and then it dawned on me

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

i'd like to think that i would not have given this junk much thought if i had not had a child with my ex.

after reading up and understanding all this BPD stuff and talking with my T. "It" dawned on me.

i felt strongly connected to my ex for a few reasons. she was easy to talk with, hot, and appeared to be great on the outside in so many ways so i just fell in over my head. awesome. i kind of had this image of her that was not true. one of the biggest things for me was one night while i picked up my friends because they were all out drinking and i was at home playing video games with my friends or something low key i picked her up with my friends. i remember listening to her spill the details about her sex experience despite the fact she was this "religious" waiting for marriage for god stuff. i believed it. i swear to you despite the contradiction and all that crap I believed it because what I wanted was something real, I just wanted a good girlfriend at 23-24. i was vulnerable because i was successful, accomplished, and wanted an awesome girlfriend to share life with. it was a childhood dream.

so as we are getting together we fool around intensely but no sex. i respected that because i thought we'd have the opportunity to build a relationship and it was worth trying. then things hit some snags. she called me saying X was chasing her, when I thought after several months we were dating, but I guess I was not on the same track. When she was away from home when she said she wanted to be with me I trusted that. When she came home she manipulated a break up and threw me under the bus. I was clueless for what happened.

then she tried to recycle the relationship about a month later and I ran with it. We were fooling around and she said she wanted to have sex, we did. I felt confused about what it really meant. then we started having A LOT of sex and spending a LOT of time together. then she needed to go on this trip and was talking to me in a fearful way saying she was going to stay at some dudes house but it was ok because he had a girlfriend... .  and then I was like wth? so leave it to me seeing her laptop open and unlocked I did a search in her e-mail with the keyword sex and sure enough she been having sex and a long-distance relationship behind my back. when she "recycled" the other guy dumped her. she was going to stay with his best friend. awesome, right?

then I crap you not, I broke up with her. when i broke up with her, she threatened suicide, acted seriously depressed, I crap you not, she broke out this knife and started cutting herself. So then I backed out on my break up and "tried" to work things out. The whole thing scared the crap out of me, but then it just got worse. I couldn't get the thought of her lying to me out of my head. Her with him. How she lied. And how things did not add up. It was a disaster emotionally and physically.

It just didn't click until reading about other peoples stories. Looking at the crazy unpredictable patterns, projections, all that stuff. And then it clicked. Most people build an image but its flexible. It's not so BORDER LINE meaning on one side of the fence its X and on the other its Y. That whole waiting for marriage line, the whole dramatic, twisting my words, game playing, the moods even before anything... .  She used sex as a way to manipulate me. I can't believe it. Sex as a manipulation tool. The whole thing was manipulation to control and get what she wanted. That's not love. That's being used. And it was sick. Ugh.

[Justadude]

i'd like to think that i would not have given this junk much thought if i had not had a child with my ex.

after reading up and understanding all this BPD stuff and talking with my T. "It" dawned on me.

i felt strongly connected to my ex for a few reasons. she was easy to talk with, hot, and appeared to be great on the outside in so many ways so i just fell in over my head. awesome. i kind of had this image of her that was not true. one of the biggest things for me was one night while i picked up my friends because they were all out drinking and i was at home playing video games with my friends or something low key i picked her up with my friends. i remember listening to her spill the details about her sex experience despite the fact she was this "religious" waiting for marriage for god stuff. i believed it. i swear to you despite the contradiction and all that crap I believed it because what I wanted was something real, I just wanted a good girlfriend at 23-24. i was vulnerable because i was successful, accomplished, and wanted an awesome girlfriend to share life with. it was a childhood dream.

so as we are getting together we fool around intensely but no sex. i respected that because i thought we'd have the opportunity to build a relationship and it was worth trying. then things hit some snags. she called me saying X was chasing her, when I thought after several months we were dating, but I guess I was not on the same track. When she was away from home when she said she wanted to be with me I trusted that. When she came home she manipulated a break up and threw me under the bus. I was clueless for what happened.

then she tried to recycle the relationship about a month later and I ran with it. We were fooling around and she said she wanted to have sex, we did. I felt confused about what it really meant. then we started having A LOT of sex and spending a LOT of time together. then she needed to go on this trip and was talking to me in a fearful way saying she was going to stay at some dudes house but it was ok because he had a girlfriend... .  and then I was like wth? so leave it to me seeing her laptop open and unlocked I did a search in her e-mail with the keyword sex and sure enough she been having sex and a long-distance relationship behind my back. when she "recycled" the other guy dumped her. she was going to stay with his best friend. awesome, right?

then I crap you not, I broke up with her. when i broke up with her, she threatened suicide, acted seriously depressed, I crap you not, she broke out this knife and started cutting herself. So then I backed out on my break up and "tried" to work things out. The whole thing scared the crap out of me, but then it just got worse. I couldn't get the thought of her lying to me out of my head. Her with him. How she lied. And how things did not add up. It was a disaster emotionally and physically.

It just didn't click until reading about other peoples stories. Looking at the crazy unpredictable patterns, projections, all that stuff. And then it clicked. Most people build an image but its flexible. It's not so BORDER LINE meaning on one side of the fence its X and on the other its Y. That whole waiting for marriage line, the whole dramatic, twisting my words, game playing, the moods even before anything... .  She used sex as a way to manipulate me. I can't believe it. Sex as a manipulation tool. The whole thing was manipulation to control and get what she wanted. That's not love. That's being used. And it was sick. Ugh.

[FoolishOne]

Dude... .  I am so on board with that... .  read some of my previous posts to see just how crazy they get.

F1

[GreenMango]

I can't say whether or not it was manipulative all the time.  People are rarely that black and white.

My experience was the majority of this kind of stuff was really poor coping skills... .  like some people use drugs or drink, some people use sex.

It doesn't help if a person has BPD because the impairments in empathy, intimacy, self direction, and identity combined with impulsivity.