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This is something I was thinking of last night laying in bed.  I remember when me and my friend got back in contact I was seeing a counsellor over a different issue but ended up discussing him with her and she said he is obviously fulfilling a need in you.

So last night I was ruminating.  My friend isn't classically good looking, he is 50, has put weight on, has lost his hair (or its thinning so he shaves it), doesn't appear to have many friends, no family as such, never been married, lives in a rented room and has no steady income.  He's an actor but not a big time actor but I believe is good at it (which is no surprise I guess for somebody that wears a mask 24/7 365 days a year). So on paper not a catch at all.  So why do I crave him?  I think back to when I was a young adult; I was forever trying to be the fixer for my mum.  She was a single parent and my brother was useless and always bringing grief home, so I tried to make her life better by buying her nice presents when I started work.  I tried to get her a better job to better herself etc.  When I was 19 she upped and moved stateside.  When I got in to relationships with men who did what I would call 'menial' work, I would encourage and motivate them to get better jobs, help write their CV's etc.  I know I am a people fixer, I try to encourage people to do the best they can and are their cheerleader.  Something I don't really do for myself.  So I guess I tried to fix my friend.  He lost contact with his daughter and I was willing to help locate her and mediate that for him but he said that 'she's gone' and I never pushed it.  I never wanted an intimate relationship with my friend again, I don't particularly fancy him but I am drawn to him.  I was always just happy with friendship and having him in my life and hoped we could help one another somehow.  Maybe its that he reminds me of home (I live 100 miles away from my birthplace and miss it terribly at times).  Maybe when we get on he is very easy to talk to, and can be very funny and warm.  

I still struggle to understand what need he fulfilled and why I still want him in my life as my life at the moment is fine without him in it.  So what is that need?  I need to try and understand what it is and where the void is in my life.

What need did your exBPD fulfil in you?

i think seeing this stuff requires a deep dive, insideoutside.

its not especially easy to see, but when we do, i think it really helps in our relationships with everyone, really, and regarding our struggles, we realize some of it is more about us than it is about them and that helps shift our focus to things within our power. 

youre not alone here with this tendency to "people fix". there are fine lines to be learned. helping others is good, right? sure it is. but was the help we are offering requested of us? are we helping the best way we can, in a way that respects another persons autonomy (and our own), and doesnt enable or hinder them.

i know in my case my ex fulfilled a very powerful need to feel "understood", to be loved for the things i most wanted to be loved for, believed i should be loved for. she really nurtured those things. i always had a hard time with rejection, and so when she dumped me, it was really a double whammy that brought it all to the surface and felt at the time that it confirmed my greatest fears and doubts about myself. interesting how i bought into both the love and acknowledgment of these things, as well as the rejection, so strongly. recognizing it, acknowledging the significance of the loss, and working to lean on myself a bit harder and find those things through my god and from inside, was a big part of my healing.



i suspect these things are connected. what do you think?

Fantastic questions, insideoutside!     I hear you're feeling baffled and can relate to feeling a strong emotional attachment to someone I'm not romantically attracted to.  It's a confusing place to be (for you and the object of your attachment). 


FWIW, I've asked similar questions of myself this past year.  Here are a few of the conclusions I've come to.

•  I am processing old trauma.  About two years ago I started having a bunch of dreams/memories about a relationship I had with my ex when we were in our teens (he recently turned 50).  As a result, I've had to look at old abuse/trauma that I buried (pretended didn't happen), acknowledge and feel it. 

•  I am looking at family of origin stuff.  Looking at past trauma raised difficult questions about how I got into the relationship in the first place and motivated me to look at family of origin stuff.  Who was looking out for me when I was a teen?  I am part way through this part of the process and it's helped explain things about my family that have caused lifelong confusion. 

•  I am getting unstuck.  Until recently, I didn't realize how stuck and confused about my life I felt when the dreams/memories started.  The process of looking at old trauma and looking at my FOO has inspired a cascade of change that, I hope, is orienting me, helping me understand what I want my future to look like and helping me get on the road to start building it.  As I focus more on what I want for my future, and engaging with the world to create it, memories of ex recede and are feeling so much less relevant/meaningful than they did even a year ago.  I can imagine a time when I don't think about him anymore. 

I hear you're married with a teenage daughter and that from the outside your life probably appears fulfilling and successful.  But having a successful appearing family life isn't all there is to living.  What else is there?  What do you yearn for?  When you're honest with yourself, where is there a lack?

The biggest factor for me is family of origin.  Through therapy I came to understand that my mother was likely undiagnosed BPD and my father had many narcissistic traits.  In my formative years that's the household I grew up in - with the added bonus of it being a strict religious home.  Chaotic unpredictable love is what felt like normal to me.

I met my expwBPD just a few months before my mother died and became totally enmeshed with him when she died.  That is not a coincidence.  That's the void he filled.

Incidentally, chaotic unpredictable love is what STILL feels like normal to me.  I'm coming to accept that I will never feel in love with a non-BPD, but I am learning that what I can feel for a non-BPD is what love truly is.

My mother had NPD and my father was extremely passive. He was a great guy alone, but he NEVER stood up to her when it came to their offspring. She called the shots, period.

I married my pwBPD later in life and thought I had hit the jackpot. He was so into me. There were signs of BPD early on though. He wanted to be joined at the hip. At first I really liked that, but over time I found it suffocating at times. There were issues of jealousy when my family visited, and then he completely ignored me when his side visited. We always fought when I went on a business trip to the point that I looked for a different job. I was confused.

Ah, but time. We became more and more isolated, and he resented anything at all that competed for my focus on him. It became really difficult as he began demanding more and more of my time and expecting perfection in every interaction. He dug into every aspect of my life and was critical. Then he told me that my sole focus in life had to be his happiness. Initially I didn't know what to say, but now I know how unhealthy that is.

Then I learned in how counselling how I really didn't know any more what I wanted from the relationship any more. I couldn't express it. That was a really odd revelation. I had to go all the way back to the beginning when he liked me and believed in me. That's what I wanted.

But it had been years and years since we had been there. He despises me. His lists of my faults and negative reevaluation of our relationship drove me into despair until I realized that no loving partner would treat me that way. A therapist told me that they NEVER do that in marriage counselling, but take bite-sized issues and work on them one-at-at-a-time. And they deal with the present. No reanalyzing the past and finding dirt that wasn't there at the time.

So yes, he met a need. As horrible as this has been, I've found holes from my childhood that are finally scarred over. It would have been nice if we had both been more whole from the beginning, but I've also learned that I have to let go of the past completely and work out correct attitudes and approaches. Some people say that you have to look at the past to learn from the mistakes, but that's an incomplete view. If you were dysfunctional in the past, you need to learn the correct way of functioning FIRST.

Hard stuff!