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I’ve posted a few times in these forums. I’ve found that at times I have felt healed, other times I’m still at a loss as how to move forward from this and I do feel that this relationship, despite being incredibly short, has impacted me more than any other.

What I wanted to discuss is the idea of reaching out to this person, telling them how I feel.

I recognise that after a certain amount of time, contacting ANY ex is risky and carries with it many stigmas and negative feelings. However, I sometimes wonder if it is just worth the risk.

I and my ex dated for a period of six months, but knew each other for two years at university. There was always very strong chemistry between us, before we dated. Any time we would get close, she would pull away. The first time she did this was when we hung out for a week; she suddenly told me she couldn’t carry on hanging out with me because her feelings were overwhelming. Immediately after she told me this, she started messaging me more than she ever had, which confused me. I then told her that I’d like to carry on hanging out and that there was no pressure; to which she ranted at me in a phone call (for the first time of many) about all the reasons we couldn’t hang out. I was baffled as to this strong reaction, but didn’t question it. Didn’t know about BPD or know she had it, at this stage.

After that we didn’t really hang out much and didn’t speak. Sometimes she’d engage with me and flirt etc, sometimes she’d disappear. She then ignored/avoided me for four months, and at the end of this suddenly messaged me apologising for the silence.

We started hanging out, and it moved into dating. Every other week or so she’d jump into a speech about how she didn’t want to feel trapped, this wasn’t a relationship, etc. We were seeing each other every day, talking every day, feelings were being discussed, it was very much like a relationship.

She broke up with me twice, both times seemed to come after me spending time with her family, I don’t know if that’s relevant. The first time she was triggered due to me not being able to respond to a message because my battery had died – she ranted at me and was angry at me for days, then decided she couldn’t trust me, I was a liar, etc. She ended it. I didn’t hear from her for a month or so.

We started dating again after a month – things picked back up after we went back to uni. She seemed to have more of a hold on her irritations, but was still acting the same in some ways. Her feelings seemed to be stronger this time around.

The second break up came after she’d taken me to her sister’s house. I was already feeling anxious on the way there because she always had extreme hyper vigilance around my behaviour around her family. My mood was slightly off on the way there, as was hers, and this was making me nervous. She became angrier and angrier and once we’d reached the sister’s, she exploded with anger in front of everyone and told me to leave – despite the fact that I hadn’t actually done anything or said anything.

She then broke up with me about an hour later, telling me I’d disrespected her and her family with my behaviour, and that she could never come back from that.

A week or so went past, we didn’t speak and she didn’t come in to university. When she did finally come in, I tried to approach her to see how we could move forward from that; she became instantly irritated and almost closed off, and almost literally ran away from me. We spoke on the phone and she said we could be friends, but this seemed to come with a lot of rules – we could only see each other at uni, speak about uni stuff, etc. This was difficult for me to handle as we had suddenly gone from hanging out every minute of the day to this.

I tried for a few days to act platonic around her. We were still sitting together, etc. I found it too difficult and emotionally stressful. I tried to then approach her (on advice from a senior lecturer) to tell her that I needed some time away from her and I wasn’t ready to be friends. Before I could even get to saying any of that, she became intensely angry and wouldn’t speak to me about it. Swearing, silence, blocking.

We had a phone call that night where it was mainly just her ranting at me about all the things I’d done wrong, how much I was like her ex, etc. She then hung up and blocked me.

The next morning she unblocked me and said we could start again and be friends, and forget about everything that had happened. That was the last thing she said to me, she has not responded to anything I’ve said and avoided me at university. She spoke to me briefly to ask me why I was in one class, but that was it. I have heard nothing from her even at this point.

Even with all of that, I still have a lot of unresolved feelings. I do still miss her, and I do still love her. The last time I reached out I sent an email expressing how I would like us to sort things out, how I didn’t blame her for anything, mentioning a few fun things we used to do, talking about a lot of positives. She didn’t answer.

One thing I’ve never done is just say how I truly feel – I am not saying this is something I will do, but I wonder what or how I would go about this if I did? I also am still quite scared about going back to university. We only have one year left and it’s really sad, to me, that things have gone this way and that she has chosen to just go silent like this.