Isolation

[crystalclear]

I read on one of the blogs by a person whose exH was a Narcissist and Borderline that the Narc or borderline leaves you isolated when he/she leaves you.

It is not strange that all his friends who seemed to be nice people maintain No contact with me anymore .I had contacted the same people in a desperate attempt to get him to change his mind. They did try talking to him but he was obstinate that he was done with our r/s and asked them not to talk about me anymore.I understand that in a break up - friends take side and they were his friends. But they were shocked when they learnt 'he broke up' with me.

Sadly, this isolation is nothing to do with his friends - it's to do with my family and friends who just do not seem to understand the gravity of my situation. Their take is that this was another 'breakup'. They seem to be fed up that after 5 months i am still 'sulking' and 'brooding' and thinking about the past while he has been 'strong' and 'practical' to move on within 3 months to find another girl and is now married to her.

Isolation is not about the 'physical' presence but it is more the absence of emotional and mental support - which is my case since the last 4 months. It hurts when noone understands or the least lends an ear when i just want to talk. But i believe there is a silver lining here - i am starting to revive my self-love, self-comfort and accepting that i am not alone as long as i have myself.

This place has been my diary, and each of you my pen friend. I want to thank all of you - bottom of my

CC

[snappafcw]

Thanks for your perspective these are 100% my thoughts and experiences exactly. Good luck with your journey 

[mango_flower]

I'm extremely lucky in that my best friend (who also knew my ex) kind of went through the whole thing with me in a way, I told her of every email, every call, all the small details.  So she knows how messed up it all is.  I think if she didn't listen to me, I'd go insane!  My best friend works at a local psychiatric ward, so I guess she's more educated about the BPD world and senses how confusing, crazy and heart-breaking it all is. So I am lucky.

But yes, this place really really helps. 

Do your friends/family know about BPD?  I sent my Mum a piece I found online about how a BPD breakup is way more painful than any other - and she got it.  She then researched it herself and started to understand more about why I was in so much pain. I wish I could find the link to show you but I can't remember where I read it now.

x

[Validation78]

Hi Crystal!

I'm sorry to hear that your breakup has been painful and that you don't feel a great deal of support around you. Please forgive your friends and family and know that BPD is something that may be completely new to them. I had never heard of it until 2 years ago myself, and would probably be less understanding had I not gone through this experience myself.

Have you been seeing a therapist? I have found that seeing one has been very validating as she is very experienced with BPD, and can confirm a lot for me, and has helped me to work through the issues that arise.

I'm glad that you have found us here. It does help to know that you are not alone and can get some feedback when you are trying to sort things out. Please keep posting when you need to, and read and explore the site. It is packed with good information to learn more about BPD, and to lead you to better emotional health yourself!

Best Wishes,

Val78

[Murbay]

crystalclear, it is a very difficult situation to be in and I understand your feelings of being alone and frustrated about how the situation spun around.

There is great strength to be gained from knowing that even though we struggle ourselves with isolation, we have enough capacity to work through that and find our inner peace, something which the other person will never be able to do. You identified that in yourself in reviving your self-love and that your ex couldn't by seeking out the next person and getting married to them. You can have peace in knowing that you will always be able to adapt and appreciate yourself but they won't ever accomplish that and lead a life of torment.

The friends and family of the ex is often difficult for us to deal with because they become a part of our lives too, so we don't just grieve the person we just lost but also that network of family and friends which does make things a little harder. It's when it upsets that balance with our own friends and families that things can be much harder to work through and completely understandable.

I went through a similar thing you did, and was frustrated at the prospect of trying to justify what happened to my own friends and family because of my ex's public persona. My saving grace was the amount of e-mails she sent where she revealed her true side and in terms of my mother and sister, who initially raised objections based on the manipulation she was telling them, I would bcc them into some of the e-mails so they saw the true picture.

