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I've been dying to ask this question for a while, it just took the last pwBPD to remind me what this feels like because I haven't cried this way in a while. I think it is the lonely child in my grieving yet another blow to the gaping wound that is my childhood.

I can't explain how deep this cry resonates... .I feel it so deep that it stirs a part of me that otherwise, lies unstirred. It is a deep, deep pain, and when crying, gasping for breath, that is the only time it is relinquished and my pain is alleviated. I'll be fine for a few days, the thoughts of the pwBPD will invade my mind, and I will have to have another one of these soul-wrenching cries in which I relinquish pain from the deepest parts of my soul... .and then, I find solace again, at least for a little bit.

The odd part is that unless crying from the soul, I don't necessarily feel this pain.

Anyone else experience anything like this? Please tell me I'm not alone!

I'm drifting off to sleep... .

However, I wanted to pop in to say:  YES!

I have had that cry.  I spent two days in bed with that cry several months ago.  It turned out to be cathartic as I allowed myself to reconnect with my pain of the past.  I felt like my soul was twisting and churning within me.  When it was done, I felt a weight lifted from me.

   

Crying like that honestly sounds like it would be awesome. I remember when I was young going through some gnarly traumatic sh#t I tried to make myself cry like that, but it didn't work.

Then, actually, what made me want to become a psychotherapist is relevant to this as well. I was watching this band play, and the singer was just belting out this intense, deep, sorrowful, "WWWWWHHHHHHHYYYYYYY!" Every time he would say it I would feel something deep in me stirring. I thought, "If i could just listen to that wail over and over on repeat it might eventually allow all my repressed grief to surface." I then decided to switch my major from literature to psychology.

So, I think that tapping into that grief is SUPER THERAPEUTIC! let it out until there is no more tears.

When i cry really hard i often feel really weak and shaky. Crying is weird for me because before being with my ex, almost nothing made me cry but now i cry like all the time.

I had a similar soul-wrenching cry about three days after the break up. I thought I was doing really well but a memory of one of our happiest times together invaded my thoughts and I literally just dropped on my knees on the spot and cried my eyes out. I think the experience was like a long work out session; it made me feel exhausted but it also made me feel great. I treated myself to ice cream after and that made me feel even better.  :)

It's really tough that some things about us have changed for the worse after a relationship with a pwBPD. I believe it's only temporary though and I know you will come out of this stronger. Hang in there bud!

I am the same. I used to be a pretty level-headed person and I would only cry for things that would make most people cry (a bereavement, for example). Now sometimes I will be just walking along the street when the tears start leaking out. I hope it's temporary.

I am no longer crying the way I cried when my ex first broke up with me/told me about my replacement - that was real gut-wrenching crying that caused physical pain and left me sleepless and shaky. It was ultimately a crying fit like this that led me to go no contact. It was about six weeks after he had told me that he had replaced me, it was late at night, and I was pacing about my house crying. I couldn't sleep and I felt so awful. I missed him so much - not even the relationship, just the friendship and the company, and it hurt that he was taking no steps to maintain a reciprocal friendship. On the rare occasions when he did speak to me I had to maintain a happy face otherwise he would angrily accuse me of 'emotionally extorting' him and trying to ruin his happiness. That night I felt like a puppet whose strings had been cut. I'd tried and tried to please him, at the expense of my own emotional health, but I couldn't do it any more. I unfriended him on Facebook and felt peace descend. I was still hurting, but it was the pain of a burn once you've removed it from the fire - you know at least it's not going to get worse. I lay down and was able to go to sleep at last. In the morning, calmer, I wrote him an e-mail explaining that we would not have contact until my hurt had healed and he felt able to have a friendship of equals. There has been pain since, but nothing as excruciating as in the initial six weeks, and no crying that made me feel as though I would shatter.

hi Southern Belle you most definetly are not alone!

I am 11 months out of my relationship with my ex girlfriend who had lots of BPD traits but was undiagnosed. I totally identify with what you have written about crying.

For a long time after we split i was in agonising emotional pain at times, the crying was so deep  i would shout out her name in the middle of it and wail and howl. It was so intense, deep grieving.

At times i would be down on my hands and knees asking god to take my pain away (ironic because i am a confirmed atheist).

