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Ok I struggle understanding why my exUBPDgf would change when things started really going well.  Anytime we were getting along really well, and I would start finally feeling some since of "security" in the relationship it would turn bad fast.  Usually she would flame me for something seemingly small and break up.

Did anyone else feel like this?

All the time Tincup.  For months towards the end I found myself actually "blessing myself"  before going into his house.  "Things are going well lord, please let this continue".     Couple hours later I'd usually be on my way home - AGAIN - asking myself What the heck happened this time?  I thought things were going well? 

This is the torture of a BPD r/s. As soon as things were going great and we seemed to be growing and connecting on a deeper level, she would start to call me out on all types of nonsense. Quirks of mine that either go unnoticed to most, or should be loved by my SO, became unforgivable flaws that warranted terrible treatment and abuse. BAsed on my knowledge of the illness, I'm assuming they simply cannot handle getting close to anyone and push you away as fast as they pull you in.

Remember the core of the disorder is a fear of abandonment and borderlines are hypersensitive.  If we go from the high drama of the beginning of a relationship, hyperfocused on the other person so that the world disappears, fawning over their every desire and giving them all of our focus, and then, once the honeymoon starts waning and we settle into the comfort of a sustainable, long term relationship, in a borderline's head we already left, the absolute worst thing that can happen.  So they will stir up some sht to either get attention, keep you on edge so you won't leave, or just look for some company in their chaos, or they will leave you, a preemptive strike.  Contentment and happiness are short lived for someone with the disorder, intimacy is triggering, and adult intimacy is a foreign concept to someone emotionally stunted.  We were looking for something that could never happen.

The key to this is that things were really good for you, not your ex.  PwBPD are masters at hiding the intensity of their emotions; they have learned how to adapt - but like volcano it will eventually blow.

This will likely not sound logical to you, but it is BPD, not logic.  Calm is hard for BPD - they have to be with the intense emotions.  Most of the maladpative coping we complain about on this board is them trying to self sooth those intense feelings.

Did she create the drama - yes - it is a coping skill to soothe intense emotions.

BPD treatment - DBT teaches how to sit with emotions "be" with them and not react.  Use healthier ways to cope and self soothe.

It helped me detach and heal when I was to see the BPD facts in the bahavior, this stuff (chaos) wasn't done personally to make my life miserable, it was maladaptive coping/BPD.

Peace,

SB

I'm never going to understand this hit_.  No matter how much I try I can't wrap my brain around their way of thinking.  It just doesn't "compute."  Drama to soothe?  I know it's real though, just so complicated.

It helped me to stop trying to apply my logic and radically accept the facts of BPD.  I mean, BPD is a mental illness -when is mental illness exactly logical?

Distraction is a common coping skill to intense emotions for all - the key is making it a healthy distraction.  Once a BPD is triggered, rational thought goes out the window and whatever means necessary is used to soothe.  I found learning about dbt actually helped me see BPD more factual, less personal.

Just think of someone who's emotions are raw. Imagine riding a bike, falling off, and getting some road rash. The next day every time you touch it, it hurts and it's super sensitive; a borderline is like that emotionally full time, there is no volume knob, and there's nothing they can do about it. That's why some cut themselves, to feel a pain greater than their emotions and just have them shut up for a minute.

Yes! That is why it is all so difficult.

Some say things were good for us and never for them. Others say they idealize us and things are good for them but when devaluing starts that's when the relationship goes south.

I had the opportunity to see his calendar where he writes short journal notes everyday after he broke up and I went to get my things from his place alone. I had to look to see what was going on. Many insights into his mind. One that struck me is he had a notation right before both major discards of me. A couple days before each it said "iwalk not in it anymore." Which of course was completely false.

There are just so many mixed messages.

This is a trend I think.  Things always seemed to be getting better, to me at least.  Finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel financially and so on.  The latest and final episode was not too long after I had found out that I would be getting a new job.  Less hours, not so dangerous, more money, more self-esteem for me.  I had to dress up for work, go to nice restaurants for business, got a new company car, new cell phone, new laptop.  And lots of  travel.  At the same time we found out we had to move (as soon as possible) and she found out that her mother had cancer. 

