I had the perfect life, now I'm a stunned little shell

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

So, I already posted this on my intro because, well, lack of reading. Wanted to repost here in case people don't look at that board. The thread Espy started is locked, but it's the reason I joined this forum.

I honestly can't believe that I'm joining an online forum right now, but I have nowhere else to turn. It's been almost a month since my ex has "split me black," I guess. She was a very self-aware BPD, religious with her therapy, meds, AA, and CBT. I was separated when we began dating so in retrospect I realize there was an immediate trigger for her, although I didn't realizing she was getting caught up in borderline habits. I genuinely thought that she felt the same way I did (I felt struck by lightning when I laid on eyes her, more attracted to her than anyone before in my life, time stood still yada yada yada  ). We became best friends first, since I was legally married with children and she was dating around but pursuing one person in particular. As the months passed she admitted she was attracted to me and getting confused because I was her "rock." Because she was moving just a few weeks from this admission, we STUPIDLY decided we could just "enjoy" each other and go our separate ways holding magical memories of our time together or some other crap. Clearly I am an idiot.

Obviously, since we had already established an incredible friendship and chemistry, we were madly in love by the two weeks, and it became months. First I couldn't commit fully to her because of my separation and children. After a few months I was in so much pain, and it wasn't alleviating at all, I decided to take the plunge and told her I was ready to move forward. She hesitated. As I mentioned, she works very hard to take care of mental health, and a big part of that for her is living near her family (especially her twin and nephew) and AA community. Considering I was giving up a lot to be with her and that WEEKS ago she was telling me she didn't want to move back home, I was her home now, she wanted to raise a family with me, etc, I accepted her response and basically told her that she didn't love ME enough for me to sacrifice my whole life. (As a little background to help you understand the drastic change my life was going to undergo: Not only am I married with four kids, I'm a Mormon woman, so I got excommunicated and if I had begun a more open relationship with her my entire family and faith community would have been politely, kindly heartbroken. Not to mention I would have had to give up a significant chunk of time with my children to work full-time.) I mean really. If I am going to turn my WORLD on it's head, it's going to be for someone is as desperately in love with me as I am with her.

So, we were actually sad, mopey, angsty friends for awhile. It wasn't spiteful. I'd already gotten her some things for Valentine's Day and sent them to her, with her permission. Just a blanket and some art supplies, and a letter I'd written her telling her the things I love about her. To me, it was closure. It was saying we can't be together, I get that, but I want you to know how much I love you so you can remind yourself when times get hard that you have all these wonderful qualities. Of course, my letter was SO touching that she decided she wanted to be with me. This was a few weeks after the "peaceful split" and I had actually started to improve a bit. My husband and I had started building a house before we separated, and moved in our family amicably. I was appreciating my children and husband, thinking how much I would miss him if I had gone through with the divorce.

She said she wanted to come visit. I told her the truth, that I was very scared and had all these real fears about our future and doubts about her love for me. I didn't slam the door in her face or tell her not to come, I just wanted to be honest. I'm a cards on the table sort of person. If she came and we kissed or slept together and THEN this stuff came out, I'd feel like a scummy user. Anyhow. That night I woke up to a text saying she was going into the hospital, and not to contact her anymore, and she'd let me know if we could be friends. Well, what the hell kind of person is going to listen to that? She was my BEST friend and I was still in love with her! So I texted her, called, Facebook, the works.

She called me from the hospital the next day. Her jackass best friend, a straight guy she met through AA who is a total enabler but that's beside the point, had her phone the whole time and told her I had contacted her. She basically gave me an ultimatum to commit to her, and her alone, BEFORE she left the psych ward. I hadn't laid eyes on her for almost a month, and we'd used no contact periodically, during which time I'd noticed she was visiting OkCupid pretty regularly. Like, multiple times a day.  I know that like many BPDs she copes with sex and attention and can't be alone, so I didn't think too much of it, but I did confront her about it. She said it was nothing, they'd just been texting, the girl had just texted her to say she was sick so couldn't meet her---THAT's when I realized that she had made plans to MEET someone RIGHT before she came down to "fight" for me, as she put it.

I was upset and spent some time thinking about how one of our biggest discussions always revolved around whether she loved me as much as I loved her. I'd ask her if what we had was "different" and she didn't even know what I meant. She said we were friends first, and that was different... . but I could tell she didn't understand the idea of a really rare connection. Finally I told her I had to read her convos with that girl before I decided. She hesitated and said in a small voice "Are you going to read *everything?*" I said that I hadn't thought about it, but now I was.

