BPDFamily.com

Just bumped into exBPD outside local pub. I live in a small community so its going to happen every now and then, cant be helped. I said hello & it was all very civil but I couldnt help notice her mobile, it runs her life & did when we were together. If ever she couldnt find it, even for a minute, she would get really stressed & angry. It does still hurt & I needed to get this out but little reminders like this do help. 

Good luck to us all.

Its so she can send text messages to her many victims.

Seriously with my wife this is true.  I didn't even have text messages enabled on my phone until I met her.  She told me to sign up.  I did.  That is how she sucked me in.  Looking back, I am sure she did this because she could send me loving messages while sitting across the table from the ex and he wouldn't know.

And when she was sitting across the table from me, she would text the ex.

And then when there was a new guy, she would text him in the same way.

They can build entire relationships with text messages.  They can cheat very effectively with this tool.

I knew the end was near when she started getting very protective of her phone, taking it even into the bathroom with her so I wouldn't snoop and see the messages.  She was sucked him in with text messages.

Mine had 2 mobiles that I knew of and texted constantly, but funny thing was, he very rarely made a phone call or even answered it when we were togetherred-flag

yep she texted constantly, and was very ambiguous in her texts.  the last straw for me was when i was told i wasn't even allowed to glance at her phone, so i went through it when she was passed out drunk and found all the texts i suspected were there.  and all i could even see was a 36 hour period of texts.  if only i couldve seen EVERYTHING.

One of the most horrible feelings I suffered while being around BPD and NPD people, is that the phone represents opportunities for them. One gets the feeling that they use the phone to use people (while they are using you- of course)- but there is never a clear indication of when its happening- just an odd, prickly feeling you get that something is up. Most people use a phone and there's an end to it. But with the BPD person I knew- The phone was always on- and always vibrating or ringing when you're talking to them- which adds to the shaky ground of mistrust. You never know where you stand, who they are calling and what's up.  It's Creepy.

Mine did the same,its the tool of their trade so to speak.Without Facebook and text messaging she was lost.Of course if I was around,the phone dissapeared and was ALWAYS on silent when she did have it out.

Mine always had her phone on, I never looked at it, I know she was very wrapped up in her moms life, her mom would text her while we were out and she would text back. She told me she cant be without her phone because of a very elderly relative who was in a nursing home, and should anything happen, she wanted to be able to be reached.  Looking back on it now, though she did have a relative with health problems in a nursing home, that may or may not have been the true reason she always had it on, and would sometimes send a text while we were out together.

   Something I did find a bit unsettling however, was that one day she showed me, on her laptop, every text I'd ever sent  to her red-flag , she had somehow loaded them all into a file on her computer. I thought that a bit odd. Makes me wonder now, how many other guys had files like that on her computer as well. All very very strange.

Cell phones and BPD don't mix very well.  Persons with this disorder really struggle with appropriate cell phone use.  The phone becomes a means of escape to their new loves and a tool to constantly harass and punish those of us who have become devalued.  I have learned, the hard way, that my partner's difficulty with the cell phone is not my problem, it is her problem.  I am trying to let it go and focus on what brings happiness to my children and to me. 

We struggled with the cell phone thing for a long time.  Once my BPDwife attached to another man, she texted all the time, hundreds of messages to him a month.  She slept with her phone, took it everywhere.  She texted him constantly on a family vacation we took with the kids to Disney.  Before that point, I had already become devalued in her feelings -- I was the the "abuser" and she couldn't feel romantic love towards me anymore.  She was already "in love" with her new man, while keeping me to care for her and the children.

Requests for my BPDwife to put the phone down and be with her family when she was with her family were met with hostility.  The cell phone became a constant insult and everyone in the house developed some pretty bad conditioned responses to the incoming message tones.  I still cringe when I hear incoming text tones.  It is bad enough for the non BPD adult partners in these situations, but imagine how my 5 and 8 year old children feel with a constant stream of "bing"... .mommy is going to ignore us again... ."bing"... .mommy's friends are more important than we are... .They must feel abandoned even when their mother is taking time with them to parent.  The children started acting out for attention in response to phone tones.  She then treated the children with hostility and the downward spiral continued. 

There is an old Jewish interpretation of the sabbath I always regarded as antiquated -- observant Jews do no matter of work at all.  They don't turn on lights (they pre-set timers), they don't drive, they don't answer phones, no television, no computer, no video games, no writing, some people cook in advance, some even pre-tear the toilet paper (this can go a bit far).  Time on the sabbath is for your relationship with G-d and with your family.  Nothing is allowed to get in the way of that.  I am beginning to see the value of taking a weekly sabbath to focus on ourselves.  The world can wait a day. 

Going into our second month of separation, with divorce papers in the works, remembering her cell phone texting addiction gives me a bit of perspective and reassurance that I made the right decision in asking my BPDwife to leave.  I also hope that remembering the cell phone addiction will help me keep perspective now that I have insisted it is time to divorce.  She wouldn't take responsibility for that decision either (But y'all have been there or are going there soon, so I'm preaching to the choir, right?). 

So, if you are posting and reading in L3 then it is time for all of us to work on letting feelings about the cell phone go. 

Dad6145

Before the raging started he used to do this in the beginning of the relationship: He would text me,and if I didnt reply to it, say within 10 mins, he would send another 1 that would always say "you not talking to me then?"And yet he was the master of ignoring my texts and calls for days, and weeks.Obviously his phrase of "you not talking to me then?showed his own childish mentality.

 :light:He was using "projection" when he used to ask that question then, wasnt he?WOW!