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I've spoken with people here who endured insane dramas, acting out, abusive behavior and so forth. It's made me wonder about the spectrum. What I experienced was way more detached, strange, repressed. Of course there's no blood test my ex could take to "confirm" her being BPD. I'm just curious.

Basically she idealized me like crazy for the first 3 months. She wore my clothes, sighed my name constantly, looked me in the eye and said, "I see a future with you." It was narcotic. She was never mean to me, she was totally disinterested in my past relationships or talking much about hers, I never caught her in literal lies, although she definitely was very vague about the past. But I could read chaos in her thoughts and behavior, though, and it always made me feel like the other shoe would drop. I could tell she'd dumped previous boyfriends very arbitrarily.

As I mentioned, toward the end, I stopped bending over backward for her because it was getting out of control, and because she was so intensely self-absorbed that she never did a thing for me, never paid me a compliment, never articulated anything of real feeling, etc. But I think because I would not be her secretary / daddy figure all the time, she painted me black extremely abruptly and that was it.

A lot of people have talked about the demonstratively insane / jealous / abusive BPD type here, but did many of you experience a quiet storm like I'm describing?

And of course, since she was never abusive to me, per se, it makes it easier to be nostalgic than if she was a nightmare all the time. I guess I got "lucky."

divinehammer: how long were you two together? It seems like maybe you got out before things got worse. My ex wasn't physically violent but her emotional abuse was very subtle and it built up over time. I didn't really see it coming... .didn't see myself getting sucked in until it built and built and basically exploded. Now I look back and everything seems obvious.

Only together for 6 months. But the fact that she had no true friends or emotional bonds with others, she seemed like everything was beneath her, extremely cynical... .toward the end I could tell she was either going to start turning it on me, or bailing without much explanation as she'd done to all the previous boyfriends. I got the latter.

The thing with personality dissorders is that its a sliding scale for each of the traits. They couldbe full blown in one element and just ticking the box in another. No two are the same although they share a lot of similarities.

my ex wife was a wife my ex gf was a queen. They were very different but very similar at the same time. Its pretty messed up how a lot of the things they do could be from an instruction manual for BPD.

Hi divinehammer,

I never experienced any insane drama's, acting out or outright abusive behavior either.  There was more of an ebb and flow of pulling me in, pushing me away and running away from me.  It was all fairly controlled behavior that then went off the rails from her overreacting to triggers.  The breakup by her was unexpected and abrupt via an email entitled "Goodbye" and a matching voice mail that was just as cold and harsh.  Her reasoning was that I was controlling her and the relationship and that she would no longer tolerate it.  This was the very first time that I can recall hearing of these control concerns as being an issue for me to correct.  Either way, she gave me no chance.

Apparently, BPD people do not follow an exact text book in how they think, feel or behave.  

So eerily similiar. The subject line of my email was "Moving forward" with a very business-like explanation of "I don't know what I want right now" and "maybe we're too much alike" and "maybe I need someone with more traditional values." None of it made any sense or had an relevance to any conversation we ever had or anything she'd shared. It was 100% in her head. On a day-to-day, we got along famously. But I could always tell fantasies were swirling in her head and she was always looking to run. In 5 years, she'd lived in 5 different cities and had multiple boyfriends in each, breaking up with all of them for reasons none of them understood.

This is why I wish I could grab her and say, "Don't ever put another man through this."

I hear ya, divinehammer.  It is so eerily similar indeed!  Sounds like ours may have been reading the same text book and even shared notes.  None if it still makes any sense to me at all.

I experienced a quiet storm it was like being rejected over an over being held in contempt and lied to. With push pull behavior. Recieving texts that were cryptic and held multiple meanings.  I have also been in a relationship with a borderline that he abuse was more overt and I found the covert abuse to be much much more damaging in my experience. Mainly because when it is so covert it is so hard to pinpoint and they lie about it. It can cause one to doubt themself so deeply driving you insane.

Everything about my ex was quiet and subtle. No raging or name calling or talking bad about exes. She actually spoke well of them, probably a form of triangulation. It was a slow burn but oh so damaging.

My dBPDw went through similar stages you are describing but I did eventually end up experiencing the drama, abuse, acting out, etc. However, what was bad got much, much worse the minute I did what you did, which was stand up for yourself.

I realized, like you, I very rarely got compliments when I gave her compliments all the time. I also realized, when we were both doing something and the kids needed something, I always had to be the one to go deal with it. I also basically jumped up and did things for her that I really didn't need to do. I did them because I wanted to but it still. If she wanted something to snack on, I fixed her something or went and got her something. Every time. Well, when it was bad already for a few years (I know, right?) and I decided there was some things I was no longer going to do because I didn't feel appreciated at all, the shlt hit the fan. Sometimes, when we were both busy and the kids needed something, she would ask me to go deal with it and I would say no. Why do I always have to go deal with it? If she wanted a snack and I was doing something, I started telling her I was doing something and she needed to get it. Even on little things I started saying no because I was doing something. "No, I am not going to stop doing what I am doing right now and plug in your laptop charger for you when it is right there at you and I have to walk across the room." "I went to Taco Bell for us last night in the middle of the night. You can go to Burger King for us now." "I got up with the kids last Saturday so you could sleep in. You need to get up tomorrow with them because I would like to sleep in."

That was it for her. She turned everything up a notch when I started that. The funny thing was, after she left, she projected herself on to me by saying, "The problem with our relationship now is that I STOOD UP TO YOU!" Hahahahahaha!