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And now my ex is going crazy smearing me on Facebook and threatening to get a PPO.  Great, huh?

Oh boy! That's what we get when we make an attempt! You need to watch some of the u-tube videos by Begood4000. They are so ridiculous, yet exactly what we go through. These are for men who have been abused, but we can relate and we are definitely being abused. When I watch them it's like a sick, dark humor in it, yet it really is truthful to see. No contact as you have found out, is really best. I don't even think if they come back around if it's worth discussing anything. In that case going "gray rock" if anything. Hope it gets better for you... .I have also been watching some things about co-dependancy and why we just have to reach out to them... .it's the addiction to them and/or the drama. So, look at yourself and work on you... .that's all you can do right now. Good luck.

I knew he was crazy, but I didn't know he was THIS crazy.  I am truly shocked.

If I wondered for a moment if he was really BPD, this sort of clinches it, doesn't it?

The fact that he could "paint me white" and want me back after this is mind-blowing, and terrifying.

He had such deep-seated hatred for his other ex-girlfriend, though, that I can't say I'm surprised.

It's strange that this sweet man who loves kittens and only wanted to cuddle all the time has turned into THIS.

Mine loves to cuddle and loves animals too. Have you talked to the ex? Sometimes people are able to and find out they went through the same thing or worse. Mine is a pathological liar so I don't believe anything he says. Mine probably, in fact I am sure, he is telling his gf I am a controlling wife. This way he can manipulate her to not do what I did, so he doesn't have to deal with it and he can do what he wants. I would say there is something there, yes... .could be bi-polar too. Sometimes there are several disorders. Hard to say unless they get diagnosed, or like me... .I lived with him for 8 years. I figured it out. It only gets worse. You are better off painted white, and stay away. They will rage on whoever they are close to. It's really hard... .we are dealing with our own issues when it all comes down to it. Like attracts like. Figure out why you are in it and learn. knowledge is power- learn all you can here. Best wishes!

Your breaking NC and then receiving this kind of treatment are perhaps a blessing.

I hope by now you have convinced your attaching mind that it is truly the time to move on and not lingering on the past. No more should ofs, could ofs, no more perhaps one more round then things will be for the better.

Sorry to hear GEM... .

Yes, for me, this has filled in a lot of blanks.  It confirms for me that every red flag I saw along the way was valid, and that I wasn't imagining things or being hyper-critical of my boyfriend.  I made too many excuses for him during our relationship, thinking that he was just an opinionated person and that it wasn't that big of a deal. 

Even in the last day since this has happened, I feel more at peace and more like myself, ironically.  I feel like I cut off the bits of myself that this man might not like, hiding pieces of my own past, papering over my likes and dislikes.  I feel like the person I was before all this is emerging once again.

I would do things like turning down the radio when we got in the car so that he couldn't criticize the music I liked.  I pretended one of my other exes, a good friend of mine was a total villain -- and even convinced myself of it.  I have since restored our friendship.  I am not constantly afraid that some fact or incident will come up that will shatter his perfect image of me -- I can just be happy with myself. 

If he takes me to court, he doesn't have legal recourse in my state to get a PPO.  Nothing I have done to him, ever, meets the legal requirements for stalking.  He will embarrass himself horribly and feel even more angry and defeated if he tries.  I am only worried that his anger will flare up even more intensely and will manifest as him physically stalking or threatening me.  He had homicidal impulses toward his other ex-girlfriend that he shared with me on multiple occasions.  My consolation is that I'm relocating and soon he will not know where I live. 

I am ready to put all this behind me.  I realize now that this rage, hatred, and sadism is as much a part of him as the love he felt for me.  I didn't enjoy the idealization phase, unlike many of you.  There was something hollow and vacant about his feelings for me that I could see in his eyes.  Even then, he didn't particularly enjoy doing things for me, unless they caused him pleasure too.  He had a strange idea about what I liked and didn't like that didn't correspond with reality; it was almost like his love for me was psychotic just like his hatred is. 

I dread being painted white and hearing apologies.  I want him far, far away because I know what he is now.

I fell for the PPO threats at first... .they are not an easy thing to get as one might think... .its something that BPD's seem to use as a power play... .I texted my ex after 9 months of COMPLETE silence ('sorry it ended this way, I wish it could have ended differently' and my ex found a lawyer to send me a letter threatening a PPO (again... .she got the cops and another lawyer to do it in the Fall). I told the lawyer that I demand that he file a PPO against me... .its funny how he admitted to me that there was no grounds for doing so.

