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I still think of my pwBPD ex as the Love of my Life who left me. I see all the ways that she didn't meet my needs but I don't see these as shortcomings in her, let alone an abnormality. I still see her as someone who is maybe too good for me, someone who is going to move on to endless opportunities for glorious relationships, leaving me alone in the dust.

This is the source of a lot of pain and rumination.

I see that I am still functioning as her idealizing mirror. I know more about her dark side than anyone else does, except for her previous lovers. I know more than she can admit to herself how she hurts people who love her. I have always protected her from this information. Part of that was for me, apparently, to make me feel like I was in the kind of relationship I want with the kind of person I need. But I do recall how she would limit talk about her withdrawals, the sudden changes of feeling towards me: "I don't want to be with someone who sees me that way!" I would get scared then, as I sensed she usually had one foot out the door anyway. I would shut up, I would question my perceptions (Is this really emotional abuse?), I would kind of "forget" the hurtful thing I had experienced with her.

But why am I still doing this? She has left me now permanently. She has admitted that the way she behaved with me, the initial love fest, the periodic withdrawals, the final loss of interest in the relationship, the abandonment, are all things she did with previous partners. So why do I still need to see her like the Prize Who Got Away?

It still feels to me like she abandoned me because I wasn't good enough. I think she probably does think that, at least part of the time, maybe most of the time now. But why do I have to think it? Why do I have to think that she was right to reject me? (I do actually think she was right to end the relationship, because it was unhealthy, but that isn't the same thing as leaving because I wasn't good enough).

How do I stop being my ex's idealizing mirror?

Sorry about what you're going through dude.

You know how she behaves. Now you just need to adjust your behaviors to match how the negative things made you feel.

Have you been in any kind of contact with her, social media included?

I found that the only thing that helped me truly knock her off of that pedestal was time and space, and absolutely no knowledge of how she was or what she was doing. Sounds like you need some room to breath and figure things out in a more clear way.

Achaya: I'm sorry you're going through this. For me it's akin to revising for a subject you never really liked. Keep reading everybody's stories and note the similarities until it starts to sink in. Going back is not an option as it will be more of the same - but with an increased emphasis on devaluing. You can only go forward. No-one is good enough for your ex - she needs the 'perfect' relationship to compensate for her own frailties and self-loathing. Whenever there's a problem she will blame her future partners for it and restart her search. You can do better - she probably can't! 

The part about adjusting my behavior to match how the negative things made me feel rings a bell. I started out in the relationship doing this, but learned that she could not/would not process my hurt, angry behavior as anything but an unprovoked and unjustified attack on her self-image. I became confused that maybe she was right, and I shouldn't have reacted the way I did. After a while I got to a place where I knew I was bottling up a lot of hurt and anger, and my need to address the conflicts so as to resolve them, but I was afraid to talk to her about anything she might hear as destructive criticism.

Also, you are right. We are still in the process of returning possessions to each other, and have had significant conversations on two occasions last week. I would say these went "well," but the fact that she was less defensive than usual about her contributions to our problems sent me into LaLa Land, fantasies of recycling and so on. I have imposed an NC boundary, but she has been in no hurry to get her stuff out of my house. She agreed to finalize it by the end of this week.

This is a very helpful way for me to look at this. My ex talks a lot about self-loathing, and told me that she has been dealing with our separation by cultivating that mind state (to avoid whatever else she is feeling). I think you are totally correct. She needs for the relationship to be perfect so that she can think that she was perfect within it. And since she can't even be adequate, that requires me to erase my reality and replace it with an appearance of satisfaction with the relationship. Over time, it became harder and harder to do that, but I was still trying. Maybe what gets to me (on an unconscious level?) is that even when I did make all my pain and anger disappear, along with my needs to be included in the relationship, she still decided to leave me. Even when I gave her what she seemed to want the most from me.

You are right, I need to look at this as evidence that I could never please her. When she left me, she said she did it because she wanted "more." I couldn't have given more than what I gave her. In reality, if I fell short, I think it was by giving her too much.

Thanks so much for your post, it was very helpful.

Wow, tough one. Really tough. I try to fool myself constantly that I don't love her (but I do), that I wouldn't take her back (but I would), that we have a chance again at forever (but we don't), that she would be different and fixed (but she won't).  The TIME thingie is working, but slowly.  I'm 51 days N/C today, the number feels good, I'm not as bad as I used to be in most aspects of the B/U, I know in my head that I SHOULD be getting better, I also look forward to that number increasing and doubling.  In perspective, after writing the last PERIOD after the word doubling, I got tremendously sad, choked up and feel my face getting ready to let loose 40 days and 40 nights of tears.  It just came as I thought of her.  So very sad, and sometimes I cannot control it.

