BPDFamily.com

Thanks to this board ,no contact and the passage of time I have realized for the past several months that the BPD chapter in my life is over.

I an fortunate as I have no residual ties(children,finances etc) and I have had no contact for almost 2 and half years.(I still get a voice message every several months when her guy inventory is low).

I had some tough moments early on and initially I was so entrenched I  thought I may be able to even  live with her cheating.Wow talking about having the self esteem torn out of you.

I pretty much know why I got involved (the fix it thing,the sex,the belief in her words not her actions etc) and think I can make better decisions now(I'd be hard pressed to make worse).

So again thanks to everybody who here who helped me(and hopefully I helped a few people along the way) and to those people in the background that keep this board going.

 |iiii Glad to hear things are going so well for you!

How have you gotten to this point? What has changed about your thinking that has given you confidence in your capacity to handle things?

Are there any other areas you want to continue to work on?

Wishing you peace,

PF

I think I have gotten to this point by learning about  BPD and why I had a fixer up mentality.

My late wife went through a long protracted illness for 5 years that I stood by powerless to do anything.

I think when I met my BPDers I thought I could at least fix there tattered life especially since they expressed a desire to change things.

As for change and confidence I tend to think of myself more especially with age.I also know and have met some high quality normal woman .I also have been fortunate enough to be involved in some normal healthy r/s prior to my BPD r/s.

As for work needed on my part  I know I have my quirks and issues and my ADD impacts on a r/s.

Thank you  for asking

I am glad to hear of someone doing well and moving on. I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was 7, and have been on Ritalin/Adderal  on and off ever since, and I am 50 now.  Before my last giant run in with my exBPDgf, I thought that my ADD was organic and pretty well offset with medication, that my problems from my youth were behind me. Then I got in to an r/s with my pwBPD a second time (27 yrs after the first time)... and it went very badly, we recycled about 7 times before I ended it. She gave me a lot of grief and when really mad would even resort to the truth if it would hurt me more. She said I didn't love her, I had an attachment problem and was too stupid to know it. Later I read books on attachment theory and found she was right, my malignant NPD dad and cold/distant mother helped me to develop a fearful/avoidant attachment style... which has symptoms exactly like ADD/ADHD, but from a fidgety anxious basis. As part of my T's treatments I learned about mindfulness, and it did wonders to drop my anxiety level and stop ruminating... and to my amazement... when I am not anxious... I don't have any ADD symptoms.

The attachment theory stuff also led me to schema therapy literature, and I took a schema therapy assessment ... . about 150 questions, pain to score, but it ends up by giving you a score on 14 schema types to see where you function relative to most people, and on 6 of the schemas, I was more than 2 std deviations off of normal... and in reading the descriptions of the self defeating behaviors associated with each one, it was startlingly accurate. There is a book called "Reinventing your life" that is based on the schemas and what you can do to address each of the problem areas.  The tests was well worth the time it took to do it, as it made clear where the issues were.

I hope you are successful in moving on from your r/s with a pwBPD... . they seem to inflict a great deal of hurt and pain, but also shine a light on our issues, and if we are willing to address them, could even lead to some positive change for us.

Robhart,

Thank you for sharing your successes.  I need to hear that, as it gives me hope for my future.  Some days are still very painful and grueling, but I have happy moments mixed in here and there.

Charred,

Did you take the schema therapy assessment with a therapist or is it available online?  If online, will you provide me with the link?  Thanks.

It is available online, I think I took the short one.

https://bpdfamily.com/pdfs/schema_inventory.xls

There were two word files you download, one was the questions the other the scoring info. Hardest thing was all the tedium of calculating the scores... then they have a mean value and one and two std devs values... . which you compare your average for each schema type against the numbers... if you are below or up to the mean... normal, if you are around the 1 std dev, you are getting out there a bit, if you are past the 2nd std dev, you probably want to look at that as a problem area.

You have to look around on the site a bit to find the info to make sense of what it all means, but the questions show how you function and cope ... and the explanations if you look around the slides and everything on the site, can show where problems came from.

Based on agreeing with what it said (6 areas needed work... and sounded like what every person I dated or was close to complained about at times... so it rang true)... I ordered the book "Reinventing your life" by one of the schema therapy creators ... it is supposed to be about addressing the issues brought up by the tests. Haven't got it yet, but suspect it will be pretty good.

Thank you.  Take care of yourself.