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Day 22 no contact. I feel resentful. All I wanted was peaceful closure. Why was that asking too much? Here I sit in agony and he trolls on okcupid. He does not miss me and does not care. I am long forgotten, a bad memory.

Feeling angry today.  

Anger is a key stage of healing and it's perfectly normal. Btw I often feel forgotten as well but remember that it's actually physically impossible for them to forget us.

How so?

Well, Beachbabe  , we don't really know what they are thinking.  Their feelings change so frequently that we have no idea.  I'm happy that you are on day 22 and I'm on day 19 .     Let's try to make it to day 30.   

I mean strictly speaking it is physiollogically impossible for them to 'forget' us unless they suffer head trauma. I know it offers little in solace.

I made it to day 19 on Sunday when my x contacted me.  He wanted to tell me his Mom was in the hospital and they thought she had a stroke.  I still don't know why he felt the need to tell me.  He made it clear he didn't want to be friends or maintain any sort of relationship and at that moment I stopped talking to him.  I was like you and thought I was long forgotten, he seemed to be going out with friends and having a great time.  He told me how happy he was.  I think half the time they are just full of it!  Obviously I wasn't forgotten or he wouldn't have contacted me about his mom.  I ended up going to the hospital to see her last night but thankfully he was not there.  Luckily this was not a set back so far for me.  As soon as shes better I will go back to NC.

Stay strong.  Anger is good.  At least I know I prefer feeling angry to weepy or sad.  Feels a little more empowering.

It's tough, I was dump since April 3rd, and she will contact me every week to devalue me, her text were offensive, always trying to pull me in to belittle me. I started NC last week, it has only been 7 days, She tried to text me again last night, I stay strong without engaging the craziness. NC has really upset her.

Reecer: I heard they compartmentalize though. Out of sight is truly out of mind. Mine began enforcing full no contact after getting a great new job (weeks before the job even started mind you). There was no sad pininterest nothing. How did your experience differ?

newtothis28: I no longer have contact with mutual friend but when I did he made it clear my ex forgot about me and does not care. Furthermore when he did remind ex, it was made very clear ex hates me. I was only used as his last resort, I meant nothing. What was your experience?

leftconfused: that was really kind you went, im sure his mom appreciated it. Have you heard from him since visiting?

joc:  i had a whole year of texts like that before the final discard. They were always initated by me tho.  do u plan to reconcile at some point?

How awesome... .22! I'm just a few weeks ahead, few days off 50. Intense emotions better under control. Still think about my X but that will likely be for a while.

Daily grind of an emotional lasagna, but I'm the one in some semblance of control and calling shots.

30 is round the corner!

"Reecer: I heard they compartmentalize though. Out of sight is truly out of mind. Mine began enforcing full no contact after getting a great new job (weeks before the job even started mind you). There was no sad pininterest nothing. How did your experience differ? "

youre both right. the issue here is object constancy, one of the reasons it can feel like you dont exist to this person. the unstable sense of self is another related issue. you dont recognize them and its hard to square your experience of who they were with you vs what youre seeing now.

pwBPD may compartmentalize, and they may dissociate. that has to be taken into consideration. but if out of sight was LITERALLY out of mind, not a person here would have contact from their exes.

i think we are simply being too literal here. beachbabe it is unlikely you are literally forgotten, if that is what you are struggling with. i suspect its more accurate to say youre struggling with the feeling of being forgotten, which anyone, rightfully, would struggle with. its comforting to know that it is not that simple and it isnt personal, but its something members struggle with a great deal. i mentioned that its hard to square your experience of who they were with you vs what youre seeing now. thats because they took on a great deal of who you presented when they were with you. reactions range from being uncomfortable to unaware. it doesnt much matter. their behavior post relationship challenges our own sense of object constancy. but when we are going through this, we are prone to distorted thinking, understandably. unfortunately we tend to torture ourselves with it when its not really about us but about a very complex disorder.

to put it more simply, i know how it feels when it seems like your best friend has turned into your enemy     with time and being kind to yourself, your mind will be more centered.

dagwood: emotional lasagna, thats a good way to put it. How do you feel differently now than a month ago? I forget did she make contact with you? I can see you are doing much better. ♡

once removed: that was really insightful what you wrote. I struggle with knowing I am hated, that any reminder I still exist would trigger him and badly. Im ok with the relationship ending,  I just wonder if I will always exist only as a bad memory. What was your experience ?

Today is actually a really good day thank you. Yesterday was really weird. I am generally not an anxious person, I do suffer from depressive bouts, but anxiety not so much. Seemed my BPDx would trigger anxiety in me and definitely depression. I ended up having to do 2 walks yesterday and I was thinking a lot about my X and I just held on. So today is a blessing.