I spent hours going through her stuff. Not my proudest moment, but I thought I deserved to know what I was getting. She'd been messaging people on OkCupid and Craigslist for everything from dating to random sex/hook-ups. She'd made a huge deal about how she hadn't moved on at ALL from me, even held hands or kissed anyone... . and now I realized that it was NOT from lack of effort on her part. I also went on her Facebook and read her messages with her last hook-up. They weren't exclusive, the other woman was also married ::face palm::. My ex talked about this other woman openly, as if she were just a friend with benefits and my ex didn't want to be with her, wasn't in love with her, etc. But reading those messages, I saw her say "I love you" several times and go through the same motions of angst-ridden "No Contact"/"I Miss You So Much." It just fizzled after my Ex moved to my state. The ex also told me before we were together that she wanted to "make love to me, didn't even want to say the word 'f***' and that's all she's done with anyone for two years" and I saw that she said the same thing to another woman months ago.

Regardless, I called and told her no, I couldn't commit to her. She sobbed, begged, told me she couldn't be alone, that was part of her BPD but if I chose her I WOULD BE the only one, she WOULD only love me. I needed her to love ONLY me NOW. I needed there to be some kind of mourning period, or SOMETHING. She actually said, "I still have to end up with someone, and I want it to be you." Meaning even though we're all the same to her more or less, she wants me to be the last. Not good enough for me.

Alas. I thought she would see that she was being unreasonable and tried to reach out to her when I saw she had gotten out of the hospital a couple of days later. She sent one line, "I'm done. Stop contacting me." It was like someone knocked all the wind out of me. I couldn't believe what I was reading. My attempts to contact her ranged from long and romantic love letters to "How can you watch me suffer like this you evil human being" to chirpy little "I'm doing this thing where I'm ignoring you ignoring me and just pretending like you're my girlfriend. Like my boots today?" kind of messages. Sent flowers on Valentine's Day. Painted her pictures like a moron. Finally, after two weeks, we were supposed to have supervision (both clinical interns, she skypes into class, generally on my laptop and we would chat the whole time). No answer for me OR the faculty supervisor. I blocked my number and called and left her several messages saying that if she did not contact me by the end of one hour I would get in my car and drive my ass five hours to her house and make her talk to me. I thought she was dropping out of our graduate program, as she'd had a near miss the previous semester, and I wasn't going to let her do it because she'd had a crisis/setback. I knew that it meant so much to her to finish and make her family proud and until that point legitimately thought that she was too embarrassed to speak to me for that reason.

So I drove up there. 5 hours. To her grandmother's house where she stays. Called, e-mailed. Drove to her parent's house. Called, e-mailed from a different address. Drove back to her grandmother's to wait. I receive an e-mail: "I have made it abundantly clear that I am done."

I ugly cried like a dying animal. It was not pretty. I probably spent an hour on that street at midnight just sobbing uncontrollably with disbelief. How could she resist seeing me when I was RIGHT THERE? Minutes from her? I wrote her a very not-nice note and headed home. She let me drive 13 hours and go without sleep when she KNEW I had to work the next day and she KNEW that she was going to refuse to see me. I haven't spoken to her since, and she hasn't made any effort subtle or other wise to communicate with me.

The next week at internship, she didn't call in again. My supervisor who knew the bare minimum about the situation said that they were going to arrange an individual supervision time and my ex would no longer be participating in class. Another punch in the face. she REALLY wanted to never see me again.

So the only place I can check up on her occasionally is Spotify. A few days ago she made a playlist, and the title was the handle of a girl on OKCupid in her area. I got my stalker on and found the girl's tumblr. THEY WERE IN THE FRIGGING HOSPITAL TOGETHER. SHE MET HER NEW CRUSH WHILE SHE WAS IN THE FRIGGING HOSPITAL. My ex was released TWO DAYS after I rejected her and this girl was released TEN DAYS after that, so I know they weren't together in the meantime. Which means at max they've been hanging out for 10-14 days.

I SHOULD HAVE known that she wouldn't be able to continue ignoring me UNLESS she had someone else in the wings. I SHOULD HAVE known that I wasn't special to her at ALL. A month before she told ME she loved me she was totally in love with another girl she'd known for six weeks (who she suddenly realized was horrible person and a complete waste of space once she had MEEEEEEEE in her life). But the truth of it was that I was so blinded by my physical attraction to and truly tender love for her that I was in denial. She told me I was everything she'd ever wanted, and I wanted to believe her. She told me I was perfect, and I believed her. I was different. I HAD to be different. This feeling is so new and powerful for me it HAS to be requited.

