BPDFamily.com

Ex sent me an invite to use some app. Stupidly I accepted and now nothing. 

Just another narc checking on supply... .feeling sick.

NOO! 

Don't fall for it BB, it's not worth the heart ache.   

Please help me to not go backwards. I was doing so well. He doesn't want to talk or apologize just torture me.

Be strong BB, don't throw yourself back into the pit of fire. 

Thx C Stein. I just want to keep moving forward.

Does anyone have suggestions how to handle this, or myself if there is contact? I gotta find a better way of dealing with this.

stay strong! NO CONTACT is the only way. it has been a year now my exBPDgf keeps sending me messages but i haven't answered to any of them, her last message she told me that she lost her mother and no response from me. you can never know or understand where to stand with a BPD because they can't discern this for themselves. sometimes you might show up on her radar and sometimes you don't, someone who lives with psychosis doesn't have the same feelings that you do.

Is your goal to detach? Or not? You answered to his request... .

In the first case, just ignore any attempt from him. Don't give him any positive or negative feedback.

I thought i'd finally get closure, stupid me.

Maybe it was just spam which hurts too. An awful reminder he's still alive. i was doing so, so well now im a mess. Is this what its going to be like? Every so often I get some weird reminder ?. Ill be fine tomorrow it just hurts knowing I could never be missed. It hit me like a sack of bricks, now I can't stop crying. I wasted 14 years of my life caring for someone who didnt give a whiff back.

Is anyone around?

Hi beach babe. How you feeling today?  I also had a set back yesterday. I was at a xmas party when my ex texted me she is out surfing with my replacement. I begged her for four years to surf with me.  That hurt me and I left the party early. Still a mess today.

She got what she wanted. To hurt me again. Why? I'm out her life.

Struggling with you today beach babe

So she just HAD  to rub it in your face? That's so wrong i'm sorry... .  do these people have ANY decency?

You will be fine with the passage of time.  People suffering from BPD can rarely give you closure and it really hurts, doesn't it? That's what separates a non BPD person from a BPD person.

Total NO contact is the solution and takes you on the path to finding your own closure. Reading about others' experience here allowed me to do that. Once I understood the reason for being denied closure, I was able to find it myself.  

I liked Zeus' response where he didn't reply to hearing news of his ex's mother's passing. That takes a lot of strength to avoid your normal common decency in coneying condolences in such a case but NO CONTACT means no contact regardless of the situation. Well done, Zeus.

Right now, you need to protect yourself and NO CONTACT is the only the solution. Block him from every possible method of contact. Nothing good can come of it. Good luck.

Quite frankly... .no. When they're on the path of destruction you better watch out.

ITGirl... .  Sorry to hear your night was ruined. My ex refused to go to the local family club for dinner with it's many restaurants because we would bump into parents from the school she works at. We always had to go to expensive restaurants.

During the marriage, she went to that exact club to introduce her friend to my replacement - while I was home looking after her child. She wasn't worried about the parents seeing her with the new guy who was fresh out of jail and can't afford fancy restaurants. I walked in on them - she looked like she was in HIS company and her friend was the tag along.

Don't take it personally. If she didn't want to surf with you it's because she doesn't like surfing. She is surfing now to hook in the new girl. It's a matter of getting what they need and they will do whatever it takes. This is not a a measure of your self worth.  My ex used to say, "it's a means to an end". Now I know exactly what she meant by that.

So as I said, no decency. The only thing to do is NO CONTACT. Saves your night from being ruined but more importantly it's the only way to detox from such a relationship. Good luck to you both.

I am sorry for you going through this again BB, it was a bumpy road in that r/s and will be for us afterwards.

Please don’t beat yourself up for responding, there is no damage done, really.

You perceive it as damage, as a weakness, but It is not! Just normal behaviour when some one contacts you; though this time it took you by surprise and triggered something. We all know the cause of that.

Reading some of your older posts, it’s been a long road, so look how far you already are. See that as a very positive development! All that you accomplished already for you, only for you! 

Next time just do what your guts tell you to do.

Not responding, that’s fine. NC is about you, remember, not about him.

Feel to respond? Just give a very boring answer.

Accepting by accident invitations, no harm, just delete it after a few days

Make believe, make believe as he is doing. 

 

Weak? No BB, you are not weak, nor had a weak moment!

You are grieving a once for you deep bond!

As Aussie writes, never expect closure, or a sort of, you must find it yourself.   

Thank you all for your advice. And to BB for allowing me to hijack your thread!

No contact is the only way to save my well deserved holiday. I won't take the bait again! She already sent me four msg this morning. I'm going to block her for the holidays. Then I have to tie a few loose ends next year with her (her car is in my name) then block permanently!