Achaya, I relate completely to your initial post (have felt that way for so long now) but I also think what you wrote in your last post -- that you couldn't have done more, you couldn't have done a better job of sublimating your hurt and anger and giving her a non-critical loving experience, what she seemed to want ... .so if there is a flaw in what you did, it lies in doing too MUCH of that, not that it was not enough.

It helps me greatly to remind myself that I did everything my ex asked of me -- I was non-possessive but loving, constantly available to him but made no demands, did not judge, was interested in him for him, not in exchange for something he was giving me ... .and he left me, over and over, in new and creative ways that made me feel like crap.  He now wants to go back to that arrangement and has many theoretical reasons why that should be good and OK and maybe will grow into more.  What I have to rely on is my experiencing already having played that out.  It did not "grow into more."  My loyalty and willingness to meet him where he was was taken for granted; it did not become a reason for him to take emotional risks and start inquiring what I needed.

I suspect deep self-worth deficits are what is making it hard to stay with that understanding, for you.  "She/he left because I wasn't good enough" resonates with our internal self-critical narratives.  Doesn't make it accurate, but does make it hard to dispel.

Patient and clear, Thanks so much for your post. Your words make me feel heard and understood by someone who shares my relationship experience.

This website is a godsend for me. At the same time I am deeply affected by the intensity of the pain so many people are sharing in their posts. So many people, so much tragedy and grief. I had no idea that BPD was such a social problem.

Achaya I hear you , after all the changes I made it was still not enough for my x the question is why did we feel we had to or should change ? God knows she did nothing to become a better person . looking back I asked for so little and got so little back why?

Could it be for you the same as it is for me ? That these partners represent something or someone else we are trying to make love us and tell us we are whole and perfect?  Could the feeling its "your fault" be a wound that's there before she came into your life ?

Achaya,

I've been there and totally understand what you're saying.  I was in a 3+ year r/s with uBPD/NPD ex gf and have been out of the r/s for nearly 18 months.  I lived with constant emotional blackmail and implied threats of b/u over the course of the r/s.  I finally left after she started getting physically abusive and I just couldn't deal with the crap anymore.  I felt a mix of utter joy and utter heartbreak and freedom and frustration and whatever!  It was especially hard to see the parade of replacements she had going on within days of the b/u.  We lived on the same street, so it was impossible for me to not see it and n/c was horribly difficult.  

Ok, so one thing I did immediately upon leaving the r/s was to create a bit of a diary of all the crap I allowed myself to endure over the three years.  All the hurtful things she said and did; all the wacky behavior; all the things she projected on to me.  After filling 18 typed pages, I could really finally see how bad it was.  I also could clearly see that this person I was with for three years, while not a horrible person, didn't meet my expectations for the mate I wanted to be with.  The biggest bucket of cold water that hit me was something that my T helped me understand.  I clearly wasn't living my own values by participating in the r/s.  I was the one selling myself short!  I took my life back and began putting myself first.  

N/c and time was really the key.  I've read some folks hear refer to 60 days n/c, but my goal was 100 days.  I lucked out and my ex gf moved away from the neighborhood about five months after the b/u, but still attempted to break n/c several times after.  I didn't fall for the antics and moved on.  Again, I'm 18 months out and I'm happy, healthy and at peace.  I do think about her from time to time, but that is it.  

Dobie, this caught my attention.

You said up above:  Could it be for you the same as it is for me ? That these partners represent something or someone else we are trying to make love us and tell us we are whole and perfect?  Could the feeling its "your fault" be a wound that's there before she came into your life ?

What it made me think, or what it triggered in me is the thought that at time, my ex actually blamed me for things that were nonexistent FROM me.

Why it relates is because it WAS my fault according to her.  Her ex#2 husband was a psycho (litterally) and he kept tabs on her constantly from what she told me in the beginning. She would always need to be on the phone with him and keep him abreast of her locations and how long things would take etc.

Well I thought it was great when we talked all the time, of course I'm thinking that she wanted to talk to me all the time (morning on her way to work, lunchtime, on the trip home). But one day it started, she blamed me for keeping tabs on her. I told her "hey, wait a minute, take a look at who your talking to because your EX did that, and not me". How much of that she actually decipered I'll never know. She had things stuck in her mind that popped up on occasion. If I brought it too her attention, she just passed it by without comment, or recognition of it being incorrect.  All the red flags that never showed up to me (I never saw them.)

So, how does this help stop me from idealizing her? When I remember this stuff, all the CONS in my list, it makes me stop seeing her as the goddess I thought she was and more like the little girl that wanted to play goddess in the class play and everyone laughed at her.  Both her and I made her out to be so much more than she actually was.  If I'm wrong, well, so be it, because a goddess does not do what she did to me. Hands down!