My ex is very afraid of the legal system but isn't afraid to use it as a weapon against me.  He assumes that if he is afraid of being a criminal, everyone else must be.  I am actually not very concerned about the PPO threat at all, but what I am worried about is what will happen if his attempts to "punish" me are increasingly frustrated.  He is addicted to hurting me, so what will the extinction burst look like?

I wish I knew... .sorry... .maybe nothing.

I know now that no matter what happens between my ex and I, there is no redeeming this with my family and friends, and I think he might be a dangerous person.  He smears me on Facebook in front of mutual friends as if they aren't even there, or under the assumption that they will take his side.  It is just crazy.  Crazy crazy. 

I tend to think that he will try to get a PPO against me, and when that fails, and when I drop off the face of the earth (which is my plan), he will get very frustrated.  It will be interesting, and a little scary, to see what happens then.  He really doesn't like not knowing where I am, and he's had that advantage for a long time now.  Hmmm.

On the up side, I met a nice guy at a dinner party tonight, and he seemed normal.  We talked for a few hours.  Maybe I'm headed for some kind of decent life?

GEM wrote--

The fact that he could "paint me white" and want me back after this is mind-blowing, and terrifying.

-----Yes, he might split you white again.

He had such deep-seated hatred for his other ex-girlfriend, though, that I can't say I'm surprised.

----Splitting? What did she "do" to provoke his hatred?

It's strange that this sweet man who loves kittens and only wanted to cuddle all the time has turned into THIS.

------Kittens are non-threatening, and won't "abandon" him as a human will, so he is free to express his love to them.

-----What was your actual contact, and how did he react at the time

-----I have no experience with PPO's, but I read about this a lot on these boards.  The BPD accuses the non of "stalking" them and tries to get a PPO... .not sure I understand the psychology behind it.  Are they splitting the non black and trying to make sure the non won't come near them (when in reality the BPD may actually want the non to approach them)... .are they projecting and accusing the non of doing the "stalking" the BPD is actually doing, or wants to do?  THis seems to be some common with pwBPD

The other girlfriend broke their engagement and stopped him from moving in with her as soon as he wanted to.

He loved physical affection.  He ate it up.  In fact, that was the time that I felt most safe with him, because I knew when I touched him, he was happy.

I think the PPO thing is pretty simple.  I am a trigger, and he wants me far away.  He is angry that I can text or e-mail him and trigger his horrible shame and sense of loss, so he wants to make it illegal or wrong for me to do so.

I think the PPO thing is pretty simple.  I am a trigger, and he wants me far away.  He is angry that I can text or e-mail him and trigger his horrible shame and sense of loss, so he wants to make it illegal or wrong for me to do so.[/quote]
Mine had threatened a PPO for or 5 times now. I really took at a sign to respect her boundaries at first and did so. But after I after I sent her a text and got a nasty letter from her lawyer and I spoke to him, I realized that she has ZERO leg to stand on (since the conditions for a PPO were not there). I soon saw it as her manipulating lawyers and cops to get her way. I also saw her extreme avoidance of me as real fear: as I am her BPD shame personified. To see me or communicate would be a punishment worse than a painful death.

GEM wrote--

He loved physical affection.  He ate it up.  In fact, that was the time that I felt most safe with him, because I knew when I touched him, he was happy.

---That's good contact. I had meant what was the recent contact that set him off so strongly? A phone call? In-person?

I think the PPO thing is pretty simple.  I am a trigger, and he wants me far away.  He is angry that I can text or e-mail him and trigger his horrible shame and sense of loss, so he wants to make it illegal or wrong for me to do so.

---So you would trigger shame in him, since he didn't do his best with you, so he wants  to block out the reminder of the shame

Hi GreenEyedMonster,

Was what your ex said about you on social media the catalyst for breaking NC after 43 days?

Are you still friends on FB or peeking? What is he saying?

We were both invited to the same event.  He had already RSVPed, and I wanted to go.  I sent him a message letting him know that I wanted to just be friends and have fun and that I wanted to go to the event.  He had told me never to contact him again, but just showing up at the event felt too risky for me, and I'm sure as heck not going to sit at home just because he RSVPed first.

I have no idea what he is saying on FB because he has blocked me.  I still have friends who are FB friends with him and they were pretty horrified, though.

Legally, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.  I am lining up some legal counsel just in case, though, because he might do something to try to jeopardize my employment. 

If he is going to go to court and testify that he's afraid for his life, he's going to have to explain why he's been openly sharing his whereabouts with me since the breakup and why he sends me mixed messages by going to parties I'm invited to.  I think any judge would see through the BS there.  In my state, the minimum threshold for a stalking PPO is to prove "harrassment," which much by definition cause mental distress possibly leading to mental health care.  Telling him that I want to hang out as friends is not going to constitute "harrassment."  I did not discuss our past relationship with him at all.  And this is the only time I've talked to him since the breakup, and stalking requires 2+ instances in my state.  So he won't win.  But he might try to drag me through the mud.

