How do I know if I am/was special to my pwBPD?

[MdW]

Having read some of the BPD information on this website I'm starting to question if I meant anything to my ex with BPD?

It is driving me crazy as I am backtracking to when I first met her and trying to puzzle it together. I think it will really help me move on from this if it wasn't real. I'm suddenly remembering what she told me about the last few people she dated. She took a few of her short term exes to Spain to meet her friends and family (I wasn't allowed). None of her short term exes are on her FB, no pictures at all, she went on holidays with them too, but there's only pictures of her on these holidays. She has deleted all my friends from her FB gradually. Only my mother is left of my FB friends and I don't know why that is. Did it hurt her to see I'm having fun in my friends' newsfeeds OR is she just sick of seeing my face and wants no connection with me? When I met her parents, family and friends they had no interest in me. I've met all my exes parents and they wanted to know me, they had keen interest in who their daughter was dating, but not hers. Did they know I would just be another one? That is the only explanation I can think of. I was just another one.

When we saw her friends in Dubai the one girl whispered to her "I'm so glad you are finally happy". They don't see her that often so maybe they thought we were happy. But why would they say that? Also when I was at my brother's wedding she told me she was imagining our wedding day and that she was welling up telling her grandmother about me. In the first 3 months she made my photo her screensaver on her phone, FB, her whatsapp status was "in love". Was I just another one of many? Was any of this special at all? We said we loved each other a month after dating and before we slept together... .Was I just being crazy to think that she really loved me?

I re-read her letters to me and she was always confident in them that she loved me and wanted to make our relationship work. She told me I was special and what we had was different, however the way she is behaving now is not suggesting that.

It's been two months since our breakup and exactly a week since I last saw her. I dropped her belongings at her house unanounced last week and we talked for about an hour where she said a few times that she would like to see me again to talk.

I thought we left things on good terms. I told her that I wanted to return her things so I could move on, but also that I still loved her. Her eyes were teary from the moment she saw me until we said our goodbyes. I also said I'd leave her in peace and leave it up to her to contact me. From her reaction a week ago I thought she did care about me and that she's not been with anyone. Now I wonder if she was just emotional because of the BPD.

Unfortunately I also left a letter in her box of things in case she wasn't home. It was a nice letter but I also did remind her that we both have issues and I might have referenced the BPD. I'm a little worried that all the good progress was undone by this letter because a few things in the letter could have painted me black again. I told her I wrote her many letters which I never sent and she seemed very impressed that I wrote her one which was now at her home unread. I kind of expected that she would at least somehow respond to my letter in some way.

I invited her to a concert that will take place in two weeks. She has a diary and is very good with remembering dates. I'm trying to be strong and will not contact her as we agreed she would contact me. I hope she gets in touch, even if just to say she cannot make it.

I've been keeping busy, but always think about her when I'm alone. Everything reminds me of her. The smell of truffle oil, shopping at the market, movies, music, I shared everything with her so pretty much all my favorite things now bring back memories of her. I'm desperate to forget her. Desperate to stop hurting. I feel like she or someone needs to tell me it wasn't real. I wish she would just tell me she doesn't love me anymore or that she would meet someone else so I can just forget and feel normal again.

It is rare for me to pine over someone like this and rare for me not to want to let go. Usually it is not this hard. Why is it so hard? She has done so many hurtful things to me and yet I long to have her close to me. Why would I even want her after she's treated me so badly at times? I know I deserve better, but I can't be kind enough to myself to let go.

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[livednlearned]

Hi MdW,

Sorry I am just seeing your post now.

People with BPD tend to have an unstable sense of self. She may be able to shape shift, almost like slipping on a costume so she can merge with you. It's a fantasy of sorts, and not one that can be sustained. She may have been looking for an all-powerful protector who would take care of her and never let her down, never break her trust, never make her feel inadequate.

Unfortunately, having intense, roller coaster emotions and a deep sense of inadequacy, inevitably something would cause her to feel a rupture in the fantasy. Sometimes these ruptures are made worse by our own doing, (the skills are not intuitive) though with BPD, it's a rough emotional rollercoaster and takes a lot of emotional strength and skill to stabilize the relationship and address underlying emotions.

For her, it was probably real though not sustainable, though only she may know. People with BPD can love, and they can also split you black, often feeling the most intense negative feelings about the people they love.

The BPD person in my life had intense emotions and through my relationship with him, it was much easier to access emotions I tended to repress, based on my own background. This made it feel as though I was losing access to parts of myself when the relationship ended. Part of healing is learning what that is all about.

It sounds to me like you are feeling confused by the splitting that takes place with people who suffer from BPD. In order for her to deal with difficult feelings of rejection, her psychological coping mechanisms lead her to paint you all bad in order for her to perceive herself as ok. Does that make sense? She likely does not have an easy time seeing the middle or third way, where two seemingly opposite things can both be true (for example, you have your own life and love her at the same time, even when apart). 

[Downtown]

Having read some of the BPD information on this website I'm starting to question if I meant anything to my ex with BPD? ... .Was I just being crazy to think that she really loved me?