BB you have come a long way. Be proud and go easy on yourself. I'm rooting for you

You know what to do Beach.  Analyze why you accepted the invite to the app, what you were thinking and feeling when you did it, and make a decision as to what you need to do differently so it doesn't happen again.  It's not complicated, just do it.  And a healthy dose of 'go fck yourself' towards him wouldn't hurt either; no one is going to give us our power back, we need to take it.

Beach Babe,

Nothing is ever an accident with abusers.

Having been what you've been through (even now, unfortunately), there's no magic bullet to help cope with your ex's prodding. Over the course of time, I've found that it helps to look at these 'shots across the bow' through an objective, logical lens. Marcus Aurelius' advice (paraphrasing) can help us all: We cannot control that which happens outside of us, but we can control how we react to it.

What is the full scope of this one solitary attempt at contact? A push of a button. That's it. There's no hidden meanings or words tucked away. It is a lazy, cowardly, indirect, and impulsive decision to mess with your head and ensnare you. It's, if anything, childish behavior. People of reasonable faculties would understand to leave well enough alone in the aftermath of a relationship, or be much more forthright and honest in their approach to reconcile.

In essence, you are being prodded with a digital stick. It means absolutely nothing. Were I you, I'd feel insulted. It's okay to feel that way.

To give you some perspective: I have been a void from Day 1 of the discard for roughly two years running. Not a peep out of me whatsoever. Even today she still pokes me with the proverbial stick. If the wound is still fresh, I would advocate blocking this person on every social app you have if these attempts are proving too difficult to deal with. There's no shame in it. I did it too for a time.

Don't be too hard on yourself. Yes, we all want validation from the ones who hurt us, but because we're commiserating here at bpdfamily.com, we had the misfortune of loving disordered individuals.

Believe me, there will come a time when if this happens again, you'll crack a smile of mild disdain, delete it, and go about your day.

Like dog feces, once we have stepped in it, we know to walk around it in the future.

-Mazzy

P.S. Maintain your distance and silence. It's painful at first, but it is an act of self-love. It's you taking your power back and declaring, silently, that you will no longer play a part in the sick dance that brought you here.

Thank you everyone for your responses. I'll respond more when I get the chance.

Update: apparently he deleted his app account once I accepted. does this mean the invite was sent by accident? But why am I still in his contacts if he hates me so much? I deleted him from everything 6 months ago. I guess I took this as a positive sign since he is now posting depressing  blog posts and unblocked me from facebook. His house is being foreclosed and clearly he upset someone because people are posting all these negative comments about him and his number on donotcall sites.  There was also some mirroring... .i lost a ton of weight for example on a no carb diet and now his social media is full of it. Creepy. If it was an accident I guess im surprised.

I hate to say it but you are probably right. What an unpleasant reminder of the 8 months of hell I went through. It felt like a fresh wound all over again.




i would never sleep with him again, but was willing to hear him out. That's what's sad here. I thought this meant the hatchet had been buried. It could have been an accident, but to be reminded I still freak him out, wow. How are you today?

itgirl: That's awful! Why do you think she still wants to torture you?

fromheeltoheel: Finally I started to forget about him and move on. Is the kind of crap your ex did?

Mazzy: Yes I feel  insulted. If he was sincere he would have sent  a real email... .and I would have heard him out and responded. Its heartbreaking, but I refuse to let it get me down. .

Beachbabe I'm sorry you are going through this. Unfortunatly we all go through it with partners or Exs suffering from BPD. I don't think your ex doing that to you was an accident. More like a calcuLted move. Maybe he wants you to contact him since you mentioned he is in a real bad mess right now. But DONT! Do NOT fall for their tricks and games. Mine after she ended things with me about a week later called my house phone. Let it ring once and hung up. So I tried calling her cel and of course no answer. She then proceded to text me saying it was a mistake. That she was calling a client and my house number was the last one he had dialed on her cel phone . Yea after a week you never used your cel to call anyone after my house? Yea ok! Don't fall into their web of lies! Stay strong! You can do this!

it girl it funny you say that you feel your ex just wants to hurt you. I always felt mine was doing the same thing. Always looking for ways after she pushed/pulled broke the relationship off to hurt me. I was always like you don't want me so why do you want to "hurt" me for? To this day I just don't get it.

My ex tried to contact me randomly for about 9 months after I left her but I never responded because I was completely done with her and committed to detaching, and I'm no longer willing to let people who treated me the way she did into my life.  The attempts soon after I left her were triggering, but that diminished with time, where the final ones were more "ho-hum, she's at it again."