He's lost all of our mutual friends over this.  They all think he is a total nutcase.  A guy who used to be a good friend of his has deemed him a "creep."

Hi GreenEyedMonster,


I can understand not wanting to stay home and you wanted to go to the event. It sounds like you tried to extend the olive branch with advising him that you're going and just be friends and have fun.

You could choose to have fun and socialize with your friends and live your life as a boundary and not advise him. You're surrounded with mutual friends right?

What do you think triggered him with threatening you with a PPO? It seems pretty excessive.

If I didn't advise him, there's a risk that he wouldn't realize I was coming until we actually showed up together, and that would be complete and total disaster.  I didn't know enough of the people at this particular gathering to feel good about chancing it, and I resent him having power over where I can or cannot go.  Besides, he would probably react just the same way to me showing up and threaten a PPO anyway.

I suspect that he was hoping to entrap me this way from the moment he broke up with me.  He is exactly the type of person to use the legal system to get revenge -- it appeals to his desire to be seen as the hero or good guy.  He can't be the good guy as my boyfriend anymore, so he's going to be the good guy who removes this scourge (me) from the earth.  He had a similar fantasy about his previous ex that he often expressed -- he imagined himself as a sort of superhero, literally killing "villains" like her.  He even discussed being the main character in a novel on the topic.

I think the fact that I am alive triggered his desire to get a PPO.  :)oes anyone remember Atticus' closing argument in To Kill a Mockingbird?  He goes on for a while about how the "victim" wants the death penalty for the defendant to destroy the object that causes her shame.  That's why he wants me gone, plain and simple.

Maybe this sounds really strange, too, but going to court and winning against a PPO application would definitely constitute "closure" for me.

My ex is in therapy, unlike many of the folks discussed on this board, though not specifically for BPD.  I would kill to be a fly on the wall when he goes to his appointment next week and tells his therapist all about how I'm stalking him and might kill him and whatever other delusions he has.

I can relate as far as the PPO goes. I allowed her to use that to control me until I told the last lawyer that she manipulated to send me a letter threatening that they would file one, to go jump in a lake. I literally told him that I INSISTED on him filing the PPO. Both he and my ex knew there were zero grounds for one and even admitted as such. This incident really changed the dynamic for me and gave me a sense of control over my/the situation that I felt was taken away from me; where I felt violated before, I now felt in control. I saw her for the pathetic woman-child that she is finding the first authority figure that would listen to get me to 'stop talking to me'. Rather than being an adult and dealing with her mess and the fallout that she had created.

Her online stalking seems to have intensified after the fact including a what I suspect to be a call from her ('private caller', never happened before) yesterday. Twelve months later and the ride is still not over... .

I can really relate to that, JRT.  For a while I felt like he was controlling the situation, and I no longer feel that way.  I will go where I want and do what I want whenever I want, provided it isn't illegal, and not worry so much about what he thinks.  It's illegal to harass someone, but it's not illegal to be kind and friendly to him.  He wishes he could make it illegal for me to trigger him, but unfortunately, that is not how life works.

He has disappeared a little since our last encounter, but he's still watching me.  I fully expect the situation to escalate as he appears to "lose" me for good and loses control over me once and for all.  I have made it so that he can no longer find me easily.

Yes, I have come to see my ex as a child as well.  He was looking for a mother.  I had been in a relationship before this where I felt like an underappreciated vestigial limb, so I was ripe for this.  I ignored red flags because it felt so good to be needed after a decade in a situation where I was treated like a burden. 

I really hope that my ex's therapist notices that there is a serious problem here and gets him some better help.  That is the best I can hope for right now for him, because the rest of it is far beyond me.

GreenEyedMonster, I understand you wanting to let him know that you'd be at the same event. You want to have fun and socialize with your friends. You don't want to risk a total disaster happening if he's surprised at the party.

The PPO threat does seem excessive given the nature of the contact. However, being triggered and emotional can cause overreactions in anyone. pwBPD have more trouble than most people at regulating their emotions and coping with their triggers.

It's likely that your ex is still hyper-sensitive and easily triggered when it comes to you. He needs time to de-escalate. What do you think you might be able to do to ease the situation?


In what ways would that give you closure? Would going to court (and winning) help you detach from the relationship?

Are there any ways in which it could go negatively - e.g., stressing you out more, prompting retaliation from him, affecting your reputation/career?

