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I'm wondering if it's at all common for a BPD to marry one of his long-ago ex girlfriends. I heard that an old girlfriend of his (who he never told me about because he would never talk about exes), moved to the city for a job and looked him up. She is 45 and had never married and apparently sought him out to renew the relationship (we're talking about a 15 or 20 year-ago relationship). They got married a few weeks ago. A friend who used to be friends with my ex BPD boyfriend told me about it and I was so upset because I don't want him to have any source of comfort and I don't want anyone to be happy for him... .especially because I haven't found a new love in the past three years, let's face it. I wanted to get married first! But this mutual friend said she had met the woman many, many years ago when this woman and my ex were dating and my friend said she found her really strange and always wondered why he was with her all those years ago. Even if she isn't a gem, I can't imagine why she sought him out after all these years when she knows what she's getting into.

What do people on this forum make of this? And why am I so sad even though I don't want to be married to him and I was the one who ended it three years ago? I am still angry that I let him go with such compassion and he never responded to that compassion. He never got help or apologized to me. In fact, I never heard a single word from him after I sent my dear john letter when he was giving me the silent treatment. So I know that's still part of my anger. But I just don't get it. I want to stop being upset and I don't know why I am. I think he's probably in a terrible marriage or it will turn terrible, right? Please tell me he'll be miserable! Sorry, but I really need support here. Thank you.

I'm sorry to hear that you are in some pain about this.

Most likely, you are putting too much emphasis on the good times you shared... .don't forget the bad and the reasons why you ended it. A wedding can mean many things, but living with him in the day-in-day-out marriage will not be a fairytale.

Everyone makes their own choices, and if they are happy now, let them be in that space. It doesn't have anything to do with you and your life now. I think you already know that each relationship he has will most likely follow the same pattern and end in a bad way. Everyone tolerates abuse differently... .

You need to get busy with your life and find connections that make you happy. Try not to focus on him. Ask your friends to support you and your life and not talk about him. If you ask, ask them to remind you that you don't need to know about him. Get busy with your life and your happiness will fill the emptiness that you have now.

Other people can't make you happy or sad - you are in control of how you feel about everything. Don't give him any more power over your life. Make a decision today to leave him in the past and move forward.

I guess I'm just so amazed that anyone would willingly get into a marriage with him and it makes me question my very memory of how awful he treated me in the end. It blows my mind. Has he changed or is he different with her than he was with me? Is that possible? And how could he make a commitment to someone when he couldn't even fight for me -- the person whom he swore he loved and felt things for so deeply that he couldn't even cry in the end. He just slinked away and shut the door on me emotionally, with no further contact.

Anyway,  I know what you're saying about happiness being my choice and I'm trying so hard. I really am. I just don't know what to do when my mind turns over and over and ruminates. It's crazy making. I really liked the idea of his being alone and miserable for the rest of his life. I so wanted him to get help after I broke it off. I hoped that he would see that not everyone was out to get him but I think he interpreted as exactly that instead. Now I've just grown to hate him and it doesn't feel better doing that either. It's easy to say "just don't fixate on him." But sadly I can't shut off my mind. I think this is why people drink. It must be. I've never been one to avoid pain and numb out, but I'm starting to understand the need to just that. I'm in such a bad space tonight. Crying, crying, crying over someone who only had potential and never actually met it. That's pathetic isn't it. I don't even want to be married to him. I just don't want him to have any peace. So here I am doing exactly what you're advising me not to do. Tralala!

I know how you feel, really I do, been there too.

In fact, when BPD/Nxh left me for the younger floosy, I did everything I could to fight for my man, and boy did I work it. But you know what, after 2 years with her (I went no contact with him) I saw his police report through the courts and he ended up treating her the same way he treated me in the end. Violence, stalking, abuse etc.

I remember falling in love with him and he was everything I always wanted. After the shine started to wear away I spent my days doing more and more to win him over and get back to the good old days. When he loved me, it was the most amazing feeling - like a drug I couldn't get enough of. It was enough for me to survive the weeks and months of emptiness and abuse and strive to be a better wife/mother/lover to get my next fix of love.

   Of course, it wasn't real. The more I distanced myself physically and emotionally from his rollercoaster, the clearer it became. I realised I was chasing my dream husband, not the BPD/N that I had married.