So, here I am. Feeling like... . I'm sure you know.  barfy Feeling worthless, and heartbroken, and humiliated. And I still have an amazing frigging husband who saw her for what she was and told me it was gonna go down in flames from the very start. I should be so thankful that I dodged that bullet, that I have a true best friend that loves me unconditionally and that has been there for me for a decade. She taught me, ironically, what a rare man my husband is. I had a case of the married-young-so-the-grass-might-be-greeners, and now I know what I have. My life could easily be back on track, going on as usual, except that she's destroyed me. I miss her. I worry about her sobriety in her new relationship with a substance user. I read the lyrics of the songs she puts on their playlist and cry. I feel like I don't know who I am, because I've done things for her, to be with her, that I would never have imagined myself capable of doing. I thought I was a good person. I thought I was an intelligent person. When I got married I thought I was done with the bull crap, I realized healthy love was supposed to be easy. How did I fall into that trap again? She was attracted to my stability and ironically she's taken it.

I just need a voice and an audience. I've shared almost everything with my husband, but after I texted him I wasn't coming home two weeks ago, and he welcomed me back home, defeated and broken at 5 am, I can't still express my feelings of loss. He doesn't get it. She screwed me, and I should be over it. But I live with a sick feeling of realizing that she never loved me, that I was as replaceable to her as a toothpick. And it crushes me.

[pinkparchment]

So, I already posted this on my intro because, well, lack of reading. Wanted to repost here in case people don't look at that board. The thread Espy started is locked, but it's the reason I joined this forum.

I honestly can't believe that I'm joining an online forum right now, but I have nowhere else to turn. It's been almost a month since my ex has "split me black," I guess. She was a very self-aware BPD, religious with her therapy, meds, AA, and CBT. I was separated when we began dating so in retrospect I realize there was an immediate trigger for her, although I didn't realizing she was getting caught up in borderline habits. I genuinely thought that she felt the same way I did (I felt struck by lightning when I laid on eyes her, more attracted to her than anyone before in my life, time stood still yada yada yada  ). We became best friends first, since I was legally married with children and she was dating around but pursuing one person in particular. As the months passed she admitted she was attracted to me and getting confused because I was her "rock." Because she was moving just a few weeks from this admission, we STUPIDLY decided we could just "enjoy" each other and go our separate ways holding magical memories of our time together or some other crap. Clearly I am an idiot.

Obviously, since we had already established an incredible friendship and chemistry, we were madly in love by the two weeks, and it became months. First I couldn't commit fully to her because of my separation and children. After a few months I was in so much pain, and it wasn't alleviating at all, I decided to take the plunge and told her I was ready to move forward. She hesitated. As I mentioned, she works very hard to take care of mental health, and a big part of that for her is living near her family (especially her twin and nephew) and AA community. Considering I was giving up a lot to be with her and that WEEKS ago she was telling me she didn't want to move back home, I was her home now, she wanted to raise a family with me, etc, I accepted her response and basically told her that she didn't love ME enough for me to sacrifice my whole life. (As a little background to help you understand the drastic change my life was going to undergo: Not only am I married with four kids, I'm a Mormon woman, so I got excommunicated and if I had begun a more open relationship with her my entire family and faith community would have been politely, kindly heartbroken. Not to mention I would have had to give up a significant chunk of time with my children to work full-time.) I mean really. If I am going to turn my WORLD on it's head, it's going to be for someone is as desperately in love with me as I am with her.

So, we were actually sad, mopey, angsty friends for awhile. It wasn't spiteful. I'd already gotten her some things for Valentine's Day and sent them to her, with her permission. Just a blanket and some art supplies, and a letter I'd written her telling her the things I love about her. To me, it was closure. It was saying we can't be together, I get that, but I want you to know how much I love you so you can remind yourself when times get hard that you have all these wonderful qualities. Of course, my letter was SO touching that she decided she wanted to be with me. This was a few weeks after the "peaceful split" and I had actually started to improve a bit. My husband and I had started building a house before we separated, and moved in our family amicably. I was appreciating my children and husband, thinking how much I would miss him if I had gone through with the divorce.

