11 months post breakup, minimal contact, he still lashes out.

[BasementDweller]

Recent back story of my break-up with BPD ex, 11 months ago.
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=335740.msg13046548#msg13046548

We are both in new relationships, and have minimal contact except for on rare occasions regarding practical matters.

I haven't been in contact with him via voicemail or email since the "Great Migration Crisis" where I told him that when I received my migration status after my appeal, I would change my address when the case was closed. Initially he agreed and was forwarding my mail. Easy-peasy. That was several months ago.

I have done my best to lay low and not awaken the dragon other than to have my friend write him in March to ask if we could come get the rest of my stuff. He politely responded to her by saying yes, in one month he would get back to her, but then "wasn't good for him". After two months, I received this yesterday. He never wrote back to her.

"Hi,

1. FYI: I DO NOT read any of your emails! I can see my junkmail filling up, but I don't open any of them.

2. I did listen to the last voice mail of yours and it is redicilous why you wait to change your address. To hold it against me. Really weird of you. But know this: there are ways to get around that too, and I will.

3. The last of your stuff:
It will be on sunday the 12th of May, at 13.00.
I accept you being here maximum 1 hour to collect your stuff.
What is left here after one hour, will be thrown away.
You will speak absolute minimum to me during this hour, simply because we have nothing of importance to share or to discuss, and because I want nothing to do with you.

4. I will provide for you and your things to be driven to your place on this day.
After this there will be NO contact whatsoever.
This will be the absolute end.

So, hopefully you will have understood point 1 and accept and agree to points 3 & 4. Your answer will be mailed to [his friend's name] and he will confirm to me.
No need for massive counter attacks with pages of your you.
Just shortly accept.
[BPD ex] "

He actually starts the rant with "Hi" - and signs his name at the end. Like it's an office memo...

Couldn't help but chuckle that he sees his "junk mail piling up"... (uh yeah, it's gmail. I get about 200 spams a day) and assumes it's me writing him!

I wonder if that will REALLY be the last I hear of him - once my stuff is out of there. The fun never ends. I can't understand why 11 months after a break-up that he manufactured and forced he still sends angry rants to tell me he never wants to speak to me again...instead of just...not speaking to me.

The part at the end..."pages of your you"...haha. That should be the name of the book I write. "Pages of my me, memoirs of time spent with a madman".

Best seller, that one would be.

I responded with this:

"Hi *****!

Thank you for your email. I hope you're doing fantastic. :-) See you on May 12 at 1300.

Cheers,
BD"

I mean what else can you even SAY to such a bizarre out of left field email like that? BIFF, BIFF, BIFF - my best friend nowadays.

Are many of you still getting random triggered rants months or years after the person discards you? What the heck?

[I Am Redeemed]

Hi BD!

Wow, that is some out-of-left-field stuff. Sounds like he is still determined to be the victim in his narrative of the breakdown and fallout from your r/s.

Even though I was the one who chose to end my r/s, for physical safety reasons, and I still have my ex blocked, he continues to randomly call and leave voicemail messages that are strange and make no sense.

He wanted to bring s3 an Easter basket to my work. Called my workplace (though my manager has explicitly and personally told him he cannot do this) several times that day. I was not there. Instead of just dropping the present off, he called and left me a message accusing my co-workers of trying to "run him off" and saying that "I'm not even on that level with you."
Whined about how he just wanted to give s3 a present (nothing prevented him from leaving it up there for him; they would have given it to me the next day to take to s3).

Also he said that he knows he has to get a lawyer to get visitation with s3 (yeah, cause he made it physically unsafe for me to bring s3 to see him!) but he just doesn't understand why I won't just...start talking to him again and bring s3 up to his work to have lunch with him just like I was doing before he went crazy on me again and made it completely impossible to have safe contact.

One of his last messages:

"you remember where I asked you to take me when we were outside the child services office that day and you said 'absolutely not'? Well...they're here. Finally. Thank GOD."

As best I can remember, this convo was about him begging me to take him to the FBI, as he was in the grips of a paranoid persecutory delusion. It also was about six years ago. Apparently, he thinks the FBI is here now (?) and wanted me to know (why?).

Then he calls his mom and tells her what a horrible person I am to torture him and alienate our son from him. Then begs her to call me. 

BTW, that would be an awesome book title. You should totally write it.

[BasementDweller]

Hi Redeemed!

That sounds really rough...and very frustrating, but it sounds like you are dealing with similar. I think this is also part of the BPD playbook. These out of the blue accusatory emails where they feel victimized and paranoid and that everyone (mostly us) are out to get them. Like...a change of address has to do with holding something against him?

I wonder what's with the paranoia about the government agencies, though? I guess that's a common one for anyone who is paranoid, or a conspiracy theorist. My ex used to accuse me of working for the CIA, being a "plant" here in Europe, and being sent here to do psychological experiments on him - our relationship was all a farce and I was "assigned to torment him."

