Thank you

[Accepting]

Hello. This is my first post though I've been accessing this site/forum for a little while - especially this last month or so. I haven't felt like joining previously as I felt like everything I was going through was being told through others who are already members - and it was kind of nice to simply read and process things without anticipating a response or needing to share my story.

However, I've got to a point where I think it's important to join up and say thank you out loud... .as in here in this post. This site is an amazing resource and saviour for anyone whose life has led them to experiencing the things we have all experienced here. I'm really grateful of having discovered this forum through an online search - I think at the time I was googling 'silent treatment' and was led to BPD family.

There's so much I could write re details of my experience of the last 18months but I kind of just wanted to jump on and say thank you. I'm a 34yr old woman from Australia who's had the most confronting, touching, beautiful and confusing past 18months - falling for a guy who I thought would be my life partner and soul mate. Whilst I had continual internal debates about the push/pull of my relationship with my guy, it was only when I found this site that everything suddenly fell in to place and made sense - a common theme amongst posters, I know.

So, without going in to the details of my own experience as I could simply cut and paste many of the members posts to pretty much recreate my own story... .I'd like to say thank you all so much for sharing your stories and experiences as there are surely many out there (who are not members) reading this site as I have who feel great sense of relief in knowing/finding that they're not alone, not crazy and not without understanding from others (most especially as this is so hard to get from friends and family who simply haven't come into contact with BPD or similar).

Why have I posted this on the leaving board? Because that is where I'm currently at. One of the hardest realisations for me is that I seem to be a trigger for my guy and overall I don't seem to be making positive improvements to his state of mind by remaining in contact. So, I'm really trying to love him enough by letting go - stop the recycle process and hopefully allow him the space to do what he needs to do to try to heal. I'm trying to allow myself time to process it all and equally trying to stop thinking about it so much. Sometimes life just isn't fair and we don't get answers. I like to live my life thinking that everything happens for a reason and that karma is in play - do the right thing by yourself and others and hopefully life will sort itself out. Every day I just try to ground myself and find joy in the small things... .and be grateful.

Thank you for reading 

[heartandwhole]

Accepting,

I love your username    I'm so glad that you decided to post.  It's great to know that the site has been helpful, especially the members' experiences, which are really the heart of this place.

I'm sorry that you find yourself in the position of separating.  It was a painful time for me, and I'm thankful to be in a much better place now.

I'd love to know where you are now with your processing of what happened, if you are communicating with your guy and how you're handling it.  Of course, only if you'd like to share!

Thank you for posting, it's very nice to meet you. 

[Accepting]

I'd love to know where you are now with your processing of what happened, if you are communicating with your guy and how you're handling it.  Of course, only if you'd like to share!

Hi heartandwhole... .thank you for welcoming me. It actually felt kinda weird to have posted after all this time reading the boards behind the scenes. I read your reply this morning before work and decided over the day to write my story on here - after all that's what led me to so much understanding so maybe it'll help someone else – (after note – it is really long sorry).

I met my guy 18mths ago on online dating. We texted heaps, emailed and spoke on the phone for a few weeks before meeting in person. There was definitely spark before even meeting and then when we did meet we got on like a house on fire. We went for hinterland drives and laughed heaps. There was so much we seemed to have in common - similar music taste, same age, grew up in towns on the same coast by the beach, liking healthy foods and keeping fit, similar sense of humour... .we seemed to have the same morals and wants in life. It was so great at first those few months of getting to know each other. Our chemistry was intense... He was the only person I'd ever been able to fall asleep in the arms of. I just felt so comfortable and natural, self assured and beautiful. I fell for him pretty quickly. He wanted me to be his girlfriend after about 6wks and I was a little taken aback given guys usual hesitation to commit but stoked cos I was really in to him.

The first time anything out of the ordinary happened was early on in the piece... I was at gym on a Sunday and going to stay at his that day/night. He had a go at me for exercising on a Sunday... which didn't make sense to me. Neither of us are religious and Sunday was just another day. We spoke on the phone and he got really annoyed and hung up on me saying don't bother coming over. I went outside of the gym and called him back. I did end up seeing him that night but that was the first of many red flags which I didn't piece together properly till recently.