She said she wanted to come visit. I told her the truth, that I was very scared and had all these real fears about our future and doubts about her love for me. I didn't slam the door in her face or tell her not to come, I just wanted to be honest. I'm a cards on the table sort of person. If she came and we kissed or slept together and THEN this stuff came out, I'd feel like a scummy user. Anyhow. That night I woke up to a text saying she was going into the hospital, and not to contact her anymore, and she'd let me know if we could be friends. Well, what the hell kind of person is going to listen to that? She was my BEST friend and I was still in love with her! So I texted her, called, Facebook, the works.

She called me from the hospital the next day. Her jackass best friend, a straight guy she met through AA who is a total enabler but that's beside the point, had her phone the whole time and told her I had contacted her. She basically gave me an ultimatum to commit to her, and her alone, BEFORE she left the psych ward. I hadn't laid eyes on her for almost a month, and we'd used no contact periodically, during which time I'd noticed she was visiting OkCupid pretty regularly. Like, multiple times a day.  I know that like many BPDs she copes with sex and attention and can't be alone, so I didn't think too much of it, but I did confront her about it. She said it was nothing, they'd just been texting, the girl had just texted her to say she was sick so couldn't meet her---THAT's when I realized that she had made plans to MEET someone RIGHT before she came down to "fight" for me, as she put it.

I was upset and spent some time thinking about how one of our biggest discussions always revolved around whether she loved me as much as I loved her. I'd ask her if what we had was "different" and she didn't even know what I meant. She said we were friends first, and that was different... . but I could tell she didn't understand the idea of a really rare connection. Finally I told her I had to read her convos with that girl before I decided. She hesitated and said in a small voice "Are you going to read *everything?*" I said that I hadn't thought about it, but now I was.

I spent hours going through her stuff. Not my proudest moment, but I thought I deserved to know what I was getting. She'd been messaging people on OkCupid and Craigslist for everything from dating to random sex/hook-ups. She'd made a huge deal about how she hadn't moved on at ALL from me, even held hands or kissed anyone... . and now I realized that it was NOT from lack of effort on her part. I also went on her Facebook and read her messages with her last hook-up. They weren't exclusive, the other woman was also married ::face palm::. My ex talked about this other woman openly, as if she were just a friend with benefits and my ex didn't want to be with her, wasn't in love with her, etc. But reading those messages, I saw her say "I love you" several times and go through the same motions of angst-ridden "No Contact"/"I Miss You So Much." It just fizzled after my Ex moved to my state. The ex also told me before we were together that she wanted to "make love to me, didn't even want to say the word 'f***' and that's all she's done with anyone for two years" and I saw that she said the same thing to another woman months ago.

Regardless, I called and told her no, I couldn't commit to her. She sobbed, begged, told me she couldn't be alone, that was part of her BPD but if I chose her I WOULD BE the only one, she WOULD only love me. I needed her to love ONLY me NOW. I needed there to be some kind of mourning period, or SOMETHING. She actually said, "I still have to end up with someone, and I want it to be you." Meaning even though we're all the same to her more or less, she wants me to be the last. Not good enough for me.

Alas. I thought she would see that she was being unreasonable and tried to reach out to her when I saw she had gotten out of the hospital a couple of days later. She sent one line, "I'm done. Stop contacting me." It was like someone knocked all the wind out of me. I couldn't believe what I was reading. My attempts to contact her ranged from long and romantic love letters to "How can you watch me suffer like this you evil human being" to chirpy little "I'm doing this thing where I'm ignoring you ignoring me and just pretending like you're my girlfriend. Like my boots today?" kind of messages. Sent flowers on Valentine's Day. Painted her pictures like a moron. Finally, after two weeks, we were supposed to have supervision (both clinical interns, she skypes into class, generally on my laptop and we would chat the whole time). No answer for me OR the faculty supervisor. I blocked my number and called and left her several messages saying that if she did not contact me by the end of one hour I would get in my car and drive my ass five hours to her house and make her talk to me. I thought she was dropping out of our graduate program, as she'd had a near miss the previous semester, and I wasn't going to let her do it because she'd had a crisis/setback. I knew that it meant so much to her to finish and make her family proud and until that point legitimately thought that she was too embarrassed to speak to me for that reason.

So I drove up there. 5 hours. To her grandmother's house where she stays. Called, e-mailed. Drove to her parent's house. Called, e-mailed from a different address. Drove back to her grandmother's to wait. I receive an e-mail: "I have made it abundantly clear that I am done."

