She knew exactly what she was doing. Otherwise, why was she diligent about deleting the texts? She was clearly and intentionally playing a sick mind game which she kept up for four months. Yet you would prefer not calling attention to this because you fail to grasp the vast difference between suicide theater and suicide ideation.
“Suicide theater, once again.”
Don: In October, I was at her place trying to get my stuff. There were several witnesses. She took my phone from me when I wasn’t looking, hid in the bathroom and went through it. She saw some intimate photos of Taylor and I and lost her mind.
Taylor: She started messaging me as Don saying he couldn’t see me anymore because he still loved her, and they were soul mates with a love like no other. Because I knew that it might be her, but I wasn’t sure, I just kept messaging back that when he could call me, we would talk.
Don: Then she snapped, destroyed all my clothes, smashed the furniture, said she was gonna kill herself…
Jaena: Suicide theater, once again.
Don: She also tore my shirt, threatened me with violence and finally really showed herself to the friends’ group for the abuse she was doing to me. She refused to give me my phone back. It was a crazy night, and I didn’t end up getting any of my stuff back. I just made sure I didn’t get arrested by her crazy.
“He ended up not getting his stuff back for a year or two and I went with him.”
Taylor: That was the last time she got his phone. He ended up not getting his stuff back for a year or two and I went with him. I wasn’t comfortable with him going there without me because even if nothing happened, if she claimed something had, I would never feel comfortable or be able to fully trust him. It was a very weird visit, but he got what he wanted, which included his Grandfather’s journal.
Don: She [ex] stole it to “keep it safe for me”.
That was the start of mine and Taylor’s relationship, which is also probably why we talked so well from the get-go. Because we had to to sort through a lot of misunderstanding that had nothing to do with each other and it was a triangulation (Trauma Glossary 1) which did speed up our connection quicker.
Jaena: So, going by your timeline this would be 2020 or 2021 when all ties with your abusive ex are officially severed. Finally getting all your belongings back, there is no longer any obligation to be around her again. But you two have one more challenge ahead before you’re officially freed from your abusive exes, and that’s Taylor’s divorce being finalized in 2022. After seven years of separation, she finally gets it – but not without drama. It’s always drama when severing ties with abusers. So, Taylor will be back next week sharing that as the final installment of Don and Taylor’s story.
Catch up on Don and Taylor’s story so far.