This is a really tough one; one I struggled with this intensely when we first broke up, and I struggle with less and less as time goes on - but it's still a battle. I wish I had a solid answer for you but I don't.

One of the biggest elements of the struggle for me was incorporating the "good" side of her with the "bad" side (to be simplistic).  When she was good she was good - funny, sweet, sexy, smart, affectionate and lovely.  In fact, I still miss that "side" of her.  But when she was "bad" she was emotionally abusive: detached, dishonest, unfaithful, uncaring and rejecting - and it broke my heart beyond anything that words can describe.

In the first six months after the b/u I found myself remembering her through these two different "lenses" - I'd be angry when I was remembering all of her emotionally abusive behavior, but I'd be inconsolable when I was remembering all of the lovely things about her that I missed.  I think for me this was the most difficult part of resolving the breakup; I felt schizophrenic with my ping-ponging back and forth between the ways I would "remember" her.

Over time, I began reconciling the fact that ALL of these characteristics make up who she is - even in spite of the fact that they are so incredibly dichotomous. As I've come to grips with this truth my pain has lessened; she was not "too good" for me - the truth is that she was too disordered for me.  She will not go on to have a "glorious life;" unless she sticks with therapy, all of her future relationships will follow the same pattern. I don't say this angrily; I say it realistically.  Nothing will magically change unless she comes to grips with her BPD and takes concrete steps towards healing.


THAT ^ may be where your work really lies.  I have felt the same, and am working with a T to get to the bottom of it.  Some of my low self esteem came from her devaluing of me; but the fact that this feeling lingered after the r/s ended suggests something deeper, I think.

Thank you so much for all your responses! I am seeing that I have an entire mental system already in place for responding to Jekyll and Hyde behavior in ways that sustain a consistently positive image of the other person, no matter what they do. Part of how that seems to work is that I construe the abuse, rejections and withdrawals as something like natural, understandable on the other person's part rather than abnormal behavior. In fact, I don't register, react, or remember the bad episodes to the extent I think normal people should. Obviously my part of this dance was learned in my childhood---it is so automatic!

I don't know who exactly in my family was borderline, if anyone, but my father was an episodic alcoholic. He was abusive both when he drank and also randomly and unpredictably at other times. He was a survivor of very severe child abuse, and I am sure he would be diagnosed with PTSD from that , at the very least. His identity was fractured in the same ways as what we see with pwBPD. My mother's stance was codependent in the extreme. When he was abusive to me, she would lead me through complex psychoanalyses of how my father had been hurt by his parents, how he "really" loved me, that his personality was "warped" by the abuse, that part of the time he acted just like his own abusive father part of the time, but this was not "really" my true father. I was left with "understanding" him as my only way of coping with the pain of his abuse.

I have worked on these issues for a very long time, but I see that I am now being presented with another opportunity. Or probably more accurately, I arranged an opportunity to work this out with someone, but once again, it came out the same way it always does. Maybe the conclusion should be that no matter how much insight I have, no matter how many new skills I acquire, I can't make these relationships turn out differently because it takes 2 people to accomplish that, and I never have any adult help! Same as when I was a kid.

Thanks again, you guys, you are so generous, caring and helpful! All of us deserve to be with people who are just as kind and helpful to us!

I second those Kudos!  This is a place that has some of the most compassionate and understanding people you will ever meet!

It would be much easier to detach and leave for me if, as it is the case with many people who post here, she actually raged at me or was physically abusive. I don't care who you are, I'd never put up with that stuff. She didn't, at least not with me. And that's the tough part.

My ex was more subtle.  She was obviously "calculating" in her mind, but wouldn't be so outright until the time was just right. She didn't blame until she got upset. Those "things" that she kept so that she could hold them over my head or at my throat when she felt that she needed ammunition.

That's a really interesting thought - normalizing abusive behavior as a "learned habit."  My ex and my mother were like night and day - my mother raged and my ex didn't.  But with the both of them I was exposed to abusive behavior - from people I loved - and that created a WHOLE lot of cognitive dissonance within me. 

Imagine the dilemma to me/us as children - either maintain the positive image of the "other" by deciding that we are the problem (bad/defective/not worthy of love); or decide that a parent is evil and we are suffering from abuse.

What a terrible choice for a young mind.  I suspect I know the decision that each of us made.

Maybe it's me.  Maybe I'm the problem.

