BPDFamily.com

I have made some postings on here but did not get too much feedback... I guess because they were long - I was feeling so much pain and everything was fresh... had a lot to get off my chest.

We were together 4 years. Broke up about 5 weeks ago. Rather than going back to her home city, she stuck around here for a while and managed to put herself in financial devastation mode within 2 weeks of leaving the house (has a low paying job now but went out and traded in her paid for car for a new car. car payment and insurance now eats up half of her income) the lady who she was staying with has given her a month to find a new place because the fact that she was letting her stay there until she got on her feet and she went off and bought a new car ticked her off, and rightly so.

My ex is very unstable and flighty. Her push pull behavior since this break up has been very emotionally abusive to me. Then again, I respond to her contact attempts, so it has a lot to do with me allowing myself to be sucked in. It is just HARD... so hard to walk away from someone you loved so much for so long. especially, when you see that person making poor choices and ruining their life. She has a replacement... she mostly speaks with the replacement on the phone but they have met 3 times in the last 5 weeks. The replacement lives about 45 minutes to 1.5 hours away. This person lives with their grandfather and has never had a place of their own at 34 years old... .cannot take care of themselves and has mental issues as well. As my ex is still living in the same city as me, we see eachother more than she sees the replacement. It just makes me ANGRY when I call her out on it and she makes up excuses for this idiot. It kills me that she would throw away our life together and me for some lowlife. Thought I think the replacement is being used, as my ex has acknowledged that the replacement is unattractive and, in her own words, "a loser"... .I just don't understand it all.  Yesterday evening, after flipping her lid at  me over my hanging out with other women and rehashing the past and what went wrong in our relationship... .she drops the bomb that when her time is up at this woman's apartment, she will be moving to the same city as her replacement and getting an apartment there. I asked if they will move in together and she said no. I do not believe her. But, also, a part of me doesn't believe she will move. I do not know what to think really.

She  just got a new job here back in july and just bought a car... .her reasoning for wanting to move there is to go to art school for interior design... .it is $20,000 a semester and rent is $950  for an apartment... .plus deposit... .plus she has to buy all new furniture... .and someone whom she has met off the internet and see 3 times in 5 weeks will help her? She has never been able to say afloat on her own... .always having to have her mom bail her out or move back to her mom's house within a few months before we began living together 3.5 years ago... .now, she said she can get 2 jobs and go to school and do this all on her own? And... She said that she wants me to go up there with her and help her find a place to live. I asked why she doesn't just ask that jerk to help her... she denied being in a relationship... .said she doesn't want the commitment and they are just friends. she has always wanted to go to school for interior design after flunking out of college about 6 years ago... .I wonder if she just used this person to make a connection in that city if she had her eye on this art school. The worst thing is that, they will not let her in to the school, she was not in good academic standing at her last college and does not meet the GPA requirement... so she is going to move and put her life in shambles to be close to a school she cannot even go to and some jerk she barely knows. She runs the risk of having her new car repossessed and getting evicted. I know it is her problem and not mine. But, it kills me to see her do this. Since she asked to spend the weekend with me this weekend, I also cannot be sure that this is just a way of manipulating me to get what she wants and let her back home without making her go to therapy.

This big decision of hers came a day after I went out on a date with another person and she found out about it. She admitted to creeping my facebook through mutual friends, since she has been deleted off. She claims that she is going to leave and we are in the past, but this whole 5 weeks, she cannot go but 2 days without speaking to me and but 3 without seeing me in person

I don't know what to do... if she moves to the replacement's city, I will have to let her go once and for all. It KILLS me inside and the hurt is so much. How do you just unlove someone? I used to think that she never cared about me, but I could see hurt in her eyes yesterday when I told her I will be out of her life if she moves and when I reminded her of the stable and happy life she turned her back on... .her nice home, the opportunity to go to school here cheaper, the lack of money issues, her pets, me and the love I gave her... she looked like she was going to cry... but she is stubborn and I do not know how to get through to her. I do not think I can.

I know I have to take care of me. Its the caretaking thing with Borderline and Non relationships. I get that. If she leaves and moves there, I will be devastated. I want to detach and begin the healing process... I am not eating, not sleeping, not taking care of things at home though I am doing well with work. I just cant bear to watch her life unravel, though she is doing it all to herself.

Why do I say she refuses to let me go? Because, her contact is repetitive. And, when I do not respond, she will just show up and wait by my car after work or come by the house or go to the gym where I am working out. I know that is not healthy. She will be hot and cold but when I do begin to move on, she freaks out and gets upset. She even said she wants me to help her find a place when she moves and see her on the weekends? ? She wants to spend this weekend with me since she is off work. I asked why does she not go hang out with the replacement and she said she doesn't want to. I just don't get it... .why will she not let me go? And if she cant let me go and wants to come home, why does she not say it? I tested her and said if she gets in a bad predicament she can crash in my spare room for a while and she didn't respond.