I ugly cried like a dying animal. It was not pretty. I probably spent an hour on that street at midnight just sobbing uncontrollably with disbelief. How could she resist seeing me when I was RIGHT THERE? Minutes from her? I wrote her a very not-nice note and headed home. She let me drive 13 hours and go without sleep when she KNEW I had to work the next day and she KNEW that she was going to refuse to see me. I haven't spoken to her since, and she hasn't made any effort subtle or other wise to communicate with me.

The next week at internship, she didn't call in again. My supervisor who knew the bare minimum about the situation said that they were going to arrange an individual supervision time and my ex would no longer be participating in class. Another punch in the face. she REALLY wanted to never see me again.

So the only place I can check up on her occasionally is Spotify. A few days ago she made a playlist, and the title was the handle of a girl on OKCupid in her area. I got my stalker on and found the girl's tumblr. THEY WERE IN THE FRIGGING HOSPITAL TOGETHER. SHE MET HER NEW CRUSH WHILE SHE WAS IN THE FRIGGING HOSPITAL. My ex was released TWO DAYS after I rejected her and this girl was released TEN DAYS after that, so I know they weren't together in the meantime. Which means at max they've been hanging out for 10-14 days.

I SHOULD HAVE known that she wouldn't be able to continue ignoring me UNLESS she had someone else in the wings. I SHOULD HAVE known that I wasn't special to her at ALL. A month before she told ME she loved me she was totally in love with another girl she'd known for six weeks (who she suddenly realized was horrible person and a complete waste of space once she had MEEEEEEEE in her life). But the truth of it was that I was so blinded by my physical attraction to and truly tender love for her that I was in denial. She told me I was everything she'd ever wanted, and I wanted to believe her. She told me I was perfect, and I believed her. I was different. I HAD to be different. This feeling is so new and powerful for me it HAS to be requited.

So, here I am. Feeling like... . I'm sure you know.  barfy Feeling worthless, and heartbroken, and humiliated. And I still have an amazing frigging husband who saw her for what she was and told me it was gonna go down in flames from the very start. I should be so thankful that I dodged that bullet, that I have a true best friend that loves me unconditionally and that has been there for me for a decade. She taught me, ironically, what a rare man my husband is. I had a case of the married-young-so-the-grass-might-be-greeners, and now I know what I have. My life could easily be back on track, going on as usual, except that she's destroyed me. I miss her. I worry about her sobriety in her new relationship with a substance user. I read the lyrics of the songs she puts on their playlist and cry. I feel like I don't know who I am, because I've done things for her, to be with her, that I would never have imagined myself capable of doing. I thought I was a good person. I thought I was an intelligent person. When I got married I thought I was done with the bull crap, I realized healthy love was supposed to be easy. How did I fall into that trap again? She was attracted to my stability and ironically she's taken it.

I just need a voice and an audience. I've shared almost everything with my husband, but after I texted him I wasn't coming home two weeks ago, and he welcomed me back home, defeated and broken at 5 am, I can't still express my feelings of loss. He doesn't get it. She screwed me, and I should be over it. But I live with a sick feeling of realizing that she never loved me, that I was as replaceable to her as a toothpick. And it crushes me.

[Waifed]

I am so sorry for your pain Pink. It is devastating when you realize that the person you love is incapable of carrying those feelings for you and can seemingly drop you like you were nothing to them. As painful as it is try to envision a future with this person, would it be filled with lies and deception?  Could you trust her while she was away from you?  Can she fulfill your needs?  Is she capable of having a give and take relationship?  Would you be her caretaker like a mother is to her child?  It will take you time to process what you have been through. Be easy on yourself and allow yourself to feel your emotions. Allow yourself to grieve, cry, express anger. It is all a part of healing. I also thought I had found the love of my life as I was coming out of a 14 year marriage. It took me 3 years to realize that my expwBPD traits and I saw our relationship very differently. I beat myself up over this for quite a while until I finally realized that what I went through wasn't all my fault. Sure, I was duped and so were you but there were likely red flags along the way that we ignored. Hang in there.

[SweetCharlotte]

Hi, Ms. Parchment,

How do you feel about your sexual orientation? Do you think you are mainly lesbian, mainly heterosexual, 50/50 bisexual, or someone who goes through phases of each? I wonder if you need to define yourself first so that you can be certain in the future if a partner is "right" for you.

You have seen from trying this Friends-With-Benefits, OK-For-Now approach to relationships that it can hurt like a MFer. You were wide open for someone who loves'em and doesn't quite leave'em.

