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I've made a post recently, I guess this is the ending. My ex charmed me last year after not talking for 3 years. Nothing came of it. She moved to a different state in another region over the summer and I accepted that chapter is finally over. She moved back two weeks ago and charmed me again. I have been trying to ignore the thought of her but in a moment of weakness I checked her facebook this morning and saw she got engaged. She has only been back in the home state for 2 weeks and is already engaged. She told me she moved to get sober, but this is what makes no sense. Her new fiancee is a drug dealer who just got out of prison. He was also arrested for dragging a woman who was trying to buy drugs off of him from his car. How can you be trying to stay sober and associating with someone like that? Does she think he will treat her different from the other women in his life? In my opinion he will hurt her all the same. On top of that, as sanctimonious as this is gonna sound, he is frankly gross. We are in our early 20s, this guy is in his 30s and looks weathered and beat down. He looks older than he is. He has a daughter who is closer to age with me and my ex than he is with my ex. I understand we are adults, I still find this repulsive. Why is a man in his 30s engaged to a girl in her early 20s who is trying to get sober. While not legally so, I consider this man a predator. I find this gross. Why is she engaged an still reaching out to me sending photos from when we were together and saying it was the best night of her life? I can't make any sense of it and I'm hurt. What does he have that I don't? A criminal past? Has anyone experienced this before? There is no way this lasts, right? How can you be home for 2 weeks and already get engaged the more I think about it the more my head hurts. Does anyone have any advice on moving on, it hurts more than I care to admit thought I know logically it shouldn't matter to me.

Oh I can relate to this.
My wife, in a relationship with her for 27 years, monkey branched to a guy she was buying drugs from. He was the husband of my wife’s friend. She left him because he was controlling, manipulative, abusive. One of her friends told me he would demand sex and if she refused he would drag her down the stairs by her hair on her back. Lies through his teeth, as in claims to have been at events 10 years before he was born, claims to have had 99% fatal disease, and a lot more nonsense besides. He has demanded my sons friend pays a debt that his father had with him, and then died. He has throw an autistic child in a pool to shut them up, and he calls people on public Facebook groups a c***t if they disagree with his bs. He isn’t particularly liked by anyone unless they shove substances up their noses……… but my wife can not see him for the piece of sh*t that he is, and she has ended up in hospital three times since being with him so her health really is in danger hanging around with that loser.

What you have to remember though, is you are better than that. You are worth more than that. He has absolutely nothing that you don’t have. It seems that people with a personality disorder are drawn to people like that. Maybe it’s because it makes them feel less worthless, maybe they don’t have a fear of abandonment because, to be honest, who is going to want to run off with a guy like that. Don’t beat yourself up about it, rise above it. You don’t want to be in that kind of relationship anyway.

That should read drag her down the stairs on her back by her hair, what I wrote makes it sound like she has a hairy back :)

Wow man, I'm sorry you had to deal with it, especially after 27 years. You must be incredibly strong. I dated this girl when I was 20, for like 9 months. 4 years ago. She still haunts me now especially with the popping in and out. I know he is a reprobate in every sense, and not a good person. It's just frustrating. I had genuine love for her. I am also her age and don't already have kids nor do I beat women. It's just strange. I don't understand why she continues to message me throughout this either. I also find it frustrating that I've struggled to find other partners while she has no problem. As well as guys like him.

There are textbooks that describe Borderline and other personality disorders.  Despite going into minute detail into those disorders, it still doesn't make common sense.  There are patterns and we see that some of the unpredictable is, to some extent, predictable.  You can't wrap your brain around insanity, so why try?  Accept that it exists but you will waste your time and energy trying to figure it out.

Yes there are patterns. My ex seems to have a pattern of preying on vulnerable men going through marriage breakups. This last one is the third time she has tried to get close to such a person, and seems to be a 10 year cycle. She claims nothing ever happened with the other two but I’m inclined to believe that is either bs or it was not for the want of trying.