If I were to find out that this is all being done to manipulate me, as punishment, and she did try to come back, I think that would be even more painful, to some degree then losing her, knowing that she would purposely make me suffer like this.

Hi Chardwood,

I'm sorry to hear that. I understand how emotionally distressing all of this is when we can see a bigger picture and know what the likely outcome will be with a sufferer of BPD.

We're often fixers and helpers with our ex partners and we can enable behavior where the person should really be doing things for themselves.

A pwBPD subconsciously want someone to take care of them, they don't know who they are and don't know where they end and the other person begins and can become enmeshed with us if we don't have boundaries, she's likely not self aware of her behavior unless she's in therapy and that's why she's not communicating it.

We can get off this emotional rollercoaster and start to feel better.

It is unfortunate that you are in this awful position.  I wish I had some advice.  All I can offer is empathy.  From what I've seen on these boards, this sort of situation is all too common.  I am in the middle of a similar situation.  My BPDW is in love with a man who lives hours away.  It's triangulation.  Somedays I'm the rescuer, somedays I'm the victim.  His girlfriend dumped him because of my BPDW.  He is an alcoholic living out of his car.  She says she tells him how great I am.  He wants to get with her and she only sees love because he was there for her when her family was abusing her as a child many many years ago.  She doesn't see that that brief relationship was puppy love and that he abandoned her at the first sign of conflict at that time.  Things started again this year after many many years.  Since then, they've broken off their relationship multiple times and when that happens she comes whining to understanding me about how she can't stand thinking that he doesn't love her.  When I write it out I realize just how absurd the whole situation is.  I also look at myself more and wonder why I put up with this.

I have brought my own issues to our marriage.  However they are nothing compared to hers.  In her irrational mind, the ideal relationship would be for me to move there with her, continue paying all her expenses so she can stay home with our child, and let this loser replace me in every other aspect of our marriage.  She has recommended this and followed up the same day with a different plan in which we move somewhere else, I get a higher paying job or she wins the lottery which she doesn't play and we are somehow happy together again.  She is well aware of how broken this other individual is.  She says he has all of my bad qualities and many more and none of my good qualities.  One minute the fool is asking her for racy pictures and the next he's telling her he wants to talk to me about how he supports me and wants me to patch up my marriage and he doesn't want to come between my wife and I.  When I point the absurdities here out she insists he is an innocent victim and that it's her fault.

Here's what my counselor has been telling me: this behavior is not about me, it is about her and her ability to draw as much chaos as she possibly can so that she is the constant center of attention.  There is nothing I can do to make her change.  Accept that she has BPD and evaluate whether that is something you want to live with.  The best you can hope for is that she gets therapy and that it tones down some of the crazy making.

Left to their own devices, these people will constantly destroy themselves just to watch every good thing in their life burn.  However, every time you provide financial support, give up a boundary, or react emotionally to the insanity you are adding fuel to the fire.  By enabling them you are not protecting them from falling, you are giving them a higher point to fall from.

Leave while you can, this isn't going to get better.   Mine is well aware of her irrational behavior but that doesn't stop it.  The hardest part of that is going to be that she is going to fail and as soon as she does she will come crawling right back to you.  She will work her way back into your life and once she's in she'll let loose with everything she has about how awful you are.  Then an hour later you'll be the greatest person who ever lived.  Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

I do not recommend giving ultimatums or threats that you will end the relationship if her relationship with the other man continues.  That just escalates things.  She came up with a plan to get me fired and ruin my life for abandoning her.  There is a post somewhere on this site on how to limit the drama when getting out of one of these relationships.  I recommend reading it.

It's tough to be in your position, but almost everyone on this board has been there.

You didn't cause her condition, and you can't fix it.  Attempting to rescue her doesn't change anything.  Frog, scorpion... .it's her nature.

My xBPDw is going to make bad decisions.  How do I know?  Because that's what she does.  No impulse control, combined with a ton of "I deserve" feelings and the inability to think down the road. 

Do you have a therapist?  Someone that understands PDs?  Highly recommended.

Gomez

I sincerely appreciate everyone's responses. It helps to communicate with others who understand what I have been going through.