It's not complicated, it just takes making a real decision to remove someone disempowering from your life, stay absolutely committed to that decision, do what's necessary to make it happen, and watch your life get better.

Confused: Wow your ex did that? That is so rude. It seems like she contacted you to 1) see if you would respond  and/or 2) to reject you when you did. In my experience sadism is more  a Narcissistic than BPD trait. Could your ex have been like mine ? Oh how he loved  to punish and hurt me. Its sick.

Fromheeltoheel: He dumped me and says I abandoned him.  The sick thing about all of this is he never seemed to care ... .until I stopped. Yuck, no. No more.  No good will come of it.

Sometimes these invites are generated automatically - especially on FB. I have messaged friends with something like "stop asking me to play [insert game name here] and they've messaged back that they never sent the invite - it was the app doing it automatically.

You need a therapist to help you heal from your low self esteem. When you begin healing your ex will not hold such power over you.

My therapist has helped me in ways that I couldn't even imagine that I could be helped when I first started to see her.

jhkbuzz: we arent friends on facebook,  He is a narc and i don't want periodic  reminders of his rejection.  Doing better today but had  nightmare about him  again last night. First one in four months.

Beach, you should go NC immediately for your own emotional sanity!

Hard to do in the immediate, but it greatly pays off in the long term... .

Also, you should refuse any contact attempt from him, i.e., do not answer or react for any reason! At some point he will stop to send any kind of message to you.

Can you do it? Always keep in mind it is for your sanity... .time to focus on yourself!

Beach,

I have learned to not take anything for granted with my pwBPD.  Is it a test? Probably.  Is it a need to get some sort of validation?  Probably.  It's not malicious.  Three weeks after my wife left, I get a text message from her if she can call me after work?  I said, "Of course!".  Mind you we have four kids together.   So, she calls... .  It was like a switch was turned on and I was talking to my wife.  We talked about the kids, about her job, taking the kids to the Drs., Getting me glasses (on her insurance) etc.  We hung up and nothing planned ever happened.  It was an hour conversation.  I was devastated.

My kids are 18, 16, 8 and 6.  So, before I went NC:

1.  I apologized to my boys because I told them I wouldn't be attending any of their school functions this year.

2.  I gave my youngest kids cell phones.

3.  I told my family and friends, that if contacted by her, to not allow her to bring me up.

4.  I told my boys (18 and 16), ":)on't judge mom and don't listen to her (about me) during this time."

5.  I told my boys, "if mom gets really bad, call me"  (They had to do this once)

I then went NC.  I would get texts/calls but I would ignore.  I learned in therapy that I had to take care of myself first.  She was making me suicidal.

yup Beach I always felt that. She would tell me who she was sleeping with  when we were teens knowing how much I had loved her etc. then she comes back into my life 28 years later and does the same thing all over again. When I had a fight with her this time around I told her thT I felt she just loved to hurt me. Her response you love to hurt me back. I never hurt this girl in my life. So everything she did to me at the end reveresed everything and said I did it. I then knew from one day telling me I am her soul mate and the next we are not compatable she had a serious mental problem... .And it was not bipolar.

Dear Beach_Babe,

I feel for you. If you call something emotional sadism, it must be something very hurtful for you. My first encounter with what I termed emotional sadism (I'm mentioning this because this is how you termed it) came from my low-grade NPD mother and since then I have dealt with it in two different romantic relationships. Here is how I deal with this type of baits if I believe/feel there is emotional sadism/narcissism involved. With time and practice it becomes automatic.  (I don't want this to be understood as something about BPD, this is the narc mechanism, yet my partner has this strongly)  :

1. I change my mindset and make a point of remembering that I'm not in an ongoing relationship with them anymore. This makes my hand much stronger. I do this before everything else and before my feelings set in. I take a deep breath and bring myself back to present reality. If I need to meditate, then I do that. Even if only in my mind, just sitting wherever I'm sitting. A bit of mindfulness helps. If I don't keep myself in my present reality, I just fall into that old mental framework - where these can hurt me because we are together. In my present reality, I realize this: Now, I don't have to put my trust again like I did in a relationship. Likewise, I don't have the burden of trying to do good things because there is no relationship. I don't have any emotional responsibility. I'm out of an active relationship and this fact makes me much stronger.

2. I make a point of realizing this as well: OK. I think this person derives pleasure from hurting me emotionally. BUT: They can do it if only I get emotionally involved. If I don't, there is NO WAY they can do this. This is a dance of two and I make this possible by being there emotionally. First, I have to make myself available for the emotional dance, otherwise it doesn't work. This is actually my hidden power. At first, it may seem that I can't change my emotional involvement. But actually I can. But that takes another mindset change.

