After so much time, I'm stile hurting...

[Billa]

Well, Hello to everybody. A long time has passed from the last time I wrote on this board, even if I went on visiting it from time to time. In the bad moments, I should say... .Well, to cut a story short, this is one of those moments. I'm three years out of the (official/real/concrete) relationship with my BPD exBf, but there has been a lost of recicling: recicling attempts, virtual recicling, real recicling, as the last time. During all these years (we lived in different towns till last september, when Imoved to his hometown - for a lot of reasons, some right, some wrong) he has had his own life. And his own harem, also. At the moment the princess is a girl who is twenty years younger than him. A wonderful occasion to nourish his narcisistic traits. He wanted me to be part of the group of his worshippers, the last one in order of importance, the one to punish in every occasion, telling me things such as "you're never been so important to me as she is" and so on (in the meanwhile, he was cheating on her with me, but that's just a detail... .). I could not stand the situation, it was too painful and so I stopped it. At first I was so angry that I was able to manage it, now, after two months and two different attempts of recicling from him, I'm feeling very bad and it's very painful and difficult. I think I won't ever be able to move on!

[patientandclear]

Billa, I remember you from back then, and am sorry to hear it's been so painful.  For what it's worth, I've spent a lot of the intervening time away from my ex wBPD, and have found it to be every bit as painful, because, even though I didn't participate knowingly in a harem, I stayed clear enough of the dynamics that I tend to forget how rotten I know I would have felt if I'd stayed on his Ferris wheel, and i can spend a lot of time in doubt and regret about having (more or less) ended things with him.

When I first started reading on BPDF I read a post by a woman whose ex lover had written her a lovelorn regret filled email, which she already decided to dismiss as "too lame" given what had happened between them; but then she found out that he wrote that inviting, beckoning email while on a cruise with another woman, actually the second he'd been with in the few months since they'd split. The poster was enraged.  Somehow the fact that he would mess around with her feelings again and suggest that things could be good again, WHILE WITH SOMEONE ELSE, brought home how tawdry, cheap, and sort of random and interchangeable it all was.  She wrote about how she had somehow found herself slipping from "the adored" to "the adoring" over the course of the subtle evolution of her r/ship, and told herself it was her job to "get up off your knees" and not participate any more in something that to such a degree degraded what she had felt, that had been so pure.  When I am struggling I find it helpful to think of her concept of "get up off your knees."

I'm really sorry that what you felt for him has been treated so poorly.  That is a very hard blow.

[Billa]

Thank you for your words and for the story you shared with me. I'll try and follow th suggestion and to get up off my knees and stand up :-)

PS: As a matter of fact, something similar happened also to me, in fact my ex tried to recycle me while he was on a three-week holiday, two weeks with one woman, the older mmeber of his "harem" and one week with the newest one (the one to whom I referred as the "princess" ogf the moment). When I got to know it, I couldn't believe it!

[patientandclear]

There's a reason we see these patterns. I actually get at a deep level why this works for someone who both longs for and is afraid of intimacy. But the question is--what does it do to us.

I was willing to hang in through a lot of weirdness with my ex. I loved him a lot. But the problem for me became that that feeling of specialness that he was so good at making me feel ... .The reason I would stick it out through all the weirdness? It dawned on me that he was making all the other women feel that special, too. Having understood that, I could no longer rationalize putting myself in such a vulnerable posture with him.