BPDFamily.com

Asking. Because I met my BPDex at work...

Around the time we broke up he was also having a v stressful time at work.

Then we broke up, and he met the new ‘love of his life’ days after. He was still attending work at this point... but then, a couple of weeks later he got into trouble with his team (he’d manipulated a situation and got found out).

He’s now never in work really... and for a few months after, people were asking me about him. I went no contact, but through the grapevine I heard he moved in with her and herl kids almost immediately and I guess mostly spends his time with them?

This is making it hard for me detaching because his absence is so obvious to me... he was very into his career throughout our relationship (he was also stressed by it), but I thought it was a genuine part of his personality - he had told me that he’d always wanted to work for this company.

I’m constantly ruminating about what he can be doing... he is life was literally all about work even before he met me - he would be the first in the office and working into the evening. Now,  people at work wondered if he’s signed off sick (his manager hasn’t said he his) I assume he’s just ‘working from home’ but his absence is being noticed... his career was so important to him previously... I don’t get it.

Anyone else experienced/ seen something like this?

I've seen my ex split with many things, this has included jobs/college. It always starts of with how great it is then a few months later she would hate it and constantly phone in sick.

She does this with pets too. She HAS to have it and it's super amazing when she gets it. It's her "baby" and can do nothing wrong but be adorable. A few months later and she hates the damn thing.

Unfortunately, this has been the case with her children to. As soon as the new 1 came along, the old one didn't seem to matter anymore.

I think they can split on anything or anybody if I'm honest.

Black-and-white thinking applies to any person, place, or thing.

I never understood this. To me at least, most of life is filled with good-and-bad aspects, but that doesn't mean that you reject people and things that are basically good. I can deal with bad memories because I have lots of good memories. Places no longer trigger me because I see them with a perspective that sees them in context. Objects we shared are the same. People we both knew are mostly good in my book. I see no reason to move to start over or to change any of the major aspects of my life. 

But if someone has painted a person, place, or thing black, it's going to remain black with that kind of thing. The only relief is to run and/or replace. Sadly, that doesn't work out long-term.

The only relief is to run and/or replace. Sadly, that doesn't work out long-term.

And so the cycle continues...

And so it does. I help with a local recovery ministry, and there are so many parallels. Of course it's fine to run from things that are destructive. I know a lady locally who moved to get away from a drug scene that kept drawing her back into drug abuse. She has to of course deal with what kept pulling her back, but that isn't a bad move if there is support and resources available. And it's healthy to replace bad habits like drug use with good ones like exercising when you're stressed, being with healthy friends, etc. etc.

But not dealing at some level with the past isn't healthy.

Well, my ex got mad when I did not want to switch my job to the same company she works at.

For the most part, she always talked about she was surprised she still kept her job. As far as I see, she still works for the same company. Not sure if she's still in the same department.

She's only worked there since 2015 though. So, we shall see.

fizzingwhizbee   :hi:

You've been out of the relationship for about 5 months now. I think it's quite normal shortly after the end of a relationship to wonder about your ex. Of course for people in these types of relationships, enmeshment tends to be higher, so both people tend to have more detachment anxieties than 'normal' relationships.

What are you doing for self care?

I'm doing a lot, but am maybe a bit inconsistent with it. I'm a social person, so I'm socialising loads (something I was doing less and less of when I was with my ex). I journal on and off, and meditate. I'm exercising regularly and have done some trips away.

Rumination is something I struggled with before the relationship though - and my therapist confirmed recently that I have generalised anxiety.

It just feels as though I have a movie of our relationship constantly on loop in the back of my head whatever I'm doing.

I'm still trying to understand why he acted the way that he did... and I constantly compare myself to the new girl.

I think, really, I haven't accepted that he's unwell - and I imagine him being the perfect bf for her... she has small kids, and one thing he said to me before we broke up is that he "can't have kids, because he couldn't put children through how he is" ... but now he's playing happy families with her.

It just makes it feel like the problem was me... Is it possible she won't trigger him?

Mine tried to get me on his team, and took it very personally when I said I didn't want to be...

and I constantly compare myself to the new girl.

They fail to connect to anybody, they only attach for need, the need to not be alone and to have an identity. When my ex recycled me I sat and listened to her speak about her then ex. She told me that he thought they were having a relationship but she did not see it the same way, she said she was there in body but not there at all in mind. She openly admitted to just using him for somewhere to live. Of all the BS she came out with, I actually believe 100% what she said on this subject because I believe that's the way she was when she was with me. They see relationships in a whole different way that we do. I hope this helps you to not take it personally.

The replacement will get the same that you got. My ex cheated on me many times. The last time we split there was a new guy living with her within 10 days. He was "perfect", the love of her life. 15mths later she was heavily depressed and began reeling me back in, it took 3mths and a suicide attempt for me to cave in. 2mths later she went back to him, 8 days later cheated on him. Within the space of 3 weeks he cheated on her then the week after she cheated again.  Are you seeing what I'm getting at? It's crazy right?