MdW, I agree with L&L that your BPDer partner very likely loved you intensely, albeit in the immature way a young child is able to love. Researchers, however, seem to have reached no agreement on this issue. In a recent book (2008) summarizing the current theory and empirical findings on personality disorders, the authors conclude:

We do not know, for example, whether borderline patients are uniformly unable to form relatively rich, differentiated representations of people, or whether they use less mature split representations and make illogical attributions under certain conditions, such as poorly modulated affect or conflicts centered around separation or aggression.

The authors nonetheless seem to favor my view that, like young children, BPDers are able to love but -- due to their inability to process and handle strong mixed feelings -- they often will "split off" their feelings of love (or hate), putting them entirely out of reach of their conscious minds.  Importantly, the feeling has not disappeared but, rather, is simply unavailable to the conscious mind.  This would explain, then, how BPDers are able to flip in 10 seconds back to loving the partner.  

If this seems strange, consider that a young child is capable of adoring Daddy when he is bringing out the toys but, in a few seconds, will flip to hating Daddy when he takes one toy away.  Like young children, a BPDer will flip quickly between splitting you white (adoring you) and splitting you black (devaluing or hating you).  Importantly, the splitting does NOT imply that the love and hate feelings have disappeared.  Rather, those feelings are simply "split off" from the conscious mind, putting them out of reach.  This is done because the BPDer is so immature that she/he cannot tolerate strong conflicting feelings, ambiguities, uncertainties, or the other gray areas of interpersonal relationships.  The authors attribute this theory to Kernberg. Specifically, the authors state:

One of the major contemporary theories is Kernberg's ... .(He) formulated his theory to account for phenomena observed in the treatment of severe personality disorders, notably the tendency of these patients toward "splitting" (the separation of good and bad representations, so that the person cannot see the self or others at a particular time with any richness or complexity). The preschooler scolded by his or her mother who yells, "Mommy, I hate you! You don't love me!" is evidencing this normal developmental incapacity to retrieve memories of interactions with the mother associated with a different affective tone... .Kernberg's theory has proven useful... .in treatment for borderline personality disorder.

See p. 68 of Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research at
https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=8r4KlgerjcUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA61&dq=%22borderline+personality%22+%22able+to+love%22&ots=lci4qP5KZa&sig=-iJ8ic3f2-Wko9ZnOUnq_XAApOU#v=onepage&q=%22borderline%20personality%22%20%22able%20to%20love%22&f=false.

[Icanteven]

Was I just being crazy to think that she really loved me?

You're not being crazy, she really did love you.  And as far as the thread topic you were very special to her.  Only, as LnL says, maintaining her feelings for you was an impossible task.

Everything reminds me of her... .I shared everything with her so pretty much all my favorite things now bring back memories of her... .I feel like she or someone needs to tell me it wasn't real.

It was very real.  And it's normal to be triggered by shared experiences even in normal relationships.

Why is it so hard? She has done so many hurtful things to me and yet I long to have her close to me.

Because there were so many great times and in these situations our minds tend to ignore all the bad stuff and focus on the good times, even in normal relationships.  What makes it worse for being in relationships with pwBPD is that the person we fell in love with seems to be so at odds with the person we now see before us.

You were special.  She loved you.  All of it was real.  And because it was so intense you two share a bond that you may have never shared with anyone else. But it is also real that she struggles to sustain love, and that family of origin and emotional development issues may make it very difficult for her to demonstrate love for you with anything remotely resembling adult love.

Not sure if that's the answer you were looking for, but both can be true: you were the love of her life, and now you're just somebody that she used to know; comes with the territory in these relationships.

[BowlOfPetunias]

I think it really depends on the severity of BPD.

My wife has some BPD traits--unprovoked rages, blameshifting/gaslighting, refusal to take responsibility, fear of abandonment and the need to be the center of attention, some splitting/black & white thinking, impulsiveness--but she is nowhere as bad as my ex from college, J.  I have known my wife for over 20 years and she does not have the unstable personality associated with many BPDs--I haven't seen her become interested in something just because someone else is interested in it for example (though she used to often assume that I must really like things that she likes, such as seafood, if only I would try them again and again and get over my mistaken belief that I don't like them.)  While her attitude towards me may go from praising me to putting me down and making me feel horrible, I think she does genuinely know who I am and is therefore capable of loving me. 

J, in contrast, was much farther detached from reality.  She did, for example, adopt my interests in an effort to get me to like her.  She shared my views and interests on a very, very superficial level, not really understanding them.  Her splitting was also more extreme.  While I certainly wasn't the villain she often saw in me, neither was I the prince she saw at other times.  She did not know the real me.  She was therefore incapable of loving me.  She genuinely loved the person she wanted me to be.  But that certainly wasn't me.  Or anyone else who was not a fictional character.  Not being able to live up to the impossible standard that she loved, I became the villain that she hated.  And then back to the person she wanted me to be.

At first, I really believed that J loved me.  But that was because I wanted to believe that she loved me.  Once the extreme splitting manifested itself, I began to realize that I wasn't the person she loved.  Wanting to be loved is not "crazy."  I was naive.  I was lonely.  I had low self-esteem.  But those things did not make me "crazy."  They made me vulnerable.