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My story with my ex with BPD is long, spanning almost 20 years. I’ll try to get to the point quickly though.

We knew each other when we were teenagers. We had a few short flings, but nothing serious. We had a lot of mutual friends, dated each other’s friends, and were ourselves friends. There was always a bit of something there, but we stopped acting on it. In our 20s, life naturally drifted us apart.

In 2019, now in our early to mid 30s, we reconnected unexpectedly through mutual friends. We hung out platonically for a few months, but then started a relationship. She told me she had BPD. I thought I had some understanding of what that meant, but it turned out I only knew the tip of the iceberg. She also exhibited quite a lot of self-awareness about it and was in DBT (though she did stop after we were together for a bit).

I was amazed at how quickly our relationship seemed to take off. I thought it was because of the history and the just out of reach tension that always existed between us over the years. After the fact, I have learned that this is just common BPD behavior. But at the time, I thought this was VERY special.

COVID hit, and we decided to shack up together. For a while, we both kept separate places, but just stayed together every night.

At this point, we had some arguments but nothing too out of hand.

After a few months, I left my place and moved in officially. Her place was small and we both had a lot of stuff, so we wanted to upsize. The feeling of such a strong relationship and our talk of the future led me to buy a house. We also decided to get engaged.

By now, the arguments were still pretty mild.

Shorty after moving in, she became pregnant. I was happy, but she was not. At first, I thought it was common fear, but it soon became apparent it was much worse than that. Fighting began in earnest. Weeks later, she miscarried. On that day, that trauma brought us closer than ever and fighting subsided.

I’ll spare you all the minutiae of events and just say that eventually, the fighting returned. In time, it became more frequent and less predictable.

I tried my hardest to please her, but I also didn’t become a total doormat, except when it came to buying her things.

When her tone became too much or she started yelling, I found myself for the first time in my life yelling back, though I now regret that. When she insisted that she knew how I felt and it was incorrect, I did not falsely agree. When she gave the silent treatment, I stayed clear and let her come to me. You get the idea. I found that if I generally held my ground and rode it out, it would turn around.

After every fight, we’d make up and reach what seemed to be an understanding. It seemed we both wanted badly to make it work, and keep moving toward our December wedding date.

We had an awesome Halloween party, and she expressed that she never felt so close to anybody as she did then. However, three weeks later we got into what I thought was a normal argument.

She wouldn’t talk to me for two days, and I left her alone. Finally, I went to check on her. She did her normal routine of blaming it all on me, but something was different. I had enough, and I was not going to have that. When she tried to come back around this time, I was still mad and let her know it was not ok. She stayed at a friend’s house that night.

When she came back home, she told me she wanted to move into a different room and call off the wedding. All of her language let me know it was over, and it hurt. When she saw it hurt, she suddenly acted like she didn’t want to break up, just slow down. I agreed.

For the next several days, we barely talked. She continued to sleep in another room. She was gone a lot and wouldn’t spend a second of time with me. I asked her about it. She said we were not together anymore, contradicting what I thought we agreed on. In that argument, she came back around to an extent until we talked about money. Namely, we spent too much, I had to tap into savings to get us back on track, and it had to slow down from now on. That was it, she said she lost her trust for me by tapping into my savings and not telling her, and that we were done for good.

I became very hurt and confused. I knew what it meant. I told her if she was going to break us up, she needed to move out sooner rather than later so I could start to heal. After another week of confusing back and forth, she moved out. I helped her move and she suggested that we didn’t need to vanish from each other entirely. We talked a bit for a few days.

Then, as she made her final trip to get the last of her stuff, she was brutal. I suspected that she was just playing nice before she could secure her belongings, but I also think there could be more to it than that. I reached out later to ask if she was ok. No answer.

We didn’t talk for almost 3 weeks. I stayed strong to let her be. Last week, I reached out. She told me, “We broke up. I don’t like you. I have nothing to say and I don’t care what you have to say.” I talked to a mutual friend about being sad and it got back to her. I was then warned by another mutual friend that if I didn’t stop talking about it, she said she was going to retaliate.

