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Day 15 NC. I'm pretty up and down still. Not being able to get the feedback of her chaos really gets to me sometimes.

I went out on a date for the first time. It was nice. But I just don't know how I feel. I was impressed with a lot of her personality traits, her emotions felt actually real, and genuine, something I was missing with my ex, and this girl was so nice and caring. I was impressed. But it felt boring. No spark. When me and my ex met we hit it off immediately. We spent 8 hours together and it flew by. I didn't leave her place until 2 in the morning and was on cloud nine. We were practically already in a relationship within 5 minutes of first meeting.

And I just didn't feel that way with this new girl. Which of course made me think about my ex, which of course then makes me think about how I'm out here alone trying to find a girl and shes with her bf enjoying her life. It makes me sad. I try and stay strong but sometimes I have moments where I just let go and let it crash.

You're still grieving. And trying to replace your ex is going to keep bringing it all back to you. Why do you feel the need to date again? It's great to get out and do fun stuff and socialise, but from reading your posts you're just not ready for this 1 on 1 just yet. It's way too soon.

Is part of it that she's moved on, and you are trying to show you are too?

It's just been so long. And I feel like I have put my life on hold. And even if I do move on and date someone she wouldn't even know. I blocked her. I just want this to be over, in the past. I dont want her to even cross my mind anymore. I hate her so much. I just want to scream at her for being such a terrible person, BPD or no BPD. She's  a manipulative liar!

Yeah I hear you. Well that date made you sad and set you back to thinking about what you lost in your BPD. So maybe try doing some group socialising? ( says me who's hiding in my house behind locked doors, just venturing out to go to work)

I've been 11 weeks NC and I can't bear to think about going out with someone new . I can't bear to think about even mustering up energy to talk to people.

It's going to take me a while to find myself again.

Good luck x

I know how you feel Zen... . I just want this to be over too. 

When i split up with my BPDx the first time I started dating a really terrific guy.  Same deal... . no sparks.  For a long time I thought it was because I was still so hung up on "him".  I talked to my Therapist about it.  He said you deserve chemistry.  Maybe it is too soon for you but maybe there just is no chemistry. 

It hasn't been so very long.  Maybe you just need time.

Hi zenwexler,

I can really relate to your feelings of wanting this to be over, especially when the pain rears its head again. Unfortunately, life doesn't often let us bypass the grieving stage.  In my experience, that's where lasting change comes from.  No doubt it's hard, but worth it.

I agree with Narellan that trying to date again might be a bit early, especially since you are still seeking the enmeshment and intensity of an unhealthy bond.  So many of us have been there.  It may feel good at the time, but that kind of overwhelming connection might one day just trigger lots of  red-flag  for you.

Why do you think you are not attracted to "nice and caring" zen? 

Can I be controversial here? Anyone feel free to jump in if you think this advice is really bad.

You probably aren't going to be wildly attracted to everyone you ever go on a date with. This applies whether you're healing from a relationship with someone with BPD or not. Almost everyone is looking for love/mad passion/whatever, and most of the time you don't find it.

From my point of view, the question is whether you are ready to handle the disappointment when you don't experience that chemistry.

I understand the desire to date right away. I wasted several years of my life on a (non-BPD) ex who was very abusive, getting caught in the cycle again and again. When I left, I made friends and went out a lot and that made me feel like I was getting back what I had missed out on in that relationship. It was good. I didn't plan on dating but I ended up having a brief relationship with a nice guy, and the things you describe - the normality, the genuine feelings... . It really helped me to have that in my life, to prove to me that it wasn't me who was at fault in my previous relationship. (It felt like it was, all the time.)

So, I'm not going to make the assumption that you just aren't attracted to 'nice girls', just that you haven't found the right one. Whether you can handle the feelings that come with dating right now is another matter. Maybe not. But there is plenty of time for that in the future. I agree with Narellan, socializing with friends is likely to be a safer bet right now.

I obviously know my relationship with my BPD ex was dysfunctional, but it scares me to think that we had actual chemistry. I have met so many girls that it's not even funny, and I never feel anything for any of them. So the fact that we actually had legit chemistry with my ex and that now it's all over and she can't be helped at this point scares me because it makes me feel like I shouldn't have taken our chemistry for granted, no matter how abusive she was.

I'm starting to feel like I took my ex for granted, but I know that can't be true.

