  We present what we call a "motivated proof" of the Bressoud-G\"ollnitz-Gordon
partition identities. Similar "motivated proofs" have been given by Andrews and
Baxter for the Rogers-Ramanujan identities and by Lepowsky and Zhu for Gordon's
identities. Additionally, "motivated proofs" have also been given for the
Andrews-Bressoud partition identities by Kanade, Lepowsky, Russell, and Sills
and for the G\"ollnitz-Gordon-Andrews identities by Coulson, Kanade, Lepowsky,
McRae, Qi, Russell, and the third author. Our proof borrows both the use of
"ghost series" from the "motivated proof" of the Andrews-Bressoud identities
and uses recursions similar to those found in the "motivated proof" of the
G\"ollnitz-Gordon-Andrews identities. We anticipate that this "motivated proof"
of the Bressoud-G\"ollnitz-Gordon identities will illuminate certain twisted
vertex-algebraic constructions.
