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My emotions keep flip-flopping. I’m learning more and more about BPD and with it gaining a sense of clarity and knowledge of wth it was I just went through. At times, now NOT being one of them, I feel compassion that he suffers this, but then other times, like now, I am feeling furious. So angry that I want him to hurt as much as me, no more than me! I want him to really be hurting. Just need to get this out there. I hate what he did to me, what’s he’s done to me and now I’m crying because why did I let him!

Oh, he is.  The disorder is a living hell, and he and other borderlines may have gotten reasonably good at living with it, part of which includes making other people's lives hell too, if you're close enough, but those tools are reactionary to something that is always there and never pleasant.


Great question!  And digging for the answer is where the gift of the relationship is, and once we learn the lessons, it ensures our best days are ahead of us.  Feel what you gotta feel L, the only way out is through, but it is definitely a way out.

I can relate Larmoyant

One day you will just wake up and the acceptance starts to move through your soul and you see clearly what you haven't been able to up till now.

Just have faith in those who have come through the storm, they are real, there is peace and happiness just ahead.

I have a very difficult time trusting after my foo and the relationship with my exgf and needed hands on proof to believe.

If we keep walking forward, seek answers, never give up, we get well.

Relax and trust you will be free and as fromheeltoheal said, the best days are just ahead.

I would have never believed until I got to where I am right now. I accept my exgf is ill, I have to take care of myself and my son and let her suffer the anguish of her illness until she decides to help herself. That's it.

Heeltoheal, well right this moment, immature response or not, I am glad if he’s hurting, but it’s hard to believe it when he’s off with other women seemingly happy. His life seems the same, like he never met me, like I never made any impact whilst mine is in ruins and that’s not a catastrophising symptom of depression. It is in ruins.

I’ve been thinking about my role in all of this and it’s difficult because I don’t like what I see. How could I have given up on myself like that to allow this to happen. How do you dig deep to find out why? My foo is one place to start I suppose and I’ve already begun that process, but it doesn’t explain it all. He got into my head, he got into my soul, took advantage of things I used to believe were strengths, my capacity to truly empathise, my caring nature, my patience and my gentleness. I don’t know who I am anymore. How can I trust myself anymore. How do I pick myself up when I’ve lost confidence in myself and my ability to protect myself from a dangerous person. How do I take care of me? The only way right now has been to shut myself away from the world, but I can’t stay here forever.

I probably sound deranged. I’m not just in pain. Not crying for him anymore. Crying for me.

Jerry, sometimes it feels as if peace and happiness have gone forever. I’m so scared to get back out there right now. I just feel so very damaged, but I’ve absorbed your words and there’s a tiny flicker of hope in me that believes them. Thank you. Isn’t it strange when kindness from a stranger makes you cry. That was what was lacking in the relationship. Basic human kindness.

With emphasis on the 'seemingly'.  Then again how could I know, although more than once I'd catch my ex in unguarded moments, curled up in a fetal position, rocking back and forth moaning, bathing in her own pain, and when confronted, comforted, whatever, she'd snap into the 'happy' facade in a heartbeat, back to the fiction, back to the fantasy.  But what's really going on?  We can only guess, but it ain't good.

I'm sorry your life is in ruins.  I could say something like the good thing about being at rock bottom is the only way to go is up, but you sound like you don't want to here that right now.


I didn't either, but the truth is it was always there, I just wasn't looking.  She gave me no choice, and for that I'm grateful.


And we get to remember to cut ourselves some slack.  Most of us were blindsided by mental illness, something we'd never experienced before, and it sneaks in quietly.  And some of us went there because it was very reminiscent of growing up and felt familiar.  There's some of both of those in it for me.

Your capacity to truly empathize, your caring nature, your patience and your gentleness are all virtues, and they'll come back, if you let them.  Or you could keep them stuffed, give up on yourself, and become bitter and mean.  Up to you, and please choose the first one.


I felt exactly as you do for a while, but you know what, with some time and distance we find ourselves again, not only that, you ever notice we value things more when we lose them and get them back?  Man, that was an awesome few months, when I started to feel myself again, and little things like going to the grocery store or taking my dog to the park suddenly became things I cherished, and everything looked brighter and more colorful.  And gratitude, lots of gratitude.  And then, a steely determination to never, ever, let someone get into my psyche that way again.  I overshot it to begin with, the self-protection meter was pegged, say anything even a little off and you're out of my life forever, starting right now.  Well, you have to cross the line to see where the line is sometimes.  And I've mellowed, but point is you will emerge as a stronger, more grateful version of yourself, and as far as digging, you're doing it right now, and then you get to decide what you do with what comes up.

