Thanks! I've been using BIFF ever since a therapist and a friend of mine of helped me understand she was BPD. But I've had to move to no contact as much as possible because if I engage at all with her she quickly uses that conversation to attack me. And once I've engaged her with her, she'll return to that subject over and over for weeks, using it to attack me and hopefully draw me into engaging with her again. There is absolutely no way to effectively communicate with her at this point. I've had my lawyer contact her lawyer to complain of the harassment and abuse, to no avail. I've asked her to leave me alone when she's being verbally abusive, so she just switches to email and text abuse on a daily basis.

I've heard of JADE before, although SET and DEARMAN are new to me. Because of her volatile and hostile nature, though, all of them are not an option at this point.

I'm hoping to propose through the lawyers that we switch to an app for child-related items to cut down on emails and texts as much as possible. I don't know that she'll respect it any more or even go along with it, but if the request comes through the lawyers she may have to consider it. And I'm continuing to establish a record of her hostility and my attempts to negotiate past the conflict rather than make it worse.

A very close person in my life with BPD left my life a couple months ago after a conflict which triggered their fear of engulfment, and after I made some rookie mistakes like begging and pleading and making overtures, I've done the reading and accepted that No Contact is my only chance at rekindling. The person has explicitly said to me that they want me to do many of the tips I've read here and elsewhere that seem to be successful with getting someone back in your life, like they said not to initiate contact and let them do it and they said to live in the moment without trying to set up more when an interaction happens, so I feel like it's a good sign that they are telling me they want what the general consensus states regarding No Contact success.

What always has me second guessing, though, is the lack of object constancy in people with BPD. Even when we were very close, I definitely felt that "out of sight, out of mind" vibe from them when other friends or events or distractions came into their life. I'm not saying that was all the time, though, because they certainly expressed missing me when they were more on the "fear of abandonment" end of the spectrum and they've mentioned missing me many times since our conflict.

So my question is, how does a lack of object constancy affect the odds of No Contact working when you are solely waiting on the person with BPD to initiate contact? Is it likely they just stop feeling your connection after a long enough period of time and just never think to reach out? Why does No Contact lead to successes in spite of a lack of object constancy?

Thanks  Pook. I think this makes sense, but I still struggle with it when the complaint from her is "it's all your fault!!!". The explicit message at these times is that she doesn't want nice words, she doesn't want a hug, she just wants a clear apology for what she thinks I've done wrong, in a way that acknowledges that it's actually my fault. I know this may not be what she actually needs, but if everything other than that is rejected it seems hard to get through with the validation approach.

It is to try and get a confession of love from me.

Now she's telling me she's gonna cheat on me with a cute guy she met on bumble, very classy woman.

Even if she is not usually aggressive, news of the looming end of the relationship can amp up the emotions, perceptions, actions, reactions and overreactions.

It has been said that news of a separation and divorce heightens the risk of DV or other poor behavior such as suicidal ideation.  So be very careful.  It's a good idea to have support there as the news is shared and for some time thereafter.  Not just for her but also to protect you (from DV or DV allegations).  Avoid private scenarios where you could be at risk without witnesses around.

I believe Our Family Wizard (OFW) can be found with an internet search but works best when those communications are available to be monitored by family/domestic court, a parenting coordinator if available, a Guardian ad Litem (GAL - lawyer for the kids), etc.  If you do it without official support and direction, your ex may not cooperate with that solution.  And communicating everything child related through the lawyers can get quite expensive without accomplishing much.

I didn't use OFW or similar.  In fact my ex blocked my email just as we were separating.  It remained blocked for many years, for all I know it may still be blocked since she claimed not to know how to unblock me - and our son aged out of the court system four years ago when he became an adult.  She preferred phone calls... the better to continue ranting and raging.  Recently she's been using text.

We have quite a few Tools and Skills Workshops articles on that other board.  There are various approaches and strategies described there.  JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain) doesn't work well with high emotions, so browse for BIFF, SET, DEARMAN, etc.

Not blocked*** but she turned off her phone most likely.

I pretty much said I understood how she feels and I'm here to listen and she said she doesn't care about me anyway (because I don't care about her) and I got blocked. "Devaluation" or whatever. I am talking to friends, working out, et cetera. Just focusing on myself, all I can do.

Hi Tina! I appreciate you just sharing that you notice this with yourself, too. It makes me feel less alone. I think it makes sense that this can change depending on the person you're interacting with and just with time and different circumstances. I think I avoided any personal connection with my mother because if I showed her vulnerability it was always used later, so I couldn't trust her kindness. I've always had a secure attachment with my father, but now that I'm older and I see the dynamic better, I can see more clearly that he similarly used guilt and obligation on my mother and my brothers to get things done for him. So now that my mother has passed, I am feeling myself become more avoidant with him. I was pretty closed off in my friendships but as I became an adult I started to realize that most people aren't out to manipulate you to get their needs met, so it became more secure and I'm so thankful for that. Realizing I can be honest about how I feel and put it out there and they often open up too has been a huge part of my own progress. I'm also very motivated by what helps others, and one of my friends said that me telling her how much I was struggling surprised her, and it made it easier for her to then tell me everything she was going through really opened my eyes to what being closed off keeps us all from.

And I agree, I think at least at this point I need to let that person figure themselves out and what they want. If I try to help I think I'll just get hurt. I don't want to go backwards in my recovery from these codependent patterns, and I definitely feel these things being activated here. The level of sadness I felt about all of this has taken me by surprise, and I appreciate the reminder that it's okay to be sad. I had a period where I kind of cycled between crying and feeling completely frozen by my own feelings for like a week. And now that I reflect on it, I realize that forming new friendships and rebuilding older ones has helped me get back in touch with my own feelings. I think my relationship with my husband has been so devastating over the years that I just shut off all of the pain surrounding it to get through the day and survive. I think the pain of this potential friendship ending has helped me feel grief in general for a lot of the losses in my life...and I've had a lot of them. I think it's helping me feel some grief about my marriage, and what I thought all of this was going to be. I have been looking more at my own day to day reality, free from my own fantasy about things magically getting better if I just love him hard enough and keeping "momming" him. And this is no way to live. I'm feeling it more, but it's always been like this, I just kept distracting until now.

I think I am going to continue to reflect on my own behaviors in relationships, and also will reflect on why I don’t feel more taken advantage of and have more hesitancy about continuing a relationship with someone after it becomes clear that they are not putting in the same effort that I am. I would really like to be able to emotionally feel like this is a dealbreaker for me, but I don’t quite feel that yet. But I'm starting to at least act like someone who feels that way, and I'll just hope the feelings catch up when I see that not giving away all the best parts of myself and my time to people who don't appreciate it makes me feel less miserable. People who aren’t working on their own recoveries are probably going to see my efforts for them as reasons to not change, because why should they change if they are getting everything they want without any effort?

I think the positive that I am seeing in all of this is I am slowly choosing better habits, and I am slowly building a better life for myself. I still have the next big hurdle ahead, the final divorce discussion and living separate lives. But it doesn't feel impossible anymore. It feels like an inevitability and something that I am just preparing for. I'm accepting that I drew the short straw when it comes to family support with hard life decisions. But that doesn't mean I have no support. And I know I'm a resilient person. And at the end of all of this is my own life on my terms. It will be worth the pain ahead. I just have to keep telling myself that, and keeping taking the steps forward.