BPDFamily.com

Hello all. I'm grateful to have such an amazing resource, but I can't believe I'm here. I'm a 37 year old male, she a 29 year old female. Relationship lasted just shy of 3 years.

Been obsessively lurking for about 5 months. I have another version of the same old story. I'm 3 months no contact from my "soul mate" and "twin flame" / reptile overgrown broken child ex. I've had 20 years of therapy and figured I knew some things about life and love. Left a 10 year relationship / marriage and dove into a new relationship with who I thought was absolute perfection. 

I mean good god. I put my heart, soul, time, money, energy, sanity, and good nature into this from the core (wounded, abused, caretaker, white knight, co-dependent core). She is undiagnosed (unless she's hiding it). With the help of a long time EMDR therapist who has met her on multiple occasions, and listened to months and months of my perplexing insanity over this ordeal, I've determined she's a very dangerous covert narc / BPD alien. Extremely beautiful, extremely intelligent, very successful, educated (Child Trauma Therapist at leading hospital - recent psych masters), etc. The sex man, my god the sex life we had. She is basically the devil destroying man after man as she continues forward in life.

Waking up to this deal towards the end of the devaluation stage was like being thrown in nut house on another planet. I have been through some VERY difficult things in life that have nearly killed and broken me on more than one occasion. This took the cake. I've never been suicidal, but got to thinking about it. I quit my job and have basically been unemployed and draining my retirement account for the better part of a year trying to get my bearings. C-PTSD is about the half of it.

I'm a strong willed, successful, attractive and outgoing guy who has never had much of a problem with career, basic life functioning, etc. Now, I'm reevaluating everything from birth. Toxic relationship patterns, geographical moves, ways of speaking and being, the source of my identity, why I am who I am, how in the hell I was able to be the door mat of the century to such a blatantly immature and pathalogically manipulative liar from hell. 

I have hope and have experienced some progress, but life will never be the same. This isn't the kind of experience I signed up for. I was an inner city cop for 10 years and know enough about the dark recesses of humanity. I didn't need this, I didn't want this. Very intense and consistent EMDR therapy targeting many relationship points, police experience, and deep childhood issues has been extremely helpful.  Other survivors have come out of the wood work in very interesting ways to offer support, but the emptiness and pain is vast.

Halfway through I started to have an issue with never meeting friend groups, being isolated from many parts of her life, no acknowledgement on social media ever, constant talk about all the amazing men she always met. Total compartmentalization and control with subtle shame, blame shifting, and gaslighting. The subtle dangling of my "downgrade" replacement for many months before publicly displaying the new love of her life all over social media 3 weeks after I shut the door on her was brutal and sick (final knife turn / button push). I closed the door on her with the only shred of energy from a smashed heart that I had left. Side note - a mutual friend of her new dude called and gave him the warning of his life, to no avail. He's doomed.

I know there is always two sides to every story and I am surely complicit in some ways. I had been pushed to doing one or two pretty angry things out of desperation, but man, who wouldn't.   Our perfect storm of mirroring neurons is surely partly my responsibility, but this is one of those life situations where there is no reasonable way to really own your part. The finger can be overwhelmingly pointed at the ex in retrospect. I get the therapy to target why you were attracted in the first place, but christ, this is never taught as a possibility. There is nothing to prepare your average person for something like this. Even my therapist said they hardly get more than a page about these type of people in school.

In any case. Long intro. Thanks for reading. I was finally pushed to post after being blocked and unblocked on Instagram 6 times in these three months. I know I shouldn't look, but the behavior I have witnessed by doing so has just checked off the last of the 10,000 indicators that I am 100% right about this enigma that is out there. Ridiculous as it seems I get some satisfaction in seeing the nonsense while remaining public, with nothing to hide.  Man I could have written SO MUCH MORE. Thank you everyone on here for keeping my head above water. I feel like Robert Duval's character in THX1138 when he finally pops through the man hole cover and sees the post apocolyptic world above.

 

Very warm welcome to the boards TPN  

I can relate to nearly all of what you have been through, and would just like to say at this point that with regards to doing a few petty things out of desperation - I think back to the enormous self control and restraint that I had considering how my BPDx behaved and often have actually felt regret that I didnt do anything in retaliation. But then when I think about it I realise it would have not had any effect more than to cause her to dysregulate more, and add a lot of fuel to an already smouldering fire.

