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Well she moved to a new job that's opening and someone from our work group text put a picture up of the new staff at the job. I didn't want to look but I did. There she was front and center. Smiling away. I immediately began to shake. I hate that she's so happy and noone knows the truth about who she is. That she gets this brand new start and I'm literally shaking because of seeing the photo.

I can't so this anymore. I'm not a victim. I allowed it. But why do I deserve so much pain bevause I gave her my life and then put my foot down and asked for a more mutual partneship? Life really does suck

The anger and rage are what came back after the shock. I wrote what I'd want to say to her. I wont send it. I'm far too logical now to know there is no benefit. But I'll share it here because I need to right now. PS. I know it's anger and when I cool down I'll see the illogical parts of this. I do already. I know it's really anger at myself for getting involved and not leaving right away when I knew something was off.

"I saw your picture. And I started shaking. I have deep seated trauma from you. The covert emotional abuse. The way I'd be upset and it would always turn to me apologizing promising to do better. Telling me to "get over it" because someone called L. at work. Calmly telling you how i feel for you to spin it back onto me. That's emotional abuse. Ask your amazing therapist if that isn't emotional abuse. Be honest for once. So go ahead with your smile and mask so people think you're a kind human being. Go tell them the truth.

But you couldn't handle the truth yourself. It would destroy the whole fantasy you made that you are a victim. Because you arent. You have caused trauma to everyone you've ever been with. You get used by someone and so what do you do with it? Spend your life using others but blaming them.

You're a fraud and the most evil human being I have ever met. A therapist with no empathy or ability to feel emotions. Keep putting the mask on. Keep using human beings for what they can give to you. Keep preaching yoga love as you leave destruction and pain behind you.

"Oh I need homework help. Well this guy is someone I can use. Oh I have anxiety. I'll use roberto for that. Oh I'm sad over Z. Well let me use this guy now. ___ his feelings. What the hell do they matter to me? It's all about me. Who gives a ___ that he loves me. I'm not gonna put any work in to show him I love him. Why? Because he's an object to me. A toy I can play with."

You're pure evil. Spin it anyway you want. You're an adult. You choose to suck your boyfriends dry and then leave them when the toy finally speaks up about being unhappy they are only being played with. The worst decision of my life was coming to your party. So smile away and use your new victim as much as you can.

Someone in my support group said it best. "Roberto, she emotionally raped you for a year and a half . Left. Came back to rape you for a month. Left. And then had a couple more rapes after."

I hope you're proud of yourself. Smile that fake smile. Underneath it's pure evil and selfishness."

Yes, all that is your anger speaking. And quietly underneath it, there's your hurt, fear, betrayal, or other feelings.

Don't think you need to stop yourself because they are illogical. Feelings aren't supposed to be logical or rational. That's not their job.

The only role being logical, rational, or wise has around this is a very small one:

You know that taking action on your feelings--sending a letter like this to your ex--will just make more of a mess, so you aren't going to do it. You've nailed that!

Please don't try to talk yourself out of your feelings because they aren't logical. 

Well I did send it. I didn't know what to do with the anger. I don't really care right now. I literally didn't know what to do with reliving the trauma. It was too much to deal with.

Now it's not my place to tell you how you should act, having anger is a very real part of processing this trauma, and it is indeed trauma!

If your ex is BPD you HAVE to understand that you are dealing with someone with a very stunted emotional development and a person who is lacking empathy. I don't know your story, but from everything I read about borderlines, there is a 0.00001% chance this will be meaningfully absorbed. It will quite likely now be used a justification for all her crappy actions against you because now she can parade around how full of hate and toxic YOU are.


Now obviously you are not that person. You are someone who has suffered an incredible trauma and are trying to process the hurt in the best way you know. I 100% relate to your comment today because I saw a picture on a news website of someone who looked exactly like my ex and it gave rise to uneasy feelings, which is why I'm probably on these forums right now.

I guess my advice is take that anger you may feel, and rather than direct it to a person who won't be able to understand the deeper meaning behind your vitriol and try and channel it into someone productive. Go lift some weights, a run, something that you can unleash your feelings into AND get an endorphin kick.

I do hope you feel better mate.

I'm literally numb right now at work. I just got off the phone with a therapist who does EMDR. I set up an appointment for next Monday. I didn't ask for any of this in my life. I just wanted to love someone who I thought felt the same about me. It's all a sham, and I had to allow myself to stay in it when I should have ran even before she showed an interest in me.

You are not alone.  Many of us are trying to get through the shock, end up numb, and are then sitting there dealing with hidden trauma alone because we were isolated by our abuser, who everyone else seems to be fooled by.  It is absolutely a cruel part of engaging with a BPD.

I've just finished reading two books that I believe may help you.  (Both of us seem to be intellectualizing rather than accepting our feelings.)

Try Healing from Hidden Abuse as well as Psychopath Free.  Both talk about the covert abuse you've likely suffered and how to heal from it.  I'm about to start reading Full Catastrophe Living on suggestion from my therapist.