I don’t know about incredibly strong, I’ve just got to get on with it. My ex used to come out with the “oh you’re always the victim” whenever I tried to get her to see sense, and for a long time I did see myself as the victim. The way she has treated me is disgusting, our own children have told me that, even her father has told me that, but I didn’t know about bpd and I do believe she is mentally ill. Either that or she is just sick and twisted.

Now I don’t see myself as the victim. I see her as a victim of her own behaviour. A victim of her own mind. As much as I hate her boyfriend, I also see him as a victim too. The way she has treated him is also terrible, but he lacks the intelligence to comprehend this. His wife cheated on him numerous times because of the way he treated her. My wife cheated on me years ago and cheated on me with him. Why would anyone that has been cheated on then get with another person that is prone to cheating, it just doesn’t make sense to me.

He told my ex the only way she could hurt him is if she slept with me (mistake number one, basically giving her the green light to sleep with anyone else) She told me this the morning after sleeping with me behind his back, and laughed when she said it. She slept with me on and off for the next year. The last straw was when she said I can tell him if I want, he will believe her not me! I hadn’t even mentioned telling him, she just came out with that comment. So naturally I told him, I explained everything that had gone on behind his back for a year, and even sent him screenshots of her messaging me to go round in the early hours of the morning, but he is too thick to work out she doesn’t give a sh*t about his boundaries or the way she treats people. Personally I think she is only with him for drugs and money.

At the end of the day, they are both messed up individuals, and as my late father would say, at least if they are two messed up individuals together they are not f***ing up other peoples lives.

  Yes I agree. I don't see myself as a victim either because I knew she was borderline years ago and still chose to engage with her. I've also realized she is basically a kid in an adult body as she relieves her trauma everyday and instead of breaking the cycle decides to abuse drugs and hang with reprobates like her mother did her whole life. I also don't believe those in my story are too intelligent either. I think they lack the ability to introspect, but I'm also jaded.

  It's just hard, she is pretty predictable for the most part, I have like a sixth sense for when she is about to reach out it seems. It just aggravates me because she does something that baffles me more. I guess it doesn't have to make sense but I think I would feel better to know there was logic behind it

Sadly, 'logic' is the last thing to expect with a BPD. They're in their own world, with their own rules and they see little or nothing of the reality that we see.. though I do still maintain they're more aware of what they do than they would have us believe.

Best not to waste your time trying to understand; assuming they won't seek professional help and stick to it, it becomes a simple choice of either accepting their condition and resigning yourself to a life of chaos - in which you will always have to adapt and tread very carefully - or end the relationship.

I still remember my exBPD waving her hand in front of my face shouting 'You never buy me anything!' She was wearing gold, sapphire and diamond rings, bracelets and chains I'd bought her. Her jewelry was actually rattling as she wagged her finger at me, but she was in her own world, one I could never get through to. That was the last time for me.

That sounds familiar underthebridge

My wife would be exactly the same. You never buy me anything, you are so selfish, while also covered in jewellery I bought her.

I never spent my wages on me, I never went to the pub with my mates. I shelved all my hobbies. My money was always spent on household bills, her and the kids. When we split up I put all the household bills I paid for in her name, upon her request. She used to say a paid for nothing, that she paid for everything. She then wondered why everything I paid for was so expensive. It was because the bills were split equally, and what I paid for was the same monetary value as what she paid for, give or take (she was the main wage earner)

I would ask her what she wanted for her birthday. Sometimes it would be something little, and I would research the hell out of what she wanted and buy her the best of whatever it was she wanted, and then I would be told I never bought her anything for her birthday, because it wasn’t something that was expensive.

Yet she would take me shopping on my birthday, I would return with nothing, and she would return with bag fulls of stuff that cost hundreds of pounds.

She would moan that I didn’t buy her flowers, that she liked daffodils from the supermarket, so every time I went to the supermarket I bought her daffs, or tulips, or both. Flowers that she loved. Yet that turned into, well you never send me flowers when I am at work. For a borderline enough never seems to be enough.

