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From what I've read across these boards over the last few days it looks like many of us are still obsessing over our exBPDs, which is natural because our own deficit (why we fit with our BPDs in the first place) leads us to this behaviour, but in this way, we're just as bad as our exBPDs, they don't get their focus right, shift blame etc, and while we can all probably allocated blame proportionally and perhaps even don't feel the need for blame we wont heal and we wont be able to have good relationships in the future if we don't shift the focus onto us.

I'd like to see what factors we, as nons, have in common, this week I have been trying to make a mental note to everytime I think about her and her BPD to instead think about me and why I allowed these unforgivable behaviours into my life for so long. Not in a, lets beat one another up, way! But this is now an opportunity for us to heal this childhood wound so many of us carry and actually have a real proper relationship, something the BPD is very unlikely to do. She held up a mirror to us and I can see a point whereby I will look back at this time and be thankful that I had the opportunity to look at myself. And now crazy is out of my life, there is a world of time and opportunity to focus on me.

Does anyone else feel this way?

Is anyone else looking for the answers as to why on earth, perfectly sensible and capable people in all other areas of life allowed ourselves to get into this mess?

Trog, hi. How are you today? Hope all is well with you. To answer your questions, yes and yes. The question of our self plays heavily here. Why? Many feel childhood trauma plays an important role. I don't. It's not so much what happened as a child, more like what didn't happen. We didn't recurve training in the nature of our selves. The questions you asked about your self can lead to a changing that is beyond belief. You can grow beyond all belief. I mean this literally. We can examine our selves and change. It happens to be the only thing that we can change. Love and compassion are no match for hatred and ignorance. Please have a wonderful day.

You feel our attraction to these partners is because of lack in childhood? That would certainly ring true for me but what are the actual steps we can take to heal on it? I can list things that happened, but I can't connect these factors to why I went for this BPD and am hurting now and most importantly, how I can use this healing lesson to not repeat mistakes.

How do you heal the gap? Just knowing these things doesn't heal it automatically?

pwBPD have an innate ability to sense what it's missing from you and give it to you. If it is attention you will get attention, if flattery and laughing with your jokes you will get that etc etc. They are different with everyone they meet because they adjust their chameleon-like personality and mask to give you your drug of choice (mine told that she was like a chameleon at the start and I didn't understand what she meant... .). In this sense they discover your weakness, your narcissistic deficit, your achilles heel and they give you what you need. When things go bad they know equally well how to bring you down. Helps to bring self awareness to us at the very least.

Examining ones self is an amazing gift to ones self.  One the other hand no one deserves abuse ever.  The pain you feel from the experience is valid. You seems I be pretty far along in your healing for just arriving on the boards. Where ever you are in your journey is ok. Sometimes the intellectual understanding comes before the body. The traumas is held by the body listen to it. Feel It.

Welcome to the community!

Trog, the three t's. time, tears and therapy. Mindfulness helps me greatly. Meditation. Love is the most healing by far. Love seems to be the universal superpower. 

Trog, I wonder about this everyday. 

First off, I thought my wife and I were a team.  She seemed so devoted to me and the marriage.  Then a pattern started to develop, it became all about her and whatever I wanted didn't matter.

In fact, if I wanted something, she would verbally criticize it.

This really knocked my confidence for a loop.  My parents really undermined my confidence growing up.  She built me up with her treatment of me (ideation phase), then tore it down.

I realize now that my confidence needs to develop from within.  When you feel about yourself based on someone else's opinion, that person can easily destroy everything about you.

Exactly what has happened to me, in the ideation phase I got built up but not with liking my hobbies etc but I did the whole, you are special, everyone else has let me down, you are better than them and she really patched up my wounds from childhood, but when she pulled the putty out, she ripped a much bigger hole in me than was there already.

I am 100% focused on making this healing about me, not getting recycled and doing anything I can do to heal this inner child issue I have that is making me pick crazy women.

One interesting thing I heard and I don't know if it resonates from you, is that we're all here to learn lessons, I actually should have been taught the BPD lesson by the previous girlfriend, she was no where near as bad and caused me much less pain, perhaps even she was NPD but she was certainly very self-centric and caused me crushing pain... .yet, I didn't learn the lesson, so god//being/source will continue to make the lessons harder and more devestating until I actually wake up and remove the friction causing the pain. My exBPDw has, without doubt, caused me the greatest pain in my life to the point where suicide seemed like a better option than spending anymore time in her toxic/blame fuelled world. Suffering is our greatest teacher they say!

I've definitely learned more than I've wanted to.

I recall having a particularly difficult sales area for work a number of years ago.  My boss told me over and over, "you're building character."

I flat out told him one day, "I don't want to build character, I just want to be an ass."  lol

I don't understand why I've had to learn all of this stuff.  Why couldn't I have just had a wife that let me touch her?  Why did everything have to change?

It wasn't like I was treating her badly.  I did everything I could to be a good husband and father. 

I just don't get it!

Usually, there's something in us nons that allows for these relationships to happen in the first place. I know for sure most of my friends and family, if this were their partner, a) would never have got involved or b) would have never put up with the relationship that a BPD creates. There was in my case 100s of red flags, some monumental, that 99% of the population would have gone... ."yeah, I think not" but I carried on ploughing away at it because she was providing me with things I craved and needed that were missing from my childhood and iother relationships. She asked me outright as soon as we met what I needed and she worked very hard to fulfill those needs, and as I said earlier, that small hole that I was complaining about was filled up by her putty, and when she ripped it out, there was gaping hole that I am forced to explore in order to heal.

It could be there's no hole in you at all but if your BPD acted in ways that you wouldn't tolerate off a friend for example, then its likely you do have an internal issue to look at and if you don't may choose more BPD partners as you'll be attracted to one another because of this wound.

Someone told me the same thing when I told her about by my situation with my ex being first heaven and then descend to hell. Without knowing the details she said 'well that sounds character building!'