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My uBPDw asked me to pick up a kid, drop him off and talk to her before I go back to my apartment. She’s had a rough week hauling kids around. She doesn’t work. I said I wanted space. I filed for divorce to get a custody plan in place.

I knew I shouldn’t have talked to her. I don’t know why I do this. She tried to get intimate and I knew that would just be bad. It would mess with our minds, blind us to other problems. So I got out of there. She painted me as a monster for rejecting her. I never should have let myself be in that position because once I was there was nothing good that could have come out of it.

I just always kept wanting to maintain hope that things could turn around. Things weren’t always this bad. I just keep losing hope. I feel bad I walked into this tonight.

I just needed to share with someone and I feel like I keep bothering the face to face people enough.

Hi Wilkinson,

Sorry you're dealing with this. You're probably right that it would have caused a lot of confusion and difficult emotions.

What I hear is that you stated that you needed space, yet she tried to get you to be intimate which is the exact opposite of "I need space". Maybe she was hoping that would change your mind about the divorce, I don't know. Maybe she thinks that intimacy is the first step to reconciliation. My ex kind of had that viewpoint- he thought that if we were intimate, that meant that we were "ok" again- like a magic "fix it" button had been pushed, and all the bad stuff that obviously needing addressing just ceased to exist. He didn't understand that when we separated and I was dealing with the trauma from his abuse, that I absolutely did not want to be intimate at all, for several reasons, but one of them being that I didn't know where the relationship was going (and suspected that he was not going to do anything to get better at all, which meant that there was no way it was going to work). He also got mad and accused me of rejecting him (and cheating on him).

Do you think that maybe you walked into this situation with an expectation of seeing some kind of sign of improvement, or reason to give you hope that things can get better?

Yeah that exactly what it was. I keep hoping for signs of improvement, but every time I try, things only go bad. I don’t know why I try anymore.

Hey Wilkinson, You did the right thing, in my view, by keeping good boundaries.  Your uBPDw still suffers from the disorder, no matter how much you hope for a change.  She's trying to draw you back into the BPD swamp.  Your task is to stay on dry land.

LJ

Wilkinson, we identified a pattern with my husband's ex -- each time her current relationship "went pear-shaped," she would turn to DH (who she went back and forth between devaluing and putting on a pedestal). Their relationship has always been one of DH being more of a father figure, even though their age difference is only 5 years. Ex most often sought him for sympathy and comfort, but there were definitely times she attempted to seduce him and want him to "come back" to her. This happened while they were married (history of infidelities), after she moved out and they were living separately, after they divorced, and after DH and I married. This was when I enforced some boundaries -- she gets no opportunity to love -bomb him to soothe her emotions while attempting to damage our marriage...not that there is a chance in hell that she could be successful.

I suspect your change in the way you are responding to her has her emotions roiled, and she will be trying all maneuvers she has in her tool box to get back to her center, where she feels in control.