Good to know I'm not the only one!

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Hello. I cannot quite believe that there will be interest in a story that has been repeated here so often. Mine is no different. Thank you all, already, for all the collective wisdom here that has shown me that my ex partner has BPD. It really helps to know that I'm not the only one to have become somehow become enmeshed in a relationship like this. I am leaving it after 18 months of living together. I have a 12 year old son and the attention I (of course!) give him as a mother is the trigger for most of my girlfriend's rages. She cannot, deep down, accept that a child's needs will often - if not always - come first. She cannot wait for him to reach 18 and leave. I successfully hid the worst of this from him but he did begin to notice the immature behaviours and disregulation, and increasingly picked up on my tension every 2 months or so as I realised we were heading for another outburst any moment. I feel emotionally exhausted by 18 months of care taking that changed nothing. I thought it was 'just' adhd at first and would be manageable, but it is not just that. It's an extreme sensitivity to rejection, a severe fear of being alone and the sabotaging of the relationship again and again.  As the verbal abuse and controlling behaviour followed by love bombing and service became a never ending pattern, I took the decision to ask her to leave for my sake and my son's. I do not want this tension, abuse and immature behaviour in his life. Nor can I have someone in his life that wishes him away.
I suppose I am now wondering whether I need support to process what happened. I am sad to lose the person she could be if she gets the support she needs, but I have no regrets except that I ignored red flags and entered the relationship anyway. I would like to explore how not to repeat the same mistakes in the future! Sometimes I feel very strong, but at other times I feel upset and tearful and fearful of being lonely. Oddly, after everything I've said here, I can still feel a little of that rubber band pulling me back to try one last time, but know I must ignore it. What is the best way of recovering?

[Basque]

Hello. I cannot quite believe that there will be interest in a story that has been repeated here so often. Mine is no different. Thank you all, already, for all the collective wisdom here that has shown me that my ex partner has BPD. It really helps to know that I'm not the only one to have become somehow become enmeshed in a relationship like this. I am leaving it after 18 months of living together. I have a 12 year old son and the attention I (of course!) give him as a mother is the trigger for most of my girlfriend's rages. She cannot, deep down, accept that a child's needs will often - if not always - come first. She cannot wait for him to reach 18 and leave. I successfully hid the worst of this from him but he did begin to notice the immature behaviours and disregulation, and increasingly picked up on my tension every 2 months or so as I realised we were heading for another outburst any moment. I feel emotionally exhausted by 18 months of care taking that changed nothing. I thought it was 'just' adhd at first and would be manageable, but it is not just that. It's an extreme sensitivity to rejection, a severe fear of being alone and the sabotaging of the relationship again and again.  As the verbal abuse and controlling behaviour followed by love bombing and service became a never ending pattern, I took the decision to ask her to leave for my sake and my son's. I do not want this tension, abuse and immature behaviour in his life. Nor can I have someone in his life that wishes him away.
I suppose I am now wondering whether I need support to process what happened. I am sad to lose the person she could be if she gets the support she needs, but I have no regrets except that I ignored red flags and entered the relationship anyway. I would like to explore how not to repeat the same mistakes in the future! Sometimes I feel very strong, but at other times I feel upset and tearful and fearful of being lonely. Oddly, after everything I've said here, I can still feel a little of that rubber band pulling me back to try one last time, but know I must ignore it. What is the best way of recovering?

[alterK]

Hi Basque and welcome to the forum! Sounds like you are having problems from both directions. Stepchildren can be an issue even in successful relationships, but they can trigger all kinds of stuff when there are already bad things going on. The trigger for my ex was when my daughter-in-law became pregnant. Suddenly my W was accusing me of neglecting her, even though I don't think my behavior toward her changed.

When my son and daughter-in-law brought the new baby to our house the first time, my W said hi to him, but never touched him, and spent most of the visit upstairs with the door closed. My son and his family live abroad, so they weren't around that much, but in retrospect, that was the end of my marriage. My W moved out a couple of years later.

How is your son doing, now that your partner has left? If you want to discuss specific issues or behaviors, red flags you should had paid attention to (haven't we all!?) in detail, feel free.

[ThanksForPlaying]

As alter says, sometimes it can be helpful to look back for red flags that you can try to avoid in the future.

Some red flags are too small to see in the moment and may not be helpful for the future. But sometimes you can pinpoint something specific and develop that into a healthy boundary for future relationships.