There is probably nothing wrong with your memory of events - it's just distorted and I can imagine that his new wife has married her ideal husband, without knowing (or remembering) what he is like.

You said that you wanted him to be alone and miserable for the rest of his life. If he is a pwBPD, he will be. No one will ever be able to fill that void for him, although he'll keep on trying. He will not have peace and he will not be happy. It's impossible unless he admits his problems and seeks help, and even then it would probably take him forever to get it right.

I don't hate or love BPD/Nxh. I feel sorry for him that his life will always be empty, and mine is full. I feel sad that his uBPD mother most likely got him into this mess and will never know just how much she has affected the lives of her 3 children, her ex husband, her grandkids and my whole family, not to mention the rest of the people they have hurt.

They will continue to blame everyone else for their problems. That is why he'll never be happy.

Maybe you're just mourning the life you thought he could share with you. You can still have it with a healthy man, it won't help to ruminate over an emotionally unavailable person... .

Is this your ex's first marriage? You mentioned his wife is 45. What is his age? Just curious.

I think no matter who ends the BPD relationship, the nons are left wanting to be in better shape than the ex in any way, especially romantically. My uBPDbf broke up with me three months ago and I avoid learning any information about him from any source for the simple reason I don't want to see when he has moved on to someone else (I refuse to Google his name, look him up on social media, contact mutual friends) and possibly marries. He wanted to marry me when we were together but there was zero follow through and a lot of pushing me away until he got what he wanted: me out of his life. My ex and I parted angrily. He shut the door cold, I blasted him about how he treated me and he doesn't want anything to do with me.

I know I shouldn't be with him, nor should I want to be with him, but damn if I don't want anybody else with him. This, to me, is probably the hardest part of detaching and moving on. Just worrying endlessly about when and with whom he will settle down with. All while I live the single life and want nothing more than to marry. Sucks. 

I am still in the resentment stage where I wish him misery. He's an alcoholic and unless he has gotten sober post-breakup, those demons are alive and well.

But like most people advise on these boards, remember the lousy way pwBPD treat those they are closest to: disrespect, anger, double standards, dishonesty, verbal abuse, and no intimacy. And don't forget to try to find comfort in what you can control, like how you feel, your career, your relationships with healthy people.

Easier said than done, but not impossible.

The sad thing about this my friend is this girl has absolutely no clue what she is in for and a broken marriage is probably not what she bought into - it is what she will get though.

Revenge is sweet when you can move forward and accept that this relationship will follow the same pattern as yours did. She is you and in a few months time will be wondering where her "happy ever after" went!

Processing anger is part of the detaching process. Any ideas why you may have put up with his antics? Find the reason and you relinquish yourself of the obligation you once felt. There is something very innate in us where we provided that role voluntarily despite the abuse.

Actually, I have to say that kind of resent that you assume I withstood his antics for a long time. I didn't at all. In fact my therapist said that I was the model of someone getting out of such a destructive relationship. I tried to salvage it for about a month before I ended it. During that time my head was spinning and I was trying to figure out what was going on. But truthfully, I knew from the very first time that he lashed out at me (Jekyll and hyde style) that something was deeply wrong and it was likely I would not be able to trust him again. I hoped against hope during that relatively short time that he'd tell me about the source of his pain and maybe I could at least help him get help. But it only got so far as him telling me (after the first bout of silent treatment) that he had these cycles and that in the past he had considered suicide very seriously three times. I felt so badly for him but I also knew it wasn't my job to fix him. After he closed up and put me through the silent treatment again, I told him that I wasn't going to live like that and didn't deserve it. I broke it off in a letter because he wasn't returning my calls, and by then I had figured out that he was BPD. I have made TONS of progress in healing (I actually became a somewhat accomplished painter in the aftermath and continue to this day). But I kept hoping he would one day apologize for having said the things he said to me (I mean the devotedly loving ones in the run up to hell), all the time knowing that he was capable at any minute of turning around and treating me like I had no feelings at all. SO incredibly reckless of him. I also hoped that the compassion I showed him when I ended it would hit a nerve with him eventually, and he'd see that I could end it for myself while still wanting him to heal. I wanted a big fat apology that I know would have helped me heal faster and more completely.

