BPDFamily.com

First post so bear with me.

With ex for 2.5 years.  It was amazing for the most part.  Felt things I'd never felt.  Adored, the sex was amazing, huge enthusiasm.  Yeah, I know now!  I didn't know was BPD was back then or until we were 2 years in.  Anyway, odd things would happen even a few months in (we weren't living together then) where she would get extremely distressed over small things  (like the mattress I bought for my daughter, my mum lending me now paid back money 5 years previously).  She would end the relationship after we'd spent a wonderful weekend together, her having driven of in good spirits, save for the parting until the next visit.  She would say the most awful things about me, my daughter.  And then a day later, a groveling apology.  I couldn't figure it out.  I really liked her.  I'm very calm, forgiving, balanced and supportive on the whole and have decent self awareness;  I'm partially trained as a psychodynamic therapist.  Anyway, I figured that if I was solid and dependable that she would feel secure.  So I took the plunge and we got a place together, with our children (3 in total).

Things went downhill rapidly from there.  The ending of the relationship would happen every week or two.  And then apologies.  During this time I learned about BPD and my god, it was like my eye had been opened.  All nine of the diagnostic traits were presenting.  Anyway, I didn't realise that my being strong supportive would make her push harder and harder to make it break.  Her mum died in July and it really derailed after that.  I was so supportive both emotionally and practically but it was all thrown back in my face.  It culminated in her smashing things up (seemingly in response to me getting back an hour later than usual for with my daughter, for which I had given notice of before I left to get her), at which point I had to remove me and my daughter (September 1st).  I began to move out over the next week and she was begging me to go back.  I was worried about my stuff but also it was so hard to say no.  She offered to transfer all her savings as a behaviour deposit (which I declined).  She did destroyed some of my daughters things before I'd moved everything out.  There were multiple other endings during the subsequent 2 months which in; she picked me up and put me down every few days.  At this stage I was living with family (and still am) and was incredibly low as I'd lost my relationship, home, regular contact with my daughter as I didn't have a home.  During this time she started dating.  I didn't realise at the time that she has slept with somebody else and then called me and asked me to go back (an hour afterwards).  She slept with me and asked me to reconsider.  She'd ditched the other guy, she said.  I considered it for a few days.  over the next few days there was talk of her wanting to eventually get married, promises to look after my heart, undying love.  It transpired she was still setting up dates with this guy and I found out when she left her phone unlocked on a message less than a week after she'd begged me back again.  I confronted her about it and she physically assaulted me, threw my stuff out of the door, smashed some mor of my stuff.

In amongst this was was excessive drinking, a suicide threat with some pills taken and vomitted up, a sexual assault on a night out, talk of loneliness, many instances of excessive anger and overreaction, fractured family relationships

I left and 2 days later she emails telling me she doesn't care about me.  She only had me back because she felt pity (she begged me back).  Then I get an email telling me that she doesn't love me or want me.  She has moved on.  She fell out of love a while ago.  This was nearly three weeks ago.  I had a breakdown and restored to asking her back, partly because I was so utterly confused by what had just happened, she just kept repeating that she doesn't love me.  I've felt like I'm going insane.  As time has gone on, I think her splitting has become more and more extreme, levelling stuff at me that is just delusional.  The accusations of control, manipulation and gaslighting when it feels all along that she's been projecting this stuff of hers on to me.  She now claims to be find and happy and have moved on and I'm the one utterly broken.  The splitting of me into good/bad became more just the bad until the end when I am now just split entirely bad.  I suspect there is somebody else as she couldn't more on otherwise and I suspect that for now, he is all good.

But after her episodes throughout, she was able to acknowledge, unprompted that she was behaving appallingly, like a child.  She said she didn't know why and that it had never happened before.  So at the end, she put all the blame on me and told me that she was find and happy with out me and it was me that was mental.

She's demanded I don't contact her and then during that time, has asked me to pay my share of something (fair enough), meet for a drink to say goodbye (where she was hostile, told me she didn't love me, cried but she didn't know why as she wasn't sad, said she'd miss me and then left), contacted me to return a parcel for her which was delivered to the home we shared (she moved out 3 days ago).

The problem is, it feels so unresolved.  I do miss her.  I am jealous (not something I've ever felt before).  And I feel confused, bewildered and blindsided.  At this stage, I'm not sure I would ever have her back, but part of me thinks that when this cycle happens again with the next person (will it?  Did it before me?  Is it even BPD), will she come back begging?  I'm aware I'm still quite angry (again, not a familiar feeling for me).  But immensely sad with it and having regular panic attacks.  I've been seeing a psychoanalyst as part of my training for the last 2 years and am back on meds.

So I guess I'm after some reassurance that I'm not insane.  That this fits the characteristics of BPD, that it's normal to feel confused and bewildered.  And, how can she just move straight to somebody else?

So for now my friend I don't have much time before I hop off here, but I at least wanted to reach out and welcome you to the fam.  :hi:

I will reassure you that we are listening and we are paying attention and that you are not alone. Please feel free to ask as many questions as you need to or want to. Share as much as you want or need to. Mostly, vent and know this is a safe place and you are free of judgment here. We have your back my friend.

In the meantime please be kind to you and please take care of yourself. I myself will check back in on you when you get a chance to respond.

Cheers and Best Wishes!