I think with your experience in life and law enforcement training that you know all about how important it is to keep the peace and defuse situations with difficult people and when it came to my own experience I just had that inner intuition to go on a lot of the time, with no knowledge of the person I was with in terms of their condition. I did subconciously realise that whilst it might have felt it would help at the time, to release that stress and retaliate, it would only serve to compound the problem and have it come back 10 fold or more in the future to bite me.

I havent seen the film you mentioned so going to watch it tonight, because for me it has been many small things like that which go a long way to where I feel ive almost overcome what I went through, this board, the experiences and the tools as well as keeping an upbeat mindset despite the ordeals we have been through, has been the single most valuable thing in helping me recover and I hope already that by sharing what youve been through in time will lighten the load even how heavy it will feel right now  :)

Thanks for the reply Cromwell.

I read somewhere on here that we should take comfort in the fact that they were mirroring us and we loved what we saw and experienced. They truly loved us, and we really do love ourselves. The fact it went as far and got as bad as it was, because it actually was real, for a time. Also, that the fact that we were able to be so patient and give it our all shows how good we are as people. I waffle on this one a bit as I can blame my codependency. Karmic soulmates rings a little truer to me. Baseball bat to the face from the universe.

It is very hard to not hope for suffering on her end. I'm not perfect, and the depths of pain from this makes me feel ok with wanting her to suffer. I know she is suffering every day, but something more. Some consequences for her may get her closer to bottom before she wrecks anyone else. I suppose my silence and eventual indifference is a consequence.

I have several close female friends who overwhelmingly agree that it is a huge loss for her to lose me. I know that to be true, but man it doesn't help much. I do feel a little crappy inside hoping she runs into a high level narc that she thinks is the one, and gets absolutely consumed by him. Then she can see my success and happiness form a far and feel like the bag of destructive sh*t she is, but you know, human anger thoughts I guess.

I'd give a lot for indifference right now. I can't even fathom getting to that point.   

Hi TPN,

Welcome to the board.  I'm glad you decided to post and share some of your story.  I spent time reading here too before posting and I found that to write about my own situation was really cathartic.  I hope it has proven helpful to get some of this onto the page.  

I'm sorry to hear your pain.     How did things end between you and did you remain in contact at first or go straight to NC?  It can be difficult not to check in on an ex to see what they are doing, but try to remember that doing so is maintaining a connection for you and this may not be supporting your detaching.  

It's great to hear that you are seeing a T who can help you to work through the grief towards healing.  I can see you still feel very hurt by the r/s and the impact it has had on you.  It's OK to feel mad about that.  I also felt stripped to my core and am at the start of what I anticipate to be a long process in therapy putting some of the pieces back together.  In many ways I am grateful for all of the terrible things that happened, as they brought me to where I am today and that was altogether necessary for the sake of my future being better than the past.  It's possible in time you will also feel that way.


I feel you on that.  Perhaps though, it will be so much more.  It's like once your eyes have been opened they can never be closed again.  With the therapy you are doing, it sounds like you have the potential to build life the way you would choose it to be.  That is a gift.  

I'll look forward to hearing more of your story.

Love and light x            

Harley Quinn,

Thanks for the support. I wasn't aware of the extent of devaluation that had already occurred when I was made aware of what I believe is her condition. I was deep in the FOG. When my therapist turned the light on for me, I started looking into the literature and all the info on these boards.  

We had a particularly dramatic night in October that gave her all she needed to go on a full fledge victim card pulling / smearing campaign.  She said to me, "I'm telling the whole world about how you treated me. Friends, co-workers, family, everyone. I need all the support I can get to hold me accountable." My jaw still hurts from getting punched in the face several times and I have scars from her biting me while I was trying to get her out the front door of my house. I was no angel that night, but I kept it to restraint and removal while taking an ass kicking.

This is when the push/pull cycle sped up. The I love you / don't leave me. We had a supervised breakup at my therapist's office. Instead of leaving she waited in the parking lot after and love bombed me until we nearly screwed in the parking lot. I attempted to force a long break, agreeing to talk on the phone once a week for a month before meeting in person again.

She couldn't make it through. The cycle of distancing and obsessing on her end became glaring and brutal. Lies became embarrassingly obvious. Blaming and shaming then begging to work things out were shifting on a weekly basis. She would tell me about all the things she was doing. Diving into social life and trips. Taunting me with all of it. "Wish you were here", "everything makes me think of you", etc. Breaking into my house at midnight and screwing my brains out all night telling me she wants to spend the rest of her life with me, only to shut me out the next day.

