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My friends and family know what I went through for 4 years. I've told them countless times. But they just don't get it... .They'll say...

"Why did you keep going back to her?"

"Why can't you just move on?"

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself?"

And while I love my friends and family, they just can't possibly understand what I had to deal with, unless they experienced it for themselves. They just say "she's crazy" but they don't know... They use crazy as a street term, but they don't know what borderline is all about like I do. I wish I had people in my life like the ones on this message board, who lived the same thing i did, that I could get together with.

theyre well intentioned, but ultimately kind of shaming statements Matt S., i know its frustrating to not feel understood, especially when youre in a world of pain. you are among people who understand, and we are here for you 24/7.

have you tried communicating, bluntly if need be, what you need from your friends and family in terms of support? they may not be able to fully place themselves in your shoes, but im confident they want whats best for you.

Hi FallenOne,

I'm sorry that you feel misunderstood. I can relate, and it can make recovery even more difficult when your loved ones don't get it. I had to keep a lot of the underlying facts to myself while I grieved.

I agree with  C<||| once removed: I'm sure your friends and family have good intentions. What about telling them something like, "Hey, it may seem illogical, but I'm hurting a lot right now, and what would really help me get through this is  ____________ (fill in the blank)."

Do you think you could speak your truth to someone close?

After my breakup, I did something like this with my mom, expecting her to negate my feelings or try to  fix the problem. But she surprised me with loving support. I was very emotionally raw when I said it, though, so I think that helped her understand that the breakup went much deeper than anyone expected.

heartandwhole

I've told some very close friends all of the details, but they were never in a relationship like this so it's still hard for them to understand what it's like being in a longterm with someone who has this disorder...

What would probably help me more than anything is a local support group that I could actually go to and meet with and talk to others who have been in similar situations or similar relationships... I know that would help me a great deal.

I would also help to understand more about how this girl has the ability to make me feel this way... I have been in relationships before, and I have had breakups before, but they never made me feel like this... .I literally feel like I lost a child or my family died in an accident... That's how I feel... Over a breakup with someone who was just mentally abusive and needy and while I know it was a bad situation and I have no trouble telling myself that, why do I yearn for it so much? Why do I miss the punishment? It's so damn confusing...

Hi Matt. No-one can really say why you feel the way that you do. I can only say how I feel and try to guess why I feel that way. I haven't seen my ex for a few weeks now and I miss him terribly. I don't miss the punishment - not at all - but I miss the intensity of the relationship. It was an intense relationship (and the hard parts are also intensive). It is perhaps the first relationship I have had (and I am not that young or inexperienced!) that has made me look into myself. This is probably because I had to try to come to understanding about emotions, feelings, someone else's feelings, communicating, validating, helping, supporting ... .all of these things either are minimised in a lot of relationships or are not addressed (rightly or wrongly). This makes it all a highly emotional relationship and it is hard to just "switch off". If there is a button somewhere, I wish I could find it.

Don't be so hard on your friends, mine are the same. If you cannot understand your feelings and desires, how do you expect other people to be supportive? You probably would be giving the same foolish advice! If nothing else, you should maybe say to your friends that you need them to listen and not to judge you. And you need them to understand that it is not easy. It is not easy... .for me I sometimes feel I cannot breathe. After being in such a volatile relationship, you'd think I would be enjoying the peace. But I miss him, even the storms... . 

FallenOne,

These kinds of relationships can bring up unresolved issues from our past, from childhood, or earlier pain. Things that may have been out of our awareness for many years.

I know it doesn't seem like it, but considering what you've been through, your feelings now are normal. It's very confusing and hard to deal with, and will take some time to feel better.

You are not alone. I know a virtual community doesn't replace face to face contact, but we're here to listen and support any time you need some understanding.

Here's a great article that may help you understand the intensity of your feelings right now:

The Biology and Neuroscience of Breaking Up (https://bpdfamily.com/content/breaking-up)

heartandwhole

I am with you. People don't understand and you cannot explain it to them in a way to make them understand.

I try to describe it like a physical addiction like alcohol or tobacco. I also explain to them that this is a mental illness that has destroyed the way I think.

