BPDFamily.com

Short story: dBPDbf, together for 1 year.

Good: 8 months

Bad: past 4 months

2 recycles, one in March, last one from last month.

He cheated on me (kissed with another girl).

He decided to quit therapy last week.

I am in therapy for massive abandonment issues, have a mother that passed away when I was 5 years old and a uNPD father.

If I would have been a stable person we maybe could have handled this, but I'm not good for him, and he is bad for me. So, I should get out and try to make way for a healthy attached partner, which will make life a little easier and more calm for me.

Zinzitar, I just posted on your thread on Staying but definitely want to give you support here.

It's so great that you recognize how his behaviors intersect with your core fears and hurts in ways that are particularly challenging.

But bottom line, I don't think it's true that if you were more stable, this could work out OK.  The combination of him needing a lot of space away from the r/s (which I could tolerate with my ex bf) and his pattern of attention-seeking from other women (which I couldn't with my ex) is a really rough one.  You're set up to be the oppressor and there is a world full of other women with whom he can enact his need to get free.  It's not set up to play out well.

If you decided you wanted to play it out through many rounds of quasi-infidelity and distance that triggers your anxiety, I'm guessing a ton of damage would be done to your feelings for him and your feelings about yourself.  There are some things that just don't settle and neutralize.

When I was first with my ex bf, the confidence the idealization gave me made me a great partner.  Once his behaviors shot holes in that, I was on the road to becoming needy and anxious, the opposite of how I was when we started.  As a former member here once put it, I was being transformed from the adored to the adoring, and finding myself on my knees in the process.  I could feel that that was not good, and I too ended things (NC for 10 months while he pursued another woman).  We got back in close touch later and it was more of the same.  He needed to demonstrate in new and hurtful ways over and over that he could set me aside.  He got something out of that.  It caused me to be unable to trust him.  He would hurt me and he did.  I can't let someone into my heart who has consistently demonstrated that he will hurt me.

I think your sense of health and integrity interrupted this pattern as soon as you'd tried everything to see if it could be managed without ending the relationship.  You found it cannot.  It was a good decision for the right reasons, and loving toward you both.  It's super rough to be the one to decide it's over, I know.  I struggle with a lot of doubt and uncertainty.  But in the end, what he needs doesn't work for me.  Sounds like that is the conclusion you reached.  I think you would really have regretted staying under those circumstances.

Hi Zin and sending you a 

Your family here on leaving will support your decision and help you along your journey of detaching.  I admire every member in this site but reading through the Staying threads often reminds me of all the issues my r/s w my expBPD bought to my life. 

I agree with the comments above.  When I was turned from the adored to the adoring I was also bought to my knees by the incredible devaluations and incredible sense of control my ex seemed to invite from this.  Abandonment issues were definitely sparked in ways I never knew I even had inside.  Quite LITERRALLY, I WAS being emotionally and physically abandoned  in the cruelest of ways nearly continually in the latter part of the r/s.   The lying.  Cheating/ triangulation, the rescuing manipulations, the never being there for my very real emotional needs by then.  The being pulled back in strongly right at these horrific moments and hit w projections when I tried to talk about these very hurtful and damaging actions. How this made ME feel while never changing my love or presence for him.

I miss my ex everyday but I remind myself that I simply could not live that way.  I do realize it is a d/o but my version of love and caring does not have the will to put up with abusuve behaviors whether they are coping mechanism or not.  Its far too damaging to the person that I am and want to remain. I want to remain free of that debilatating anxiety

We are here for you Zin 

Thanks guys. Will answer in more detail later, but it's helpful to read about the choices other people made. Having a hard time now. I know this is the best way, but then I think of a few months ago and I can't help but start thinking 'what was my role in all this?'.

I always feel I should have tried to change my behavior more when something ends. He was making such a big effort, how wrong and hurtful is it to say that his best is not good enough for me?

Z -- because the subject line says "please help me stick with my decision," folks here may rally and want to convince you to stay out or stay away.  I'll say I have struggled with months of regret about setting boundaries that -- unlike the happy ending stories, where boundaries result in the pwBPD improving behavior and making some sort of commitment to the r/s and feeling safer and ... .-- effectively ended my r/s.  I needed something he cannot or does not want to give (in my case, that he not replace me with other women).

We had an amazing relationship except that he kept replacing me with other women and denying the significance of what we were doing together whenever it got scary.  There was a lot to lose.  Like your guy, mine made efforts, lots of them.  But he also made important choices that really hurt me a lot.  I wasn't going to force him to stay, like you're saying.  I saw his choices, I respected them, they had certain implications, and the end of our r/s was one, so long as he continued in that way.

If you are going to get stuck in what-ifs, go back!  Or see if you can go back.  I do think that the questions you were asking though are the right ones.  He is going to need a lot of space and you are going to need to de-personalize his choice of a lot of space.  For me, if there was prior cheating, that would become a lot harder.  If you can do that, great!  But it's OK to need certain things from a r/s and the knowledge that he wants to be with you is a really important one for most people.  And you're right that if you are in this, you are not going to be in a potential different relationship where you don't wonder or worry about that.

Just things to consider. You can go back if you are going to get consumed with the what-ifs.  That sucks -- I know it well.