Too much change, too quickly I suppose for her.  I think she felt overwhelmed emotionally.  That I might meet someone "better" than her, that I would leave her.  I asked if she felt jealous and she said no.  She said she was happy for me.  I thought we should be happy for "us".  In her eyes I was changing for the worse I guess.  I felt like I was taking a better step in life for us.  The other times she had left me for days at a time to stay with a friend, it always seemed that better times were right around the corner.  I guess she just wanted me to stay in a low paying, dangerous job for the rest of my life.  They don't seem to do "change" well.

Tincanmike- I made the mistake of saying I got a raise and a bonus, then saying something about how expensive something was.  Within a day or two she broke up because I like money more than I like her. 

I was reading through OLD journals from many recycles ago.  We were meeting for coffee during and trying to figure out if we were going to try to get back together.  She said that she "never intended to break up with me but couldn't control it"

I just will never wrap my head around how when I felt my best about our relationship, she felt the worst about it.

Tincup - I made similar mistakes with the new job.  I picked up my new car on the road and sent her a picture of it. I sent her a picture of the nice meal I was having, while she sat at home alone.  I sent a picture of the nice hotel I was staying at.  I wanted to share these things with her, my excitement with the opportunities my new job provided.  I told her that when I got back, we could eat at nice restaurants, stay in nice hotels, go out more and do things together.  I own my mistakes and could have done things differently.

On a side note,  if I showed affection to our dogs, I loved them more than I loved her.  Similar to you liking money. They were "our" dogs. Just another example that I could never do enough or say the right things. She projected her self-image onto me and tried to make me feel inadequate as a husband, a lover, a friend, in my career. And no matter how many recycles, she will keep finding that no one out there can meet her needs. And she will devalue and discard again. Will she learn from this? Only with professional help.  (Sorry, I'm a little bitter today!)

I agree with this. I found this to be true in the relationship. The major irony is that leaving a person and a relationship that you have built your whole life around is the most change one can possibly have. I will never get the contradictions in this disorder. Ever! I think the contradictions are what makes it so hard for us to wrap our head around.

I remember after the last DV charge I could no longer become a nurse. She was still in nursing school and I was starting a new program in school.  Asked her "when I get out of school will u help pay for some bills around the house so I can focus more on my school?" her reply "why? So u can become successful and leave me for someone else?" i was astonished. But she always promised she would help out when done. Well, the graduation day came and she left me a week later. Sept of this year. On her fb pics of her graduation with a comment "I would like to thank all my family for helping me make this dream come true!" it was all pics of her immediate family except me. No comment thanking the guy who put a roof over her head, food on the table, lights, cable TV for those years. Not even a pic of us together that night. Her special night, and I had nothing to do with it. It's that lack of appreciation that questions my manhood. I have no nuts... .been chopped off!

Scary thing is she is in a profession where she CARES!

You are so right, I too have done that exact same thing. When things were good and calm I would think wow we are making progress. I would think we are finally seeing the light at the end of this long long long emotional draining journey. I would look for wedding dresses on line picture us growing old together.Then a flick of a switch, something so small ,he is mad,angry,and gone again. I am so blessed that I put off getting engaged,letting him move in. It's like you can put it on your calendar,what's going to happen and the longer I knew him the closer the cycles would come. It is so crazy making. I still try to think why did I stay so long, was it all the attention turning the good times, was it the thought of just more understanding and and stability would make him better? But now 3 weeks out , it is a terrible problem he is just a sad person that has been living this way for so long and for what ever reason chooses to stay this way. I know that he will find the next woman do the same thing and she will be on this site,feeling used. Reading everyone's postings has given me the strength not to go back,to realize, it's not much fault of not loving enough.   

"I have everything I ever wanted, yet why am I still unhappy?" She tld me more than once. Along with what she wrote:

"Why do I think everybody cheats, why?" Along with:

"We had a good six year run!" (After two kids, a home), which says to me that she also thinks "everybody abandons."

I already knew that she thinks the one thing she tries to attach to is worthless and lets her down: Men, including now me.