I did read psychopath free. I'll check out the other one. It's tough. There are days where I am really good at feeling my feelings. I will stop the intellectualization and figure out the feeling and just kind of look at it in my mind. I'll remind myself that it can't hurt me, and it's okay to have those feelings. It's the anger that gets me the most. The feeling of being betrayed and lied to. When we went to couples therapy and I did my genogram part the therapist told me that I have a close knit group of people who i trust. I don't need many people in my life. But I expect trust, and love from those that I am willing to allow myself to love. He was dead on. I think this is where my anger really comes from.

What you expected was totally fair and with a healthy partner, would have been fulfilling.  You can't get love or trust from someone who has nothing to give - a lot of what pwBPD do is projection - take that for what it is.  Allow yourself to grieve the time you lost and the investment you made.  You were loving.  Someone new will come into your life and you will be loved as much as you are loving.

Keep the faith!

Thank you for the perspective. It's true. In my first real relationship I was more controlling, jealous, didn't want to talk about my feelings. I did a lot of changes in this one. I fought against my self-sabotage, and did some introspection. The sad thing is the introspection led me to see early on that this person wasn't right for me. But only after the idealization, and when I tried to leave she pulled at my caretaker heart strings. And I foolishly thought if I left I'd be doing more self-sabotage instead of trying to work on what I could do in the relationship. Well I did that, but was putting it into something that was never going to pay me back. I have tried to grieve but have only made it 12 days max without NC and outside of a recycle we've been finished since January. So I really do need to grieve. You can't grieve when you're still in contact. Thank you again. This has helped me this morning.

To share another perspective... .I just read some of your historical posts.

I suspect you have had an emotional wound prior this relationship, possibly latent. Maybe from a parent or a sibling or a past relationship. Might be that you have never been fully appreciated for who you really are. Might be that you had an experience where you were grossly underappreciated.

"Appreciated" might not be the exact description. Love, respect may also be elements of this.

Your relationship with this girl was a bright star - it held a lot of promise and it some ways it was the appreciation you have long deserved.

What you found out, in time, was that her words and actions of appreciation (again, this word might not really capture all of the emotion in you) were exaggerations of what was really happening in the relationship. I'm not suggesting that she was insincere or malicious - more that she lives in a world of emotional hyperbole and you took (many of us took) it all very literally.

You were on your way to the appreciation you have long deserved and you were certainly willing to be a reciprocating partner and shower her in love and affection which she appreciated.

In time, you started to see inconsistencies, and couldn't make sense of it. This started to dredge up some other wounds... .

Now, obviously I don't know much about your life and this is conjecture, but you might want to pursue this a bit and see where it takes you.  One clue is that you are (and have been) reacting with anger more than, say, a sense of sorrow and loss.

So yes, there is trauma. The pwBPD traits may have been a match to a woodpile that has stacked up over time.

My first real romantic relationship in my life was someone who I now know had borderline traits if not the disorder itself. It was much more intense. If I tried to leave she'd cut herself. A lot of drug use, and getting into legal trouble, etc. Always flirting with other men, and everything. Then I found out that she had found a replacement for me before we actually broke up, and she was pregnant within a month of us breaking up. That in and of itself was very traumatizing. I remember calling her to speak, and he picked up, and told me what he was going to do with her after he hung up on me, etc. It probably was the catalyst for this. But after that relationship I just went out with friends and partied a lot. I never processed it. I didn't know how to. I definitely buried it.  

But I swore I would never be with someone who was like that ever again, and that I would work on myself (because I did realize where I went wrong in that relationship) so that I wouldn't fall into bad behaviors on my part. I came to terms that I did things in that relationship which did help it come crashing down. Then this one came along. And she wasn't like the extreme parts of my other ex. Which might have fooled me. She had a career, a condo, seemed to be very "with it". Jealous like the other ex, but I thought I'd overlook it as she told me eventually that she really did trust me. But the subtle emotional abuse, and instances of bullying were something I didn't experience with the first one. So maybe I wasn't aware of it all.

And you're right. I was ready to be a better partner. I saw the areas I drove my first partner away, and what I wouldn't do in this relationship.  And I tried to do better. I wasn't jealous or controlling of her. I tried to talk instead of suppressing. I encouraged instead of trying to keep her "tied to me". As much as I could, I kept doing self-care (now I see the subtle way she kept me away from friends and family). I think it's why this one only lasted 15 months compared to the first one being 3 years. My brain saw the signs, and I finally got the courage to get out.

When I go to EMDR I have to tell her about that initial episode because you're right. This is where it probably stems from. Thanks for posing the idea. I might not have consciously brought it up to my therapist if I didn't just think of it now.

And it's annoying. But I know this anger is a lot of projection at my own internal anger at myself. It's tough not to tell yourself "how could you fall for this again? Why didn't you get out when you first had these  concerns?" But that all comes with self-healing and self-compassion.