She contacted me this weekend through email.

[AG]

SO she contacted me through email over the weekend asking if I am doing ok. I am definitely feeling some way about it and I have not answered it. I am particularly annoyed with my own set of emotions that actually want to reply back. There is a part of me that says "maybe she actually wants to know how you are doing and maybe she herself is in trouble". There is another part of me that says "THis is a recycle attempt and she does not actually care how you are doing at all just using fake empathy as a cloak for her own intentions". To be honest with myself and I think that is very important at this point I think there is a part of me that wants another recycle. That part of me Im angry at and ashamed of. Part of me also knows that if I do not respond she will soon show up at my door maybe not this week but pretty damn soon if not immediately. There is not enough strength in me yet apparently. Ive conquered so much emotionally speaking these past two weeks. Seeing her as a dark force is very difficult to maintain on a consistent basis. I always end up having empathy. All the spiritual material Ive read mixed with all the psychological things Ive read cannot prepare me enough. What the heck type of poison did I allow to be injected into myself? I doubt and question my own actions and decisions and question my own common sense. I've never seen something like this before. I mean seriously what type of poison is this? 

[Narellan]

" seeing her as a dark force is very difficult to maintain on a consistent level" sums it all up for me too AG. It's so difficult and I sway back and forth. You know why we do this? Because we have too much empathy. And so much information on the disorder that we almost excuse or explain away behaviours that threaten to destroy us. I hear you loud and clear. The need in me for my ex to attempt to recycle me is also very strong. I don't want him back. I don't want him in my life. But I do want to know he wants to be. It's the rejection for me that hurts most. The rejection of my unconditional unwavering love and support I had for him. I would have taken a bullet for this man. Not now. I'm out of the fog, but I feel like I need to show him I'm not the easy piece of sh#t he takes me for. I'm not the vulnerable sucker now.

[Infared]

AG... .

If you respond, how will this go for you? My experience is if she is a pwBPD you are showing her how much power that she has. She only wants to know that and then she will trash you.

How does that feel?

[cobaltblue]

"Are you okay?"

I get these texts just like that.

They normally pre-empt either a power play, like she wants sex for her own needs, or she is getting ready to project or gaslight me.

The correct response to this question is either a non-response - which you correctly point out may invite further contact in person; or:

"I'm doing great, thanks."

There's a great book on communicating with high conflict people, BIFF - brief informative friendly firm.

Less the better.

Hang tough.

If it becomes too hard, consider setting up an email filter that routes all of her email to the trash so you won't see it.

[Infared]

Great advice CobaltBlue.

There is no right or wrong here... just trying to grow and make healthy choices.

I would like to impart an experience that helped me grow.  I got into a group therapy.  I became very tight with this one guy who was a really fine human being and we were helping each other get  better.  He was pretty well along at detaching from his situation and I had the opportunity to sit in the car once when he had to drop off or pickup something from his ex.  This guy was a total gentelman, real upstanding.

I gotta tell you... . I could not believe the way she talked to him... . it was unbelievable... . like he was a dog in the gutter.  I gently gave him a heartfelt talking to... . some tough love mixed in there. God... . it was so upsetting for me to see this... . he was such a great guy, and then it popped into my head... . right in my face actually, that he was me. I started crying for myself at the realization that I needed to take my own support that I was giving him and apply it to me.

This and some other support helped me when I came into the following situation.

(6-8 months out of my r/s with pwBPD... . she now living with new hero (Craig), me villian). She contacted me after months of NC and every cell in my body wanted to see her and be with her.  She suggests that we go for a walk, and oh, "it won't change anything".   I took a VERY deep breath, pulled up my big-boy pants and said in a very calm voice: "So let me get this straight, you want me to take a walk with you, get close to you, and want to be with you and then I am going to go home alone and you are going home to sleep with Craig tonight?" Her response, "well, yeah".  My response in calm voice: "Absolutely not.   I would not be being a very good friend to myself if I did that".  There was total silence on the other end of the line... .   I made some niceties, wished her well and got off the phone.

Now I have to say... I was not right for months after that... . but I kept getting support and therapy and worked on my part in that. My buddy going to a person's house who treated him like that "for ANY reason" was his stuff. Healthy people do not do that.  I was the same guy... . and I had a lot of work to do. I was loving and gentle with myself ... . but I really had to look at that go get well.

[BacknthSaddle]

You can't consistently see her as a "dark force" because you have the appropriate emotional development to recognize that people are complex and can have many different characteristics, both good and bad, within themselves and can still be whole people.  She, on the other hand, does not have the emotional development to recognize this fact, and so to her you will always be either all good or all bad, no in between, indefinitely, for as long as you are involved with her. This doesn't make her "evil" per se, it just means that she doesn't have the capacity to see you as, and therefore to treat you like, a whole human being. She will treat you like someone who can be harvested to satisfy some need or other, whatever it may be, as this is the only way she really can treat others. And, once said need is satisfied or you have failed to satisfy it, you know where you will be.

There is nothing to be ashamed of. Her mind doesn't work like yours. You wish it did. We all do. But it doesn't.

[cobaltblue]

Great advice, infrared.