This is it for me... .exactly!  I've been thinking about why I feel so much guilt over ending this relationship, as if I'd let him down in some way... . It's so messed up really because all my life i've been trying to get my dad to not have abandoned me, to have been good enough for him, and have subsequently been abandoned a lot by partners! Also I was bullied, terrorised and criticised by a mother who most likely had BPD!  So it's all so familiar!  I spent so much of my childhood normalising her behaviour and trying to be good enough not to provoke her... .all the while longing for my daddy to come and sweep me up and make it all alright... .

I'm 4 months out of a r/s with a pwBPD now and have maintained N/C for most of that, blocking his phone and email, yet the other day one got through, a sad, lost, pathetic plea to me... .he expresses himself very well and I felt sad and sorry for him and missed him and yearned for him and agonised about how it would be if I never ever saw him again for the rest of my life... .

However having dipped in here for 10 minutes I'm remembering, the covering up, the trying not to provoke, the trying to justify and blame the illness and make allowances.  The vain belief that if only I could be strong enough for him, that I would be the one to help him to get well... .that he would love me and not abandon me, all the crazy stuff I told myself.  I remember telling myself that I had made a commitment and that no matter how tough it got I was on for the whole ride!  I told myself that if you love someone you don't leave them because they are ill, that if he had cancer I would stick by him, and on and on and on... .

Thank heavens for all of you and this amazing forum! I just put my nose in for 5 minutes to try to gain some support and I'm back to my place of resolve and determination to move on and grow from this experience and let him go with love... . 

Thank you all  

And yes Achaya, going back to your original post and later post, I agree with what you've said here... .I think it might be what we all have in common, reacting to current abuse like this because it is familiar.  I remember telling work colleagues about my relationship and seeing the horror on their faces and hearing them tell me that it was unacceptable that I should be treated this way,  so what did I do?  I didn't tell them about it any more, lied in fact and said that it was all ok again now.  I covered it up! 

Wow, I could have written that sentence.  Only difference was that my dad was there, but it was almost like he was a non-entity.  Mom ruled the roost; dad went along with whatever she said. So I never turned to him for comfort - I knew whose "side" he was on.


Could have written that ^ too... .

dobie, I am looking at the source of the "fault" in my family of origin. Even as a distraction, this focus actually helps give me something constructive to think about. And besides, I am already learning some things. I see now that I operated as a positive mirror for my ex. I didn't discuss the behaviors that were hurting me because she took that to mean that I was painting her black. That was her projection, I was trying to solve a problem between us. If I hadn't given up on sharing all of the truth about how she was affecting me, she either would have learned something about how she hurts people or the relationship would have ended sooner. She got to discard me because I wasn't more forthright sooner in the relationship about her abuse of me. Just in that area, I already see how I can do something very different in my next relationship, if there is to be one.

Gosh, I am having this same problem with my ex who recently dumped me out of the blue. It has been two months with absolutely no contact whatsoever, although, I can't stop wishing he'd reach out and at least make a peace offering so I could move on with some closure.

But, honestly, I just wish he'd come back. I know it's not a wise wish, so why do I want someone who clearly can't treat me well? (My parents raised me with more self respect than that!) I can't stop craving how he would stare at me when he thought I wasn't looking, how he'd kiss me slowly with his eyes open, and how he'd confess sweetly that I was his dream girl.

They say uncertainty is a huge aphrodisiac. Perhaps that's it. It's the uncertainty that keeps your tummy so in knots that you mistake it for love. I guess that's why the sex was so amazingly good. Was it the intensity of it all that keeps me hooked?

I have been trying to occupy my time with activities and friends, and it has helped a lot. But I can't shake the underlying hope that each new day will bring an email or text from him. Somehow, I can't seem to accept that this is how it will end, and as much as I know he would only continue to make life miserable, I can't imagine it without him.

Ugh.

Yes, I relate to all of this. The longing for my lover to return is getting eroded by what I now know for sure, that nothing would be different even if that happened. It would be just another trip around the merry go round. Anyway, my ex has been very clear and unwavering in saying she is done with the relationship. She has been in and out and in and out of it for several years, but she acted different this time, so I believe her decision is solid. That is what hurts the most, that she just lost all that feeling she had for me. At the same time, it will help me to get over her, because there is no way she will accept me back.

I am noticing quite strongly how I continue to regard her as the ideal partner, who has left me but remains ideal. If I had known before I became involved that she would treat me this way, I would not have regarded her as ideal and would not have entered the relationship with her. I would have regarded her as very attractive, impressive and totally my type, but I did not want to get involved with someone who would be distant and unavailable, then dump me. I know now that this is part of who she is, and that this part has destroyed every relationship she has had. It is part of her BPD, but is also part of her, because that's what a personality disorder is.