You know, kindness, forgiveness, healing... .all those things we're taught to believe can happen when you treat someone like a whole and valued person even when they have done you so deeply wrong. But nothing even remotely like that happened. I never heard from him again and I only heard that he had gotten very eccentric over the past two years - although still accomplished in his job. Then I heard that this ex of his came to town and looked him up and they got married. All this is to say that I know I mustn't ruminate and I can only hope that his true colors will come through to her sooner rather than later (although I suspect she's already seen them since they were once in a long term relationship. Huh?) It's all been so disillusioning about the nature of some people and how incredibly different this karma thing works if you know what I mean. My truest hope after this recent throwback into these memories is that I can let go for good now and just live my best life. And that that will be what heals me. I have learned an incredible lesson about just being fearless even in the face of incredulity, and I want more and more to spend time with those people in my life who build me up. I think that's the only way I can heal myself. Thank you for your support, by the way. I mean it.

i can totally relate to feeling this way estee. it is often assumed that you are a codependent type on these threads and that there was some karmic reason why you allowed this person into your life. this doesn't seem to be the case for me though, so i can understand your frustration. however i can completely empathize with (the majority?) of nons who may have some codependent issues--b/c i know how attached i grew to this person... and i'm aloof/independent!  (lol, joke's on me). if i had been codependent things would have been that much more terrible. however it was still particularly devastating for me (at the time of the breakup), so on this i can relate to everyone.

in my case i didn't see the full blown chaos of the BPD until after the breakup--and like you i stood up for myself and did the breaking up--but truly i was broken myself. and wanted with every fiber to mend the r/s back together, as i didn't know how hopeless a cause it was to think that this person could actually grow (didn't know about BPD till much later). so i'm saying all of this to say that i am so grateful that i had the chutzpah to end things when i did... .but that doesn't mean i wasn't weak as a wet noodle when the rug was pulled from under me and i realized what a truly awful person i had spent years of my life with. in a way, i think during our r/s, she was a better version of herself--all my friends loved her. but after our break, she's making a bad rep for herself. and let me tell you, hearing the negative things about her through others, although it seems like it would be nice in some ways since it confirms my beliefs of her toxic character, it's still heartbreaking. still messes me up. oops, now i'm wandering!  :)


the idea of an apology, estee, i believe is where you are hurting yourself the most. you're never going to get one from him, and if you did it wouldn't be to help you, he'd only fake-apologize to try and manipulate and use you further. i think radical acceptance may be in order here. and in fact i think perhaps what may be a sticking point for you is not accepting truly how disordered this person really is. he doesn't have what we would consider character. no real integrity. compassion only during idealization. it's the way he's made and the way he remains. and sounds like he's happy doing things his way, with no apology or growth, so he's not changing.

thinking about this further, i feel perhaps you are projecting your own non-toxic, loving and self-reflective parts of your personality onto him. did i just say that? yes, i'm just realizing it now. you are questioning whether he's happy, healed and going to have a great marriage--and i think this is because you haven't radically accepted that he is who he is and he's not changing. i think you may be projecting your own version of health, character and possibility of growth (which you see in yourself) onto someone who isn't that at all. who wouldn't want to be that if he had the chance to be, because he's just fine with things (remember, you were always the problem to him, no?). so, i'm not saying that we call this person a monster, but i think it's important to solidify in ourselves, that to us, our exBPD's are pretty worthless individuals, no? that's just how they roll.

and that's ok. it sucks that we have to start over and build a new healthy long term r/s from scratch. but i will say that i am soo thankful that i didn't try to bond with and get married to my exBPD. even though it may not feel like it, pragmatically i think you and i both dodged a major bullet here, so i'm thankful for that.

oh and regarding your ex's marriage--i say wait it out, i'm sure you'll see it play out badly. but, as i was saying before, after hearing about several foul r/s endings of my uxBPDgf, well it still makes me sad. b/c even though i know it's true, it's just a reminder of how awful this person we so want to be real/compassionate actually is.

my next step is working to not even want to hear anything about her again at all. good or bad.

I can relate to your feelings.  You are a compassionate person.  You are expecting him to respond to your compassion and offer an apology the way you would.  He can't.  It is mind blowing, if he is anything like my ex, he did such a good job mirroring you that you think NO WAY can this person not respond or apologize.  Think again.  That is the disorder.   