Don't compare yourself, she is not the problem, BPD is. She could be a goddess and the cycle will still take place.

Great job keep it up. A few of us here have been through this kind of thing with a BP-traited person, and I do think self-care is the way to make your transition away from this person easier.

It seems like this has been the case for you for some time. Where are you for progress on this with your T?

I appreciate what this is like. I found myself being somehow forced into positions of comparing myself to my ex's partners. I think I was doing pretty well everywhere else in my life until this BP. This is how I think it worked in my relationship:

• BP triangulated a third party.
• I competed with the third party to keep the relationship.
• If I didn't compete, it's near certain I'd lose the relationship.

One way to look at my relationship's last termination was I didn't want to compete with the third party. When I didn't step in the ring, I behaved like someone with a higher sense of personal worth, thereby repelling the BP.

So don't take it personally. The BP habitually trying to triangulate people and make them compete is one of their only (and most powerful) ways of coercing someone to get into a relationship with them. You aren't worth less just because you didn't qualify for the BP's mystical attractiveness tests rofl.

If you want to stop competing, then don't compete. E.g., if a person tells you 'my ex did this', just keep quiet. Don't immediately try to one-up their ex. The moment they try to compare you with someone—don't even engage. In my view, if a person is trying to make you compete, it's usually because they aren't confident enough in their own attractiveness, therefore they have to stoop to undermining the confidence of their prospective partner. From a guy's perspective, I think this is a very common tactic. To put it bluntly, if a man is a 5, and a woman is a 7, but if the man then can make the woman think she is a 5, then his odds of scoring are higher. Don't even play. Recognise it and move on to a guy that doesn't have to make a woman feel 'less than' in order to date them.

I think you could be right.

Sometimes when we contemplate possibilities for our ex's relationships, those possibilities include good possibilities. They may or may not have a good relationship.

When you're in a relationship with a BP, it's easy to minimise the value of your other experiences. One thing I found I could rely on was the realisation that the horrible dynamics between my ex and I were unique. They almost never played out in any of my other close relationships. So based on that, it becomes unlikely that the 'issues' are mine. Of course, we have our roles to play in getting into those dynamics in the first place. That's definitely somewhere I think all of us SO's have to look. And just because you're easily triangulated at one point in your life doesn't mean the 'problem is you'.

I think it's just a matter of time. My ex faked on social media that she was having this perfect relationship, but she later published that she was going through the same garbage she did with me. That's consistent with the ideas that:

1) People put their best marketing on social media.

2) If a BP gets closer to a person, the togetherness increases, and the corresponding dysregulation will start to show up more.

Anyway, stepping back from all that, a 'perfect' relationship doesn't really exist. My time with my BP was horrific compared to my other relationships. If your ex has BP traits then they're that much less likely to be able to maintain a healthy relationship than someone without BP traits.

I encourage you to be your own judge, do your own research, and don't fall into the trap of thinking you're a commodity for the BP. I give you hope that if you increase your sense of personal esteem, you'll find yourself around less men that are trying to make you compete with other women—and correspondingly with more men that will be looking at your attractiveness as a set of individual and valuable strengths.

Enjoy your peace.

i ruminated a great deal myself, and this was a subject that played in my head a lot.

heres the thing: the more we rely on the need to hear that we werent the problem, that the relationship was doomed no matter what we did...the more we need to hear it. if it were that simple, its probably not a question wed be asking.

it is, though, a common question when our self esteem and confidence are in tatters. i never could quite convince myself of the things above, but the more i rebuilt my self esteem and confidence, the less my recovery had to do with the outcome of my ex.

their relationship will be "different", just as your next relationship will be "different". we are all a bit of a different partner depending on who we are with. we also all learn lessons from relationships...things we want to take into new ones, or baggage we want to leave behind. sometimes they are lessons that come up for us repeatedly.  the time will come, i think, when you want to ask yourself what lessons you want to learn and take into future relationships. for me, that time didnt come for a while, i had wounds to tend and pain to heal first.

Yeah, I need to keep this in my head and not seek proof of it either... because waiting for the cycle to happen with them really has no bearing on me, or my recovery from our relationship

We're working through it, she's knows it's an issue and we've been working on some CBT, but we're still exploring and finding insights here and there. I haven't seen her for that long to be honest - but she seems good.



In fairness, it's not my ex making the comparison, or 'forcing me to compete' - it's my own ruminations and thought process (and here is the crux of why I was prone to falling into this kind of relationship I guess) It's what I'm working on with my T.



This is really good advice, I definitely need to work on my own esteem and i think that needs to be my focus in order to move past this.

Yeah, i definitely feel that...


I think I definitely have some way to go to heal the pain, but I hear what you're saying and it's really good advice. I have already learnt a lot and there's more to work on 

Healing and learning about yourself is good. Take it a day at a time.

I know for me, it will be a while because I am having trust issues and I don't think I could be as passionate as I was with my ex, or having the new girl do the same.