The bottomless pit.  You throw everything in there to try to fill it, but it's never enough.

awe, I remember this well. The literal screaming with a finger in your face. Calling me an aszhole. I'm selfish. I'm never there for her when she needs me most and she knows she can't rely on me. Then me doing what I do and kindly listing off ENDLESS things I've done. Which is apparently me lacking accountability and changing the subject.

And like Rowdy said, I'd be told to buy her flowers and plants and all. I would, even without her asking, but she never remembered this since I never did a thing for her...oh how they conveniently forget.

The strangest times are when they have those breakthroughs in clarity and kindness. They acknowledge something and thank you. And you think 'dang, this is coming around'. Or you try to communicate in a way they say they need from you...and it works in one situation...then the next random blowup over nothing, you try the same tactic and they tell you they don't feel heard, and you're not listening, and you're gaslighting them. NOTHING IS EVER ENOUGH.

The Bridge (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=65164.0;all)
The Backyard Black Hole (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=65164.msg13138572#msg13138572)
There's a Hole in My Sidewalk (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=65164.msg13229364#msg13229364)

the backyard blackhole is a good one. But God, do you imagine you'll fill that hole somehow, someway. Sometimes things get caught in that hole, making it look like progress, only to dislodge right to the bottom.

I think that is the biggest cause of our mental anguish when with a BPD - the fact that one second everything works as it should.. then it doesn't. This is what keeps us co-dependant; we want that 'good side' again.. we know it can happen so we keep chasing it.

It's actually worse if things are good for a long while, because it makes the inevitable shoot-down even worse when it comes just when you've relaxed a bit..

It got to the stage with me where I was waiting in the bar to meet her and wondering A) Will she even turn up? and B) If she does turn up, will she just walk past me because of some imagined thing I'd done or someone else did?  Even the bar staff would ask me 'Is she due to ditch you this week or is that next week?'

Eggshells scattered over a minefield over quicksand.

I assume these "strange times" are just part of the toolkit of keeping their partners off-balance and chasing them.  I recall sometimes in the depths of multi-day fights, amidst lots of screaming and dysregulation, BPDxw would break down and say "I don't know why I'm acting like this" and "I know you didn't actually do anything wrong."   

Of course, this didn't lead to any actual change in the overall emotional tone, end the fight itself really, or any lasting improvement in our relationship, and she would pretend she didn't say these things later, if the fight continued for another day.  At best, when she said these things it was like a momentary ceasefire.

I couldn't figure out at the time why she said those things; was it a brief moment of honesty?  A crack in the facade?  Did she just let her mask slip?  At the time it gave me hope that maybe there was a chance for improvement, which - if she was being intentional in her words - was perhaps just another trick to keep me hooked.  She knew if she pushed any more at that moment, I might walk right out the door? 

In the end, it doesn't matter.  It's impossible to know why they say and do anything, and given their tenuous grip on reality and the concept of "the truth" even if they told you, how could you trust them? 

When I started learning about BPD, it blew my mind how it seemed like BPDers almost had a "playbook" of how to emotionally manipulate others.  It felt very foreign to me, and I'm aware of how it can come off as sounding "moralizing" like "I don't manipulate others" which I know is false - we all do to some extent - but I'm talking about the way relationships with pwBPD almost have no "normal" interactions in hindsight.  You look back at how they behaved when you met them, how they behaved at significant points in time, and how they changed as they felt more secure that you wouldn't leave, and it's shocking how calculating it is; I think specifically how they don't seem to be just living their life, but instead controlling the people around them.  They almost don't do anything unless they have something to gain from it, or they know it will be perceived by others in a way that benefits them.

Exactly. And strange how all of us who were unaware of BPD and all it entails thought that our situations were specific to us...then you read stories and forums and books and it's literally exact situations you went through. Even the same words. Makes you question reality. I think for my situation at least, things would be SO horrible for seemingly no reason at all, every bad thing in life was my fault or taken out on me. Horrible hours long fights, screaming, tears, cursing, slamming things. Then they would sort of just 'end'...like she got it out of her system. Go to bed, have sex which felt passionate due to the intimacy after a blowup argument. Then the next day she's an angel, texting me she loves me, making date plans etc. Your brain tricks you into thinking it's safe. And then you stay and put in more effort to keep the good times going. And control, absolutely, the quote I'll never forget 'My biggest character flaw is I have to control everyone, every situation and everything around me'. And yes, that was true, couldn't surprise her with anything, events, anything because that would become a fight too. God those few years were so draining. Still are in residual ways.