I wrote a thread a few weeks back, my ex got married too.  Something one of the senior members reminded me that marriage does not fix BPD, in fact it often makes it worse.  So if he is not getting help things will not change. 

Hang in there.  I know from experience this is really hard news to hear.   

This makes a lot of sense:

Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful remarks. It is helpful to have the company. I hope his life does get worse with marriage. I suppose he found someone who is willing to take on his toxicity and maybe that will sustain them both. Who knows. I did indeed dodge a huge bullet. If I ever run into him even after all these years, I'm thinking I'll just tell him that the passage of time and moving on doesn't change what he did.

You were completely reckless with my heart, then you turned around and shut me down and treated me like I had no feelings, like I was less than human. It took me a while to accept that you had really done that and you felt none of the compassion I felt for you. And that was indescribably painful for a long time. It doesn't matter that we've both moved on. You owe me an apology, even though I stopped waiting for that a long time ago.

Done.

Estee,

Think about what truly lives under your anger. Whether it's hurt, shame, embarrassment, sadness... .it helps to validate your true feelings instead of the mask of anger. Validating your anger will only keep you stuck and attached to your ex in a lingering and unhealthy way.

Like someone mentioned perhaps you are still struggling with accepting that your ex is truly mentally ill. I can totally relate because it took a good year for it to really sink in that my ex's behavior wasn't a personal attack; but a reflection of how truly damaged his is on the inside.

As for him getting married... .that means... .so what. So what your mentally ill ex married. He's her problem now... .not cured, fixed, or new and improved for someone else.

Your life shouldn't be about comparing your success to his losses and his losses to your success. If he's BPD he lost a long time ago because he's sanity is gone.

You want him to suffer as if he isn't. If he's BPD; he suffers and will continue to suffer tremendously. Their emotions are betraying them constantly and it is PAINFUL. And while you may not have proof... .karmically our ex's do get what they give. But it isn't your job to hold your breath and wait for his karma to unfold. Our job is to love ourselves back to wholeness; not wait for others to be punished.

Marriage is not a cure all elixir happy ending that it's touted to be. It will not make your ex act sane and normalize his unstable sense of self. There are many on here who have married their BPD's and it's been a total nightmare and hell on earth for them.

You have so much to look forward to in your life. You have the power to create happiness in your NOW. But your anger towards this man will keep you attached and stuck.

I'm guessing your trying to learn how to fully detach?

Detaching is a learning process and a goal. It's the understanding that this person will never have the keys to your (or anyone else's) happiness. It's accepting that inside their brain truly lives a sickness. It's the understanding that we got ourselves involved with someone who was sick before we met them and will continue to be sick. We didn't cause them to treat us terribly; it is their disorder.

Spell

One thing that helps me daily he is living a lie. I am living my life!

Yep:
I have the same attitude. I can move on with anger and disappointment. I don't have to forgive his actions to get past the relationship. Forgiving and letting go are not mutually exclusive, in my opinion. An apology is totally in order from him for being reckless with my feelings, for strongly leading me on. There's no statute of limitations on apologies.

I also think it's okay to wish an unsatisfactory life on our exes. It's a normal human emotion and so what if it lingers for a while. We shouldn't always have to force ourselves to correct this. We don't need to be told all the time to dig around for what is "wrong with us" when we are motivated by these negative feelings. They just are. 

You have so much to look forward to in your life. You have the power to create happiness in your NOW.


Detaching is a learning process and a goal. It's the understanding that this person will never have the keys to your (or anyone else's) happiness.

These are two very helpful things to keep in mind. Thank you.

I love this! This is a keeper. Thank you for that.

Yes, I hope one day I will be able to forgive him because I'd rather not put more energy toward him than I already have. But if anger lingers (well put) while I'm in the process of truly moving on, that's totally normal. Of course sadness and disappointment and betrayal are at the core of that anger and that means I will probably feel some anger until those things are healed. Meanwhile, I can feel anger in the moment but not fixate on it. In fact, I'm already feeling better as I talk to friends, my therapist and this support group. I do know that marriage isn't going to fix him. I have to just remind myself of that when it crops up. Meanwhile, forward ho!