For many the pain associated with parting from this type of realtionship trigers something very deep and primal and it can only come out through the most intense emotional pain, at times its unbearable and feels like it will never end. Although 11 months on i still miss her so so much at times the emotional pain has (thankfully) lessened in intensity.

I am also experiencing the soul crying. It seems to be coming out of nowhere sometimes, surprising me at times when I think I am doing good, getting better, detaching from my exBPDbf, then bam I find myself crying uncontrollably, leaving me exhausted, but relieved for a while.

I agree that this type of Relationship triggers something very deep. I have neved cried like this in any other Relationship.

Absolutely. Married eleven years, two children, a happy family--I thought. I was split black and tormented for almost a year as she carried on with my split-white replacement. I was never a big crier and found myself on the floor, driving, in bed wracked with primal howling sobs that seemed to come out of nowhere. I was shocked these were even in me, that I was capable of such emotion. Definitely touches something deeply primordial. Finally I divorced her and have not cried for over a year. I'm sorry you are going through the worst of this. You are not alone, and it WILL get better.

PS: I cried like this in front of her, pleading with her to stop causing me such pain. She regarded me with distant, dead eyes, a stranger utterly devoid of empathy.  Frightening.

Thank you all for the personal stories. It means a lot to know that I'm not alone in feeling these deep soulful pangs of pain in the aftermath of the pwBPD. It makes my reality feel a little more real and less like there is something horribly wrong with me.

i agree. They are definitely something I never knew I had in me. I think, if anything, they are therapeutic, though not that fun to get through.

I think, if anything, they are also proof of the pain inside of us. We cannot deny - when faced with these primal cries of emotional pain - what we went through, despite the speculation of others and the speculation of our minds.

When these cries come on, I just want someone to hold me. Someone to stop the pain, but also, I feel like I'm also disconnected from reality for a bit, wholly consumed by my pain.

I can relate to the lonely child reference... for some of us who have had childhood issues or anxiety and depression these relationships where a real spit in the face literally and figuratively... .these sorts of cries come from out of nowhere just when I think i'm over it.

My uBPDexgf discarded/abandoned our relationship a year ago. On my birthday, which was last week, to be exact. And not her telling me, but in a typed written note inside a birthday card she mailed to me. With no explanation for her decision, just that she was going down a new path. After 9.5 years. I  cried literally every day straight for 6 months, and I do not exaggerate that. I finally told myself to stop as I was getting dark circles and bags under my eyes.

But the tears haven't stopped and the pain hasn't either. I don't cry as often, but tonight I have. To the point that it felt as if the only person who could stop it was her. It seems like my tears are endless when that happens. They come when they want. There's nothing I can do to stop them. And the pain hurts so bad it's as if I have to do something to get it to end.

No one gets it. I'm ashamed that after a year, after someone treated me so deplorably in the face of all the good I brought into her and her kids' lives that I feel no further down the road than I did a year ago. Friends think I should be further along. They talk to me as if I never went thru something so traumatic. But the tears that come when they want and as deep as they want know that it feels like I'll never recover.

The thing I hate most is that the one comfort I used to have, which was in my faith in a higher power is just gone. I really don't know what will stop the tears. Well maybe one thing.

You're not alone. No heartbreak I ever had prepared me for this. Cry as much as you need to.

Hey im really sorry to hear you are feeling that way man, your story really resonated with me. It really hit me how you said your crying causes you to get dark circles around your eyes. Ive gotten to the point where i have to wear sunglasses everywhere i go incase i start randomly crying but mainly because you can see it in my eyes. It also hit me when you said it still hurts as much as when it just happens, because im also the sort of person who never really quite gets over things. So with as much empathy as i can convey thru a computer, i feel you, hang in there. 

SG

Hey ShadowInTheNight,

There's absolutely no shame in feeling all the hurt today as you did a year ago. The general consensus seems to be that it takes 1/3 to 1/2 the time in a normal relationship to get over it. I don't want to make you lose hope in thinking that you'll take years to feel better only that you might have to implement some strategies in coping and managing the pain. Have you seen a therapist?

pwBPD do know how to leave a relationship in the most hurtful way... .