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After being separate and hardly communicating for about 8 months (she blocked me on all media except for email) my BPD ex with emailed me about a month ago to wish me a happy birthday (I became thirty). In her email she wished me all the best, said she hoped my projects were doing alright, that my friends and family were doing alright etc.

In addition to that, about a week before that email she unblocked me on facebook, though she blocked the possibility to send her a message or befriend her (apparently this is possible).

I responded to her email a week after I received it to thank her, told her I had a nice birthday and finally I asked how she was doing. Now, a bit more than 2 weeks later, still no answer.

I just can't wrap my head around it. Why would she unblock me but block any messages? I keep wondering. Did she miss the attention I was giving her by emailing her? Did she feel she was being forgotten and wanted me to notice her again? She still has me unblocked on all other things except for email and facebook...

And why wouldn't she reply? It's harmless to ask how someone is doing. It's not a lot of effort to reply. Even if it was a one-time friendly congratulations email, she could have still let me know she didn't want to communicate any further. But why send anything when you don't want to communicate at all? I feel like she's playing with me again.

I'm thinking of emailing her again to voice my disappointment in her ignoring me again and that's she hurting me doing this. Then again, she'll likely just send the "leave me alone!" reply again.

What do you think?

She wants to 'see' you but not 'hear' you. The conventional wisdom as it relates to BPD is that she wants to know that you are receptive or available. Often times this is a tee up to a recycle (or further no contact at all).

I can identify with this.  I think they have a very strong fear of abandonment, even when they are the one to have cut you out of their life.  It's like part of their personality is trapped in you and every now and again, they have to tap back into it to gain some of their energy back.  I am convinced these people feed off of other people's life force.  One way of doing that is to find out their past lovers still care about them or are hung up on them.  Once they get the attention, they disappear again (for the time being).  It is a very selfish thing of them to do.  My ex just did that to me (he dumped me and blocked my number, and then sent me an email 2 months later) and admitted he didn't even think about whether it would hurt me, and his only intention was to relieve some of his guilt of abandoning me and also to gain pity and support from me.  He sucked me dry and discarded me once again.

A clever term I have coined for people like this is "emotional vampire".  They suck every drop of attention, pity, desperation, and self-respect that you have.  It inflates them and gets them through the day.  Then they leave you drained, and just when you finally start to heal, they come to feed once more.

You asking why she unblock you and then ignore you? I wonder if she knows why since BPDs are impulsive people and every five minutes they have different software programming in their heads. If you want to know why from someone that has an impaired brain then good luck!

On Facebook if you are blocked they can't see you either. Maybe she wants to see what you are up to but doesn't want to friend you or you to ask. Your best bet is to make everything you do private or block her. The cover photo and the profile pictures are the only things people can see. I eventually got off of there as to not deal with it at all. I feel much better. Mines ignoring me now and doesn't want contact at all, yet still playing games by not paying me money he owes me as he once did. It is upsetting me but trying not to make a big deal out of it. I hope he understands the consequences if he doesn't pay me. It's all games to them I think. All manipulations to benefit them. It's hard not to read anything into it.

i encourage you not to act on this, but to work through your frustration here.

all we can do is speculate but what is clear is that:

1. she wanted to wish you well

2. she wants to keep any communication limited to having wished you well

i get that its confusing behavior, but that doesnt mean you have to react.

do you want to be in contact with her?

They always come back to check on the body... .

Yes they can't move on completely. Inside they are children on the emotional level. It is quite sad.

This sounds a lot like part of the push/pull cycle that they engage in sometimes. It's like they don't have the emotional maturity to know a relationship is truly over, they somehow want to keep people who were important to them in their lives. But entirely on their terms and with no thought of the impact on you. I've just been through something very similar this last weekend with my pwBPDexgf  but on "Meetup" not Facebook.

I'm left scratching my head - why would she do that, what a waste of time. It makes no sense. But it makes no sense to normal people because they have disordered minds and act impulsively with little or no thought of the consequences.

If you respond to their contacts with you, then the cycle starts again and you are back in THEIR game. and it is just a game to make them feel better. 