Oh Zen - I have those feelings all the time.  If I had only done this, had only done that.  He didn't feel loved or appreciated enough.  I let him down. 

Of course it's not true.

Actually it's more likely than not. I don't know if your relationship skills were as lacking as mine with my BPDxgf (part of why i blinded myself to all the  red-flag ) but i certainly didn't appreciate the good times as much as i felt i should have when the bad times were so constantly looming and i had a hard time trusting in her sincerity. That's probably part of why it's so confusing and hard to get closure because the good parts of them are genuinely amazing, they just can't give that part of themselves for very long or for the right reasons, and you feel if you could just get through to them everything could be ok, but it seems that it just can't happen that way.

One thing that I noticed after we split and I figured out she was BPD was that I got really impatient for my life to get back to "normal" and start experiencing the sexual side of things that was roaringly constant throughout the past 6 years with her. I read a few books on patience and meditation and that really helped. I'm still dying to connect with someone again but i have better tools to calm down about it. The best thing (not the best feeling mind you) that has come from this has been a dedication to not repeating the mistakes of the past. Rushing in to a relationship before i'd figured out the work i needed to do on myself was the absolute root cause of all the pain i'm feeling now.

Chemistry is a weird thing, because you can't manufacture it: it's either there or it isn't. But it's both the deepest and the most superficial thing, because you don't have to work for it... . It's so easy to take it for granted, and at the same time it's so easy to refuse to leave a bad relationship because 'there's chemistry'. No matter what, if the relationship was abusive, all the chemistry in the world wasn't going to save it.

I'm going to maintain that you shouldn't worry about when you will meet someone who makes you feel that way. Easier said than done, don't get me wrong, but nobody can predict when it's going to happen. I'm at that point in life where my friends are just starting to pair up and settle down, and every single person I know has said some of the things you have.

I just have this faith that I will fall head over heels for someone ABSOLUTELY LOVELY at some point.  I guess that's what Xstaticaddict is getting at by talking about working on yourself though. Getting to the point where you have confidence and faith in yourself.

"A but i certainly didn't appreciate the good times as much as i felt i should have when the bad times were so constantly looming and i had a hard time trusting in her sincerity. "

I completely agree with this, but I don't think it's because I took it for granted or lacked relationship skills. It was because she made me so unhappy at times that even if she was being nice or having fun it either A. felt fake to me because I could see right through her, B. I would be so angry that it's hard to just flip the switch and be happy because I am a normal human being so I actually process my emotions and can't go from happy to said to happy within three seconds. And C. I never trusted her sincerity because her emotions never felt real, mainly whenever she was "happy" they were either for superficial reasons, forced, or just didn't feel real to me. And I have a hard time being friends with people who aren't honest when it comes to expressing themselves.

It's just scary to think that I had chemistry with her, and that we can't be together, and I get anxious about finding someone I can have that chemistry with again, but hopefully in a healthy light, And what makes it worse is that I'm out searching, and she's already found someone. And I've said this a million times but the thought of her being happy with guy living a happy and well adjusted life makes me want to scream! But again. I know deep in my heart that their relationship is most likely just as dysfunctional as mine and hers.

16 days NC, blocked number, so even if she has texted me I wouldn't even know. Scares me to death. I miss her. I wish I could talk to her. Every time I open up my facebook I fear a message from her or an picture will pop up with her and her bf.

But I also fear that maybe she hasn't tried to text me. Or call me. Maybe she has let go fully. And that thought makes me the saddest

When i said relationship skills, i was mainly referring to boundary setting on my part. I would constantly cave to the behaviors that made me feel bad that she'd do, and not being emotionally self aware enough or having enough self esteem to walk away from the good parts of her after i realized the chaotic bad parts of her personality were going to always keep me at a level of not truly being able to respect my partner because somewhere inside i knew she couldn't nurture or give or love in a healthy way. All part of what i'm finding out are my deficits in self love.

It's still really fresh with you not even being a month into NC. It's a nightmare to go through the emotional shredder and to know that it's due to a person that you probably never should have been with.

I was given a book right after the breakup by a friend and it made so much of a difference in how i dealt with the emotional part of things. Blue Truth by David Deida www.deida.info/books/blue-truth I'd highly recommend the read. It's about how to sit with emotional states instead of reacting to them, which is just another take on mindfulness, which seems to be the key to getting through life as a non or a BPD.

Good luck and stick with the NC, eventually it will start to be about you, not her and that's a good thing.