Hi all, I figured it was now time to take the step up to PI after spending the past month away from the world of BPD and focussing on myself.
Firstly, just want to thank the many people on this site for sharing their stories and advice as it has been a really big help, not just to me but also to others. There were avenues I had never even considered before and things I had dismissed, which now make a lot more sense.
After a BPD marriage and then a BPD relationship, I took the time to step back and complete the self evaluation I started during the year after my BPD marriage and why I ended up coming full circle. Part of it I know, ego. I willingly stepped into a BPD relationship (although I didn't know it at the beginning but carried on with it once I was aware) because I felt I had something to prove to myself and that had I done or said things differently in my marriage, I could have made it work. This included dismissing everything my T had to say about it not being my fault and accepting responsibility for things that were not mine to own. I know now that a relationship always takes 2 people to make it work and that unless you are willing to ride the rollercoaster, put up with the abuse and give up who you are, it will always be one sided and always head down the path to failure.
So the big question is why I put myself through that? Why when I knew something was wrong prior to my marriage, I still relinquished that control of myself. Why, after a very abusive and destructive marriage which included physical abuse, verbal abuse, control, isolation, lies and hurt, I still put myself up for round 2 with someone very different.
I cannot use the excuse that I didn't know enough or was unaware, because after the breakdown of the marriage I found this site. I read everybodys experiences and we all sit there and relate to what is being said, despite the fact these are very different people in different parts of the world in very different environments all experiencing the same things.
It was a reference to a book, given by winston72 that triggered a journey of self discovery and provided the building blocks for some answers.
The biggest answer of all came from the realisation of my own abandonment trauma. It was a long conversation I had with T last year as to why I allowed myself to be trapped in a violent and abusive marriage. It was really difficult and frustrating to try and figure out and I expect it was for T too. I wasn't in denial and was fully aware of my situation, could sit there and explain it all to him, big picture, little picture and the who, what, where and why. It was also frustrating because I took ownership of my responsibilities but then went a step further and took ownership of everything else. It was a perfect marriage in the sense my exBPDw took no responsibility and passed it all on to me and I took ownership of everything but again, was fully aware.
We approached the idea of it being down to abandonment issues, which again was equally as frustrating. My father did abandon us when I was 7 and my sister was 3, NC for all those years and then reappeared when I was 15. Growing up, he was my hero so I did take it hard. However, all of those feelings I had growing up, I had the opportunity to address as a teenager and also as an adult. It was a clean slate and as an adult, I finally saw the man for who he really was. He was controlling and abusive, a true narcissist in every sense of the word and I was only thankful that he didn't play a big part in my life. Although I tried to build a relationship with him as an adult, not following his demands or orders resulted in an immediate disowning or being told you were dead to him. This is the way he treated all people in his life and after one too many being dead to hims, I grieved the loss of my father and moved on with my life.
After the birth of my daughter (his first grandchild) I contemplated getting in touch and felt it was only right for him to know. What he did with that information was then down to him, but at least I knew I had done the right thing by my daughter and by me too. I sent him photographs but rather than being thankful, I got an email of abuse about how long it had taken his computer to open the pictures and how I wasn't good enough. That was the last time I ever spoke to him. Again, grieved and moved on. Since then, he has tried to get in contact and I get a "Happy birthday" or "Merry Christmas" every year but it doesn't bother me anymore and I don't respond. The irony in that is that all those years growing up, he never remembered and as for chirstmas, his excuse was that he lived in Buddhist countries and they don't celebrate christmas. Funnily enough, when I lived in those countries, I caught him out in a lie.
So yes, there was a degree of abandonment trauma but as T said, my approach and resolution was very normal and only relates to my father. My friends are all spread out so we all drop in and out of each others lives, given we have our own lives. We can go weeks or months without seeing each other or talking but when we do, it's just like we were never apart. So there is no abandonment issues in that sense and the trauma only applies to my father and nobody else. So why is that the key to it all?
Because in some ways what happened, has still left scars that hadn't healed. I approached my adulthood trying to understand what made my father the way he was. He had been a soldier and blamed a lot of it on that, so I joined the army to try and understand. Only I found it to be a very different place and although there is a degree of brainwashing, it wasn't responsible as he made it sound. After the incident with my eldest daughter, I modelled myself on trying to be everything that he wasn't. My mother didn't help in that department when I was a child and if I played up, she would often comment on how I was just like my father. I guess that coupled with the reality stuck with me and kept me in a loop.