Sound like a tactic my ex would do with me. After she ended things she still wanted to remain friends with me. But I felt after what she did to me and how cunning she was to get me to fall back in love with her then pull her crap on me again I was like no way! I had no idea about BPD or what it even was. I cut all ties with her took her off my FB friends etc. . She did t block me on FB until I wanted a few things back I sent her and she claimed she got rid of. Then total block feast! When I found out what was really wrong with her I sent her an email about the disorder and to please get checked. I also told her I would help her find a Dr. Well in return she contacted my then wife and told her if I was still married and myself and my ex were still together I should "back off" from her. Myself and my ex wife T the time were separated pending diviorce. So in regards to your ex I think it was just to see what you were up too . Kinda like the stalking thing. Remember it's all about them. All about their needs etc. . They make the rules and punishments and you have to obey them or take them! Silent treatment etc... Yea for me I do t think so. Do you really want to play this cat and sick mouse game with an ex that is mentally ill? I know I don't and will not in the future. I have gotten crazy FB messages I have now gotten blocked numbers calling my house and cell. Never had any of that before ever. Only after I let this sick woman back into my life. I will Never Ever allow her to play games with my heart again. I will never break NC with her either. These type of people are Toxic and you my friend deserved a hell of a lot better then her.

You fell for the oldest trick. The real question should be... .

why don't you have her blocked in every possible way?

Now your head is spinning two weeks after an email she sent you. Two whole weeks of thinking about this and possibly more to follow.

If you leave yourself open, this is what happens. Nothing good can come from further contact. Have you thought about protecting yourself and moving your life in the FORWARD direction?

Perhaps you left yourself open so she can tell you that she was wrong and you were in fact the BEST THING that ever happened to her? If so, it's not going to happen - well, not in the way you want it to. Move on, young man. Don't waste your life on BPD.

Quick question on facebook and blocking. Why do they tend to block you rather than just removing you as a friend?

If you remove someone as a friend they can still see a lot of what you're doing and vice versa. If you, or they, get tagged in a post with a mutual friend you, or they, will see it in their timeline.

Blocking removes you as friends and stops you from seeing anything about that person including if they liked or commented on a post or are tagged in a post. It basically means they don't exist anymore.

For control... .

"The calendar changes, they don't. -Unknown

I'll go along with that... .but when does that need for control expire? I mean: the BPD is no longer with that person... .why would they want to exercise control in perpetuity? It's not even really control at that point is it? 

I would offer you are not dealing with a rational mind... .

"The calendar changes, they don't" -Unknown

Hi Whiteblue;

I have a similar thing going on with my ex. I have posted about this elsewhere on the boards, but to sum up, when he 'went over the top', devalued and discarded me in the run up to Christmas, he instructed me to 'drink less' (coming from the heaviest drinker I have EVER met!) and to avoid talking to any of his friends. We have many many mutual friends, so this is an impossible task, and besides which, I am not about to be told who I can and can't speak to. That's another story. On actually seeing me on a night out after issuing this edict, I must have triggered an enragement, or similar, even though I had simply stopped replying to his texts... .there's not a lot you can say when someone employs playground  bully tactics and actually tries to instruct you not to talk to people in town. During the next afternoon, he deleted and blocked me from Facebook... .big whoop. He was already not talking to me and had told me that this was 'the best way' and I didn't ever really look at his page anyway, so no great shakes. I suspect he did it so he didn't have to 'see' me.  What followed was that on Christmas Day, at about 4 am (after we'd all been out on Christmas Eve) he suddenly flew at me from nowhere in a bar because someone he knew had passed me a drink. I didn't even know he was there until he accosted me out of the dark and physically tried to stop me taking the drink, saying that he had "given you two pieces of advice, and not to talk to my friends. That's my friend, not yours". I wish I were making this up. It was like talking to a 4 year old who won't share his toys. He then proceeded to tell me at great length how I had made a big, big mistake (it doesn't matter what this is about) and that he had 'deleted me from his life'. It was a terribly sad and scary conversation. I remained perfectly calm, but of course, the mask was well and truly off by this point.  It has struck me many times since this incident, (that I walked away from by the way) that if you have really 'deleted someone from your life' do you really stop by to TELL them about it? At length? Really? Don't you just do it? He wanted a reaction. He wanted the drama and to see me react. I didn't. I said something along the lines of right, ok.  He hasn't deleted me from his life, he's deleted me from Facebook. Facebook is not real life. I want you to remember that.