I have to keep returning to the need to treat this loss as a death. When I get involved in yearning it is always because I want to keep some hope going. Hope is usually a good thing, but in my recent relationship, hope was what kept me in pain. Having hope for myself requires killing all hope for a relationship with my ex.

It took me a long time to replace my idealized version of who I thought she was with a realistic version of who she actually is. After the b/u I understood who she was intellectually, but I seemed emotionally unable to accept it.  And until I was able to do so I struggled with exactly what you described above.

The good news is that time and a deepening understanding will help you heal.

I know I shared the quote from my T the other day ("She was in a dysfunctional relationship with herself. How could she be in a functional relationship with anyone else?" and the fact that my ex had different 'parts of self.'  I've been practically meditating on my T's quote since she said it and had this realization the other day:  all of her different 'parts of self' had different goals.  Adult M desperately wanted to finally have a successful adult r/s; Teenage M wanted to be free and to do whatever she wanted - including sex with others if she felt like it; Little M wanted a caretaker - she just wanted to be cared for, protected and safe.

She was at war within herself; she was a shifting canvas of opposing desires; the very epitome of what it means to be in a dysfunctional relationship with oneself. I don't know how I didn't see it sooner.

It makes me sad that I hung on for so long. We didn't really ever have a chance.

This is a very good way to look at the situation. I am a very hopeful person. I always try to find the good in things, but this time it got me in trouble.

And I like what you said about not idealizing her if you'd known how she was from the start. I would have to agree with full disclosure I might not have proceeded to enter into a relationship with my ex.

Plus, you made a point that this person will never have success in ANY relationship because of the way he/she is wired. That's sad to think, but helps it feel a little less like a loss on my end.

I have come to similar conclusions, probably because I am using the same multiple-selves model you are. I never really knew what the diagnostic description meant by "unstable" self. I see now that my ex was unstable because there wasn't any consistency, as far as I could tell, in which sub personality was out at any given time. I found them to be different in the ways you describe, especially since they were of differing ages. I think that the purpose of this kind of personality organization is in fact to keep the attitudes, feelings, memories, etc, in separate compartments, not touching each other. At least that is what some experts seem to be saying. I am always more convinced by what people tell me from their own experience, however

I also feel that we never had a chance, and I believe that we did both want the relationship to work out.

I don't know that it's a purposeful compartmentalization... .not overtly purposeful, anyway. What can get compartmentalized are traumatic memories - sometimes one part can hold the traumatic memories and the other parts are not aware of them.  But when you get into this territory I think you're heading towards a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder.

I think that Schema theory posits that some of the maladaptive modes were actually adaptive at one point in time - adaptive for survival in dangerous or stressful situations. "Early Maladaptive Schemas began with something that was done to us by our families or by other children, which damaged us in some way. We might have been abandoned, criticized, overprotected, emotionally or physically abused, excluded or deprived and, consequently, the schema becomes part of us.  Schemata are essentially valid representations of early childhood experiences, and serve as templates for processing and defining later behaviors, thoughts, feelings and relationships with others. Early maladaptive schemas include entrenched patterns of distorted thinking, disruptive emotions and dysfunctional behaviors. Schemata are perpetuated throughout one’s lifetime and become activated under conditions relevant to that particular schema.”

I think when my ex was feeling fearful that I would abandon her (these were her fears; I never even considered leaving her until she became unfaithful later in the r/s) she would slip into vulnerable child and compliant surrenderer modes - and remain there for a while. She probably learned early in life that if she was compliant, and if she appeared sweet and needy, she would get her needs met by sympathetic adults. These strategies likely helped her survive a chaotic childhood - but the problem is that she carried them into adulthood. I could say the same for her other maladaptive modes.

It's funny; I dreamed about her last night and the night before - and I've hardly had any dreams about her in the 9 months since the b/u. I don't remember the first night's dreams, but I do remember last night. We were getting ready to go out on a Saturday night, but then began thinking we might rather stay home. I was aware during the dream that we were interacting normally (and even sexually at one point); but I was also aware that she was in the process of deciding whether to leave the r/s (and had been in that "grey zone" for a while.)  I was debating whether or not to bring the topic up to finally resolve it one way or the other; in the dream I had the same anxiety in the pit of my stomach that I felt in our actual r/s.  What stood out the most to me in the dream is that I couldn't decide if I should bring it up - I think because I was afraid to hear what she had to say. That indecisiveness in our actual r/s (especially towards the end) is what disturbs me the most about my own behavior; I'm normally a pretty decisive person.