Of course, I was still obsessed and addicted. I frantically tried to improve myself and "fix" things to win her back. We were reading relationship books and comparing notes, etc. I took a few trips to see my kid, family, etc and she absolutely dominated my time and attention anytime I tried to distance or do something for myself.

We would meet in person towards the end and she would shame me for improving my health and appearance and making progress towards a new career. At this point I had read enough to start to see the pattern. I began establishing boundaries and asserting for myself. This is when the narc side came out. I started seeing a very vindictive and angry side that seemed to enjoy picking me apart.

Our last night together she eloquently pushed about 15 buttons in a row in a way I had never seen from her. I can't describe it here in a way that would paint a proper picture. All I can say is that with the knowledge I had gained looking into BPD at that point, I saw it clear as a bell. The insecurities that she had observed in me over the three years she wrapped up in about two paragraphs of questioning me and telling me about her week at private band parties with other men. I had enough knowledge from observing past lies to know it was about her new relationship. I broke down and started shaking and crying at the reality of what I was experiencing.

I could see a sick smirk on her face. A joy in breaking me. She tried to embrace me at that moment and comfort me. I felt a deep repulsion to her presence and touch, I couldn't take it anymore. I put my foot down and demand she stop disrespecting me. She gathered her coat and things and said her last words to me in person that will echo in my head forever, "I can't be around you anymore, you're just a trigger for me."

After that I got another round of push/pull on another trip out of town. I tested her some more with the knowledge I had gained and she suddenly started to look like a real sick "mean girl" high school character in a bad movie. Being in a position in the end, to manipulate her in reverse to confirm my suspicions was the most depressing experience of my life.

I finished her off by letting her down easy and asking her to leave my things on the front porch of my house before I got home from out of town. She didn't. I was home when she finally did. I watched from a darkened apartment and locked door, only to find my favorite t-shirt of hers soaked in her smell and perfume waiting in the bag. Brutal manipulation. I used it for an EMDR therapy session and burned it. NC started at that moment. I got one text two weeks later accusing me of breaking into her house for an HDMI cable (only used for movie nights with me, aka new guy). I didn't respond.

Then of course the new love of her life all over social media and the blocking / unblocking nonsense. I'm sure this more than satisfies your how did it end request. I feel a little silly writing all of this. There is so much more I could say. The trips, the love, the commitment, the international travel, hanging with my little boy, and on and on.

And as I always read, she moved right along while I plummeted into useless despair for months. I got a little satisfaction out of her boyfriend's buddy (interestingly enough a survivor of a very violent and dangerous BPD ex himself) giving him a call to warn him, but it didn't help much. There is another depressing story about a whole crew of flying monkeys being deployed on social media that I won't go into here. Just more hallmark signs of her sick reality.

Hi TPN. My exBPDgf is 29 years old now and she’s a child trauma therapist in a hospital too. What a coincidence!...

Ah. I've heard they are the worst of the worst. Naturally, we have good taste. 

Hello, TPN!

*welcome*

Please allow me to welcome you to the discussion forums. I'm so sorry for what you're going through but glad you have found a community where many of us have been through similar experiences, and we can learn from each other. I believe that you have found the best place in the world for understanding, compassion, and education as it relates to BPD, or facing emotionally intense relationships (as the byline of our logo says). So…we support each other here. I was a little scared when I joined, but mostly about having my fears confirmed. Now that they have been, I'm feeling much better.  :)

So, again, welcome!

Thank you for sharing with us what you have thus far:


I know you are here by way of sorrow, but I just want you to know that you are among peers, friend. Unfortunately, there are legions of us! I'm so sorry you are experiencing this. However, I think you'll find a lot of parallels here - lots of members (including me) have similar stories. You will see from reading the posts here that you are far from alone.

There are also site articles and helpful tools that can be utilized by you to help you navigate this healing process. Since you've been lurking for five months, you probably already know where all the applicable articles are for your situation, but if not, I would like to encourage you to take them in as you're able.

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I believe you will be greatly comforted by the support here and the fact that we really understand what you are going through. We've all been there to varying degrees. Take care of yourself. We will look out for future posts from you.

Keep writing, keep processing, keep learning!


-Speck