Because the CIA cares about this one dude who lives in a suburb in Europe and works as a salesman. Mmmmmkay. That was of course when he was in his deepest dysregulation/dissociative states. Still...really unnerving.

Sorry you are still going through this. Perhaps I also have a long haul ahead of me. I kind of doubt he will really disappear.

[I Am Redeemed]

I'm sorry you are dealing with this, too, BD, I think it is possible that this type of behavior might continue for some time. I have yet to file divorce, for financial reasons, but I am expecting some financial aid money in June so that will enable me to go ahead and get it done. Then the real fun will begin 

Do you think he will actually let you get your stuff or will he sabotage that? He sounds very unpredictable.

I don't know what is up with the government conspiracy delusions. I have researched it, and apparently it is a specific type known as a persecutory delusion. My ex fits all the criterial for Paranoid Personality Disorder as well as BPD. He also had ''ideas of reference" at a few really bad psychotic points, along with thinking that I and my whole family are out to thwart his every effort at doing anything to better himself...which, in reality, is nothing. He is his own worst enemy. I guess he can't accept that, hence the paranoia that others are keeping him down.

I'm glad you are in a new, healthy r/s. How does your new partner take the behavior of your ex?

[BasementDweller]

Wow, Redeemed...I have never thought about paranoid personality disorder before, as I knew he was diagnosed borderline, and sort of attributed all the bizarre behaviors to that. But in looking at the DSM criteria for PSD, with four out of seven traits required for a diagnosis, he was solidly 7 out of 7 consistently. 

What an epiphany. I knew he behaved in a  paranoid manner, and that he exhibited odd behaviors as soon as I met him, but I kind of laughed it off at the time, because I just thought he was maybe kind of joking. A couple of examples are that he was stockpiling canned goods and bottled water in the basement storage room, and when I asked what was up with that, he gave me a very detailed explanation about how he knew the Russians were spying on us and would invade soon. How cans of beans in the basement would prevent that, I don't know. But again...I really didn't take it too seriously. I started to get a bit more disturbed when he blew up at me for moving a dirty dish and cutlery from the kitchen table before we left the house. After a prolonged meltdown, he explained that he had placed it there to make burglars think someone was home if they peeked in the windows. (?) Stuff like that was the norm, along with the usual BPD stuff in spades.

Claims that I, my family, past "friends" he had cut off, and work colleagues past and present were out to get him, sabotage him, destroy him, etc... happened almost daily. I never thought of it outside BPD, but I suspected he had a massive co-morbidity, but never had a clue what. NPD and ASPD never seemed right, nor histrionic. (Which his sister is, severe.) I thought maybe bi-polar because some of his agitated states could be prolonged - but that never quite sat right either.  

Paranoid...yes, that makes a lot more sense. The inside of his head must be like a bad neighborhood you don't want to be alone in. The most overwhelming of all the traits he exhibited were holding grudges and having a massive persecution complex. He was always the victim and everyone was out to get him. Even when nothing alarming was happening at all. After a paranoid thought he'd then have a BPD level emotional response to the perceived "threat". It was always a minefield and I never knew what I was walking into every day when I came home.

Whether or not he will allow me to get my stuff remains to be seen. He has sabotaged it before, but he CC'd his best friend in on the email, and knows my work colleague is coming with her truck to help me. So the likelihood is less now that he has an audience. His friend also tends to hold his feet to the fire to some degree, though he still enables the hell out of him. But in this case, with two others involved, he knows sabotaging will reflect poorly on him. As off his rocker as he is...he still attempts to pretend I'm the bad guy, and tries to act innocent in front of others. Sometimes he succeeds, other times he comes unhinged when people are watching. But I think this time he will allow me to get my things as his friend has been recruited to help pack. I'm pretty sure my replacement doesn't like seeing my stuff everywhere. Maybe she has been on him about it too. ;-)

My new partner is the most rational levelheaded person on earth, and takes everything in stride, and with a total grain of salt. He gets that my ex is not mentally well, and deals with it really well. He responded with great tact when my ex bombarded him with texts about what a horrible person I was, and how he would sue us if we came near him. (Like we would want to do that.)

I showed him the recent letter, and he read it carefully, shook his head, and said, "Wow. That's...wow. I guess I must be a walk in the park for ya then, huh?" And we both laughed a bit. He has the patience of a saint, I tell ya.

After the deportation attempts, and the barrage of abusive texts we both received back in November, he said about my ex, "I just don't understand how anybody can be so mean."