3. In my everyday life, I'm not a freak who responds to chess emotionally. (I may respond emotionally in regards to why they are doing this, the game may hurt me etc, but ultimately, no, in principle I don't respond to chess emotionally.) Here, however, I respond emotionally only because I assume they have something equivalent or fall back to my patterns (hence number 1 here). If they are an emotional sadist, though, it's not about mutual emotions. This is completely about them. They are playing a game to derive pleasure. I have enough intelligence to respond to a game intelligently rather than full-hearted emotional involvement. It's not always automatic because I'm emotionally conditioned but the first 2 steps help me change my mental gears manually.

4. From now on everything is a game. If one day I'm convinced that they aren't playing a game, I can change my mindset. Only, they'll have to prove it this time. I'll not assume anything. Anything seemingly emotional happens within the game. One type of classic game is: They drop a bait 1), we think it's emotional involvement and put in emotional involvement, they take it back (3). We are hurt and frustrated and maybe feel rejected. If we don't, they may give another bait (1), increase the attention (2). Then once we are there emotionally (and they have radars for it:)) oops, back to square one. In between, there may be some attention coming from their way and we may even feel flattered. Once we drop our guard, oops back to square one.

Once you start thinking about this like a game, you emotionally detach (don't try to win the game by trying to make them feel something, you'll always lose. Not because you are less intelligent but because your "win" is different. We always expect something emotional - a bond, real intimacy-  to come out of this.  That will not happen. The moment we expect it, we lose. But you can approach it with a bit of distance like "Oh, here is the game. He is in step X. It will usually be one of the above." Then it stops hurting. (The sadness as to "why" remains but please accept that they have different wiring. Like, why do you have emotions yourself? Why do you get hurt? You have different wiring. We have to accept this.

In time, you may even start realizing how gullible emotional sadists and narcs can be. Sometimes they actually imitate your behaviours and patterns when trying to hurt you:))


Please be careful with emotional expectations like apology and closure. They are unable to give these (true apologies etc) due to the nature of their wiring. (It signals imperfection, which means death. It's a matter of survival, it's like someone asking for your kidneys or lungs after a relation ends). If they do give you an apology, it's probably something to gain narc supply. It will never be what you expect and it's good actually - when we see a bit of recognition (apology) at this stage, we are prone to going back to the feeling sphere and chasing them:))

In the last week, my ex partner (with whom I have to communicate for the time being) did this: 1, 1, 2,1,2, 3

This translates: drop bait (something about some technical thing but with a bit of goodness and kindness), repeat, increase loving words, go back to more technical (bec.I didn't respond emotionally and he imitated), got crazy for attention and increased lovingness, I responded (with technical stuff but also some more narc supply), he has been ignoring me:))

It's very empowering for me to see it this way. It hurts way less and when it does, I'm able to come back from hurt more quickly.

I'm doing it because I have to. If I could go NC, I wouldn't respond.

I don't answer phone calls, written communication gives me a bit of time. I took the blame for that (rather than setting a boundary, I said it's still strange talking to you, I get a bit stuck) and he accepted it happily (because he thinks it signals feelings for him whereas it's my move to secure a emotionally safer zone of communication).

I hope these help you a bit if you have a narc or emotional sadist in your life. They can't do anything unless you open your emotions and ways to your heart. You can see it as their game and close those emotional channels.

Big hug,

 

Sorry its hard to quote using this phone lol

Fr4nz: I think you are right, sadly, NC is the only way.

this world: thank you for the helpful advice. it's a game, you are right. I was happy to bury the hatchet, guess he still wants to chop me with it. How sad.

joem678: I think you made the correct choice. Are you still in touch with your kids?

Confused: "you love to hurt me back". yep mine responded that way too. They have no shame.

Yes we are currently co-parenting

Oh that sucks. How long has it been since the breakup?

We are going on 5 months.  Yes it's been rough. 

That is ONLY possible if you are friends with the person doing the 'inviting'. In this case, they are not. In fact; he is blocked.

Another invite for another app. Another accident or sick joke. Either talk to me or leave me the F alone, this is crazy. *end vent*

its exactly like enlightenme stated... .they don't want to make peace or reconcile, just make sure you don't forget.

BB,

I have my doubts it is coming from him.  More likely it is spam or some type of malware.

Yeah but since it's coming from different email addresses I can't block it.  My only option I guess  is to change my email address entirely. I wish I did not have to but  life  needs to move on and I can't handle the reminder.