From compassion to anger and back again

[Rebuilding me]

When will this vicious cycle stop or slow down? One moment I feel better which leads to compassion for her, but this leads me to feel that I could of done better and she did do kind things for me. Then I question if she is pwBPD or am I? Obviously this has affected me greatly and I feel I'm cracking up, so I must be the mental case! She moved on in weeks time while I poured my heart out in letters! Makes me feel like a fool to have emptied my heart to her and find out months later she had moved on while I did this with no response what so ever from her. Then the compassion is gone and anger starts back in. My last text to her I called her cold and heart less. I have guilt for that being the finally ending, sometimes, and others I feel without  a doubt it is the truth and someone needed to point out her  coldness and not let her off the hook. I'm sure she is an idealization stage which makes we realize how I fell for that and it wasn't what it seemed! I'm tired of running through all these emotions many times a day! I want one day to have true compassion and forgiveness, but I want to be done blaming myself. I want to ask for forgiveness for my last text, but then it just shows her how all over the place I am, and makes me feel like a fool. All she had to do was give me some type of response from my letter, at least acknowledged it. It is so hard to understand how someone can say so many loving things, than just turn off and be cold. I've never felt more like a discarded piece of trash before! I know only I can make myself  have those feelings, but that is how she treated me! I am so tired of this! Coming on 4 months from the breakup in a couple of weeks!  And I have been putting in work on myself!

[santa]

4 months is a good start. I was still sort of a mess at 4 months. I'm coming up on 6 and feeling a million times better. Just wait it out. Keep doing what you're doing. It'll fade eventually. If you aren't doing no contact, you should definitely start. I've been no contact for about 4 weeks and that was when I finally started to see things differently. As long as you're still in contact with her, it's going to keep being the same emotional mess over and over again. The only way to really distance yourself from it is to stop all contact.

No reason for you to feel any guilt. BPDs are guaranteed disasters in every relationship no matter what you do. You tried your best. No shame in that. She's just going to keep having the same problems with everyone forever.

Hang in there. Your life will really come into focus once you totally remove yourself from this. I promise you.

[Tausk]

Many of the hardest feelings come at about 3-4 months.  It's when some of the intensity of the break up has subsided and what we are left with is just the void.

It's a good thing.  Poster 2010 says that we need to go through the pain of abandonment depression.  It's painful, lonely, and scary.  But it was and is the best thing that I have ever done for myself.  Between therapy, meditating, self help books/techniques, and this board, I learned about myself.

With our exes wBPD, our pain and efforts resulted in nothing but more pain and suffering.  But in our recovery, our work results in positive changes that will stay with us for the rest of our lives.  

But we need to be aware of our impulses.   It's very tempting to break No Contact to relieve the pain.  Just like a junkie wanting to fix and shoot up.  

When I reengaged with my ex, it cost me and year and half of recovery.  And it took me longer to recover again.  It was like I never found the board, and I fell into the place where I would have been had I never left in the first place.

Never again.  Today, the greatest act of love that I can do for my ex and for myself is the strict boundaries of No Contact.

Hang in there.  Have hope. Have faith.  And know that your work on yourself will result in a return on your investment that you could not have imagined before the journey began.

[love4meNOTu]

It's a rollercoaster for sure, but it's nothing like the rollercoaster of being in a relationship with a pwBPD. I go back and forth between these two emotions every couple of days. It's becoming less and less though,  because I have been concentrating on helping others like yourself, and doing things that make me happy.

I have a list of 300 things I can do to feel happy. Just gotta pick one every day. It's called self care, and it works.

I'm nine months out now, so I've got about double your time. There is light at the end of the tunnel, I promise.

L

[that1guy]

I'm at 20 months.

Most days are good days. I tell myself that the change was good for me. I have been validated by friends and family that tell me that it's good that I'm back to being me again.

I know your struggles. I'm in a smallish town, so that avoiding her can be hard. And it seems like she knows just what so say to push my buttons. It doesn't help that we still have some legal issues that are not yet resolved.

I have come to the point that I can care what happens to her without investing myself into her outcome. I know that I can't be the white knight to her rescue. It will take some time, but I hope you come to the place where you can hope she'll be ok, without putting yourself in the middle.

[sydneybob1]

To Rebuilding me, you couldn't have picked a better name- that's exactly what we are all doing. I've read how long it's been since various people broke up with BPD individuals and for me, it's been 5 1/2 years and I'm still picking up pieces. BPD sufferers leave a trail of wreckage in their wake. The biggest thing for me was coming to the reality that I'm not a bad person and never was. Simply put, I was up against a disease which I had never encountered and had a "baptism by fire" dealing with my ex.

If I had never had a child involved I would have recovered long ago. But I worry about my son all the time and the impact this is having on him (with his BPD mum being the sole influence for the past three years) and my ex refusing to be on the same page with me re parenting. I hope for the best but expect the worst.

Imagine how hard it was for me to move away from where he was to the country? I knew that would make reconciliation harder but given I had no contact with him, the important thing (according to my doctor) was getting away from a toxic situation and repairing my self-esteem which really took a battering for ten years. And I do swim coaching for lots of kids in addition to marketing for my firm- you have to be "on" all the time and motivate them to do great things but inside you feel like you still have failed in some way.

I'm starting to understand how difficult it is to reconcile those two personalities, as it were, and find happiness in other things to keep me busy. So I work with kids and my animals on the farm, love my partner and try to work hard at the office. And I'm doing some good things. But I still have those dark thoughts that somehow I brought all this on- I know that's wrong. I just got into a relationship with a long-term BPD sufferer and was out of my depth. Things will get better- I had a tough holidays because those are family-related and I reached out but got no contact with my son. But I got past it and am trying to generate some positive momentum. I assure you that you will get better, too, if you believe things will get better. To quote from the "Six Million Dollar Man", "we can rebuild him- we have the technology". Part of that technology is the faith we all have in you. Be well.

sydneybob1

[Mutt]

Poster 2010 says that we need to go through the pain of abandonment depression.

I learned a lot about BPD going through her posts.

[Rebuilding me]

Thank you all for your responses! It always helps! May you all find that peace that we all deserve!