Hi Gomez: Yes, I do go to therapy. My therapist is great and has already explained borderline to me in a way that I understand and she has also began exploring codependency with me. My previous therapist I had before I moved here also touched on BPD with me, and he was actually the person who reiterated to me that my ex needs therapy for this and cannot be "fixed"... that she wont get better unless she gets help. Both my parents passed away by the time I was 25, my mom when I was an infant and my father of bone marrow cancer when I was 25. I met my ex just shortly over a year after my father passed away. I suspect this could be why I was susceptible to her and staying in the relationship as long as I did (I kicked her out once in 2013 and honestly should have not taken her back after that)... .likely a codependency thing on my part. I am trying to sort this out and also to make sure that my grieving process was not somehow stunted, since my ex came into the picture so shortly after my dad passed. It was a 3 year long ordeal and I took care of him along with my stepmom. I was absolutely destroyed when he did. we were very close. I was in counseling at the time I met my ex and had been since I found out my father's cancer came back and he was dying about a month to 2 months before he passed. Perhaps this could also be why my attachment to my ex is so strong, as she was not all bad and did offer much needed support during this tough time in my life.

Mutt and WornandBurnt and Gomez: I see an overall theme of your comments:  rescuing her is enabling her and may make her behavior worse. And also, BPDs lack the self actualization to even have a "self", so we can see what is ahead of them, the consequences of their behavior and reckless actions, but they cannot until it is too late. yes, it makes it hard. I know that I loved this woman with everything I had and gave her the very best of me... .but sadly, I cannot say the same for her. I do think she cared for me, at times she was functioning better, in her own way as much as someone with BPD can, but I do not think the love was ever equal. She cannot love. She does not even know or love herself. It hurts. I think I was in denial for all these years, hoping somehow I would be special enough, love her enough, be good enough for her to somehow fix her. Sometimes, love is not enough. All this woman wants deep down is to be loved and, like someone else pointed out, she is rejecting the very thing she yearns for and self-destructing. I am a very stable person that comes from good upbringing. I have never been in trouble. I have a good education and have always been a hard worker. I have tried to show her the love and stability she never got growing up with a BPD single mom. As unworthy and not good enough as my ex has made me feel, I know deep down I am a good person. I am sure that others who have a BPD in their lives struggle with the same thing.

Wornandburnt: I can really sympathize with you and relate about what you said about your ex and her irrational behavior. That's what mine does too: work her way back into contact and the very second I challenge her with a simple question to bring her down to reality: how can you afford an apartment? Why did you get a new car when you just left your job and got a new one that pays low and you have to find a place to live? how can you afford an apartment with low rent-to-income ratio and bad credit? I am not going to sugarcoat things for her. Sometimes, the only thing I ask her is "what is your plan?" and she goes off on me and gets enraged... .even if it is just as simple as her thinking I am looking at her the wrong way... .like today when I asked her about the apartment, she got pissed off and said "seriously... I am so mad I want to hit you right now!" and was screaming and her face changed. It is nuts. That is abusive... .and all I am doing is actually being the one person in her life that loves and cares for her. But, she cannot see that. it is truly sad.

wornandburnt, my ex is not quite as bad as yours was with trying to get you fired. mine wouldn't do that, thankfully. She is not vindictive when it comes to hitting me where I live, but moreso with throwing things in my face and making me jealous.

I am confused by one thing... .you say that she will come crawling back as soon as she fails... .do you really think so? Would she not find some way to blame her failure on me and paint me to black and go running back out of state to where we moved from to her mom? or are you thinking she will paint me to white and use the kind of thinking that I warned her and I was trying to save her and I was right and she needs to come back to me so I can fix her life again... .Its hard to tell with BPDs. To me, if she is going to move an hour away and put herself in that much financial duress to be near some stranger, its pretty bad and that is burning the last bridge she has with me... .it tells me she does not intend to try to recycle and return home. If that is how it is, I will move on with my life and walk away clean... .I just fear in a few weeks, after I have made progress, she would show up at my door possibly. maybe I will read the limiting the drama post.

She has a little over a month to find a new place and move if that is what she is gonna do... so anything could happen in that time.

I may be projecting my problems onto your situation however from here it looks like you're in a drama triangle.  The second she finds some rational or irrational reason to flip the other guy from white to black, you and he will switch places.  You'll be painted white because that's hat she wants not because something has changed between the two of you.  It can be any old trivial reason.  Maybe she suddenly has some nostalgia or maybe she just likes your new haircut.  This is just my current experience with my BPDw.  She hasn't physically left to be with the other guy however it's clear that our roles in the triangle keep switching so that she always has a persecutor and a rescuer.  For her it is so convenient to have someone to rage at and someone to glorify.  It's hard to accept, but all those good times you remember where it seemed like nothing could go wrong were all a symptom of BPD.  The good times weren't real, she just needed someone to paint white and you were convenient.  ex: back when I could do no wrong she always had a coworker she had to talk about who was painted black.  Sometimes the dog was painted black.  It seemed like the happier she was with me the more she had to tell me about someone else who was mistreating her.  We went from having one dog she wanted to get rid of to having two dogs where one or the other was the good dog in any given hour.  Sometimes it was my family, sometimes it was her family.  Maybe I'm on the wrong board because I am currently staying, but there are times when I don't understand why I'm not leaving.