As I laid in bed this morning and thought about the dream another thought popped into my head; her habitual lying takes on a whole new meaning in light of my first realization (that her different parts had different goals and desires).  I've always viewed her lying as something she did TO me; something purposefully manipulative so she could "have her cake and eat it too."  I think I've viewed it that way because that's the only reason I can imagine that I would lie under similar circumstances. Viewing her lying as a symptom of her internal battle - of the conflicting desires of her 'parts of self' - is another lens to view it through.

The dream sounds exactly like my experience of my relationship. After a number of breakups and distance episodes I became increasingly fearful about confronting my ex. In the beginning of the relationship I would get distressed and go right to her with my concerns, but I got conditioned to not do that. She would sometimes simply deny what I was saying about the change in her towards me, and sometimes she would validate my sense that she was thinking about leaving. Either one was horrible. As time went on she was less and less engaged, I was less and less secure, and I started the eggshell walk about then.

Like you, I find that I project my own dynamics and reasoning on her: I think "Now if I did that it would mean I did not love this person," whereas her behavior might have meant something totally different for her. I find that I feel better when I tell myself that I don't understand what her experience was in the relationship. I tried many times to find out, but she could never articulate her experience, that was why she couldn't resolve anything. She just acted out and dealt with the fallout later. Or just walked away. I believe that my partner wants to be able to create a permanent, committed relationship and function well within it. If she could do that, I believe that she would have gone farther with me.

Yes - and that completely confounded me until I began to understand (post b/u) that how she answered my questions sometimes depended upon who was in the "lead" when I asked.


I think the inability to articulate is due to the shifting sense of self.  How in the world can you explain to your partner how you're feeling if it constantly changes? How do you explain that one day you're feeling like an adult who is working on the r/s so it lasts; but the next day you're feeling like a young child that desperately needs to be cared for, and then the next day you're thinking like a teenager want to be free and out living your life and dating?  

Imagine the possible responses to our question, "Are you committed to our r/s?"

Adult:  Yes, I want this to work and I love you.

Child:   Yes, I NEED you. Don't leave me.

Teenager:  I'm not sure that this is what I want anymore.

My partner VERY much wanted to create a permanent, stable relationship with me and function well within it.  There was nothing "fake" or manipulative about her desire - it was genuine. It was just beyond her ability to do so in the sometimes mundane, day-to-day reality of an adult relationship. It's all just very sad.

This is what I'm struggling with my x was a 7.5 for looks one of the smartest woman I have ever know and incredibly successful as well as eight years younger .

The woman I meet now in my late 30s  just can't seem to compare .

This is picture perfect how I found it when the devaluation started. I felt the distancing and the slow decline in activities we used to do together. Instead, they were replaced by new routines that I also liked, but retrospective, I can see how those suited better his/her way of wanting to control me, and make sure I wasn't going anywhere. Reading your post has really helped me understand some of the contradicting and conflicting things I've been going through lately, thank you, and thank you to everyone who has made their valuable contribution as well.

Sometimes when I would ask about her mind state relative to me, my ex would say, "It depends upon who you ask?" I don't know how she finally decided to leave me. I think she makes impulsive decisions at some point after a lengthy period of hopping from one viewpoint to another. It was obvious after she left me the breakup note that there hadn't been much advance planning. Maybe none at all.

It seems that pwBPDs act in very different ways after the black painting. Mine told me he/she needed space, but not a BU. I tried to the best of my ability to give space (given my co-dependency and trust issues, I had a hard time with this, I recognise now... .), but after silent treatment for a long time, I just couldn't do it no more. I can understand that space is sometimes needed for every couple, but you don't do that after you've been in a lengthy relationship, and you don't do it if you're each other's so-called best friends. Guess the friend thing was only a one-way street :/ Another thing is, space can be given, but that doesn't mean that you stop talking to each other. You may reduce the "healthy" love-bombing on each other, you may reduce the amount of times you talk a day, but you most certainly do not stop communication completely. I was never left a note, I was just silent treated until I reached out one last time and got shot down again. It was painful and I couldn't wrap my head around it anymore. I had to end it and that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make. Looking at it from the distance I have now, it shouldn't have been so hard, because my gut feeling is telling me my ex-BPD already had found another person at this point - the ST was just to uphold our relationship on various media, but it was hidden for most people except the closest ones. It was such a joke, and when I found out, it tore my heart even more apart. My ex had most likely already spent time with the next person in line in the long ST I endured... .Sadly... .

WOW.  Just, wow.

