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Why did she rub salt in an already big wound? So 3 days ago I find out my ex has been texting someone I confront her and it's her boss at work whom she had hooked up with when we had been broken up 6 months before. I don't know if it was just texting or physical while we were together but it was definitely inappropriate. Given her sexual past, the fact she's cheated in every relationship including ours, and that this guy works with her daily I knew it was pretty much gonna be the end of us, how could I trust we anywhere with anyone after this.

What makes matters worse is she didn't even apologize or try to make amends or say she will stop or that she doesn't like it or anything to even attempt to keep our relationship. I was hurt and lashed out saying this guy is ugly and nerdy and had nothing on me, which is true, and she defends him! It's not all about looks she says, although on many occasions she talks about that stuff, he's intelligent and witty, etc. it was insane so as I'm sitting there trying to make sense of this she just wants to drink alcohol and get drunk. She drives drunk to get more beer after I start packing up my things to leave, asks for the keys to the apartment. Doesn't seem to mind I'm leaving and we are over. Like she's mad at me that I caught her doing something wrong. She could had tried to save us, somehow.

Just a preface this section is quite abrasive because of the language and situations used by her. After she got back from buying beer I had my things packed but I still went outside to talk hoping maybe she would explain why she did it or try to fix what she had done. No she started telling me all the details of her sec life when we were broken up. How many people she had slept with somewhere around 7, in 3 months. The number isn't the worst though she detailed it to me. Telling me she slept with a married couple that lived in her old neighborhood and didn't use a condom. Telling me she had sex with a guy on a pool table at a bar, and how his penis felt, and how he went down on her, and how she danced on the bar topless. How she met some 21 year old in a bar and ate her out in the bathroom. Just sick disgusting things. I am seriously worried they will have scarred me for life. And she didn't even seem to care she is describing how low down she is and is even more low down for telling me during breaking up because she was texting another guy! She even wanted to have sex with me after this telling me to touch her etc. She is sick. I remember asking her why she was trying to hurt me when I did nothing wrong. She just kept doing it. I didn't know how vile of a person she truly was until then. And she had done some bad stuff to me before. But this takes the cake.

Does anyone have any thoughts as to why she did this, said this, wen all it served was to hurt me, even though I had done nothing wrong but and she had. I was trying to make us work. I'm at a loss to how she could be so cruel to someone two days before she just loved so much and wanted my attention so much. Any responses would be great, thanks.

Hi Karmas,

I'm truly sorry to read all you went through during the break-up. It's a sad and dark thing for someone we love to lash out like that, to want to hurt us by shocking us with how depraved they can be.

Maybe she tells you these things like that to try convincing herself she's ok with them, to try to pre-empt any feelings of guilt and shame by acting like she's fine with her behaviour. Easier for her to pretend that she feels good about them and mock you for the pain they cause, than to acknowledge feeling any guilt or remorse. And maybe she tries to have sex with you at the same time to show you that you're no better than her. That you would sleep with her just like all those other guys and that's just how people are.

In a sense all that kind of speculation is an attempt to reconstruct what she might be feeling and I'm not sure there are any coherent answers or clear motives at work when someone behaves like that. I went through something similar -- though not nearly as extreme as what you're describing -- with my ex recently, when I saw her for the first time in months. She started describing how hot she used to find it when I would show "no concern" for her well-being during sex (which is not at all how I would describe what our sex life was like -- kinky and intense, yes, but always more passionate than rough). She was telling me how unsatisfied she was with her current boyfriend, and basically suggested we have sex again. I didn't. But the whole thing left me in a dark place, because it felt to me like she was trying to drag me down to some disturbing level just to prove to me that I was no better than that.

I think the best we can do is acknowledge whatever feelings this triggers in us, and then begin to work towards a healthier place and, ultimately, healthier relationships. Take the time you need for that.

The most horrible effect of any BPD relationship is the shame that is invoked in you.

BPD is a shame-based disorder, and in many ways whoever comes close enough is used as a conduit to release that shame onto.
And that starts in a subtle way, sometimes through sexual contact, sometimes through situations that are constructs to make you fail, and invoke shame in you.

The situation you describe Karmas, is absolutely horrible, i can relate as i have been dragged down that road too.
In the end sex becomes the only form of intimacy that still remains, yet it probably means more to you then for them.

In the downfall my ex would say "I love you" and get close to me the one minute and then say "I have been looking around for someone else but have not YET found someone better, but those construction workers near the kids school are very much into me".

And what did that cause? I felt the shame she was supposed to feel about that. I felt devalued and used. She felt proud in a narcistic way.

Sounds as if you are in shock and feeling shame KharmasReal. It is shocking when we realise that we've been intimately involved with someone we assumed had much the same references as we did and then find out that their moral compass is way off.

It's a horrible feeling and I sympathise. Go easy on yourself. Her behaviour reflects solely upon the person she is, not upon you.