How in the hell she thinks she can raise a healthy male child with those attitudes is beyond me.

That other side to the pwBPD is always just under the surface, even in the idealization/honeymoon phase. It shows itself via small outbursts/lashing out, out of no where. If you carefully think back to that time period or read old text messages, you can very well detect it. It doesn't fully come out until the pwBPD is triggered. That is how it was for me, even extending all the way back to friendship. A Janus-faced entity, forever smiling at the future and looking horrifically at the past.

This says it about as well as can be said.


This is BPD. There is always the other side.

Smiling at the past (got away from it). Looking horrifically at the future.

Ironmanfalls-I think you are right when you said it was just under the surface.  I can remember a month or two after we started dating I went somewhere with friends.  My phone died and I missed a series of text messages from her.  The next day I GOT BLASTED from her.  I remember thinking holy sh&t what was that... .

Nevertheless- Do you really mean you could mark the cycles on a calendar?  I say this because I think I really could.  my pwBPD would ALWAYS cycle in the Fall months (either late Sept or Oct).  It was so odd and I would really start to become tense once school started back up (she is a teacher).

According to my therapist people, especially bipolar/borderlines, seem to have real issues around the equinoxes--ironically, times of balance.  My experience with my ex bears this out.  We know that SAD is real, it could be that people with bipolar or similar mood-swing disorders feel more comfortable even when nature is imbalanced/at extremes (when day or night are longer than one another.) 

Tincup, yes I would  lol he went from once a month to in the end every 2weeks Sunday to Sunday lol I once said when he was melting down I expected you to do this today it's been 2 weeks. That's one of the few times he snapped out of it to prove me wrong? Maybe I can't use lodgic with him there isn't any

i picked up enough hints that my w was as much or more into being attached as she was into me. during the hour she blew up my life she said "i always thought you would be the one to leave," as if leaving is a thing people do, and as if i, in particular, would ever leave. it's like she never knew me.

and i also wonder about the good times. the good times were very very good. but i had already done a few impatient things by then and i have to wonder if they were on her mind all the while. 'official' reasons she gave for bolting included events that had happened before we were even married and were the sorts of things i had spontaneously apologized for and had stopped doing 5 and 6 years ago.

One of the reasons mine gave for the split happened BEFORE we actually met... I more I read and the more I type about what actually happened in my case, the more I can't believe I put up with this crap... I mean really if anyone else would of done this stuff to me I would not take it for a minute.

I think this is wrong, there is only one side to BPD... .a dark passenger/Demon/hater/predator.

The other side I assume you refer to ( idealisation ) is fake/false/covering up/a lie.

May be wrong

Oh! I think that's what you meant.

Excuse me

Changing,

The pwBPD is those 2 sides. The original side you first encounter and that other, godawful side that you encounter after intimacy triggers the pwBPD.

I like your Janus analogy. Mine, however, was indeed Hermit, Waif, Queen, Witch. At the end of our r/s, I also witnessed Teen Mom, Abandoned Five Year Old Girl, her Father (Cheater, Abandoner, and Abuser),  Besotted Teen Lover to her paramour ("the night knows you will be mine" *ack* *gag*), and now almost back to externally functional Adult with BPD lurking in the background.

Its been rather fascinating to watch this cycle unfold, in a sick way, but I'm ready to jump into the lifeboat now, to watch the Titanic sail into the depths of coldness and darkness. Maybe her Robert Ballard will find her someday, the man I could not be for her, but that's no longer my concern, as much as my failure hurts right now. Maybe that was my fault, being an Icarus, when she needed a Ballard. My failure, and my shame.

Just monsters, no love.

In my experience you are right... the clinging persona is 1/2 true, the idealizer... total phony... . but the hater is 100% authentic.