It seems that PD people seek empathetic fixers / healers. We have the capacity to genuinely love another. We feel as-is we can nurture them and love them through it "for better or for worse." For me, I take the failure to help someone as a deficit in myself. If I were X, Y, Z or did A, B, C this "could" have worked. If I were prettier, smarter, more patient, et cetera. If I continue to put my wants and needs on the perpetual back burner this might have worked, etc. Notice that all of the I should have, could have, would have puts 100% of the responsibility and work in a relationship on me. In some way, if  I take 100 % of keeping it together or fixing it, it somehow gives me a false sense me being able to cure something that clearly not within my control. I could have been a runway model with a Nobel Peace prize and that wouldn't have made him healthier. I am not perfect but I honestly and genuinely made a true effort to develop a real loving connection with another person. His receptor was broken. That is very sad. Sad that the love he so desperately wished to have may always elude him due to fear. It seems to be a self-fulfilling prophecy which he orchestrates. I wish it weren't so but I can't help him, Lord knows I tried.  I have to remind myself that my heart was true and I can't tear myself down for trying. Ridding myself of self-doubt is a huge challenge.

"I found that the only thing that helped me truly knock her off of that pedestal was time and space, and absolutely no knowledge of how she was or what she was doing. Sounds like you need some room to breath and figure things out in a more clear way."

Achaya,

I think valet is correct, you are going to have to get some time and space away from her to put her and the relationship into the proper perspective. It never was about you or you not being good enough; she told you that as all of her relationships have followed the same pattern. You weren't in all of those relationships, but she was.

I never gave this much thought but:  It was either right before or right after sex, I had said to my ex something to the effect of:  "who are you now?" referring to a different personality... .I didn't know anything about BPD at this time and I was just saying it in a playful way, because I knew at the time that she was moody and during sex, she just wasn't exactly the same "in the kitchen" kinda woman.  She jumped and asked me what I meant, almost like I stumbled upon something.  I realized to sort of alarmed her at the time, but I didn't give it any more power at the time.  As you can see, I never forgot this... .It' sticks right up there with her comment: "I have a habit of pushing people away".

I am SO VERY HARD trying to STOP thinking about her.  I don't know why it's so impossible!  She just keeps popping up, and yesterday, mothers day, was an absolute killer.  That is an occasion that I should have been with her... .out to morning breakfast with the family, the little one (9yo) at home regardless of if she was with her biodad or not. Just so many things and feelings surrounding what she took away from me.  Of course there is always the thought if she is having fun and smiling without me or with someone new.  I do not want to be affected by those things.  I don't think about my ex wife, nor the loss of GF's in the past. I don't want this either.  Does it make sense?

Valet and Apollotech, I agree with you about the separation time. I went NC with my ex just last Tuesday, after we had finalized all the business of the BU. I have to say that I was very relieved immediately. I had been nonstop anxious about having any contact, because of my conflict between the painful longing for her and the fear of how she would be with me, so obviously out of the relationship. Imposing the NC on the relationship has helped me move from bargaining to depression. I still go back to fantasy conversations that are all about bargaining, but when I am in reality I know that this is a hopeless relationship.

Dying Love, it takes a long time to get over a normal relationship if it is a deep one, and usually they aren't ended when the bloom is still on the rosebud. I had a relationship with an NPD guy several decades ago that was of the type we have been discussing on this board. I was wildly in love, but he kept a lot of distance, had sex with other women, and would vanish altogether for a couple weeks at a time sometimes. He finally dumped me after 4 years. I obsessed and longed for him for years. As much as 20 years later I would have dreams about him filled with grief, longing, and a desire to heal the breach at the end (he ended it on the phone, devaluing me). On the rare occasions when I would talk about him to a friend, I would be surprised and embarrassed to find tears in my eyes. Finally, after 25 years he called me one day. We had several phone conversations in which he expressed his regrets about how he had treated me and told me the truth about how important I had been to him. He explained that he had freaked out and "run away" because he was scared of his feelings for me, which were intense and ambivalent. He also told me some things about his current life that let me know it wasn't vastly different from what had been going on when we were in our 20's. (Drinking, drugging, married with gfs on the side). The whole picture he gave me enabled me to let go. I saw that the love I thought we had when we were together was real. I also saw that he had never had his act together, and although he was doing MUCH better when we spoke on the phone, his lifestyle still wasn't one that I could respect. I meanwhile had established a stable, healthy life, and couldn't imagine sharing the same activities we had done together as graduate students, partying together and so on. What he said during our phone conversations released me from the ego hurts he had inflicted long ago, healed the rift in our friendship, and also showed me that he wasn't really what I as a mature person wanted from a partner. All the bad stuff I had seen in him when we were young, which I had mostly dismissed, was still in him, and had sabotaged his life.