I also saw him reading about BPD on his computer...he seems to get it, at least from a clinical perspective why my ex does what he does. My boyfriend handled his abuse with such non-triggering tact and diplomacy that my ex never bothered him again. I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed that May 12 goes well, and that things die down after. Nobody is responding in kind to his drama at all these days. We're all bored with it. I hope he'll get bored too, and just move on.

What do you think your ex will do when you finally file for divorce?

[40days_in_desert]

To answer your question at the end of your original post on this thread: After almost 4 years - yes. My ex’s rants usually come in the form of texts from around midnight until around 3am. She might go a month or so without much contact but they still come.

[I Am Redeemed]

I don't know what he will do, honestly. His mom says he still just can't understand why I left for good this time 

I read up on all the personality disorders when I was searching for what might be going on with him. I searched the delusions and psychosis and there were several possible causes. I thought part of it might just be the BPD, but the match to ppd just is really close.

My ex was always kind of paranoid and suspicious, but it really kicked off when he went on a heavy meth binge six years ago. He never really came back from that. I think it may have triggered a dormant mental illness, and even though the severe psychosis lessened after he stopped using, it took months for it to wear off to just intermittent episodes. I think really he just stopped talking about it every day, but I don't think it went completely away. Stress and high emotion seemed to trigger it and make it resurface. He would be hypervigilant and pull me outside to have conversation because he thought people were listening to us.

[BasementDweller]

To answer your question at the end of your original post on this thread: After almost 4 years - yes. My ex’s rants usually come in the form of texts from around midnight until around 3am. She might go a month or so without much contact but they still come.

Oh, wow, 40 Days...that's just bizarre. It sounds like maybe this happens when she has been drinking? I mean, based on the hours when the messages arrive. I guess that could happen with the best of us, but with BPD, the outbursts (drunken or not) will be way more intense. And 4 years later? Wow. How do you respond? Or do you at all?

I don't know what he will do, honestly. His mom says he still just can't understand why I left for good this time 

I read up on all the personality disorders when I was searching for what might be going on with him. I searched the delusions and psychosis and there were several possible causes. I thought part of it might just be the BPD, but the match to ppd just is really close.

My ex was always kind of paranoid and suspicious, but it really kicked off when he went on a heavy meth binge six years ago. He never really came back from that. I think it may have triggered a dormant mental illness, and even though the severe psychosis lessened after he stopped using, it took months for it to wear off to just intermittent episodes. I think really he just stopped talking about it every day, but I don't think it went completely away. Stress and high emotion seemed to trigger it and make it resurface. He would be hypervigilant and pull me outside to have conversation because he thought people were listening to us.

I hear you on this, Redeemed. My ex didn't do drugs but he was a hell of a drinker, and when he was drunk it was 1000 times worse...though he could get really nuts even when sober. I think looking at the literature, and knowing my ex as I do, he is also a combination of BPD (eight out of nine) and PPD, (seven out of seven). I'd bet my life on it. Others on the board used to suggest when I'd write about his meltdowns that something else was going on besides BPD because the mental illness exhibited seemed well above and beyond emotional dysregulation. This seems to make sense now. It also helps in a sense to allow me to accept that there really was nothing I could have done better or different, and this is not my fault. He is far too sick for me to have been able to manage a relationship with him. If I had validated better and it had only been BPD...maybe it could have been better...not likely, but maybe. But outright paranoia? You can't really talk a person out of that with validation. Like your ex, he always thought the neighbors, people at work, even strangers in the store were sabotaging him somehow. I learned fast not to suggest otherwise, because then I'd be accused of being in league with them.

How did you deal with the outright paranoid delusions?

[I Am Redeemed]

My ex thought people in the grocery store were plotting against him too! He said they were pushing their carts together behind him to block him in, and they were talking about him.

I didn't know how to deal with it. I tried using facts and logic to challenge his thinking but it didn't work. He just found a reason to discount or twist whatever evidence I could show to contradict his delusions. I tried reasoning, and that didn't work. Sometimes it made him angry and then he attacked me, verbally and physically.

I told my T about it and she said that challenging the delusions was futile because they were not based in logic. She basically said just don't validate the invalid, and don't outright challenge the invalid...a very difficult and lonely fine line to tread.

I just started keeping my opinions to myself, and just let him ramble. Sometimes there was nothing I could do, though, if he demanded that I take action that was crazy based upon his delusions... like changing our identities and abandoning our kids... unless we went to Virginia to the FBI and they listened to him...sigh...

[BasementDweller]

I told my T about it and she said that challenging the delusions was futile because they were not based in logic. She basically said just don't validate the invalid, and don't outright challenge the invalid...a very difficult and lonely fine line to tread.

I just started keeping my opinions to myself, and just let him ramble. Sometimes there was nothing I could do, though, if he demanded that I take action that was crazy based upon his delusions... like changing our identities and abandoning our kids... unless we went to Virginia to the FBI and they listened to him...sigh...

