An email nearly 2 years later

[oletimefeelin]

While preparing for a meeting at work last Tuesday, I looked down at my phone to see a name I hadn't seen in quite some time.  I didn't believe my eyes at first, but quickly tossed my phone in my desk drawer to go back to focusing on the task at hand.  This action alone later struck me as a stark contrast to how I would have reacted to contact from her in the throes of my addiction to her.

A few hours later, I read the email.  The subject line read, "Could I talk to you?"  The body contained only one sentence.  "I know this is random, and I completely understand if you don't want to."  She concluded by signing her name.  I knew I'd likely respond, but went about the rest of my day before penning a response later that night.

I'll tell you why I responded.  Despite not having directly communicated with this person since November 2011, a deep connection still remains on my end.  I have completely avoided everything to do with her.  When I say everything I mean everything.  This hadn't achieved the desired result.  So I responded looking to crack the door open a bit.  Going about my life as if she were dead hadn't done the trick, so I was prepared to at least acknowledge that she's alive in the world.

I knew I needed to establish clear boundaries.  I told her I'd talk to her, but needed to talk to one of her family members first to establish ground rules to any conversation.  I outlined this in more detail and concluded by telling her it'd be better for me to have any conversation over the weekend.  It's a week or so later and have heard nothing back.  My feelings and emotions on all this may be instructive to others going through all stages of the detachment process.

I had a lot of downtime towards the end of the week, waiting around airports and such.  I certainly ruminated but nothing near the way things used to run through my head.  The overwhelming emotion for me is sadness.  Her short email fishing for a response and failure to reply told me so much.  First, and most profound for me, is that she's still suffering from the emotional turmoil that ruled her life in the two years we knew one another.  Things were certainly hard for me, but I don't wish her this life of constant pain.  She has many wonderful qualities and deserves to experience joy.  So, just as when she had her friend write me in January 2011, I quickly recognized the hallmarks of BPD.  Unlike that time, when I recognized this as confirmation that I was better off, I was just sad for her.

The lack of response tells me a lot as well.  It's more push-pull control games, which feels so pointless some two years later.  If her primary purpose was to apologize, well she wouldn't care if I had to talk to her Mom first.  I always subscribed to the theory I have read here and elsewhere many times that borderlines are constantly taking your temperature.  For her, my response whereby I needed to talk her Mommy before talking to her, well she didn't like those terms.

So now I know she's out there.  She's not dead and she hasn't moved away.  When I walk outside my office (we work 2 blocks from one another), I look both ways.  I do wonder when she'll jump out at me again, and the reality is with my response it will happen eventually. 

[Lao Tzu]

Dear oletimefeelin,

     What an excellent approach you've had to a very stressful situation for you.  If you substitute 30 years as the no contact time you will pretty much have my story, although I can't say I felt as cool as you despite the much longer time period.  I agree with your conclusions about why she contacted, by the way, and why she hasn't responded to you.  I get it that you wish in many ways that she would respond.  The 'good' news is that I will bet you a beer she will respond. 

     The bad news may be that sooner or later you will find a way to make the recycle happen and I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone.  If we "nons" haven't done the hard work to change the way we look at ourselves (I hadn't in 30 years), the passage of time is almost completely meaningless.  "Going about my life as if she were dead hadn't done the trick... ." is exactly correct. I'll apologize in advance, but I don't agree with "My feelings and emotions on all this may be instructive to others going through all stages of the detachment process.", as I don't believe you actually have done a lot of detachment yet.  It's a process, not just a decision, and it sounds a lot more like you've essentially taken two years off.  That's not an indictment, as I took 15 times as long  . 

     You haven't asked for advice and you likely wouldn't follow it anyway as you sound very self-reliant, so I'll skip the homilies on NC.  Whether you move forward with her or not, you need to find the key to getting this powerful link to your psyche under control.  It isn't easy and my guess is that she'll recontact long before you even get started, but the recycles typically run much faster than the original relationship, so when it's over (unless I'm wrong, of course -- and I pray I am) and you get past the acute depression, you'll have the motivation to start the real work of letting this go.  We'll be here for you if the need should arise.

LT

[UmbrellaBoy]

Two years! For someone at 3 months no contact that makes me feel so many conflicting things. On the one hand, fear that even that long in the future he could still haunt me, on the other hand a perverse "hope " that it means he will... .

