Hi Rebuilding me,
Welcome to L6! Your username says it all – we're rebuilding from the wreckage, and we come out stronger and happier.
Just a question to get you started thinking about what may have brought you here: what feelings, behaviors, or events in your relationship with pwBPD reminded you of your childhood or family?
It is very courageous to look deeply at yourself, Rebuilding. We're here for you.
Thank you to all the wonderful people on this site who share their stories and wisdom!
My parents divorced when I was two, which is a blessing in a way! But I remember around that age a physically intense argument between them that I believe created the mediator/ rescuer in me!
My mother was what I like to call stoic and it felt more like an employee/employer r/s! I believed I was taught to feel bad about feeling certain ways! This obviously from her on foo situations. "Get over it!" Man I've heard that one a lot lately! I learned to stuff and as a child I would explode in anger over little things. Which no one seeing it would understand it was the straw that broke the camels back! My mother is fiercely independent and has owned her own business for 40 years! Work seemed to always come first! She was an alcoholic and raging was not uncommon. In my 20s me and my mother grew as I confronted her from my own understandings! I believe by realizing these things I lived as a victim! Poor me!
My father was super loving and over protective! I was the apple of his eye! ( I Believe he strengthened my victim mindset, by fighting my battles etc... It was all in love, but I believe it helped create my learned helplessness! He has been so understanding as I have vented these last months, I need to let him off the hook of all my blabbering!
So in ways traditional gender roles were reversed my mother was the nose to the grindstone, get up get over it and my father super nurturing! Thus I believe the creation of my hypersensitivity!
In my last two r/s I noticed both women were fiercely independent, strong, seemingly well put together. ( like my mother) Where I lacked much exp. in life from my father the safety net.
With my uBPDxgf I was captured by her waif attributes, and her strong (high functioning ) persona. Such contradictions? But in my pride I felt I saw through her strength, which I did, and I was the one to help her grow! She played me perfectly. I thought I was clever seeing her weaknesses, but she was throwing out the bait! Using them for the hook! We fell madly, passionately in love! I was her white knight! Idealization, clinging, push/pull devaluation and discard all followed!
Finally coming out of the fog in the last month I can see all of her subtle manipulations and all of those red flags I ignored! I saw them, I just ignored them! she was good too, no outward raging just internalizing, thus making me helpless, but driven to save the poor hurt little girl I saw behind the walls! In the beginning it was our r/s, "I had opened her up to her true self, who she was always meant to be!" She was convincing, she believed it I'm sure, so how could I not! When we moved in with each other, I had already begun in the devaluation stage! She was depressed, subtly vindictive, cruel and emasculating! It was so passive aggressive! I was slowly chipped away at, and trained by a professional! I realize I learned this walking on eggshells from my mother, and it was wiser not to rock the boat, thus total breakdown of any meaningful conversation, thus becoming roommates!
I believe because I have done work on myself in the past I could feel something was wrong and I just got tired of playing the game I didn't understand the rules to, but I believed we would work them out when the stresses in her life subdued! than it was just over!
No fight, very little discussion, and me discarded with silence on the other end! I felt so violated on such a core/soul level! I can see what it was, who she is, who I am, the whole dance! The worst part is I thought I was smarter and more in touch with myself than that to allow this to happen! She was like a surgeon with such precision with her scalpel cutting into my heart, mind, and soul, I barely felt the blade, or didn't even know I was operated on until months after the surgery!
Well back to the foo drawing board!