Hang in there, one foot in front of the other.

I've seen him struggle in a similar way too and it's what kept me in the relationship so long I think. I wanted to help him. He'd tell me stories of people letting him down and in particular his ex wife who he said abandoned him when he was diagnosed with cancer. I remember thinking how could anyone do that. That is until he kept accusing me of abandoning him when he was ill. I would 'never' do that to a person, and I now suspect his ex wife didn't either.


I can hear it  :) It's just that I don't know how to get back up.


I still have those things, but I'm scared now that they make me weak. That someone could come and bulldoze me again. I don't know how to change, but I'm going to have to be stronger or it might happen again. I met him on a dating site and when he first contacted me he said that he wasn't interested in a relationship with me (first devaluation right there!), but wanted to meet to advise me because I looked vulnerable and would be eaten alive by the men on these sites. Turns out he was the predator! I don't want to look 'vulnerable' and I don't want to feel 'vulnerable', but I do.


I'm going to hold on to this and have faith that things will get better. If I reflect for a moment I can see that they already have if only a tiny bit. I've been in my new place for almost a month now, he has no idea where I am and I feel a sense of safety and peace. For this I'm truly grateful. This is a start I think.

Thanks fromheeltoheal  :)

Larmoyant

I just want to thank you for being honest. How you are feeling is a lot like how I am feeling and I admire your honesty.

I miss her and the family life we had but I am also angry that I allowed myself to be devalued like that. I felt like the more I gave the more I had to give and I wondered where it would all end.

If you are getting a lot out of this board, me too. If you feel alone, scared, hurt, confused, me too. But the comments from others are very helpful and I read daily.

It is very slow progress.

I know how you feel Larmoyant.

Its like we cycle through the wheels of emotions and thoughts, maybe just at the same rythm even when we were in the R/S at times.

Its a fight between various things really. We fight between our emotions and our rational side. We fight between how we used to see them/us and how we ended up seeing them/us, the good vs the bad. We in-fight between our ex partner and us. And all that while we revisit moments throughout the r/s, and even remind ourselves of similar circumstances that date back to our FOO.

To me that feels like a 4 dimensional puzzle that we are trying to solve. And our emotions are flip-flopping up in that process.

It is normal.

And it's something i learned not to resist and have confidence in. It's your true self trying to come to a point where it has grown and learned all the lessons that can be taken away from all of this and then be able to move on as a much stronger and hapier person. It's painfull and confusing, but in this case it's a good sign.

 

I've had a vile few weeks, and sat with some horrific feelings especially confronting foo issues and having to accept my ex made the choice to leave rather than get a hold of his issues. I have been alternating between that and feeling dead inside. Although having said that have had glimmers of faith in humanity and genuine excitement from that even if fleeting. This gives me hope. Bit by bit the covers of darkness will lift and we'll be fully awake and ready to face life head on without denial and minimising - fully accept the ups and downs of life. I read something the other day there's no such thing as good and evil behaviour - rather wisdom and foolishness- humans are motivated to avoid suffering or to fulfil some desire - some are more aware of the effects of their actions than others. But there is no denying the pain that has been inflicted by contact with our exes xxx

That's a boundary thing; we don't need to be stronger, we just need to have better boundaries.  Once we spend the time focusing on ourselves, our values and our needs, and start living from our values, living our values, we build something we consider valuable, and no one gets to screw with that.  Of course we can build boundaries so strong that no one gets in, that ain't good either, so it's a matter of enforcing those boundaries, standing guard at the gates.  Some people are just boundary busters, for a variety of reasons, a borderline's reason is to attach, you can't have boundaries when you're trying to create one person out of two, but that's a subset of the boundary busters in the world.  And if someone busts our boundaries, then that's just them, and if we continue to let them and don't remove them from our lives, that's on us.  And awareness required yes?  Someone with a personality disorder who needs to attach, and is therefore very good at it, and then flops from idealization to devaluation, well, not very many people do that, we seem to have found a few though, which is actually the good news, because next time we won't be unsuspecting, and can remove egregious offenders before things get ugly, in fact we won't look susceptible to those needing to attach next time, so they'll move on to future members of this site.

And BTW, there is absolutely nothing weak about vulnerability, in fact the opposite.  Here's what I mean, a popular TED talk that is great and may just shift your beliefs about vulnerability:

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en#t-1073026 (https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability?language=en#t-1073026)


Yes!  The first step is the hardest, and you already took it, build from there.   |iiii