We broke up suddenly one day when he ended things by text. I was in shock. I thought we were great... I insisted on seeing him in person as text wasn't going to cut it for me. He works in emergency services (his job he has said is such an important thing he has in his life and he’s always loved it – never not wanted to go to work ever except once he met me, then it was so hard leaving me in bed and getting up to leave for work) and I met him at the end of his shift at his place. I remember him letting me in then walking to the balcony for a cigarette and I looked at him smiling (maybe just hoping for a smile back, I don't know why I smiled... .maybe I was nervous?) and he looked at me with this distant, grey look in his eyes and asked "why are you smiling?" After many tears and disbelief and sorrys on his behalf I left.

To cut a long story short, this started what I now see as the recycling process. Why didn't I just walk away for good? Well I did date other guys and tried to let go but I just didn't meet anyone like him - also, the main reason was that he had gone through a divorce 4yrs earlier with his wife of 13yrs (school girlfriend - she cheated with her married boss - I know this is true as I met his family) and then his mum had passed from cancer - so I always thought that this stuff was about trust issues and grief. I felt like he needed someone to show him he could count on them and trust them again after losing the most important female figures in his life in close succession. It was some time therefore before I realised a pattern emerging. We'd break apart, then initiate contact and have the most amazing texts and chats and get back together. The cycle happened at a faster rate though... .at first he distanced after a month of seeing each other then by the end it would only take a few days and he'd shut down. When he shut down he'd go silent. The worst sentencing of all. So hurtful and so incredibly hard to take. I only ever turned up to his place unannounced a few times and each time I'd see that the few personal belongings of mine were still there, nothing was hidden and I didn't ever feel like there was another girl on the scene. I trusted him the whole time. But still it just didn’t make sense to me. My family and friends made a mockery of him and said I was totally delusional - he was just using me when he felt like it. But what they didn't see was how perfect it was when I was with him and how sensitive he was. Nothing made sense though... .he said he'd had counselling in the past, he’d stopped and then that he was getting more, he said he still cried over his mum and that he didn't know that he could ever love another after his wife and was amazed when he fell harder for me than anyone.

Things for him got worse when he said that he couldn't see me any more as I gave him the highest highs he'd ever felt and the lowest lows. He said I knew exactly what to say to cut him to his core - but that he didn't think that was my intention - it was just what he felt. He told me that his psychologist told him that it was important he let me know none of it was my fault.

Why didn't I just walk away? I tried over and over but I just kept going back. Every time it sounded like he'd made so much improvement and I didn't realise that it was more than grief. Then more things started to happen. I noticed that he attached strongly to girls who were in relationships already - I think it's cos they were seen as 'safe' - he could spend time and communicate with them on a surface level without being threatened by anything further - they could give him nurturing without getting too close. He said things that didn't make sense also - like he said recently he didn't go to a music festival as he didn't want to see me there with another guy? I never had tickets (last year I did for the same festival and went) and 'what other guy?'. His time frame also proved to be of concern to me. We'd stop being in contact for a few weeks and when contact would start again (we've both initiated at times) he'd ask how I'd been as though it'd been 6mths since seeing him, not 2wks. In my mind I'd think 'huh?' but as had become a usual in this whole experience I kind of swept it aside.

Just recently he told me that he has seen a therapist the entire time we've known each other and that he told me at times he'd stopped as he didn't want me asking questions. He said he has loved me the whole time and has come to realise he doesn't love/like himself and needs to find himself - he's even linked songs to how he feels - he says I deserve so much more than he can give me and that he doesn't want me to wait for him to find himself as he needs to go on his healing journey alone and doesn't even know if he'll ever find himself or be okay. This simply cuts me to my core... it's so hard to see someone you love hurt so much be so lost when you yourself have put in the effort in life to get to a place where you choose happiness and try to always ground yourself after painful experiences. I feel like the whole process has made people close to me cringe and I've felt alienated as they simply don't see the beautiful side when they just see the repercussion of me when I'm hurt, when I'm copping silence for weeks on end. I've done a lot of self reflection as to why I'm repeatedly putting myself through this and as mentioned above, I'm only just now really started piecing together the whole relationship - now that I've discovered this site especially. I guess I thought it was grief and that it would pass and maybe it is... .but more and more stories he mentioned are coming back to me and forming a bigger picture.

I guess for me now I just have to try to accept that I am a trigger for him. That the moment he gets really emotionally close to me he flicks a switch and shuts me out entirely - so so painful for me to experience.