How is it after almost 2 months? All the emotions, the looking back, wondering, etc. is all still there difference is frequency and intensity. As you well know, first 10 days were about surviving from one hour to the next. To me next 20 were about day to day. Now at almost 60, I am focusing on 10 day chunks. I have a calender that you can write notes on and commentary seems less dramatic as days pass.

Yes, she sent an email using a non blocked address. It was rather insignificant in meaning and overall jibberish I think about N/C. She is ALL about Control and Attention so I'm thinking she's wondering where her missing toy is finally realizing that unlike the orbitors, X boyfriends, FB fans or chasers I'm not blowing up her phone.

Hey... .where did Woody go?

depersonalizing "i struggle with knowing i am hated, that any reminder i still exist would trigger him and end badly" is the key, but will not happen over night. youre in shock. youre experiencing trauma. treat yourself and your pain legitimately in the mean time. i say depersonalizing is "key" because its a bit like handing you the keys to a car you dont necessarily know how to drive. youll learn. but ill give you an example.

the notion that pwBPD are "emotional children" is sometimes used as an overgeneralization, but remains true, at least in many ways. im not sure if youre a mother, but surely youve heard of young children shouting "i hate you!" at a parent. i dont need to tell you its nothing personal when a young child says such a thing. the comparison here is that neither is it personal when a disordered person says it. thats not to say it doesnt feel personal, this is a person you have a romantic history with. going from feeling loved and adored to forgotten and discarded doesnt just toy with your sense of object constancy, it toys with your sense of reality. it isnt just about the pain, as painful as it is  . its very difficult to feel like yourself or "normal" in that state. so its reasonable to suggest that some of your thoughts may be distorted, and that will cause pain not necessarily proportionate to reality. and i dont mean to suggest your pain isnt valid. just that when we come to this board there are an awful lot of painful things we have to accept already. we dont have to make them harder than they are.

in other words, im more or less speaking to the future beach_babe: there will come a time when you do not distinguish his expression of hatred from a child expressing it to their mother. there will come a time when you look at the entire relationship, your role, his role, all the words said, all the actions, and see them for what they were, clearly, and without the pain.

youve probably read on this board, and experienced yourself, variations of "emotionally i feel this way", "but rationally i feel this way." it simply takes time to connect the two. plenty of this process is just time. part of it is educating ourselves on the disorder. and in the end, if you want to truly heal, not just scar over, it involves doing the work on ourselves.

i would recommend this concept and this workshop on radical acceptance:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=89910.0

radical acceptance might either seem complicated or common sensical depending on how you look at it. but ill bet you have used aspects of radical acceptance at times in your life, and drawing on that will aid you in this struggle. in my experience its not like i read a book on radical acceptance or actively practiced it or anything like that. it was that going from where i had been, to being able to do it with regard to my relationship, was a milestone in my recovery.

im not sure which part of my experience youre asking about. the relationship or its aftermath. as far as the aftermath, i struggled with very similar thoughts and feelings like "do i even exist?" or "is she not even thinking about me?". you can take the fact that so many of us struggle with this for what its worth. the truth was i had no idea what was going through my exes head. and it helped the most when i accepted that and stopped trying. trying usually meant either feeding my own ego or punishing myself. neither helped. to some extent, you may even be looking for signs that play into your fears.

but i think the most helpful thing i can offer here is:

"I struggle with knowing I am hated, that any reminder I still exist would trigger him and badly. Im ok with the relationship ending,  I just wonder if I will always exist only as a bad memory."

elaborate on your struggles, if you can. how does it make you feel and why? what would it mean to you if you "always existed only as a bad memory"?

Hang in there Beach Babe! Read your thread. Hope you'll get to the point where this person doesn't have such a grip on you. Because they obviously aren't worth it. Sorry to hear you are struggling so hard. Take care.

Beech I feel the same but we have to remember this has no bearing on us or our worth as people ... .They are disorderd they don't act like they don't feel like us so we can't apply our logic to their madness .

 

oh god the pain. why did that mutual "friend" have to do that? why? its because of him hes gone from my life forever. 14 years is such a long time. why?

Beech because he is a snake same as my x as much as we wanted them to be who and what we loved about them they both have another darker side this is NOT your fault .

BB - Thank you.  Yes we have communicated minimally by text since and I've kept it strictly about his mom.  I went and visited her two nights in a row.  She is getting discharged today to a rehab facility for two days.  Shes doing much better.  Once she is home I will not have a need to contact him anymore but I have a feeling he will find a reason to reach out.  At least he has been cordial and respectful, no hateful texts... .yet