So I feel for you. I am tired of hearing, get over it or suck it up. They don't get it. So I try my best to dump all of that here and keep from laying as much on "friends"

Matt, that is what we are here for on this board.

I know it is frustrating but try to put yourself in your family's shoes. They are not IN your relationship, they only see the surface stuff or hear about all the crazy things that happened in your relationship like the multiple breakups, cheating, lying and stealing. Plus, they love you and from the outside, when you hear all the crazy things our ex's do, they want what is best for us and they are right... .
the best thing IS to walk away. But you and I and the thousands of others on this site know the perils involved in doing so.

The struggle is real.

I am two years out from my relationship with a full-blown BPD. BPD was just a co-morbidity for her, there were a lot of other issues that contributed to the crazy-making insanity and my staying with her, hoping things would be good again didn't do either of us any good.

During that time I was very vocal with friends and family in regards to my relationship. At the beginning she isolated me and I told no one what was happening but as our relationship "progressed" and I started reading about emotional disorders I realized there was a bonafide disorder, a name for this and I wasn't going nuts. I talked to many of my friends and the answer was still the same, "Just leave".

My "healthy" friends couldn't understand why I would want to subject myself to this treatment.

I am going to say something that I hope does not offend you. I hope it doesn't because I was in the same boat, the same place. We tend to attract people who are at our emotional level. I hadn't dated much so while I am not disordered in many ways I am immature in my understanding what a healthy relationship is. My parents are divorced and their relationship/s are not healthy. To me, that was the norm, that is what I saw.
I knew no different.

But it isn't healthy. Not at all.

IF we were healthy we would not stay in crappy relationships. We wouldn't put up with all the stuff that happened. We would have walked away. Heck, we would have run for the hills!

Be grateful for your friends. I know they don't understand but they sound like healthy good people who love and care about you.

This board is a good place to work through your issues and "we get it" here. Post here and work on yourself and your issues. When it comes down to it, it's about US getting healthy and to a good place. It really isn't about our exes at all.

I wish you the best on your journey. 

Keep on keeping on!

PW

I honestly don't know how severe her borderline is... I just know that she's diagnosed with that, bipolar, and PTSD... She claims she was abused and neglected as a child, but who knows what's true and what's real with her? How would someone have a disorder like this without something traumatizing happening to them though?

When we started dating, I already knew she had personal issues because I knew her family for a while already. Knew about her suicide attempts, teenage pregnancy, hospital visits, etc... I saw no sign of anything severe at first when we started dating. She just seemed troubled. She seemed helpless and in need of rescuing... She talked about how nobody understood her and how she was left behind... It made me feel sorry for her and made me sympathize... She said she "didn't feel like she deserved help" but I helped her with her needs and wants anyway and she worshiped me for it... .for a while...

Why did I like this "neediness" so much? Because feeling needed is a great feeling... That's why. Being "wanted" is a great feeling as well, but when you're dating someone who's completely independent and you know they would be just fine without you, it just doesn't feel the same as helping someone who you know needs you in their life...

I began noticing there was something very wrong after about 7 or 8 months together... She started becoming irritable and impatient with everything... Snapped on me over questions, things I would say and do, etc...

After maybe 6 months of this, she began to start escalating these irritable and impatient moments into full blown arguments and started blowing everything way out of proportion... Soon enough, making a small mistake or wording something incorrectly (where she took it the wrong way) would result in a full blown argument where at times I had to leave the house and just wait for the "other" side of her to come back around again...

After months of these recurring arguments, we would have short breakups, where she usually begged me not to leave or to come back... .

Then her sneaky behavior started... She would disappear for hours without contact, she would end up in bizarre situations and needed help, she would hang out with and talk to ex's, she always had some sort of chaos in her life... .If I ever got angry with any of this stuff, I was in the wrong... .I was supposed to just accept and deal with it...

This is when she started blaming me for stuff... Any time I got upset about any of her questionable behavior, I was the bad person... If I questioned her about sneaky behavior, criticized anything, whatever... I was a bad person... .I was being hurtful... .(her words)

It eventually got so bad that any time I tried to talk to her about anything serious involving US, she would just start to rage and tried to leave the house or walk home. I had to tiptoe around EVERYTHING I spoke to her about... .She could not handle "bluntness"... She could not handle wording things a certain way... I had to sugarcoat everything I said to her and watch how I said it, or she would rage and turn on me...