First, wouldn't it be good to know if you want a man or a woman as your lasting companion and lover? Then, if it's a man you want, why didn't your husband fill the bill for you? I don't think that his allowing you to come back when you were down is going to change the suitability of that relationship for you in the long term.

If it's a woman you want, wouldn't you need to date a few before charging into an intimate relationship with one? You know how complicated we are in such matters (I've always been petrified of having a lesbian attachment, even a fling, because I dread the manipulation of the fairer sex).

Finally, I don't think you will have a satisfactory new relationship (if that is where you are heading) until you are divorced and the dust has settled from the collapse of your marriage. Look how obsessive you have become from the dalliance with the BPD. You are combing through SPOTIFY for clues about the ex, for crikey's sake. I never heard of cyberstalking on Spotify; that's a new one. Also, checking up on exes through an online dating site is most unhealthy. Do yourself a favor and figure out what you need and want and how you might accomplish your goals.

[GreenMango]

She actually said, "I still have to end up with someone, and I want it to be you." 

This was an incredibly honest statement about where she is at emotionally.  And hesring something like this is devastating.  It's a need and desperation not uncommon with people with BPD when they are triggered by being alone.  She also sounds like her recovery and therapy was very tenuous and she wasn't ready for a relationship.

You sound like you are pretty vulnerable right now too.  There are huge changes happening in your life.  You definitely aren't the first person to find themselves drawn into a relationship like this when they are going thru huge life changes (divorce, separation, etc) and jumping into a new relationship.

Are you still planning on ending your marriage?  How long have you been separated?

[pinkparchment]

I'm not having a crisis of sexual identity. If I were, I would have addressed it in my extremely lengthy post. I am almost exclusively attracted to men. There's been one other woman in my almost 30 years I've been attracted to, which makes 2 women to probably 200 men (if we're counting cute men in the grocery store/pass-by attractions).

My marriage grew out of a friendship, and I have at times mourned the fact that we skipped the "infatuation, hearts pounding" sort of phase but for the most part (9 out of 10 years) I have been incredibly happy. The distraction of my attraction to her, long before any relationship began, was an impetus in my deciding to separate in the first place. THE PASSION. I forgot that the root of the word passion means suffering.

I've learned that there is a lot to be said for peace, comfort, contentment, joy, common purpose, in life. I haven't had that in quite awhile now and won't take it for granted again if I can recapture it.

SweetCharlotte, I wonder if there is a generational gap between us. When we were dating we created Spotify playlists for one another all the time, we even had a shared one when she moved that we could both add to. It was a huge part of our relationship, as we listened to them in the background every time we were together. My inbox is full of songs she sent me because I can't figure out how to delete them. She's still in my top five notifications as a follower even though we've since "unfollowed" each other. I just have to click her name there and voila. A bit of a far cry from "Cyberstalking" although I'm not saying I haven't done that.  The same goes for online dating sites. It's not a hunt. You google, it appears. And she wasn't really an "ex" when I checked on her, we were in a bizarre and as you point out, obsessive limbo.

Sure, I suppose I am obsessive over her. In ten years I've never cheated, been tempted to cheat, or considered ending my marriage. All of the sudden I felt a love so intense that I was, all of those things, and it was cut off at the knees at the crux of emotion. Someone I talked to constantly over every medium was suddenly a ghost. I had no idea if she was okay, if she was dropping out of school, nothing. Hell yes I used all the resources available to me to determine those things.

GreenMango, she was very self-aware and honest about herself. She works very hard, which is why our relationship was so good despite the situation. She rarely used any push behaviors on me, probably because she knew she would lose out to my family. I didn't realize that it was her borderline causing her to make promises, like moving away from home to be with me, that she wasn't *actually* sure she wanted to keep. I thought she meant everything she said when she was subconsciously trying to get me to choose her.

Don't know exactly where my future will take me. As I said, I was very happy once, and now I can't imagine being attracted to anyone ever again, man or woman. My husband knows everything and still wants me to stay. He believes we'll get it back, and this was an "episode" for me. He said he's willing to be second to her for awhile. I know, I don't understand it either. I have no idea why he's still around after what I've done to him.

Waifed, thank you. Your post helped a lot. There was a very parental dynamic to our relationship. She was very irresponsible. She mentioned several times she couldn't wait to be pregnant and have me take care of her. I'm thinking uuuuummmmm sure, I'll take care of four children under 8 and you, sweetie. I also worried about her stability as a parent since having children was her dream. There were many, many logical reasons that our relationship/life together would be challenging or even impossible. I really believed I loved her enough to take it all on, and now realizing it was just a huge frigging ego-boost for me to choose her over the rest of my life is devastating.