It's interesting: I notice you last post before this was at the end of May, five months ago. It's late October now. It makes me think of the advice that "they'll reappear right when you think you've finally moved on." You must have been really getting over it to not post since May. But then *bam* she reappears, almost like she knew your timeframes and that her window was closing.

[winston72]

Fastball down the middle of the plate, LaoTzu!  Or, maybe better said a fastball under the chin.  And you have the right to throw that pitch given your life history.

Oletimefeelin, you sound really clear about your feelings and your situation.  I think I am in a state that is similar to yours.  I agree with LaoTzu that the hard work of detachment is not yet complete for me... .but it is hard and it takes time!  And sometimes the pain of the recycles or re-contacts are needed to scorch the connections.  It is, after all, a process.

One thing you said really struck me, "Going about my life as if she were dead hadn't done the trick... ."  It has not, does not work for me either.  I am perhaps reading something into LaoTzu's comments, but for me this describes a kind of denial.  Rather than say it is over and try to compartmentalize it and be rid of it, I have found progress when I really try to embrace the pain, search for the truth about what was really happening in my relationship, and what was/is really happening in me.  In other words, rather than trying to deny my feelings and my attachment, I make more progress when I embrace it all more fully.  She is a part of my inner world as well as all the dynamics of why I was drawn to her and the situation.  It is all a part of me and gaining some control over it has meant incorporating those truths into my life.  

I think you are on the way to doing this just by the way you describe what has happened and your reaction to it... .and that you brought it to this site.  If the strategy of avoiding everything related to this person did not work, what will?  That is an honest question.  For me it has been an internal engagement with it all... .not engaging her (although I have done that a bit also... .with some good and some painful results).

A very helpful two posts by you guys, by the way!

[oletimefeelin]

Lao Tzu,

What you wrote is fair.  I can't deny it.  I left out a few things in the interest of time about my own personal situation.  I have so much ambivalence tied up in her.  Yes, I still love her and likely always will.  However, I've long since acknowledged that way too much happened and she's fatally flawed for me to get back in the ring.  I am a gambler, but she's a bad bet.

[oletimefeelin]

It's interesting: I notice you last post before this was at the end of May, five months ago. It's late October now. It makes me think of the advice that "they'll reappear right when you think you've finally moved on." You must have been really getting over it to not post since May. But then *bam* she reappears, almost like she knew your timeframes and that her window was closing.

Very much true in my case.  I had stopped altering my routine.  Started revisiting restaurants we shared again, etc.  I'd shown a lot more enthusiasm toward the opposite sex than I had.  The timing was uncanny. 

There's likely a few things going on behind the scenes here.  First, her brother recently got married.  He's much younger.  Second, a friend works with her best friend and let it slip that the two of us are going on a fun trip in a few weeks.  Third, the Monday before the text was my birthday.  Fourth, we met around this time.  So October is always intrinsically linked to us.  Fifth, she had a lot of time on her hands with the U.S. government shutdown.  Yes she works for Uncle Sam!  Sixth, would be whatever else she has going on.

Keep doing what you're doing.

[Lady31]

Winston!  Lmbo!

[winston72]

Another thread woke up my inner baseball player!  I assume that is what you are referring to... .nice to have someone get it!

[Lao Tzu]

Dear BPD Family,

     Winston said it correctly "... .sometimes the pain of the recycles or re-contacts are needed to scorch the connections"  The subconscious needs to get more pain from being involved than it feels from staying away, I guess, before it becomes aligned with our upper cognition.  I didn't mean to hit you hard "oletimefeelin", I guess I have a bit more of an edge about these issues than I should.  You have to deal with this stuff your way; it's the only way that will work for you. 

     The secret here is in repairing one's self-image, ultimately.  The pwBPD can detect the "non" who tries really hard to be as perfect as they can be and then lets them know that as far as they're concerned the non has accomplished his or her goal.  What perfectionist wouldn't want a beautiful, accomplished, kind and loving person to convince them that they actually attained that vaunted state?  People say that the most completely irrestible woman is the one who is madly in love with you, and this is what the pwBPD 'does' in spades.

     This won't work, though, if we aren't always criticising ourselves.  I was told to stop doing this a million times when I was growing up and I, intentionally, never changed a bit because I truly feared that if I quit whipping myself I would also quit being successful.  There's a bit of irony for you: it was the self-whipping that ultimately had the most significantly adverse effect on my success.  I should have listened a long time ago and trusted myself a lot more.  This is really 'the hard work', of getting over this thing, at least for me.  The better I get at it the less effect (even after three decades) my pwBPD has on me.

LT