She got overwhelmed with everything... She couldn't handle any of the hurdles in her life that we all deal with on a daily basis. Everything stressed her out and ruined her day... She had excuses for everything... !

In the beginning, she "didn't deserve help with anything" (her words) but eventually developed a sense of entitlement about it... What she would do, is talk about something she needed help with, but not directly ask for help, and then I would offer my help... It got to the point though if I didn't offer or couldn't help, she would get angry about it...

Same deal with friends and family... She said she didn't care if I hung out with friends and/or family, and encouraged it... But I swear as soon as I went out with my friends, she stated giving me a jealous vibe through text messages, like she was making me feel bad for choosing my friends over her (even though she told me to go hang out with them!)... OR, a crisis would come up and I would have to attend to that and help her with it... .

This is how the whole relationship went...

Even though I was in my late 20's when this relationship started, it was my first longterm relationship that I had been in... I had dated before but for no longer than maybe a few months and when I was in High School I never dated anyone and was non social... I was very self absorbed in geeky activities while in high school such as playing video games and collecting stuff... After High School I grew out of this and began dating a bit, but never anything serious...

I can't explain why this is, but when I was a teenager and in my early 20's, I just wasn't concerned with dating and put it off until my late 20's when I began to start feeling more lonely...

Other people were dating, having sex, and getting married after high school... I was too focused on my own "shut-in" hobbies and never bothered with this till around the age of 25.

Matt, I did the same thing. I lived at home until I was 35. I am in my early 40's. I didn't date at all from 25-35 so I can relate to you in many ways. Thing is this... .why would you be driven to date someone with all those problems? Mine also attempted suicide, she's a cutter. These are not normal, healthy people. That's why it's so important to work on us and why we chose them. Why would we choose a broken person? What is it that drew us to them? Was it a challenge? Are we rescuers? Those are things to explore now that we are in the healing stage.

Did you read my long quote in reply to your post? Does her behavior sound like typical BPD behavior? Do you see other traits here?

The answer to your questions though is simple... I didn't know she had that many problems when we began dating. It was not noticeable... She came across as a really sweet but troubled girl... She's also very attractive and it's not common (in my mind) to come across a young and attractive female with self-esteem and confidence issues, that is so willing and eager to hang out with you... Do you know how many times I've had an attractive female actually WANT to hang out with me and spend time with me? Not once... Ever... Attractive females are typically stuck-up and know they can get anyone they want... I am a confident person, but never got the sense that women really "wanted" me... They never seemed interested... So, here's this sweet, attractive, seemingly troubled but nice girl who is approaching me and wanting to hang out with me, who shares many similar interests, who has the same views and beliefs, who expressed a high interest in me and my interests... Who wouldn't go for that? Who wouldn't want that? I would talk to other girls, and they seemingly didn't give a damn about anything I would say to them, and yet this girl was very communicative and talkative and listened to everything I said. Who wouldn't be attracted to that? I had no idea what BPD was when I started dating this girl... I figured okay, so she has some personal issues, but I thought they were manageable and that I could deal with them... I thought she was going through a phase... I thought it would go away or therapy/meds would fix it... I had no idea what any of this was.

So, basically, all the people that I have dated in my life (including this one) are people who show interest in me. Whether I approach them first or they approach me... If someone shows that they are truly interested in me and things that I enjoy, then I want to take it further... Who wants to date someone who doesn't seem to give a damn about you or the things you enjoy? Who wants to date someone who would be just fine without you? Why do I want to talk to and get to know someone who isn't interested in anything that I'm interested in? I don't care if people have flaws... I don't care if someone is troubled or has some issues... I care about how they mesh with me and what I enjoy, and likewise for them.

These are not normal relationships or normal breakups - they are traumatic experiences that are almost impossible to understand.
Once I understood how incredibly unhealthy and abusive the whole situation was, I understood why others couldn't understand. This forum is great because people on here understand and want to share their similar experiences as well.