BPDFamily.com

I just passed 3 months since breakup, and 2 months since last contact.  It would be 3 months of no contact, but she got around blocks by emailing me wanting to reconcile then something in my response (which I should never have even sent in the first place) caused her to pivot, paint me black, said its over forever.  We know that “forever” from a BPD could really be forever or there might be other recycle attempts, I pretty much gave up on trying to understand our final interactions.  Truly I’d just had enough of trying to understand her behaviors and things she was saying, it was all just a bottomless pit designed by her illness to confuse me and weaken me so I was easier to control.   I just gave up and punted in the end!

So now here I am at 3 months post breakup noticing some positive changes and some things that continue to be problems also.

Ruinations (40% recovered) - definitely better, not as strong, but still frequent.  At the beginning the ruminations were so painful I wanted to double over in pain sometimes, like when i would be walking down the street and a strong emotionally charged memory would hit me.  Those felt like 9/10 pain or more, now the strongest memories are maybe a 6/10, but they come fairly often still.

Sleep (70% recovered) - this has been the single most important area of improvement.  I didn’t sleep well at all for the 1.5 years she and I were together and the other night I had my first 9+ hours of sleep without taking any sleep supplements or melatonin or anything.  I almost shed tears of joy it was such a relief to get a good night of sleep again.

Dating, being attracted to new women (40% recovered)  - ok so this change was really interesting.  I met a woman who I saw just casually fairly early on after the breakup, but I couldn’t really stomach being around her too much because she looked a lot like my BPD-ex but seemed to be overshadowed so much by my ex, it felt like she was less attractive, less sensual, less of everything.  We have only seen each other a hand-full of times, maybe once every few weeks, but this last time I found myself not annoyed by her, genuinely enjoying being with her, and able to take in her attractiveness.  I’m very unlikely to end up with this woman as a girlfriend for a variety of other reasons, but this was a valuable reference experience because I could see that working on dissolving the trauma bond with my ex, stripped away some of the illusions. and ways that my mind was playing tricks on me — it was making this new woman seem less attractive than she actually was and making my ex seem more attractive.  It was a good benchmark to show that at least some healing has taken place in me, but I still have a ways to go.

Motivation (50% recovered)  - My motivation to work and do things took a real big hit at the beginning.  I’m still a little slow some days to get work done or am late in getting up and leaving the house.   But this was also the area where I got destroyed the most by my BPD relationship.  My motivation was 100% wrecked by the end of it, so to have regained half is a lot.

Health (90% recovered) - I suffered from many colds, flus, and stomach issues when I was with her.  Now these are mostly gone except I still have some muscle pain in my upper back which I seemed to develop when I was with her.  Interestingly, she had the same type of pain her whole life.  Did I somehow take that on temporarily?

Anxiety (100% recovered) - I hadn’t had anxiety in many years, with her it was crippling.  Away from her the anxiety is now gone.  I think the anxiety is one of the most common threads I have seen running through BPD relationships on this forum.

Depression (80% recovered) - I had been prone to depression my whole life but it was crippling towards the end of the relationship and post-breakup.  But all of the things I’ve been doing to heal myself have helped me get to a good place compared even to where I was before at various points in my life.  I’ve made a lot of inroads with depression and am probably better off than I have ever been, but I’m not marking this as 100% recovered because there is still some situational depression around my ex, but not much.

I welcome any feedback or other areas to look at the gage improvement.

A lot is conveyed about your improvement just in the content of your posts, and even over the course of a few weeks, I’ve noted many positive changes taking place in you.

From my perspective, I’ve been focusing on Maslow, and see that most of this rests on the physiological elements, with sleep being paramount. I’m up to six-seven hours a night, up from a consistent four a month ago, and I attribute most of my recovery to this alone.

I try to stay engaged with life by dining out with friends as often as I can.  It’s not really in my nature to be this socially active, but the needs must, and it seems to get my mind off of the raging Basilisk for large blocks of time.  

I think that your reaction to the woman you’ve been seeing is perfectly understandable.  I think that your assessment of the situation is very accurate, and that your impressions of her (in one form or another) are entirely dependent on the rate of your recovery.

However, you will be emerging from your BPD experience as a different person, and I suspect that your preferences will be in a state of flux for a while as you orient yourself to a new, post BPD world.  

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had a bellyful of life lessons, and this one was the least endearing.  I really don’t relish the thought of being retooled due to some irresponsible a-holes’ BPD.

Something that really weighs on me, and that others should note as well, is that the acute symptoms of BPD didn’t manifest until I had been with my x for six years.  She always had traits, but the over-the-top insanity only appeared in the last three months of our relationship.  They were induced by stress and menopause. Something to bear in mind going forward. 

Thank you for pointing out the changes you have noticed.  I welcome all candid observations, whether they are positive or negative.  I have always valued candid feedback if it is constructive.

As for your sleep, that sounds like a major improvement.  I am glad you have that, at least.  With good sleep your system is able to make all sorts of repairs to the trauma, including doing integration work while you sleep.  So once you have that, time will chip away at the trauma bond.

As for your ex being hard to spot, mine was like that at first too.   Although if I’m being honest with myself, there were plenty of red flags also that — if they occurred now — i wouldn’t continue forward with the relationship or at least would be hypervigilent moving forward with a woman like that.  Did you truly have no red flags with yours?  From what I understand that is quite rare with BPD but there is an upside for you if that was the case: if she was truly asymptomatic for the first few years of your relationship then you can probably safely subtract that time off from the part of your relationship where you were “with a BPD” being actively traumatized, that’s something to be grateful for at least, given the damage BPDs can do when they are with you for years or decades.