[SweetCharlotte]

SweetCharlotte, I wonder if there is a generational gap between us. When we were dating we created Spotify playlists for one another all the time, we even had a shared one when she moved that we could both add to. It was a huge part of our relationship, as we listened to them in the background every time we were together. My inbox is full of songs she sent me because I can't figure out how to delete them. She's still in my top five notifications as a follower even though we've since "unfollowed" each other. I just have to click her name there and voila. A bit of a far cry from "Cyberstalking" although I'm not saying I haven't done that.  The same goes for online dating sites. It's not a hunt. You google, it appears. And she wasn't really an "ex" when I checked on her, we were in a bizarre and as you point out, obsessive limbo.

Sure, I suppose I am obsessive over her. In ten years I've never cheated, been tempted to cheat, or considered ending my marriage.

Yes, I'm sure I'm a good deal older than you are, but I use or have used the sites you mention (Spotify, online dating, and of course FB) and I still recognize obsessive behavior in your described use of it. Some sort of counseling seems essential if you are to achieve peace of mind again.

I believe a relationship has to have some basis in passion in order to survive. What you describe with your husband doesn't quite qualify. With him, you can take a "short cut" to peace of mind. Coming straight from your Mormon upbringing, this may have seemed enough. Try to get there (happiness) without short cuts and allowing for the passion in your life to flow freely.

[pinkparchment]

I figured out I was obsessive when I joined an online forum just to talk about my ex. isn't that why we're all here, trying to understand and let go?

What this site is not about is my marriage. I do have a therapist for that, to put your mind at ease. In my experience, most couples do not sustain the infatuation






passion of the early days and instead develop a passion for the individual as a person, friend, and lover. To have good sex and truly still like someone after spending every day of a decade with them and dealing with life's ugly times together is in my opinion something rare an special. I've really shared very little about that part of my life and apologize if I've painted an inaccurate picture or led you to believe I have not loved and been in love with my husband over the years.

[SweetCharlotte]

The site is about our lives and relationships. You seem to be in denial about having had the perfect life with your husband, because you cheated on him and fell in love with the other person. I think your chances at long-term happiness and stability will improve if you find out why, instead beginning the cycle again.

[maxen]

She actually said, "I still have to end up with someone, and I want it to be you." 

This was an incredibly honest statement about where she is at emotionally.  And hesring something like this is devastating.  It's a need and desperation not uncommon with people with BPD when they are triggered by being alone. 

i overheard mine say "i wanted a husband and if i had to go to [where maxen lives] to get one i was going to."

and i bulled ahead anyway. so, there's her, but there's me too.

[Learning_curve74]

Hey pinkparchment, I read your story and really feel for you. I don't think it's a strange thing to fall head over heels in love and then find yourself feeling devastated when you land on your head instead of on your feet.  You did fall for her and when you found out the things she was doing it just seems unbelieveable or perhaps illogical, a sad reminder that BPD truly is a mental illness.

Since you're here on the Leaving board, I'm going to assume that you're here to find healing through detachment, is that correct? Some of the first steps on the journey of healing and self-discovery is coming to some understanding of BPD and mental illness and then an understanding of why we were vulnerable to the charms of a person with BPD. I believe the following article is very important for everybody on the Leaving board to read: Surviving a Break-up with Someone Suffering with Borderline Personality Disorder. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to check it out.


On a different topic:

Don't know exactly where my future will take me. As I said, I was very happy once, and now I can't imagine being attracted to anyone ever again, man or woman. My husband knows everything and still wants me to stay. He believes we'll get it back, and this was an "episode" for me. He said he's willing to be second to her for awhile. I know, I don't understand it either. I have no idea why he's still around after what I've done to him.

You say right now that you can't imagine being attracted to anyone ever again. Do you feel that is because of feelings of betrayal or confusion from having loved somebody who was incapable of sustaining the reciprocal relationship you were hoping for?

As for your husband, and how you don't understand why he'd stick around for you and love you after what you've done, let me ask you a different question: didn't you still have feelings for your exBPDgf even after you found out about all the people she was trying to date or hook up with behind your back? Should it then be any stranger that your husband of ten years still has feelings for you after all that has happened?

