BPDFamily.com

My relationship with my BPxh is extremely confusing because sometimes he is normal, its a bit like an alcoholic who is sometimes sober and sometimes out of their mind. Looking back, wonder how much of my BPxh's 'falling out of love' over the years is the BP devalue and discard or just normal marriage issues?

Pre-separation:
During the initial break-up I had access to all his text and FB messages... .He was telling friends a year before he left he had slowly fallen out of love with me. What they didn't know was the increasing  devaluing of me after our son was born - criticizing and blaming me for much of his unhappiness.

The separation:
I couldn't understand how he could break-up our family and neither could our community. I'm an amazing person! I'm beautiful, talented, loving, kind, funny... .I am by all means the catch of his life. And I gave him everything, so much of myself its unreal... .support, love, I tried to inspire him. Then I got the ol' I love you but I'm not in love with you. He, on the other hand, was not liked much by other people and not as attractive in body or spirit. He also claimed he didn't want a 'core' family, whatever that means, he wanted to be on his own and focus on his solo album he never made (mid-life crisis?). But he wanted to be best friends and co-parent... .

The recycle (?):
6 months after he left me, he realized he still had feelings for me and maybe made a mistake. He claimed "I realize now that you are a beautiful, sparkling, amazing light and woman and I left because I feel inadequate" --- ok... .

He said he would go to therapy and found someone, but never went, and progressively got manically flip-floppy: One day sending me extremely romantic love songs, the next day silent treatment, next day "I am madly in love with the mother of my child, she is the hottest, most amazing woman and gift in my life" to "I can't be with her! It's over, I'm scared - why am I going back to her i was unhappy, I'm not ready for therapy'

It ended with jealous rage and punishment over him falsely accusing me of sleeping with someone else (excuse me, you left me!) and projection because he had asked another woman on a date and felt guilty - and then some of his worst words to me in our 9 yrs together "You hold a grudge because I left you last year, get over yourself!" WHAT? If anything, can anyone help me with THAT sentence ... .it's beyond comprehension... .what is he really saying here?

Why is he so conflicted about me? what is this love / hate?

In every relationship, you have things you love and things you don't love about the partner. But you kinda meld them all together and accept the overall. But the black-and-white thinking gets you in a BPD relationship. To some extent, you're either all good or all bad in their minds, and it can change in a moment.

Unless there's a real turnaround in the thinking, you may eventually become "all bad." Everything you do and say will be scrutinized for "all bad" too.
To reconcile, they may want you to become "all good" in terms of their criteria. Needless to say, that isn't humanly going to happen.

This is why marriage/family counsellors won't do couples counselling with BPD folks until both have gone to individual counselling. For both partners, there has to be a positive view of each other and a willingness to accept the not-so-good parts and work towards something better, but of course imperfect.

Any couple that has separated has a lot to work through. Expecting no hurt feelings and complete turn around after separation is impossible.

well, extreme love/hate and scenarios like this:


are certainly "BPDish" behavior.

a couple of things i learned over time as i detached from my relationship and my narrative about how it evolved and broke down shifted:

1. human nature still applies to BPD
2. when a relationship is breaking down, both parties are usually on pretty different pages. for example, one party may be further along in the grieving process. we dont always see this.

we have an article here about how relationships break down that i found really helpful to sort of plug my relationship into and view through that prism: https://bpdfamily.com/content/your-relationship-breaking-down

does this ring any bells? can you see your relationship in the various stages?