If you can, try to use the emotions you feel as good reason to stay nc and detach. You will recover as the months pass and you get more sense of who you are, seeing her behaviour within the perspective of a serious mental disorder and reason to remove yourself from her radar.

Karmasreal, I agree with rfiesen on this one.

I think she's looking for someone to share her shame with. How cruel to use you in this way.

I think it's important to frame this in terms of her shame for this behaviour and to separate yourself from it. The fact that she shares this horrible stuff with you does  not mean you have to take it on. What is your boundary around what you allow her to say to you? When do you walk away and say " Thanks, but no thanks to your stories"

How else can you spare yourself from this pain going forwards?

It did often seem, throughout our relationship she was always manipulating me to be meaner, more uncaring, and darker. With sex, with acting unemotional, with treating her like I didn't care about anything. I guess she was trying to make me like her.

Also, I don't really understand that she was trying to use me to disregard her shame for these terrible acts? She looked smug and satisfying recounting these stories, she seemed to enjoy hurting me. I've seen her be this way before she was egging me on, it really felt like she was hoping I would hit her. She even was drunk and said she can take the physical pain, etc., which I thought was weird. But these were things that happened 6 months ago while we were broken up. I had no need to know, it's not like we were together. The only Hong she did by telling me those things is to prove how vile and depraved she is. How much I could never trust her, how cruel she was just trying to hurt me because we were breaking up over her doing something wrong and texting a person she had a relationship previously. It all just confounds. Then she doesn't want me to leave really, wants to feed me food drunkenly, and have sex. Then she says there's probably no way we could work again after all this and I said probably not and left. Haven't communicated but our pictures still remain up on social media even still as the main picture, 4 days later. I don't know what is going on.

She is probably a sex addict.

I agree with letitbe223. There could be an element of sex addiction involved.

I know that my ex has said and done similar things to me. Her telling you those things may not have anything to do with her deliberately trying to hurt you. It may or may not have anything to do with shame either. It could be that there is that big of a disconnect in her mind and how she views sex.

My ex would tell me that stuff because that sort of thing did NOT bother him at all. Hearing about me with somebody else turned him on. After 15 years of marriage, his solution to everything was "Let's see other people." And then, he proceeded to demand details and get turned on by the thought of me with somebody else. It did NOT register in his mind that I did NOT want to hear about the people he was chasing, talking to, or having sex with. I got to hear about these great people that he met. I got to hear all about how they inspired him and how I didn't float his boat any more. It was painful to hear that stuff. I never understood how he could possibly think that it was okay to say those things to somebody that you claimed to love. When I would try to tell him how hurtful it was to hear those things, he looked at my like I was crazy. How could it possibly hurt me to have him be so brutally honest? He could not see how something that turned him on so much disgusted and hurt me. It was a lack of empathy.

On the flip side, he didn't understand why I did NOT want to share any intimate details of my experiences with another person. He wanted very detailed accounts. There would be times when we would be in the middle of physical intimacy and he would say things like, "I bet you would love to be with <fill in the blank>". He was doing it in a seductive manner and it excited him. It wasn't mean spirited. It was very smug and matter of fact and quite obviously turned him on in ways that being with ME, the boring housewife and mother of his children, couldn't. He had to live in a fantasy world.

It was so confusing to have him profess his love for me and tell me that he wasn't seeing anybody else and wasn't interested in anybody else, blah, blah, blah only to turn around and look for people on OK Cupid or other online hook up sites. Ex is a sex addict. When he was going through the amends step, he used that as an opportunity to reach out to all of his old girlfriends and talk to them. Forget the fact that I was his wife and had 4 kids with him. He didn't need to make amends to me directly like that because he was going to change his behavior, blah, blah, blah. He couldn't possibly see how hurtful it was to have him reach out and talk to all of these old flames to help him get over his sex addiction.   

A week or two was more than enough time for him to move on to somebody else. It totally baffled me. In one breath, he would tell me how great I was, blah, blah, blah and the next minute he was off looking for a new "friend".

You get too close and they hurt you to push you away, it also gives them validation to be the better person; a PWBPD makes up their own reality to fit their current emotion of the moment.
It is common for them to cheat once you get too close (show them unconditional love), then project their cheating onto you; you are the bad person and that's why they did what they did. The core shame they feel for themselves doesn't allow them to accept responsibility for the failure of their relationship, it ALWAYS has to be someone else's fault.

My ex continually talked about her past affairs and I asked her many times to stop. Some of her behaviours were truly disgusting and sick. She often bragged about how she would do anything with guys or girls at someone's challenge. She had no morals, until she looked at me and said "cheating was the worst thing any person in a relationship could do to their partner" Then go on about how many emotional affairs she had with councilors and doctors during her marrage.

So sick, and did I think I could change her or that she would change herself? No, I was the exception.