Why do you think you were so attracted to your exBPDgf? Was it the intensity of the feelings you felt? Was it truly head over heels?

[GreenMango]

Pink you mentioned she was up front about her recovery.  I do believe people working on what ever their particular issue is diligently have good intentions and are developing self awareness.  With any illness, whether it's BPD or alcoholism,  the road to recovery has a lot of pitfalls and risks. 

With BPD in particular the thing that instigates the illness unfortunately is intimacy.  And a dbt therapy can take years.  There's often a family component to augment the skills training and vcognitive training the person is going thru.  The baseline skills Dr. Aguirre says people with clinical BPD possess is almost no skills in the respect on how to handle stressors and interpersonal situations.  The ones that are present can be really destructive, like risky sex or dependency issues.  He called it "habilitation" not rehabilitation because the skills just aren'tthere in many cases.  It's a long road. 

When you start to add in things like alcohol dependency it complicates therapy and makes that road even more tenuous.  It's not so much doubting her intentions as her falling back on the the coping strategies that did work.

As far as addressing the marriage aspect.  I brought it up in reference to maybe shifting gears to think about how you want to move forward with your life... . not as judgment.  We do encourage members to look at the details of overall relationship, including our own as a way to develop emotional health and hopefully better relationships in the future.  Once you know which way you want to go and you've done some assessing of the relationship(s) it may help to alleviate the chaos factor with this last relationship.  It may be grieving the relationship with her, your marriage, etc.  It does seem like it will take some time which way forward in a healthy way for you and your family.

[pinkparchment]

Green Mango, no worries! I wasn't defensive or worried about your question at all. It's something I am still working out. I think long-term relationships are complicated animals, and no relationship is perfect, and it's about figuring out what you can and can not live with(out).

So that's what I'm doing, but it's hard to be logical when I'm in a very illogical place. My ex was a list maker, and once she made a pro-con list about moving back to be with me. I made a pro-con list about being with her, and being with her was the ONLY pro. The con list had like 20 things on it. There was no rational explanation at all except how much I wanted to be with her. She really wasn't life companion material in terms of functioning at adult tasks (money, showing up for professional/school stuff, minimal standards of general life management) and other things that matter in a long-term relationship involving children and a mortgage.

Now that she's out of the picture, the pro-con list for getting divorced is the inverse. The "pro" might say "hey, there's a tiny possibility that the grass is greener um, somewhere, and you might meet someone um, someday inbetween working full-time and raising four kids." The con column is literally everything else. I have zero complaints about my husband. The odds of me finding as good a match/man anywhere else are almost impossible. He's my favorite person in the whole world. No relationship is perfect, so even if I found someone with whom I had more mind-blowing passion, what struggles would we have that counter balance that? And besides our interpersonal issues, how much would custody, financial stress, and missing time with my kids detract from my happiness?

Honestly, one of my fears I expressed that sent her to the hospital is that the intensity of the passion would wear off and I'd be left with someone I wasn't truly compatible with long-term, who annoyed me (which she sometimes did, she was critical, somewhat condescending, and corrected everything). Would I resent her if I went to work and supported her while she stayed home and did what I wanted to do and felt like I should be doing? If I'm being honest, the reason I chose her is the worst possible reason, desperation. Panic.

And if I'm being honest, the reason I can't move past it is the same. I'm desperate for closure and simultaneously desperate to believe I mattered to her, that I was special to her. I told her in one of my post-NC e-mails that I felt like I'd been seduced by a serial killer... . that awful moment when the co-ed realizes that Ted Bundy is actually going to bludgeon her.

And she was a good person. I've read a lot of posts now and I realize how much she had overcome. She would tell me occasionally "I'm trying really hard not to push you away right now" or "This is one of those times I feel totally irrationally rejected. I'll get past it." She was occasionally spiteful, but apologized quickly. She worked so hard on herself. I was much more emotional than she was, because I'm just a confrontational person, and she generally wouldn't engage (AA principle of no-conflict). That was infuriating in and of itself but I realize she probably thought she would be triggered in a passionate discussion.

I also can't let go because we were friends. Real, actual friends before we started dating. We read eachother's favorite books, music, she spent time with my kids, went to dinner, concerts, study groups, etc. Even if she could hurt me like this as a BPD partner, I don't understand how she could do it to me as a person. To Learning Curve, Yes, I am here on this board to learn how to detach and move on with my life.

[pinkparchment]

meant to say the pro con list for getting divorced is the same