-SC-

youve really been through the wringer. its not surprising that youre having difficulty making sense of it.

there are a lot of complexities, a lot of moving parts, that make it very difficult to digest or may feel like you dont even know where to start. it wont be resolved in one post. right now, i want to speak more to what youre feeling about it all.

a quick story: about a year after my ex, i met someone. it was never going to work, we were extremely different people, but i knew that, and i persisted. i was probably a little bit vulnerable still, maybe placed too high a stakes on making work whatever came. our differences came through quickly. she went off on me one night, and terminated our relationship. i was (unusually, for me) fine with that at the time. she reached out some time later. i almost didnt bother to respond, but i did. not long after that, she stopped responding, and i started obsessing about that, like a light switch. we did eventually fall back into contact. we got together to hang out. i wasnt expecting anything, but when we were hanging out, something about the way that she showed no attraction toward me, no indicator of anything like that, retriggered that obsession.

feelings of rejection are a powerful thing that most people find it difficult to cope with.

our relationships tend to be characterized by idealization and devaluation; on one hand, a level of acceptance that weve scarcely or never known before, a feeling that this person is a soul mate, that we can be ourselves with in a way weve never known. on the other, a level of rejection that can cut to our core.

that can create a powerful drive to reverse those feelings of rejection. and it may feel like the only person that can do that, is the person that rejected us; the same person who once gave us a powerful sense of acceptance. when that doesnt happen, or isnt possible, we might turn to any number of coping mechanisms. we might have fantasies of reconciliation. we might have fantasies where we are the ones doing the rejecting.

some of these things are a natural result of our feelings of loss; they are the bargaining stage of grief. but some of them are coping with the sudden loss of a very loaded and complex bond.

in other words, i dont mean to suggest that your pain and confusion arent about her, or what youve been through; they very much are. but they also may be about what youre experiencing psychologically. for example, i personally went from having a foot out the door for most of my relationship, to a place where, after she dumped me, and jumped into a new relationship, id have done anything to get her back. i couldnt make sense of it either, at the time, and almost lost my mind in the process.

but when youve invested in this persons adoration for you, and that is not only taken away, but replaced with disdain, rejection, coldness, and a seeming disregard, reversing that can feel like psychological life or death.

part of coming to terms with that is the process of seeing that person, and the relationship, as a whole; we, generally speaking, have our own ways of idealizing and devaluing that person weve loved.

for me, from 30000 feet up, it is obvious that your ex is unstable, way over the top in her expressions, and that little to no stock ought to be put in what she is saying to you now/recently; shes merely coping, and from a very emotionally limited and volatile place. having been in a similar situation with my own ex, i get that it is more complicated than that.

on the other hand, bpd itself is not really all that complicated. youre seeing the flip side of that adoration and idealization (youve seen it before). both are part of who she is. both are part of what your relationship was. the hard part is that now, while youre experiencing one, youre living with the loss of the other.

but usually, the truth is somewhere more in the middle. thats what we work toward in our grief and our detachment.

of course, youre also dealing with a lot of shock. i suspect that you were operating on adrenaline for a lot of the relationship, and probably still are. if so, your body and mind will go through a lot, and depression (or wild mood swings), or panic attacks (i had daily, hours long anxiety attacks), arent unusual when youre going through that.


disclaimer: i in no way mean to compare having bpd to being a murderer when i make this comparison  :(

how can someone kill someone, and then carry on their day as if nothing ever happened, and then go home to their families and do the same?

the answer is "compartmentalization". it is a coping mechanism.

in the same way, an addict can continue a relationship with a drug that has long passed the point of diminishing returns, and is destroying their lives: "denial".

we all have coping mechanisms we develop in childhood, and in adulthood, we find they no longer serve us. some of us continue them, in spite of that. on the extreme end of that, you have a personality disorder; where your very system of coping is dysfunctional and causing you suffering.

i dont mean to put it so coldly and clinically, but the tendency to overlap relationships is something that is built on a lifetime of dysfunctional coping methods, efforts to avoid the powerful fear of abandonment that was never learned to cope with. that is the "how".

the reality of it is of course incredibly hurtful for us. for you. i dont mean to suggest "it isnt personal"; youre the one it has happened to. and i dont mean to suggest youve nothing to learn from the relationship. but it might be a small comfort to know, that how a person chooses to cope, is not a reflection of you.

I'm relatively new to this board myself. But I wanted to say, you're not alone. And what you describe sounds like classic BPD. It's normal to feel "confused and bewildered" in your situation.

re: "The ending of the relationship would happen every week or two."
I can relate to this. I went through 25 years of it.

re: "And, how can she just move straight to somebody else?"
I went through the same thing (after 25 years together). It seemed like all her feelings for me, and all caring, had suddenly shut off, and she was enraptured with a new guy. I think that was enabled by compartmentalization and dissociation. I waited two years, hoping to somehow win her back, then about three months ago gave up, and set up boundaries minimizing contact.

One thing that's helped me a bit recently is reading through old posts by member "2010".
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?action=profile;u=38193;sa=showPosts
Though I wouldn't necessarily take everything they wrote as gospel, there are some insights (deriving from Masterson and others) that were quite helpful for me.

Best wishes to you.

Just wanted to reach out and say how sorry I am you've had to go through all of this, which sounds like so much - so many very distressing events and ups and downs in a fairly short amount of time.

I suspect that your nervous system is totally shot at the moment, so I really hope that your family and friends are creating a bit of a cocoon for you as you begin the process of healing. I don't know if it's possible to truly reflect and see things clearly until you feel safe, so I hope that self care is something you have the luxury of prioritising above everything else. Sticking to basics like sleep, food, a bit of movement if you can, some supportive human connection and when you're ready, maybe some more specialised therapy.

It sounds like you've been thrown completely off balance by someone who isn't stable at all. When you read the list of things that happened, it does make perfect sense that she moved on so quickly. There's no way she would want to sit with the consequences of her actions, that would be too painful. So it's really just a protective mechanism, which unfortunately just adds a nasty final barb to all of the hurt she's caused you already.