We want to help and support you on your healing journey.   It's important to take care of and protect yourself.

Yes, the incident has really helped me detach from the relationship.  I understand that I could, with serious effort, temporarily paper over these issues and make a relationship with this man work.  It would be tempting.  But I am glad that I have seen what he is really capable of doing when he is in pain.  Can I handle a long-term situation with someone who becomes sadistic when I hurt him, remains emotionally unavailable for months, torments my family, and uses the legal system to get revenge?  No, that is not possible.  So I am glad that I have been forced to consider these things.

I have done everything I can to ease the situation.  My e-mail was intended to communicate that if we see each other, I WILL NOT talk about the past or anything he did to me.  If even that is not enough, it seems like we have no place in each other's lives.  He has also shown his true colors to our mutual friends, and all but one have taken my side.

I'm not a very political person, but I am a member of a union, and the union will provide me excellent legal representation if he does something to damage me professionally.  I really feel there's little potential for a negative outcome for me.

  He wishes he could make it illegal for me to trigger him, but unfortunately, that is not how life works.

EXACTLY!  Mine goes in like a damsel in distress. She is very demure and soft spoken hence she is VERY convincing that she is the victim and that someone is doing her wrong.

It's completely understandable that you wouldn't want to have a relationship with someone who is emotionally unavailable and can act vengeful against you and your family.  

The good news is that you don't have to try to make a relationship or long-term situation work with him.

You've let him know now that you will not talk about the relationship with him if you see him. Now there is no more need for further communication, for your purposes. If/when the two of you are ever at an event together, then you will be able to deal with that instance. You don't have to try to maintain any sort of relationship with him.

Do you think that maybe this issue will blow over if you don't contact him anymore? If you don't provide fuel, then he can't create fire and burn you with it.

It would also give you a chance to focus on and take care of yourself, without having to worry about him. You deserve that time for yourself.

At this point I'd say it is a relief that this is not my problem.  He seems so terrified of me that he will probably stay away from me for a long, long time.  He has no interest in our mutual friends, either.  One of the symptoms he frequently shows is a desire to "inform" other people about who victimized him, so I suspect he'll be talking about me publicly for a long time.  This is having the opposite effect he's anticipated.

Almost two years later, he still obsesses over his other ex-girlfriend, posting about her on Facebook yet, rambling on about how she was going to turn him into a sex slave and kill him, and even expressing a desire for violent revenge on her.  Will it blow over?  Maybe.  Give it a decade or so.

I might add that I *am* worried about him seeking revenge if he tries for a PPO and doesn't get one.  His desire to control me is very strong.

He is very careful what he shares as far as that's concerned, so I know I'll never be able to get protection from him unless he becomes very psychotic.

I have one lingering question that's been haunting me the past couple days.  He projected a lot of things on to his ex-girlfriend, as far as I can tell.  He said that she shared with him that she was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder, primary and secondary.  Was this really his diagnosis?  Hmmm.

GEM, I am usually on the ":)etaching" board but come on here to see how you (and others) are doing as we shared a lot of similarities in our stories. I'm sorry to see this has happened and I hope you're keeping safe.

Like others have said, and as you have identified, I think that if you two are ever going to speak again it's going to have to come from him. I know you reached out in good faith, but he's made it so clear that he considers any contact from you to be harassment (does he *want* it to be harassment? Sounds like it... .), that you have to protect yourself from his actions and stay well away. Whether or not you could ever trust him again enough to talk to him without having him eventually threaten you with legal action for doing so remains to be seen, but do keep yourself safe in the meantime.

At one point during my counselling, I described my desire to reconnect with my ex, and she asked me "so why don't you contact him to ask to talk then?". I thought I'd have been pleased to have received "permission" to do so, but instead I had a strong kickback against it. I said "because no good would come of it. There are only three outcomes. They are: 1) he ignores me totally, which will make me feel stupid for approaching him, will cause me anxiety while I wait for him to respond, and which I will regret doing when it goes nowhere. 2) he will give me a piece of his mind, which will be unpleasant, scary, and too hurtful for me to go through again. And 3) he will ask me to meet up with him to talk things over. The third is potentially the worst option, as I may well be back on that rollercoaster as quick as a flash, and it will always always always end up the same way.

You had good intentions reaching out to say you were going to be at an event. His reaction seems massively disproportionate. I guess all you can do now is tell yourself he is no different from anyone else at those events. You have every right to be there, as much of a right as he does. You don't have to run it by him, explain yourself to him, or seek his permission. If you both turn up at the same place, why would it be *you* harassing *him*? You could easily claim it's the other way round. I guess getting on with your life and ignoring everything he does is the only way to go. Hope you are ok.

