BPDFamily.com

I haven't posted here in quite a while. But I'm feeling sad/in a bit of pain tonight.

My relationship with my BPD ex lasted 25 years. Despite the frequent turmoil in our relationship, I loved her deeply; and in many ways we were exceptionally well-suited for each other. Then, in the midst of a crisis with her son/my stepson, she monkeybranched into an affair with a married NPD guy who she had been involved with five decades ago. My ex and I have a son/stepson in common and we've maintained contact, but I also keep contact relatively minimal. And I've been doing reasonably well for the last year (her affair started four years ago and, after hanging on for two years, I ended our relationship two years ago).

She called tonight and I talked with her on the phone, and it kind of got to me (to a degree that it normally doesn't). In many ways, her BPD and distorted perceptions/rage/paranoia seem much worse than when we were together. Even though her behavior toward me isn't bad (I'm not really a target of her rage these days, etc.), it's painful to watch her state. And it was hard to get her off the phone tonight.

Her affair with her boyfriend continues unabated. On the one hand, she gets to travel a lot with him, and she always wanted to travel more. On the other hand, the relationship seems to very adversely affect her BPD. And it's not surprising that a relationship with someone who is highly narcissistic would exacerbate the symptoms of someone with BPD. It's not a publicly acknowledged relationship and, apparently, his wife has no idea it's going on.

She was talking tonight about where she traveled on her last trip. And that kind of got to me too. It was a location with significance that we had travelled together to previously, and those memories have meaning/importance for me. And I always had wanted to travel with her more - it didn't happen because of financial constraints and time constraints from other responsibilities (including my job). But when we did travel together, I always enjoyed it immensely.

In the years we were together, I think I kept her more oriented to reality than she is now. That included pointing out the nuances and complexities in people's thinking and behavior, when she was perceiving them in totalizing black and white terms. But she often experienced my input along these lines as invalidating. Had I known then what I know now about BPD, I would have handled things rather differently - working more to validate her emotions.

Anyway, writing here about all this seems to help ease the pain a bit.

I'm so sorry you're going through this- I did the same thing last night thinking about raising my kids with my BPD ex.  We were married for 25 years as well.  Long story short, my kid was going on a cruise with family this week and it brought up so many old memories that I don't know what to do with.  It's hard to be moved on but also miss the time you shared as well.

They say time heals all, and I am thankful that I rarely slump into that type of mindset anymore.  Birthdays and holidays still take me by surprise sometimes, and maybe it's something I'll never be 100% over.  Like you, my ex went after another man and they married almost a year ago.  I'm glad it worked out and she's not alone, but a part of me still wants to resent her (and her husband) as well.

Anyway, I wish you luck and I wish that I had more advice...I think it just takes time though.  Your ex (and mine) made their decisions and we have to learn to live with that, even if the situation is less than ideal for their mental health.  At the end of the day, it's not our responsibility to save them or protect them any longer.

Hi Pensive1

A lot of what you have written I can relate with. I was with my wife 27 years. She is undiagnosed but I strongly suspect bpd or quiet narcissist. We were chalk and cheese, opposites attract, and my calmness and logic kept her fairly grounded and I was her rock.

Two years ago she also monkey branched, although she was pretty quick to drag him out and parade him around, I basically felt that I had been replaced, wiped from her life and replaced with him. His wife was a friend of my wife’s, and they always struck me as being quite alike, other than his wife seems mentally stable. She left her husband because of his narcissistic behaviour. My wife tries to validate it, saying he likes her because she is nothing like his wife when I can clearly see the similar personalities of them both.

They are currently on holiday, again. Part of our problem was due to the fact that I didn’t like booking holidays. It’s not that we didn’t go on holidays, it is the fact that I didn’t like organising them. She has her own business, owns a salon, and is booked up months in advance. She is also a control freak, she has a business partner but hates leaving her in charge. We also had/have three dogs, so I didn’t book holidays because a) I didn’t like giving her the stress of having to sort out the business while she was away and b) I don’t like leaving my responsibilities (like the dogs) to someone else.

The guy she is with takes her on holiday a lot. I have got the dogs, so they don’t need to organise them, he doesn’t seem to care about her business so doesn’t think about the affect that has, and before she moved in with him for the first year he would leave his 14 year old child at home alone over night while he stayed round her house getting drunk and high on drugs, so clearly has no moral code.

I wonder, is there a pattern of her contacting you after they have been on vacation? Before my wife moved in with the other guy, she would go through the cycle of returning from holiday with him, to ghosting him for a week and constantly messaging or phoning me, and trying to get me to go round her house.
Even now she has moved in with him, she will moan to her sister about him booking holidays, she will moan about her business partner when she is on holiday stressing about the salon.

It strikes me as somewhat strange, and seems to support the fact that someone with bpd is never happy, enough is never enough. I can’t get my head around why they invest such a long period of time in a relationship with you, and then leave you because the grass is greener, yet do nothing but moan about it when they get what they think they want.

It’s easy to ruminate about doing things differently in hindsight, but the reality with a borderline is the shifting goalposts and whether or not if you did anything differently the outcome would likely be the same.

Thanks for sharing, Pook and Rowdy. The commonalities in our experiences and in some of the patterns of our BPD exes are interesting. It's nice to feel understood/not alone.