I have been learning the ins and outs of BPD behavior patterns for weeks now. I rationally understand what is happening. I rationally understand it was becoming unhealthy and I’m better off. I even rationally understand that she’s likely better off, too.

This was the first and only breakup. I really don’t want it to be over.

I have again tried to resolve not to reach out for fear of making it worse. The hope that she will feels pointless and hurts. But I cannot for the life of me let it go. I don’t even want to let it go.

  Somebody please give me some idea of what to do.

Hi there my friend...

Welcome and really sorry for the heartbreak. That really is tough.

You know, you really don't know how she is going to react - that's the thing about a disorder.  There's no order to it - no real sense of structure, making predicting the future really tough.

For sure you miss her. 20 years is a long time.

Tell me, beyond answering your one question, what other questions are lingering on your heart. Hang in there. The more you pick it apart into bite size pieces, the more you'll piece it back together. Just be ready that the puzzle pieces might not produce a picture you were expecting.

Does that make sense?

Stay safe. And again, welcome.  This is a really cool place. You'll get help here. I did.

Rev

My other questions:

Was she just using me for money? (The thing about savings and slowing down spending seemed to me to pale in comparison to some of our other fights. Yet, that was the dagger.)

Was she just flaunting remaining friends so I’d help her move and out of fear that I’d do something stupid with her belongings?

How can she treat me like I suddenly don’t exist, unless I’m a terrible enemy?

Was her back and forth during the breakup pre-move out just trying to buy her time to move out and/or secure a new person?

Is she fully ghosting me because she already have a new person?

Will I never hear from her again?

Knowing she has a tendency to keep exes as friends, why am I different?

I know nobody can answer these questions, but I would like to hear experiences.

Here are subjective thoughts...

Was she just using me for money? (The thing about savings and slowing down spending seemed to me to pale in comparison to some of our other fights. Yet, that was the dagger.)  Money issues are common among the Cluster B - my story is just like yours. Money was the catalyst - it was her symptomatic behavior to cover other things.  I see money issues generally as a symptom that left unchecked become a cause to a break-up.  Like you are sensing that she "did" that to you because the deeper hurts lie elsewhere.

Was she just flaunting remaining friends so I’d help her move and out of fear that I’d do something stupid with her belongings?  My intuition was that she was flaunting friends to fill a void - often people with BPD react in the moment without much future thinking.  Future thinking is more sociopathic.  People with BPD live in feelings based facts. When the feelings change the "facts" change.  So there's no real master plan.

How can she treat me like I suddenly don’t exist, unless I’m a terrible enemy?  The phenomenon for that is called "splitting".  There are resources here that will explain how that functions.  It's a form of soothing the all good to all bad swing in feelings that can happen several times in a day even.

Was her back and forth during the breakup pre-move out just trying to buy her time to move out and/or secure a new person?  All of the above.  It's part of the dis-order.

Is she fully ghosting me because she already have a new person?

Will I never hear from her again?

Knowing she has a tendency to keep exes as friends, why am I different?
  Let these go for now... it will take time to understand because it's so contextual to the actual moment things happen.  One thing I have found is that with BPD, there is not pattern of behavior so much as a pattern of traits that manifest differently depending on the context.  You will like never know the real answer to these questions.  And that is what causes the Ruminations.  Dr. Ramani has a lot of pop-psych videos based in good academics that explain some of this in quick terms.


Hope this helps.

Rev

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.

Thank you so much for posting this. I have dealt with all of these issues and Rev nails it! Just reading all of these is a very helpful reaffirmation of the reality! All if the things Rev has said are spot on so need for me to repeat. One thing I would add is once you have made a decision to whatever path you ultimately choose STICK WITH IT! I am now on week 3 of no contact with my cluster B that checked every subject you posted about! There is a lot of white knuckling through this but I feel your mental health and what days you have left on this planet are more important! Self Care is key here and the amount of therapy required for your potential EX is likely greater than the time you have to waste on waiting! Stay with it and please keep messaging me as I need the reassurance as well!