BPDFamily.com

Hi, i´m here to share my testimony and maybe get some feedback. English is my second language. I live in South America and I am 39 years old. I have a 7 year old son.

So about 5 years after my divorce i went into my first serious relationship 19 months ago with a woman 10 years younger than me. Things went really quick between us. At first I was somewhat distant, as I had been in all relations since my divorce, but she found the way to get to me with ease, perfect timing and perfect words. She told me the exact things I wanted to hear. I was the man of her life. She was definitely the woman of my dreams. Our sex was AMAZING. I used to tell my friends that I never thought a relationship like that was even possible. Things went by smoothly and perfectly during 18 months, I never saw or perceived any red flags, no major problems no major fights. Then, six weeks ago, she started to drift away misteriously and with no visible reason. I inmediately felt insecure about her as I had never before. I even thought she might be talking to someone else. She told me she felt I wasn´t compromised enough. I answered back that I was so compromised as to move together right away and once that worked into place, get married. I would not allow myself to lose that love. Things got quiet for a couple of days during which we planned our future life together. I was again the love of her life and we couldn´t foresee the future without each other. Then, one night, like a month ago, we went out for a drink and she broke up with me out of the blues with some classic break up reasons. I was in shock. Like a train hit me. Five days later i called her and told her i needed to talk to her. When we met at a coffee house the person i found was a COMPLETE stranger. She went up to me with a huge smile and deep anger and told me she had been great without me, having a spectacular time. She told me she was in a COMPLETE new page (five days afetr breaking up!) of her life, that she did not love me at all (and hadn´t for quite a time), that she was talking to two men that already knew about our break up, and that i please not bother her with calls or anything, that i shouldn´t make things harder. Then she just left and thats all i know of her, till 10 days ago I got an email where she was hard and distant and thanked for a picture i gave her that she would keep "in her heart for the rest of her life". I never answered.

I am devastated with an excruciating pain that I can in no way explain. Never have I felt anything similar in my life. I seeked for help and started therapy where eventually I discovered the possibility of her being a BPD. She matches the quiet BPD traits almost perfectly. Now I can see how i totally missed some huge red flags: she had some type of eating disorders, took pills secretly for that, abandonment issues from childhood (just as myself), some lying, and general poor self image. I am working on my childhood issues to figure out why i choose such a person as a partner. Apparently, my mother has BPD traits as well.

Now I am in the midst of the biggest crisis of my life and having enormous problems dealing with it. I have sticked to the NO CONTACT rule. As a matter of fact, i hope never to talk to her ever again in my life. I am doubting i have BPD myself. I have never felt so f*cked up. I have lost like 18 pounds in one month and i rarely sleep more than 4 or 5 hours a night even though I am taking pills to sleep (for the first time in my life). I am having trouble to put up with daily work and I am even having trouble attending my child.

How can i cope with such extreme pain?

Time dude... . only time... . Not gonna lie, it takes a loong time to get over this kind of stuff. BUT you are in the right place - we all have been there, we all get ourselves out of it. Trust me.

Hi Jeycee,

Welcome to BPD Family. I'm sorry that you're feeling such pain right now, but I'm glad you've found the site.

It takes a skilled professional to diagnose BPD, but the behaviour you describe is certainly consistent with the disorder

I realise that things are very difficult for you right now, but your pain will ease over time.  

Working with a therapist is a really positive step.

Do you have any other family or friends that you can confide in? Can anyone help you with your son?

Please keep posting. There are many members here who have gone through very similar experiences and who can offer their support and encouragement

Reforming

Hey JeyCee, I am so sorry you are going through this.  I understand your pain.  Keep exploring this site, there is so much wisdom and compassion here.  It was so important to me to read others testimonies, to know that I wasn't really alone in my experience, as no one in my life could relate or comprehend what I was going through. 

I'm glad you're in therapy.  Do you have family or friends that can help pick up the slack with your kid?  How is he dealing with the loss of this relationship?

Things I did to help myself cope were working out/dancing, eating nutritious foods, taking lots of hot baths.  Drinking tea, not alcohol.  And receiving acupuncture and massage- both of these were really instrumental in maintaining my physical health, as mentally and spiritually I was crushed.

You can heal from this. 

JeyCee, You have found a good place for healing. You will find lots of support and kind people here who know what you are going through. You will feel better. Ud. se va a recuperar, no se preocupe!

Thank you all for your generous answers. I do believe I will heal eventually from this painful episode. I just don't know how. At least now, a month later, I am past the point in which I fealt like tearing my skin off. In a way I feel I have come to the end of a long and painful road, from which I will be reborn, emotionally healthier. From that point of view my ex is only a symptom of some profound wounds I have held within since childhood. She was just the catalyzer that shred my life into a million pieces, forcing me irreversably into a path of concience. For this I am thankful for she is a master in my life.

In a more physical level though, I am at times obsessive about my ex: what's going on in her head and soul, does she have any concience as to the way she conducted the break up? She was emotionally violent. She was a plane, and crashed it into my entire being. I kind of feel I have to start my life all over again. Reboot.

As to my seven year old, yes, I have received some very valuable help especially from my ex wife who very compassionately saw the poor state of mind body and soul I have been in the last couple of weeks. My son cried a lot when I told him about the break up, he asked me why we would never see the "magician" again (my ex's father). I told him we would eventually go to him to say bye. But that won't happen. I blocked my ex and all her family and friends from all social networks.

I am trying my best to take care for myself. I'm working out one or twice a day: yoga and cardio. Trying to eat healthy and normal again and my apettite is slowly coming back. No alcohol, drugs or placebos whatsoever.

I don't really know what else to do.

Hey JeyCee

*welcome*

I'm so sorry to hear about all of the pain that you are in.  I think all of us here can relate to that.  The pain can indeed be excruciating like you describe.  I have never known pain quite like the pain of this breakup.  It has been surreal.  It is a miserable experience, JayCee, but there is indeed life on the other side.  Many members here have walked that road already, and everyone is here to support you in that journey as well.   |iiii

It sounds like you are already doing lots of great things!  You're on the road already.  I think learning about the disorder is one of the things that helped me early on - it gave so much more context to what I was going through, and so many things that hadn't made sense before suddenly did.  It sounds like you've been doing that already, and I think that's a great start.  Have you been able to look through the Lesson (https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=136462.0) resources yet on the site?  Those might be able to provide some more information for you.  The reading list (https://bpdfamily.com/book_review/index.htm) is also highly recommended.  You're making some great insights about your past too - most of us here have something like that in our past that helped to bring us to this point.  Keep exploring that.  Keep working with your therapist.  My therapist was instrumental in helping me to work through my breakup, and she also was a great pillar of support.

Keep working on yourself.  That's the best thing to be doing right now.  Taking good care of you and son.  It will take time to get over this.  It's a true loss and the grief is very real.  It just takes time to process that.  Things will get easier as time goes on.  Keep posting here too.  We're all here to support you.

Thanks!

Will I ever be able to reconcile the image of the two different persons I dealt with: the loving amazing 18 month girlfriend, and the cold ruthless angry woman I had never seen before to whom I sad goodbye to.

Hi Jeycee

The short answer is yes, but I've found it one of the most difficult aspects of recovery.

It helped when I began to understand that both the good and bad qualities of my ex were the product of her disorder.

The intensity of the her attachment, her idealisation of me, the sex were were the flip side of the devaluation, the anger and the darkness. They are part of the spectrum that comes with the illness