Only, what I didn't see was that my mothers comments were said to me as a child, not as an adult. That if I threw a tantrum as a child, my father was actually doing it as an adult when he didn't get his own way. I also interpreted it as my father leaving, so if I was just like him, it would mean I would leave too and I feared that more than anything. So being the exact opposite, I stayed in abusive relationships fearing that if I left, it would only serve to prove I was just like my father.
There is much talk about seeking partners who resemble the aspects or elements of one of your parents. Simply because this is what feels familiar to you. Freud talked about males seeking out a mother figure and females seeking out a father figure. I see some aspects of truth to this but that it can also be switched around.
By distancing myself from every aspect of who he was, I allowed myself to become the exact opposite. Where he was controlling and demanding I became the complete opposite. I allowed myself to be controlled, was involved in 2 relationships with demanding people and in the case of my marriage, allowed myself to be abused too. I didn't seek out people who resembled my father, only from a personal aspect stuck to being the opposite of who he was. This in turn meant that the people I attracted were those could identify me as a target and once in, I held my values of not walking away even though I understood I was in a destructive relationship. That is the part I played and for that I'm equally as responsible for my share of the dance. It is also the reason I allowed my boundaries to be broken, because I allowed someone else to dictate what my boundaries should be.
Through this realisation, I have been able to work on closing that chapter of my life and although some of the scars may not heal, I am able to identify with them, know why they are there and have acceptance. I no longer live in anyones shadow and cast out my own. I have been a people pleaser when it has come to relationships and also doing things for acceptance, for someone to tell me in the past how different I am to my father, seeking that validation. But it no longer matters.
I no longer have a desire to be a white knight either and I'm finding that perfect balance. It's an alien world out there and I'm discovering more each day. The people coming into my life now are ones who take ownership and responsibility for their own actions and I no longer feel I have to babysit. I have found myself saying "No" more and more over the past couple of months, both from a personal perspective and from a work one too. At work, I was always known as Mr Dependable. We have a noticeboard on our internet hub to leave comments about colleagues and I was reading through them the other day from a few months ago. "Many thanks for being the lone ranger and riding over the hill to our rescue again". ":)ay or night, we always know we can count on you in a crisis. Many thanks for bailing us out yet again"
Although these are nice comments to have, I now see another side to it. I give the impression to others that it's ok not to take accountability or get things right because I was always on hand to fix others mistakes. Even if this meant changing my own plans to do so. Day or night I would get calls and I can imagine the what was being said on the other side. "It's ok for us to rush this code through because if it breaks, Murbay will sort it" Only now, I learned the power of "No"
It doesn't mean I won't help others, but it also means that when I have plans, I stick to them. It has upset a couple of people over the past couple of weeks but it has also exposed them and in turn helped the company identify where it needs to strengthen it's resources. It also means these very same people now have to think about what they are doing because when it goes wrong, they are the ones being held accountable for their own actions. The dynamic has completely shifted now, in that rather than having me fix others failures, they are coming to ask for advice on how to get it right and then taking ownership themselves. So from that, I now know that "No" isn't always the negative word I always believed it to be.
Obviously, one or two people are not happy that I'm no longer carrying them, but you can't accommodate everybody and if someone expects to be carried, are they really in the right job? Not my responsibility, it's theirs.
I finally understand a lot of what SB has been referring to on several of the posts and it makes so much more sense now. Although it's early days, I am getting better at identifying other peoples ownership and leaving it at their door instead of taking responsibility first. Obviously some things will still slip through but it is definitely becoming clearer.
So to sum it all up, I was looking for answers through BPD only to discover that an open wound I had from my own FOO was acting as a beacon. That in order to stop the cycle occurring and to turn off that beacon, I needed to identify and close the wound once and for all. Finally, that my experiences with pwBPD are experiences I should be truly thankful and grateful for, because without them and understanding them, I might never have identified why this pattern repeated itself.
My apologies for the length of this post. As it has been over a month since I posted, it seemed there was a lot I needed to say