Some months later I discovered, purely by looking, that he hadn't blocked me on his Instagram account, even though he has unfollowed me. Again, big whoop.  About 2 weeks ago, so almost 4 months since I've even so much as breathed in his direction, he saw me in 'his' local wine bar. My friends are of the opinion that I shouldn't be intimidated into going where I want, and so, we went.  That same week, a friend of his, and mine, posted pictures of himself with me on a night out on Facebook.  And guess what happened? I have been blocked on IG. All these months later. :)  It is both sad, and funny at the same time. It's not because I contact him and he wants to stop me communicating with him or seeing his page, because I never make ANY contact. It's because he's lost all control over me, and he is very controlling. This is the only power he can exert now, and like a small boy, to use that analogy again, he is effectively stamping on his own toys so no one else can play with them. Even though no one asked to.  He has attempted and failed to make me not talk to people he knows. They like me in my own right because I am a nice lady. So, the only conclusion we can draw is that he can't face seeing what he has done/what he had. It's not that he can't stand the sight of me, the man was incredibly attracted to me. He probably still is.  I think seeing me sends him into turmoil. Anger, and other emotions, all at once. And this is how they manifest.

I suppose the point I am making is that deleting/blocking/unblocking may not be for the reasons you suppose. It might be about control. It might be to exert some kind of power which has been all but lost. It might be lashing out, even though the intended recipient is blissfully aware (as I was with the IG thing, for example)  Others here have alluded to your ex wanting to 'see' you, but not 'hear' you. I think this is almost certainly accurate. I ran a little experiment over Christmas when this horror was all unfolding. I remembered that I had another IG account for my small business, and he had neglected to 'unfollow' me on that. I posted a few pictures. Then I posted a selfie of me as the face behind by business. Within half an hour, he had unfollowed me.  :) He can't face what he's done. I appear to enrage him.

And yet, here's the strangest part of all. I've been blocked on Facebook. I've been blocked on one IG account (he forgot that I know about his other one) and he has unfollowed me. Yet we have a shared photo album in the iCloud with all of our photos from our relationship on it. He's still subscribed. He hasn't blocked me on Whatsapp, where we spoke all day every day.  

And best of all, Skype. We occasionally spoke on there, he would log in to talk to his parents, see me, and message me. I assume this means he can see me on there. And we are still on there as each other's contacts. I see him online, so I suppose he sees me. At the time of writing, we are still connected on there.

They are very strange people indeed.

Whiteblue... .did anything come of this? Have you heard any more from her?

My ex made it clear she hates me, I'm a horrible person, wants nothing to do with me, yet will not block my number. Strange right? I mean, she has an iPhone.

To test this, I called her, and texted her a few times very late at night, and VERY early in the AM.

It would ring like 5-6 times, then I'd call back and her phone would be off.

So I WAS waking her up. But 2-3 days later, I'd try again, and guess what, it would ring through again.

She has blocked me in the past, so it's not a question of not knowing how.

The only thing I can honestly believe is she needs to know, wants to know, that I still want her, perhaps I am one of many, but she needs to know I am an option and that my calling her makes her feel comforted despite the fact it causes me pain.

I mean, if I didnt want to date someone, told them so, and they called me up at 2AM, (well first I'd answer to make sure everything is OK), but if I had made it clear it was over-- and they did it more than once. I'd block them. Change my number. Over and done with.

I don't test it any longer. Its over. There is no use. I am not a pawn she can use to feel good or comforted at my emotional expense.

WOW, I almost spit up my coffee. Ain't that the truth. Good one.