BPDFamily.com

Had lunch with a person today is who was really a stranger to me. I got more out of the hour lunch with her that cost me $25, than I did from my hour with a psychologist that cost me $45. This is a cut and paste message, so it may not read quite clearly, but it was a breakthrough "a ha" day for me. I hope it helps someone else:

"You have to realize that the person you loved never really existed. It was all a con. A fraud. There is no such person. She mirrored you, and now she is mirroring someone else. If you see it that way, the person you fell in love with was yourself. That's why it felt so perfect. So now just love yourself, and heal, and stay away from her don't get sucked back in. They really have no empathy, no feelings for anyone else, and they do and say whatever it takes to get whatever it is they want. Then when whatever they wanted does not make them happy, they push the other person away, blame the other person for the relationship failing, and believe that the other person is an impediment to their being happy with a new person."

It sounded so strange at first-how could a person not exist, how could an entire person be a fraud. But I understood what she meant, and I know how my ex often said she felt like an empty shell. And then it started to make sense. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that it made a lot of sense, and it was all probably true.

I come home and find three emails from the ex who asked me to stop contacting her and emailing her, LOL. The first says "our relationship made me sad". The second one says "you are a bad man and do mean things. I can tell by the people you have added to your FB account" Mind you, she is blocked, and has not seen my friends in months, and 60 of my friends are her friends too. The third email says "please don't text my work tablet. I am allowed only 300 minutes a month, and I used 1000 this month". Now this is really strange because I almost never texted her work tablet, I have texted it maybe 10 times in my entire life, and not at all in the last few weeks. How many "minutes" could ten text messages use up.

So i just told her about the texting, and ignored the other statements. Then later I wrote to her about the one about being sad. I just paraphrased what the woman said to me:

"Your ex husband was not an impediment to you being happy. You left him and I was supposed to be this great man who would make you happy. But I am just a human being with flaws, and all I can do is work on my flaws. I am not an impediment to your new relationship making you happy. Pushing me aside and blocking me out of your life will not make you happy in a new relationship. We all have baggage, find someone who wants to help you unpack. And at the end of the day we are all alone, and we have to live in our own skin. It's nice to have a long term relationship where you are compatible with someone and that person understands you and accepts you."

What an awesome quote.  Thanks for sharing that.

As I said, I found it amazing and quite helpful. I am sure others will too. Here I am wondering how a person I loved, a person I was basically leaving my family and moving 1000 miles to be with could change from what they said they wanted for two years, to go away I don't want us anymore, in a matter of days/weeks. My ex said that she had been feeling it for months, and had been thinking about it. But to feel it for months ago go through the motions of going away with me and inviting me to stay at her apartment, just makes no sense to me. I couldn't understand how a person's feelings could change so quickly and so dramatically.

The person that told me that has a nephew with BPD. He is like 22 or 23 now, and it is her sister's son. She has a son the same age. She has seen for 15 years or more what her sister has had to put up with, going as far as setting the son up in apartment because they could no longer live with them, and then having him do something that messed up his being able to live in the apartment. I'm not sure if he was evicted or what. They then had to get him a van and let him live in their driveway!

Her opinion is that no one, and I've heard this before, should be involved with a borderline unless they have to be i.e.-family. Maybe with the DBT therapy for a year or so some do well. Maybe many do well if they complete that therapy. But I have also heard that very few complete it. So sad really, if the therapy could help that many... .  SMH

wow... .  thank you for that. its still hard to believe though that someone you were with for so long, through so many tribunals and trials, could just walk away. i know they are hurting too. every time she has come back i know she had been hurting in pain when she would break up. i feel empathy for them. and that I believe is what has kept me stuck in this purgatory. but what you posted was an amazing quote.

Makes complete sense.

Thank you!

|iiii

I feel empathy for my ex too. I wish she would get the therapy she obviously needs, and gets better, but I know she won't.

I found a therapist by her a year and a half ago that does the DBT therapy that is supposed to be some helpful. She claims she called the woman, but the therapist did not take insurance or did not take her insurance, and the cost was something like $3000 for a year's treatment. Yes, that's expensive, and my ex is just a middle class person living paycheck to paycheck. But, and this is a BIG but, I'm sure i she wanted the therapy she could have worked out a payment plan and cut corners somewhere and asked me to pay half, which I surely would have done.

Bottom line, it's easier to see a generic therapist once a month for her, blame all our issues and me, and say "I am what I am, we are all products of our environment. Take me as I am, or don't be with me"

I'm glad you liked it. I found it awesome. But after 24 hours or so, I realized how the statement dehumanizes my ex. Yes, she has this disorder, yes it affected our relationship greatly, and certainly the relationship prior to us, which was a 22 year marriage, and it probably affects another relationship or two she has had. But, she really is a person. She does have some firmly held beliefs, but very few. She may mirror men, at least she did with me, but there is a person underneath this disorder, even if that person is sick and kind of superficial/flighty.

At this point, I agree with all those who say just stay away from people with BPD. If you don't need to be involved, like they are a family member, it is never going to get better without the DBT therapy. If they don't admit they have it, and do the therapy, it just ain't happening.

It makes me so sad to think that they never really existed and they never really loved... .  that's a hard one to swallow but it is so very true. 

Good on you for that. While it's totally understandable to attach negativity and devalue another human being, I personally don't see where this helps healing over the long-term. There may be exceptions, but I don't believe that the words "con" and "fraud" are necessarily accurate at all. They would imply malicious intent, which doesn't ring true (at least for me). Black or white, the emotions a person feels are very real, even if anyone else's perception can't make sense of them. In other words, the love and attraction was every bit as 'real' as the anger and rejection.

And even more so when were the one's left to pick up the pieces  folie

I agree with TheDude and Discarded26.   

When I listen to "Such a Fool" by Christina Aguilara, I just cry.  She should do an acoustic version of that song - it would be more beautiful if she wasn't screaming all the lyrics.

Cookie

I believe my ex loved at the time, and believed every word she said at the time she said it. It's just that she got hurt, and she is able to mourn in her own way, paint me black, turn off her emotions for me, and move on.

I know she existed. It's just that the feelings change quickly and her thought process is different from mine. I am a relationship builder, and take a long term view. She is more of a flash in the pan whatever works for me now, type.