 Sending you a great big hug! 

Yes, I think it is good to consider our role in things. However, don't get caught up in overanalyzing things. Sometimes, things don't work out for whatever reason.

I have been trying to change my behavior for close to 18 years. It never worked. I contorted myself into somebody that I am not trying to change and analyze myself and fix myself for the relationship. And yes, my husband is trying but his idea of trying is so far removed from my idea of trying. It is okay to have standards and it is okay to say that somebody else's standards don't align with yours. I saying this as much for myself as I am saying it for you.

From P&C:


For a contrasting viewpoint, my situation was pretty much the opposite: I struggled for months to not set boundaries, because it was the only way to keep peace in the relationship, and when I started to, the relationship ended immediately, which was absolutely fine by me at that point, enough is enough.  The big difference for me was my ex didn't try, at all, in fact she took a my-way-or-the-highway attitude, so I took the highway, which she later regretted, but by then I was way gone, there had been just too much unacceptable crap, and other men is an absolute deal breaker for me, closely followed by blatantly lying about it.  Her concession was she wished she'd been more "self-aware" and she would have changed sooner, in time she'd hoped.  Whatever.


That topic has been groundbreaking for me.  I've been learning a lot about attachment styles, the three are secure, anxious and avoidant, and I very much have an anxious one.  It's a pretty deep topic, but to cut to it, people with anxious attachment styles need a lot of reassurance in a relationship, reassurance that the relationship is solid, that their partner is all in.  People with secure styles give those assurances easily and naturally, but people with avoidant styles are like kryptonite to us anxious ones; 'I need space' means they don't love us anymore, they're seeing someone else, they don't care, yadda, yadda, and depersonalizing that is not an option.  BPD is a personality disorder and not an attachment style, but borderlines in devaluation mode, and when they're cheating, lying about it and feeling ashamed, become very avoidant, completely emotionally unavailable, and that is just intolerable for someone like me.  And it's not just her, I've known other women who aren't disordered but are certainly avoidant, and I got the same feelings I got with my borderline ex.

So.  Supposedly 60% of the population has a secure style, 20% anxious, and 20% avoidant.  Oh, and two anxious folks getting together?  We'd reassure the crap out of each other, might be an eye-roller from the outside looking in, but we'd feel great about it.  So the secures and the anxious together are 80% of the population: how hard is it to avoid the 20% who are avoidant and the 2% that are BPD?  Not very, armed with this information, so off into the dating pool we go... .

Thought maybe some of this might speak to you, apply as needed... .

FHTH, interesting post as yours always are.

I think the issue in the bod r/s, at least from my perspective, is that the non enters the r /s in whatever attachment style is their own.

For me, I entered secure. And that remained for a great deal of time.  He was the anxious.  I was the anchor.  They hook you so deep. So very deep in their convincing demeanor.

Then they flick the switch.

And we have no idea how to follow the bouncing ball.

In devaluation, through the subsequent phases, my ex bounced strongly amid all three styles. 

I couldn't fathom that who I knew so solidly to be the waif was now the secure. And the avoidant.

And cruelly confident.

This, as much else, caused ME to bcome anxious.

Its the rapid cycling and ever changing demeanor of my expBPD that really was the impetuous in setting me in a tailspin of doubting who I previously knew as my being. And the struggle to get back there. 

Yep, I called it emotional Whack-A-Mole.

And you bring up a good point: attachment styles are fixed but plastic, for example if a person with an anxious style gets with someone with a secure one it can make them more secure.  Me likey.  And another thing about attachment styles is everyone has one, 100% of the population, whereas folks with BPD or significant borderline traits are what, 10-12%?  Hopefully one upside of our experiences is the we now have the radar upgrade, and can leave the borderlines to their dysfunction moving forward.  We earned it.

Was it darkness we found ourselves in? (Yes, temporarily)

That the light was suddenly so bright? (Yes, continuing since then)

What a life for our exes, to just keep flicking switches without much benefit.

 

I get all this. Read the info on attachement styles as well. Am being treated for my anxious-obsessive one, too. I can depersonalize the distance sometimes, but sometimes I can't. And then in 50% of the time he is now able to comfort me. And the other 50% he get's mad, and that's where it hurts the most. Needing something, knowing you're needy, and then someone who gets mad at you for it instead of loving and supporting.

I've had 1 r/s where the guy had a healthy attachment, maybe 2. That was a lot more calm and something that I want. I was still showing the behaviours I usually have but they weren't triggered this much. Sometimes I feel like a needy monster when he is pulling away, I feel so low of myself, ashamed. Which causes me to beg him to stay because I don't see anyone else tolerating this type of behaviour.

And then in a good period I think to myself: wait a minute, a lot of other people would put of with it AND they would trigger it less.

And then I feel so sad for him. How do you deal with the sadness towards leaving them behind, switching the light on and off? It's what is tearing me apart. He was in therapy for 2 years and got stuck and is so hurt and sad about it. He wants to be normal, but he can't.

I hope that somewhere this break-up is going to burst something open for him.

I know it was good from my side, for now. I won't say that I would never try it again in a few months or years. But by that time I hope to have found a healthy attached guy that will make me not want to go back...