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How did I survive the break up. It is more like surviving. It’s a constant process, it doesn’t just go away, or stop. There is always rumination.
So, how am I surviving. Well, it’s a case of having to. The discard was quite brutal, I’ve written about it on here. My first step at survival, I threw myself into my work. As I mentioned above, we had switched roles and I went from full time work to part time with the bulk of the child care fairly early on in our relationship, from when our first child was about 2 years old. They are adults now, but while I increased my work load my wife would try and stop me working on her days off so I would be with her and she wasn’t at home on her own. Or I would have clients that were wealthy and because she was jealous would try and make me stop working for them, so that was the first struggle…. Building my customer base back up and earning enough to be able to live. I’ve had to start from square one pretty much and at times it is still a struggle.
Second step was to get out and do things, socialise, re start hobbies that had been shelved because of my wife’s hatred of me doing things that didn’t revolve around her. To see more of my family and friends as they had been neglected for similar reasons as to why my work had been neglected. Seeing those friends and family helped, because every single one of them told me how badly they thought she treated me. That’s not just my friends and family, but hers too. The first thing my father in law said to me was that his daughter didn’t deserve me, and I wouldn’t take her back if I were you. The first thing her sister said was haven’t I stopped to think how much better off I would be without her because she treated me like sh*t
So I guess the follow on from that is stopping to think more clearly. When you are fully committed in the relationship you can not do that. Your judgement is clouded and you become blind to it. They say love is blind and I suppose I and a lot of us on here are testament to that. Writing about it helps. Going back and looking at the relationship retrospectively from the beginning and realising what you have written, if it was a friend that had told you this was his/her life, what would your advice be. Joining this forum and seeing that I am not alone. I didn’t even know what bpd was throughout my marriage, but after telling my story on a forum for people affected by partners suffering drug/alcohol abuse and being told by several people my wife is a narcissist, I researched and found out about bpd which I think the description better fits my wife, and I can certainly relate to a lot of things people have written on here. Many times I come across a post and think I could have written it word for word.
Where am I at now. It is about 2 years and 2 months since we split up, because my wife left me for a guy that was selling her drugs. A guy that was married to one of her best friends, that had been left because of his own toxic behaviour. I’d spent many months feeling as though I was the victim, but that mindset has now changed. I now see my wife as the victim of her own mind. I see her boyfriend as the victim of her behaviour. Less than a month after the discard, after being with her new boyfriend she was sleeping with me behind his back and that carried on for a year until I decided to get off that rollercoaster ride, and realised she respects absolutely no one.
Two months after that discard, when I was getting out socialising, I met a woman. A beautiful, kind, funny and far more stable woman. 14 months after meeting her we started dating. We both knew it was inevitable, but both knew I needed to heal first. That was 9 months ago. It’s not without its challenges that comes with us both having kids and living apart, but we love each other and our relationship is easy. It’s natural, it’s relaxed and calm, it’s normal when we have both been used to turbulence.
So, I am in a better relationship. I have made many new friends. I get out and do more. I can live my life, and not the life of a suppressed codependent and trauma bonded man trying to appease someone that is in effect mentally ill. It’s complicated, there is more to it than what I’ve just written, and some days can still be bad, but I know those days are by far outweighed by the good days now.
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