An analogy he recently used is that we are like magnates who attract so strongly but then he feels like, as magnates do, something happens inside of him and he is repelled from me - that when this happens he feels like he drops and just shatters.

So beautiful and so sad. But I am okay. Just need to try to accept and be happy with my life and try to accept not having him be a part of it.

[heartandwhole]

Accepting,

Your story is very touching, thank you for sharing it.  I can relate to it in so many ways.  I also experienced getting closer to my pwBPD, only to be pushed away sooner after a recycle.  It's so sad, especially since my pwBPD had awareness after the fact, and felt terrible about his actions, seeing how much I was hurting.

I'm glad that you are striving for acceptance.  It's a gift, and it comes right on time.  Like you, I had to look deeply at my behavior, and have been learning a lot since.

I hope you'll continue to share as you feel moved to.  It's nice for all of us to know that what we feel is not so strange under the circumstances. 

heart

[fromheeltoheal]

There was so much we seemed to have in common - similar music taste, same age, grew up in towns on the same coast by the beach, liking healthy foods and keeping fit, similar sense of humour... .we seemed to have the same morals and wants in life. It was so great at first those few months of getting to know each other. Our chemistry was intense...

Did you ever get the impression later in the relationship that the person you met and fell for was not really him?  It's called mirroring, and mine was so good at it she was like a dream come true, the perfect woman for me, and of course the dream turned into a nightmare.  Curious if you noticed that as things went sour.

I guess for me now I just have to try to accept that I am a trigger for him. That the moment he gets really emotionally close to me he flicks a switch and shuts me out entirely - so so painful for me to experience.

An analogy he recently used is that we are like magnates who attract so strongly but then he feels like, as magnates do, something happens inside of him and he is repelled from me - that when this happens he feels like he drops and just shatters.

So beautiful and so sad. But I am okay. Just need to try to accept and be happy with my life and try to accept not having him be a part of it.

Yes.  I'm sorry we had to go through that, I choose to believe everything happens for a reason.  A BPD gets triggered by intimacy, the closer we try and get, the stronger the trigger, and then the push/pull of the disorder shows up, crazy making if we try and make sense of it, and very, very hurtful when all we're trying to do is love and our motives are pure.

It wasn't us, our love is more than enough, and with better boundaries we'll let the right one in next time.  Thanks for your post, you sound like a sweet person.

[Accepting]

I hope you'll continue to share as you feel moved to.  It's nice for all of us to know that what we feel is not so strange under the circumstances. 

Thank you. You know I've felt genuinely better and less alone since posting - cos no one I know can relate whatsoever to the experience I've been through. They most especially don't understand the love and care I still have for him - they just want me to move on and hold little regard for the emotions I still feel. It's kind of like, how could you love someone like that?

I've also found that whilst my resolve at the moment is pretty strong towards not making contact again, during the moments I feel sad, I feel less sad since posting. It's simply the shared experiences which make me feel less alone and definitely more matter of fact about things.

Did you ever get the impression later in the relationship that the person you met and fell for was not really him?

Thank you for your reply.

Honestly, though I can see that happening here for many people, I do feel like the person I met was the real him. A lot of the things we spoke about which I related to were initiated by him. However, keeping to 'being this person' (not being overshadowed with self-doubt and depressed tendencies) was where things fell off the rails entirely. His interest in being 'real, genuine and honest' was lost in the lies? of keeping his mental/emotional issues from me. If he sought someone genuine to  become involved with, then his biggest fault was not being open and honest in return. I didn't feel he lied too often, moreso kept things close to his chest - I feel now that his anxieties got the better of him often... perhaps he was ashamed of what happened in his head... could never trust me enough to tell me the full story, only gave me tidbits to work with (and boy did my mind go into overdrive working on piecing this all together once I cracked the code as such!). I also feel like in hindsight I made so many errors by pulling him up on his behaviour which, had I known it to be so great a personal issue, I would have strived to understand and educate myself on - but the hints and clues he gave were never enough till now.

I think it's important to share information regarding our own stories whilst aiming to accept things and take as positive an approach as we can to the future. I'm not feeling like crying so much since sharing on this website which is nice. I actually feel calm inside. I just try not to allow too many daydreams about him to enter my mind. Remembering and picturing them doesn't help much!