Yeh control freak. Is that a common theme? Do all your ex’s seem massive control freaks and appear really confident in life in general, but when it comes to a relationship with you, they are actually very insecure?

Control or else feel controlled.
_______ or else feel __________.

That's actually a really good saying, and it makes total sense when you take a step back.

Just out of curiosity... did anyone's BPD partner exhibit black pupils of their eyes when they had an episode? I've since learned that this happens a lot

This happened on her worst - and last - outburst and quite frankly scared the hell out of me as it looked demonic, like there was no soul inside her. Much later, when the internet was available to everyone, I learned that this is a sign of severe emotional state and increased blood pressure, which makes the pupil seem black.

Though she'd never been violent before, she seemed very near it this time and that's when I decided things were really getting worse and stayed away for good.

Backyard black hole. Couldn’t believe it when I read that.

I moved out of our home, but told my wife that she should move out as she was the one that screwed our marriage up, that she should move in with the man she monkey branched with.

She agreed to move out, so I could move back home.
6 months later, I went to work one morning. That day when I came home, I went to walk out of my back door and go into my back yard. I couldn’t, because a massive sink hole had opened up right outside the back door.

It took 16 tonnes of hardcore and shingle to fill the hole up that had just appeared from nowhere.

So reading that, backyard black hole, is quite apt for me.

I remember getting an angry/argumentative response whenever something she wasn't familiar with entered our conversation.  It could be a memory of mine, a movie, a song, etc. that she didn't know about.  And there was A LOT she didn't know about because she was: 1) not well read (I would say she was incurious and lazy when it came to using her brain), and 2) not originally from the U.S. 

If I shared a memory or something funny that happened from before I met her, I usually got a lot of questions about whether there was another woman involved or how I must've been so happy back then before I met her.  Or a passive-aggressive comment to someone else in earshot that I "used to be sooo cool before I met her and did lots of fun things."

Any bit of pop culture she wasn't familiar with was "trashy" or stupid; books I read she had never heard of were just pretentious, etc.  I started to self-censor and just not talk about much with her.  Almost every conversation topic was a potential minefield. 

Yes, and I've seen other people mention that phenomenon with BPDers here. 

In my experience, it was a sign she was completely dysregulating.  Her pupils would dilate and she would start screaming and yelling, often incoherently.  Sometimes it wouldn't be clear what she was even saying, like I'd have to stop and mentally think about each word and what she was trying to say.  And her memories of the event would be highly distorted so as to justify her outburst, i.e. she would claim others were the ones to have escalated the emotional response by swearing at her or screaming when I'm pretty sure nothing like that happened in each case (I was there). 

The last time I saw it was the day after she told me we were getting divorced & I agreed and said I'd move out in a week.  I was backing out of the driveway to take our D to pre-school, and she started screaming something about me being a "snake" who had "ruined [her] life."  I ignored her and just drove away without making eye contact or engaging.  I was soon-to-be-free and didn't have to tolerate that insanity anymore. 

100% and I think I've written about it on here a lot. Her pupils were so big that those bright blue eyes were almost gone. I'd just stare at them. The last 6 months or more, I would look for the eyes. If they were 'gone' I knew I was in for a hell of a time. Black eyes, legit heavy breathing, different face...and actually say aloud 'Ken...I'm getting frustrated...' and I'd just shut up. Get yelled at, hear how horrible I was, be blamed for someone cutting her off in traffic...for hours, literally not an exaggeration. Up to 6hrs straight at one point of circular arguments and me just dropping my head in defeat 'I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. I'm sorry for whatever I did, can we please go to bed?'.