BPDFamily.com

Hey All,

I have been in whirlwind relationship with a guy for the last 6 months. As these things tend to go, it was head over heels at first, then cracks started to show, which I initially chalked up to him not having a lot of relationship experience ( which should have been a red flag at his age) and just not knowing how to respond appropriately to female needs and emotions and generally show up in adult relationships. He has a BPD mother and in his moments of clarity he admits he has "fleas" and wants to get back into DBT therapy for it ( which he did briefly many years ago).

He has broken up with me twice, initially claiming that " we just weren't right for each other"  but after much prodding he admitted it had more to do with  my ex boyfriend coming back into my life as a friend and he felt he wasn't equipped to handle such complexities. Like an idiot, I won him back just to tie myself in knots bending over backwards to avoid conflict once we got back together. The good times never lasted and more and more I was accepting treatment I should have never tolerated.  We broke up for the last time 3 weeks ago but I still have his key and he still has a lot of my things. He keeps stonewalling me on making the exchange. I am trying to avoid talking to him but I cant seem to help myself from falling into the " if I say it louder/differently, they'll snap out of it" trap. When I do slip and contact him, he can go from rational and reasonable about the factors that led to the relationship's demise to insisting I'm just angry at him all the time and he would never be able to make me happy so thats why things went sour, nothing to do with BPD.  I know this guy is no good for me  ( or any woman) right now and may never be in a place to be. But its so hard to let go of what could have been.

I got the 'we just weren't right for each other' statement after I called it off also. I suspect that's the explanation my ex BPDgf gave to others, to make her look okay.

In reality, we weren't right for each other because she has a serious mental disorder, she didn't tell me about it, and I couldn't cope with any more of her emotional abuse.

I very quickly realised the 'dreams and hopes' were complete fantasies. Our relationship would never ever improve. She would never one day 'recover' from her illness. There was only the potential for a consistently bad relationship and hurt.

With healthy people we hold hopes and dreams because we know what is possible. With pwBPD, we are always looking to try and get back to that awesome idealization phase. Once we've been devalued however, that will never happen again and we become a trigger for our partner's illness.

You summed that up quite well, parisian.  As I can attest, a BPD r/s (or marriage, in my case) can get increasingly difficult as time goes on.  The abuse and rage intensify, in my experience, so the possibilities decrease.  Dreams die hard, but a person can only take so much abuse.

LuckyJim

As difficult as it is, we must force ourselves to face the reality of the situation, to look at their actions and the real person that they are, rather than some fantasy of who we think they are or who we want them to be. Or who we thought they were in the very short months of that idealization phase. That is not the real person. It was just a mirror of who we are back at us.

When we face up to the reality that they are disordered, that their behaviour is abusive and hurtful, and they will never be able to treat us with the love, care, trust or honesty that we deserve, we can then start to let go.

When we learn to respect and love ourselves, and demand that people we let into our loves treat us right, we can then start to let go.

Agree, parisian.  Learning to respect and love ourselves, in my view, is the cornerstone of recovery from a BPD r/s.  I suspect that most in a r/s with a pwBPD suffer some lack of love and respect for themselves.  That's OK, because BPD forces us to confront this issue, which leads to new growth.  Growth is painful, of course, yet leads to new horizons.

LuckyJim