The same thing with our T, though he did see straight through her mask, I just confirmed what he already suspected. The turning point for all of them was when she suspected she had been found out and just couldn't hide her true self from any of them in the form of painting them black and taking her rages out on them.

Again, you cannot change the perspective of others unless they want to see it for themselves. The only thing you can do is continue to work on yourself as then the people who enter your life and stay are the ones who deserve to be there. You have made fantastic progress in terms of identifying the self-love, self comfort and being at peace with yourself. Keep following that path and it will lead to great things in your life.

[crystalclear]

mango_flower,

Unfortunately none of my friends know about BPD/NPD. I myself learnt about it after my breakup when i was informed that my exbf was a sociopath by on of the 'r/s expert forums' and directed me to read more on this. Eventually i realised my exbf's traits/behavior matched to that pwNPD and BPD. I tried explaining this to my family & friends but i can see they are just 'listening' and do not really understand or care to research/learn about it. Sometimes i feel like they think i have gone nuts... . and i am overreacting, and he was just a bad case - and i am exaggerating by calling him 'mentally ill'. Most of my friends are guys - who tell me that it is 'normal' for a 'guy' to 'fall out of love' and 'quickly move on to someone else'... .

Val78,

Thank you for understanding my pain. The place i live does not have any qualified or rather experienced therapists. The ones here only give you medication - which i do not require. I just need some strong counselling and guidance to understand the disorder and my path from here. The only reason i feel better than before is because i read more each day about NPD and BPD and the people who have been in r/s with them. This forum has helped me a lot too. Apart from this music, my work is my solace. One of the worst things i did was to hide what i was going through (emotional abuse and physical abuse once a while) with this person, from my parents. I was keeping his 'image' protected from everyone - mine and his friends and family. It's too late to share with them what i was going through. I cannot tell his parents how he treated me, how he kept me in the dark , because noone will believe me. He painted me black saying he cannot trust me anymore and he is frustrated with me. He is happily married now, to someone who is professionally well placed and from a wealthy family. It's like he 'showed me', that he could get 'better' girls if wanted. He never contacted me since he broke up with me.

[crystalclear]

Murbay,

Sorry for your troubles  and the pain you went through too... .

It's great to have a T who is able to guide you during the times when nothing seems to make sense or make less sense. I am trying to atleast find a good online T if possible, although i know it is not the best thing way to seek therapy.

In my case, i am a very private person - i do not share details about happiness/pain with friends especially. But i am quite close to my mom and share most of my life with her. I chose not to disclose the abuses because i thought 'this is not him' but 'this is his anger' which will disappear. And i assumed all of this will stop and return to normal-happy us if I changed, if we just worked things out. In case of emotional abuse, i did not know that this is 'emotional abuse' i was unaware of this behavior, and again assumed this is his anger speaking. And somewhere he is RIGHT that i need to stop partying, stop meeting my guy friends, and i was provoking interest from other men  and i should cuss any guy who shows the slightest interest in me. I should not meet new people, even randomly. I am to be blamed for his anger, and frustration and for not marrying him when he was ready and to make him wait until we resolved the issues.

[Sleuth]

mango_flower,

I tried explaining this to my family & friends but i can see they are just 'listening' and do not really understand or care to research/learn about it.

I completely understand this perspective on 'isolation'. It is very hard and lonely to feel like no one who cares about you has any idea about what you are going through. This barrier leaves a true void of emotional and mental support.

In my opinion there is little option except deal with the pain and confusion alone, and hopefully emerge a better, wiser person. The vast majority of people will never understand what it is like to go through what everyone here has. And you can't expect them to unfortunately, who would research this unless suffering at the twisted hands of it? I'm certainly not here to pad out my psychological resumé.

I pretty much pretend it doesn't affect me anymore, it seems pointless to do otherwise.

I spoke to my friend about it the other week, he said on my 5 year relationship:

'It's not like it was all bad'

I said:

'It's not like any of it was real either'

[Sleuth]

Hmmm. I was supposed to prune mango_flower off that... .