It has been almost a week since the PPO threat and . . . Nothing so far. Crossing fingers.

BPD is all about control, and since he has realized that he can't control my opinion of him like he wanted to, he has to control whether I can see or contact him.  Now he won't even post where he is at all, as if he is truly terrified of me.  Given his anxiety, I'm sure his fear is real.

Do people really recycle after things like this?  Really?

Given his history, once he has no idea where I am or what I'm doing, he'll start to feel abandoned.

I'm not convinced BPD is about control, but abuse certainly is. A desire to control is the cornerstone for all abuse, and that includes silent treatments, threats etc etc etc.

And yes, people do recycle after things like that. Mine recycled after TOTALLY going off the rails, implying I was harassing him because I tried to get him medical help and things like that. Yep, once I was split white he was full of grovelling apologies. Lasted another three months before he cut me again.

If you rely on other people to provide your self-esteem, you have to control them or hate yourself.  That's why I think it's about control.

His total fear of me is mind-blowing.  You would think that seeing me in person was worse than death itself.  I am convinced that he posted the thing about the PPO on Facebook not because he intends to get one (or even thinks he can), but because he was hoping it would filter back to me through mutual friends and scare me into staying away.  He is frightened to communicate with me.  He knows if he mails me another letter, I can take him to court for a PPO.  He is afraid that however he contacts me, it will open up communication and I will be able to contact him back.  So he stays silent out of fear.  Posting on Facebook and letting friends go ballistic in my inbox was the ultimate win for him -- sending a message without communicating at all.

He had his psychologist appointment today and I would kill to know what happened there.  Is the psychologist enabling him, or starting to realize something is really wrong here?

He has now eliminated almost his entire social life so that I won't know where he is.  He is that afraid.

I have also disappeared from all social media he can see.  Funny thing.  He is still watching me.  Recently.  There is nothing to watch, though.  I wonder if my disappearance will make him even more paranoid, or make him finally feel abandoned and paint me white.  Hmmm.

Hey GEM,

How do you all of this information about his appointments and such?

Secondly, I know it's tempting to figure out what they're thinking, but sometimes it could be quite the contrary. It's difficult to make sense of a pwBPD's thought process as the underlying symptoms make emotions switch rapidly.  (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=140819.0)

I can only guess at his intentions, of course, but he is not the kind of person to make idle threats.  Once he gets it in his head that he has to do something, he usually does it.  So I can assume that he didn't necessarily intend to get the PPO.  He was either venting, hoping, or communicating with me by proxy.

I know when his appointments are because they have been the same for the past few years, and I know when it is from when we were in a relationship.

Well, here we go.

A week later, he has seemingly forgotten his desire to get a PPO against me, and has e-mailed my friend group announcing that he's coming back to our parties.  Is this the beginning of a recycle?

I'd like to see him explain his desire for a PPO to my father . . .

GEM, how do you feel about him coming back to the group parties?

What is your plan going forward for dealing with him or not dealing with him?

I just got this news a couple hours ago, so to be honest, my head is spinning.  The friend who told me swore me to secrecy about it.

Just like clockwork, he's reaching out to see if we're still there.  I honestly think that he triggered his own abandonment fears by being such an a__hole.

I know on some level I am still attracted to him.  So there's that.

My ex (different one) with whom I spent over a decade of my life is coming to visit me from another state.  So there's that.

I'm kind of sort of halfheartedly maybe starting to see someone else, but I'm not particularly fond of him.

I know that exBPD has burned bridges with my family, particularly with my dad, that will probably never be put back.  So there's that.

Then there's the BPD and all that that entails.

I'm kind of of the mindset that I'm not interested in a serious relationship with anyone right now, so I think that I might just focus on myself.  I have a few good things going on in my life right now that will be taking up a lot of my time and attention in the next few weeks.  I am going to try to focus my thoughts on those things.  I will be interested to see if he is apologetic or not.  If he apologizes, I will forgive him, because that is my personal code of ethics and consistent with my values.  If he wants to just be friends, I will be happy to bury the past and play some card games with him.  If he wants more than that, he better have more to offer than just forgetting what happened.  He might also want to show that he's willing to face my parents.

I am debating right now if I am ready to see him yet or not.  Maybe I will let him see our friends a bit without me and see how that goes.  I have other things to keep me busy, like an upcoming trip with a friend. 

It's funny.  Y'all told me that people recycle at the exact moment that you get on your feet and feel good without that person.  Funny how you were totally right.

Update:

My ex has RSVPed for a party on Saturday night with our friends.  Our hosts have informed me that he's agreed to see me there.

The plot thickens.