The question is, how do we move on from these people if we never get the healing phone call? If we don't someday see our ex as failing in life and in relationships with others? I am looking inwardly for solutions. I think that part of it is that we need to trust our feelings more. I "knew" when I was first together with the man just described that he reciprocated my feelings for him, and I also "knew" that he was abusive and disturbed. I just couldn't really take in all that I knew at the time. I didn't want the bad parts to be true because it would mean he wasn't willing or able to commit to me. I couldn't trust the good parts because of my low self-esteem, and because the episodes of devaluation played into that. I believed the devaluation because that fit what I already thought about myself. The last part was the reality that a fragile and beautiful connection was stomped on and trashed at the end. Now I have the possibility of a real friendship with him but I no longer want it.

I have had no contact with this man since he called me years ago. I still think about him sometimes, especially now that I have just been dumped again by someone I fell so hard for. But I don't long for him at all now, don't have sad dreams about him, and am able to keep all the good I had with him without any longer taking his other stuff personally.I hope that you and I can both reach that place of peace with our most recent exes, and can move on to healthier partnerships in the future.

You still think that because you spent a lot of time in an intimate relationship with someone extremely sick, acquiring some of their patterns/ideas as a result.

The most helpful thing is... .he has a very serious disease, BPD... .that is the ONLY reason things got as bad as they did and the reason she left.

Your part was allowing that disease to manipulate you but other than that, nothing else.

Don't try to look for any cause in yourself for her leaving... .nothing you did caused her to do the crazy things she did and to leave... .BPD did.

Realizing that there is no cause and relationship between your actions and him leaving is very enlightening.

But there is a cause and effect relationship in allowing a person like her into your life and that would be a serious question for you and for all of us to consider so that we don't do it again.

But it takes time. I thought of my first as the lost love of my life for 6 years.

Now I see her as what she is.  A disease that misled me and made me mistake a sick fantasy/manipulation for true love.

I think you already may sense the answer to this question, Achaya.  It's a "both/and" - you both have to understand the disorder of your ex (to make sense of what you've just been through) AND examine yourself to see why you end up in these types of r/s's. I'm doing the very same thing.

I think it's possible to give yourself closure - I'm making a lot of progress doing it in my own r/s. I am seeing more and more that what my ex did in our r/s with me wasn't really personal - it was the progression of the disorder. I can let go of the hurt and work on forgiveness at the same time I put up boundaries to keep from getting hurt by her in the future. The fact that she is disordered doesn't give her a free pass to emotionally devastate me ever again.

My feelings of love for her have been harder to deal with, but as my understanding of the disorder grows and I really see her as she is - and as more time passes - my feeling for her lessen.  I don't think there's any way to hasten this process.

More importantly, I'm looking at why I overlooked the red flags in the beginning of our r/s. There are several reasons: I was deeply unhappy in my own life and she was a welcome distraction; she had a daughter and provided me with the opportunity to raise a child and have an instant ""family";  I enjoyed being a "fixer for some of the problems in her life (and she enjoyed my fixing, at least in the beginning). I'm sure there's more but as I take on more and more of my "part" in things I feel less out of control and more grounded.  I have been involved with two undiagnosed personality disordered women, and my biggest task is figuring out why this is the case.

I'm glad you got that phone call from your ex, but it really is possible, over time, to give ourselves closure if we look do the healing work on ourselves that is probably long overdue.

I have to admit that one of my attractions to these disturbed people is that I am fascinated by the complexity of their stuff. I have always loved a puzzle, and I am confident enough to want the really challenging ones. I noticed in the last six months of my last relationship that I was not as interested in my partner's stuff as I had been. I was beginning to experience it as rather boring and irritating, an elaborate excuse for her unwillingness to enjoy all that we had together. Maybe this was another reason why she left me, because I was losing interest in her disorder. I would have been very happy with an ordinary lover who just wanted to enjoy her life with me, but she didn't enjoy any aspect of her life so that wasn't possible. This is another factor I will keep in mind in the future: with some people, the most interesting thing about them is their stuff. The person herself/himself is much less developed to the extent that their stuff is big and interesting.

Achaya,

"I still go back to fantasy conversations that are all about bargaining, but when I am in reality I know that this is a hopeless relationship."

That's normal; we all do that. It's clinging hope that he/she will come around and everything will get better and be normal. With time and acceptance (your rational thoughts) that unfounded hope will dissipate. Your recognition that the relationship was unhealthy is a sign that you're on the right path towards recovery. It is hard to let go of someone that we love. Our entire lives are based on doing just the opposite of that---if you love someone you bring them into your life. Unfortunately, a pwBPD has a very difficult time accepting the parameters of said intimacy---too close, engulfment, too far away, abandonment. It's a no win scenario as stability cannot be established. Emotions and energies are consumed in maintaining the relationship rather than growing it.

I think this is a very profound insight!