To be clear, BPDw didn't try to get me fired because I gave in to her unreasonable demand.  When she was calm she admitted she was thinking several moves ahead and planning how she would win a custody battle and that she assumed me issuing her an ultimatum that she had to cut contact with this guy meant that I wanted full custody.  It wasn't a rational plan, but then she's not a rational person and with a threat like that you really don't know how long it will take for others to realize the accusations are baseless or what level of damage all that smearing will have done.  She also has for years laughed about how she'll smother me in my sleep some day.  I was in denial, thought she meant nothing by it.  It distressed me but I didn't have any way to understand it and took her word that it's just harmless ranting.  She had laughed about trying to kill herself too.  Again, I thought maybe this is just how she was raised and she can't be serious.  I thought that until the first time she tried.  It's become more and more obvious that when she's laughing about something that's abusive and doesn't make sense that she isn't really kidding.

I don't think you are projecting... .all of our situations are just so similar. Maybe you are right. I am not sure if it is necessarily a triangle... as I think she seeks attention from others too... .I am pretty sure. I do feel like I am her primary though... .its like she paints me to black... goes silent for a day, two at most, then comes back with an excuse to text me or see me or call me. She may not have any legitimate or rational reasoning for doing this, but I do notice that things do trigger her. I do not know whether to say you are lucky she isn't physically cheating or not... .since you do not know whether you even want to stay with her or not... .I have been there with my ex... .she did not physically cheat the first time we broke up... .though she did not physically cheat this 2nd time, she did meet the replacement attempt, though I have found out that there was nothing physical that happened (my ex has a history of sexual abuse when she was a small kid... she does not have that normal sexual impulsivity like other BPDs do... she actually does not care too much for sex from what I have observed. Though, I am very into working out and stay fit and she can heavily come on to me at times, as she has made it clear in the past that the physical attraction to me was something that attracted her to me aside from the fact that she thinks I am intellectual... we actually waited over a month of dating before engaging in intimacy... but after that it was almost continuous, several times a week for about 6 months straight until the first minor devalue came along) I guess BPD is different with different people who suffer from it.

That is really creepy how someone will laugh and joke about unbalanced behavior. Mine does it too. I saw her after posting this... went to dinner with her... .and things got real crazy real quick. I had gone through the whole "I am painting you to black now" thing from Saturday through Monday after we argued on Friday evening. She went to see her replacement sunday and I went out on a date with another woman myself that Sunday... she found out by creeping on my facebook (even though she has been removed as a friend) and admitted this to me. I though something was up with her Monday, as she seemed depressed... but I could not tell. At dinner, she got extremely upset about my date and asked "how come you cant take me to go surfing? huh?" how come you never did this, this or this when we were together? huh?"... .She went off on me, saying I am obsessed with myself just because I am good looking, that I treat women like objects, that I am just off with different "bimbos" now and am out of control, asked me if I sleep with every woman I talk to and asserted that I she does not have sex or get physical with anyone she talks to and that if I do than I am a sleazebag, tried to grab my phone and go through, asked me for the names of women I talk with... and this is the kicker: she told me that she made a fake dating profile on every dating site and listed the sites off to see if I have an online dating profile: which I DO NOT. She even showed me a profile she made on POF with no profile picture that she said she used to search for me. What the heck. She then told me that she has plans to move to the city where the replacement attempt lives about an hour or more away and said she will go to school there (though there is no possible way for her to meet the prerequisites and get in to that college after flunking out from her last one, afford an apartment with her debt to income ratio and bad credit... .she is a financial mess... .heck, she is a mess in general)... .I told her"good luck then. you wont be seeing or hearing from me every again then" and was about to leave but she stopped me and said "wait, don't you care. I wanted you to be by my side on this and be supportive about me to finishing school... I wanted you to come help me find an apartment and see me on the weekend... .I said absolutely not. you want to go do that, then I am out... .

so... .she asks me to go on a weekend vacation with her, to get out of town after that. She wants us to get a room on the beach for 2 nights, hang out all weekend together and "make memories"... .I am a little freaked out. I am almost tempted to go just to see what she does.

I am not sure if this is a recycle attempt. manipulation. impulsive behavior. or an attempt to simply seduce me. It is just bizarre to me. If she is really moving in less than a month, why be so concerned with me and spending a whole weekend that she is off work messing around out of town with me rather than hanging around with my loser replacement and finding a place to live (cant live with this dummy. The dummy is a grown adult who lives with grandfather lol)

The more that I get around my ex... .the more I feel like she sees I am moving forward and is becoming desperate to perhaps pull me in and get back. I could be wrong.

My situation is kind of different from yours because you stayed, yes. But I think our wives behave the same or at least in a similar manner.