I found this to be the case as well. There was really nothing I could do or say. His paranoia was deeply ingrained. He also thought people in the stores were staring at him, talking about him, or trying to menace him in some way. He once yelled threatening profanities at an elderly couple because he said they "repeatedly deliberately blocked his way" and when he tried to go around him, they "insulted him". Not at all what happened, and these poor old people were stunned when he started ranting at them.

Another time, also in the grocery store, he nearly roughed up a guy who accidentally bumped him, and I couldn't stay quiet this time...I HAD to point out that the man was a burn victim, wearing shades and carrying a white cane. Yes. He was OBVIOUSLY blind. My ex thought he was faking "just to mess with him". The man's whole face was burned. My god. Just...in retrospect...MY GOD.

Eventually I offered to do all the shopping, which he agreed to 99% of the time...saved me (and the rest of the town) a whole lot of grief. 

Crazily enough, there are things I miss about him. He could be hilariously funny, and he was a very talented builder. I could have a creative idea about something I wanted in the home, and he could create it with his bare hands, and beautifully so - amazing craftsmanship and talent. He loved nature and especially birds. Built birdhouses for us, and taught me how to build my own. He diligently tended to the birdfeeders, and loved to see the little guys at the window, and would try to look them up to see what kind they were. I don't mourn the loss of him as I once did, but I remember the good things about him with great fondness. I also realize the bad things...were too much.  I could never have a happy relationship with him where I felt consistently safe. He wasn't able to be a good, reliable, kind, loving partner. Not consistently, and toward the end, not at all. There were genuinely good reasons why I loved him...but it wasn't enough. The relationship was not sustainable.

I hope that you have as good an outcome as possible when the divorce ball gets rolling, and are prepared (and have a plan in place) in the event of his having any backlash. My ex hates me, and never tries to reconcile. As time goes by, and contact dwindles he becomes MORE hostile, hateful, and belligerent. If you look at the borderline subtypes, he's petulant, and if you look at the paranoid subtypes, he's malignant. Horrible combination. Grudge holding, malicious, vindictive. I'm quite sure we will never be able to be friends. So sad, really.

Do you miss your ex at all, or have you totally lost all feelings for him? I think I will always feel something for mine...some kind of love and fond remembrance...but it's more like watching an old movie when I think about it. An old movie from a bygone era, and all the actors are dead.

[I Am Redeemed]

I really like the old movie analogy. What a beautiful and sad way to describe the feeling. Yes, that is how I feel.

I wish so much that it could have been different. I just see a man who is really ill and will probably always be that way, and it makes me sad. I don't miss the stress, the abuse, the insanity, but the times when things were almost normal, even for just a few hours or days, yes, I miss him in those memories.

You are right. It was in no way sustainable. I poured everything into trying to figure out what to do to help him be normal, and he worked against me. He was and is too sick to have a relationship, and he has been that way for over twenty years. I didn't know the real truth about some of his past, only what he told me... which was rewritten history, lots of it. He was always the victim.

I wonder what he will tell the next woman about me. Whatever it is, I know his mother knows the truth.

His family tried to warn me about him. I thought they were exaggerating or just still having a hard time trusting him after his addictions. Nope. I should have listened.

[BasementDweller]

He was and is too sick to have a relationship, and he has been that way for over twenty years. I didn't know the real truth about some of his past, only what he told me... which was rewritten history, lots of it. He was always the victim.

I wonder what he will tell the next woman about me.

His family tried to warn me about him.

Redeemed, I truly appreciate your responses and the fact that people here on this board...get it. As so many have said previously, the outside world who have never had a relationship with a mentally unwell person cannot understand the aftermath and even the trauma we experience while in it. I had the exact same experience. A string of failed relationships in my ex's past - all where he was the victim or the other cast-offs before me "did something to make him have to leave".

His sister warned me about him until she took his side during his coup de grace, the most mind-boggling distortion campaign against me that one could imagine. I know for a fact he is telling my replacement all manner of horrors about me, as it's obvious by the content of his emails he still has tremendous hostility toward me. I'm sure she's getting sucked in the same way I did when he told me how his ex wife cheated on him and left him for her affair partner and drove him from their shared home and broke up their family with two small children.

I now wonder how much of that was exaggerated or fabricated. Maybe she never cheated. Maybe she asked him to leave because he was unstable. I will probably never know. Despite her bad past with him, she turned against me at the end too. He managed to poison everyone we knew against me. All the people we had over to our home, that I cooked meals for, invited over for the holidays, participated in birthdays for them and their kids...they all know me - and KNOW the content of my character...but he succeeded in the smear campaign anyway. Somehow.

For as long as I live, I don't think I will ever understand how these people get so many others to bend to their will, and lose their grip on their own observed reality.