WOW! So right here.  I love it actually

Borderlines have an unstable sense of self, but do not have two personalities.  My take, absolutely true with my ex, is she was traumatized at a young age and continues to retraumatize herself today; her life really is a living hell and she is in constant psychic pain, with brief breaks brought about by the chaos she creates.  She is also terrified of abandonment and knows that if she shows the real her, people will walk away, other than mental health workers who might want a challenge.  So she mirrors, which is a fiction, a facade, that serves two purposes: one, she mirrors back the good she sees in people so they will like her, very attractive because she's showing us ourselves, what's not to like, but the more important reason is she's assimilating our good to combat her bad, a parasitic attachment that is creating one person in her head, and for that period when the fantasy is still fantasy, she's finally a whole person who can live with herself.  Of course those of us who are autonomous individuals and make the mistake of assuming she is too, expect the relationship to progress in a different direction, a partnership of two selves.  Eventually the wheels fall off the fantasy, the shame and self loathing shows up for the borderline, too much to handle, so she offs it on us, we become the scum of the earth, and it's off to another fantasy.  But not only is there only one personality in there, there's a half of one, perpetually looking for that other half.

I wouldn't describe it as two personalities... rather the phases in BPD... idealizing/clinging/hating. My pwBPD had a general way that she was... which was really over the top, emotional... but how she acted varied like a chameleon. Whenever she was idealizing, being nice, volunteering and putting on a public show for others... it echoed phoniness. When she was upset, clingy, she was like a little kid... that wanted something... there was some truth to her actions but something not said. However every fiber of her being was 100% consistent with no brakes or holding back of any kind when she was hating and raging... never seen a more consistent, scary person. She reminded me of Jodi Arias... acted like her... have absolutely no doubt she could stab someone 29 times, rip their throat out and shoot them... . then go to the funeral, grandstand and want to be comforted. Total sociopath.

BPD is a personality disorder. Wouldn't the phases be more descriptive of say Bipolar where the mood swings would equate to that? It can't be that only the godawful/hater side to the pwBPD is 100% authentic while the original/idealizing/clinging side is 1/2 true to false. I experienced the actual schism of her personality in her very presence. And it was horrific.

One thing that has become fascinating to me as I've detached is the clinical side of the disorder, and as we know BPD often times is comorbid with other disorders; BPD, sociopathy, or antisocial personality disorder, and bipolar disorder are three different things that may coexist in the same personality.  Plus there are 9 criteria, 5 of which must be met for a diagnosis of BPD, so there are a lot of permutations even within pure BPD.

My ex exhibited traits of both BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, although in my opinion the BPD traits were predominant.  The thing that helps me is the core of BPD is a fear of abandonment borne out of a failure to detach and become an autonomous self in infancy, and that drives all the behaviors and traits; very easy to see my ex's motivations when viewed in that light.

And at the end of the day the label doesn't matter, except to mental health professionals.  We were just the lucky recipients of the fallout of the disorder, painful as hell, a way for a sufferer to share their trauma with us, and detaching is a way to grow and become educated so it doesn't happen again.

My pwBPD was diagnosed BiPolar at one time, BPD, and most recently was told she "had an unstable personality... thats all".  Reading on BPD ... seems like typically pwBPD in a r/s go through idealizing,clinging and hating... . my experience matched those three ways of acting... each recycle had far less idealizing, a bit less clinging... and massively more hating/abusive behavior. I too don't care what you call it, it was horrible trying to make a r/s work with her.

Tincup,

  Mine would dump right before or during a holiday/special event. Got dumped 2nd week of Dec, she was back before New Years... .

dumped on NYD. Came back for Valentine's Day. Made it through her birthday (lucky her) and then dumped me right before the 4th of July. Came back before our anniversary and finally dumped me a week before my birthday and all the holidays (Christmas/New Years) etc.

EA-That is what worries me a bit right now.  I either got dumped in the fall months, or almost got dumped.  Not sure what it is about the fall that does it to her.  You could see and feel the change coming.  One time when I did get her to talk some she said it was "something with her that she needed to deal with".  I was patient with her even though I didn't understand, and she couldn't verbalize what she was feeling.  We got through that one last year, but not this year.  This one I didn't really see coming first. BUT we almost always got back together in Feb.  So if I have contact coming it is probably coming soon.

Sounds like SAD. Pretty typical. Mine's worse dysregulation and depression were in the winter months when days were shorter. SAD typically starts hitting around the autumnal equinox.

Tincup,

 Well for me this is new but she has never had a replacement here nearby. Maybe she truly is done with me.  In the past I was never threatened with a RO except when she left FOR someone.

She didn't threaten the RO this time just blocked all communications. Kinda childish because there are still 3-4 more ways I could really contact her if I wanted to... . I simply do not care anymore.

I think when there is a replacement the game changes. This has been the longest split and again, no problem there. I still have anxiety attacks from dating this chick. My heart races, stomach aches. It sucks. The best thing is her staying away for awhile. I am happy she is seeing someone else.

Not my problem anymore.

Truly, more than SAD I think the holidays and my birthday triggered mine=commitment of sorts.

This has been an interesting thread to read through. For the longest time in my relationship with my ex I didn't understand the very unhealthy nature of her relationship with her mother. Every time her mom would visit it was like she was 12 and she let her mom treat her that way. We had a lot of conflict over this because of course then I was wondering where my partner/wife went. Her mother had a very direct role in my ex getting triggered and leaving me. I have struggled not to hate her mother but as the grandmother to my daughter I try extremely hard not to. So after my ex up and left (when things were the best they ever had been) she came back for a while. We were having breakfast and she said to me that she didn't want things this way but she was afraid to lose her family. At the time I thought she meant me and our daughter. Then over time I realized she meant her moms approval because her mother had not liked me since before she met me. So sure enough her mom egged her on to divorce me quick etc. and then my ex ran straight to her mom, who then flew in from out of state almost monthly to "help her daughter" through this horrible time divorcing an abusive guy, and trying to convincer her I didn't deserve 50/50 custody. She wouldn't even acknowledge me as the father of my child for almost 3 years. What I have come to realize is that my ex never had any attachment to her mother and as such she is still desperately searching for that approval and attachment she didn't get. She felt she had to give me and our family up to get that. The triggered part of my ex is horrible to deal with and live with. The non triggered part of her is relatively pleasant. The problem is once she was triggered then just my mere existence triggered her and it was all over from there, no going back. It is a sad disorder really, when I am in my good place I can see that. When not I am just angry still.

well said that you can see how sad the disorder is when you are in a good place and can see it.  I am at the point of going in and out.  One minute I can see things very clear, and an hour later I want her back.  BUT at least I am to the point where I can see things clear.  When I got recycled prior I just wanted her back and could not/did not allow myself to see things clearly. 

It really amazes me that I can even see any good in this relationship after all the bad. 

Looking back I can see a lot of good in the relationship, and that is why I am then able to see how sad the disorder really is. My moments of wanting her back, the life I thought we had back, are very few and far between and when I do have them they are not terribly strong and overwhelming because I have been able to learn to tell myself in those moments that what I am wanting is what I "THOUGHT" I had not what I really had. From the outside I had it all, but inside I was sad and lonely. I actually called up an old therapist I had when I first met my wife and one of the first things she told me was that I always said from the earliest days of the relationship that I felt emotionally alone. That was very helpful to me in being able to see that it was an illusion. I think that my ex did want it too. We did have it all, the house, the kid, the 2 cars, the cat and dog etc but I think that honestly may have triggered her too. I think she wants it though, she just can't cope with it. That is the other way I find it sad.

She sent me an email about a month before she left me and it talked about how she was when her parents were in town. She said she wished I was gone and didn't exist and then she went on to say that she has done a lot of thinking and she really didn't think she would feel any different no matter who it was and it was not personal against me. I unfortunately took it personal and had a huge reaction. Where now I can look back and see she was really being honest and vulnerable and truthful in that it wasn't personal. She even went as far as to say she knew it was wrong and F-ed up and it made her sad, and that she wanted to work on it but didn't know how or something like that. In hindsight that email alone is so telling. I have been a jack a-- in our divorce and thrown that at her a few times and I regret that. None the less I think at least for my ex she is aware, and even on some level remorseful or regretful or something. I feel like it is similar to an alcoholic (I am in AA) who tries and tries to get sober and they know they have a problem but just can't get it and how sad that is because they do want it, they just can't bring themselves to admit they are powerless and need the help.