Picked to be in the game, the game is over, why are you still playing alone?

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Everybody loses in this game. They now this fact when they start! The only thing is that they hit reset immediately and it seems most of the nons get stuck, can't process the facts and get so sick mentally.

Why are you agreeing to play alone?

We play one game and they are playing another once the initial game ends.


I know the love I felt towards my ex was so intense, but knowing what I know seemed to make me understand that I was under a spell like hypnotic state. Once I went complete n/c the spell seemed to start to expire. I payed attention to what the facts of our relationship were. I was giving my all, my everything, I was getting sex and somebody that told me what they thought I wanted to hear, but nothing was true! It was all a lie.

I was just the recent game being played!

I hit reset and changed the game and rules! It's my game now.

I honestly don't really understand why so many people still torture themselves for so long when knowing that this is not a relationship. It's a new game that will run it's course like whoever they were before you.

Becoming friends with his first ex wife and swapping stories was the best idea I ever had. She gave me the window of the past. She too was just another game as well! Ex Wife 2 also went through the same crap!

Nobody matters to them past the point where you have nothing that they want from you anymore.

It's horrible but true!

I think everybody here should have an in depth conversation with the last two exes of your ex. ( maybe that's bad advice) It was healing for me and accepted on the exes end! The exes story was mine, but earlier.  They both went through exactly the same things, maybe worse if you could imagine one had children and lasted 9 years and one lasted 5 years! I can't even imagine

It would help so many here to understand that this is nothing personal, even though it feels horribly personal.

We were in the path of a mentally ill person who has an internal gps/tracking device to find people who are extremely loving, caring, kind and generous.

They know how to behave with us because they have done this so many times before. They already know it will end for them before they even focus on us.

They know there is a certain time period to get everything they can mentally, emotionally, financially from us before we figure things out or start fighting back.

At that point, we become a burden and the game isn't fun anymore for them, so they start searching out the replacement game!

I wish it would click easier for the many on these threads, so that they could truly move on to seeing how beautiful life without all of this bs drama and heartache is.

I feel bad whenever I hear that the exBPD is hanging that carrot out in front of every bodies faces or worse hanging the replacement out there to make everybody feel even worse.

I will stick to my guns on the importance of complete n/c from anything including photos, internet, phone calls, texts.

Any way that you can see anything about them, if not necessary because of children, is continuing your own torture and needs to be addressed at that point.

If there is still contact and it is setting nons back over and over, maybe it's time to accept our own  responsibility in this and talk it out with a t and start moving forward. Our exes have the new edition already, maybe they are hiding them, maybe not!

Learning here and with the exes has really put everything into perspective!

Today is one month on these threads, I have come a very long way from my first post. I reread from my beginning here. I came with the intention of never going back, to learn about my feelings, the disorder and why I was was so attached.

I have to say that I really have learned so very much from you all!

I have learned to accept everything , including the person I am, what I need to change and what I am happy to keep the same about myself.

I realized that I am very strong, but needed to take a stand on my boundaries. I have not once felt the urge to go backwards. I have had beautiful memories of great times, but those memories have a big cost. I had to remember the bad, and ugly times as well! How I felt the minute I was being abused or spoken down to or treated with less respect than I deserved. I allowed myself to be used for my home, my lifestyle, my body, my popularity, basically everything.

The bad outweighed the good at the point I ended it for good!

I pulled so much strength to not give in to the sweet talk, crying, flowers, letters for everybody here.

I didn't know if I could have survived another recycling round had I chosen that route. I couldn't do it it to myself again.

It was a gift I gave myself to end his game!

Rifka

[Rifka]

Everybody loses in this game. They now this fact when they start! The only thing is that they hit reset immediately and it seems most of the nons get stuck, can't process the facts and get so sick mentally.

Why are you agreeing to play alone?

We play one game and they are playing another once the initial game ends.


I know the love I felt towards my ex was so intense, but knowing what I know seemed to make me understand that I was under a spell like hypnotic state. Once I went complete n/c the spell seemed to start to expire. I payed attention to what the facts of our relationship were. I was giving my all, my everything, I was getting sex and somebody that told me what they thought I wanted to hear, but nothing was true! It was all a lie.

I was just the recent game being played!

I hit reset and changed the game and rules! It's my game now.

I honestly don't really understand why so many people still torture themselves for so long when knowing that this is not a relationship. It's a new game that will run it's course like whoever they were before you.

Becoming friends with his first ex wife and swapping stories was the best idea I ever had. She gave me the window of the past. She too was just another game as well! Ex Wife 2 also went through the same crap!

Nobody matters to them past the point where you have nothing that they want from you anymore.

It's horrible but true!

I think everybody here should have an in depth conversation with the last two exes of your ex. ( maybe that's bad advice) It was healing for me and accepted on the exes end! The exes story was mine, but earlier.  They both went through exactly the same things, maybe worse if you could imagine one had children and lasted 9 years and one lasted 5 years! I can't even imagine

It would help so many here to understand that this is nothing personal, even though it feels horribly personal.

We were in the path of a mentally ill person who has an internal gps/tracking device to find people who are extremely loving, caring, kind and generous.

They know how to behave with us because they have done this so many times before. They already know it will end for them before they even focus on us.

They know there is a certain time period to get everything they can mentally, emotionally, financially from us before we figure things out or start fighting back.

At that point, we become a burden and the game isn't fun anymore for them, so they start searching out the replacement game!

I wish it would click easier for the many on these threads, so that they could truly move on to seeing how beautiful life without all of this bs drama and heartache is.

I feel bad whenever I hear that the exBPD is hanging that carrot out in front of every bodies faces or worse hanging the replacement out there to make everybody feel even worse.

I will stick to my guns on the importance of complete n/c from anything including photos, internet, phone calls, texts.

Any way that you can see anything about them, if not necessary because of children, is continuing your own torture and needs to be addressed at that point.

If there is still contact and it is setting nons back over and over, maybe it's time to accept our own  responsibility in this and talk it out with a t and start moving forward. Our exes have the new edition already, maybe they are hiding them, maybe not!

Learning here and with the exes has really put everything into perspective!

Today is one month on these threads, I have come a very long way from my first post. I reread from my beginning here. I came with the intention of never going back, to learn about my feelings, the disorder and why I was was so attached.

I have to say that I really have learned so very much from you all!

I have learned to accept everything , including the person I am, what I need to change and what I am happy to keep the same about myself.

I realized that I am very strong, but needed to take a stand on my boundaries. I have not once felt the urge to go backwards. I have had beautiful memories of great times, but those memories have a big cost. I had to remember the bad, and ugly times as well! How I felt the minute I was being abused or spoken down to or treated with less respect than I deserved. I allowed myself to be used for my home, my lifestyle, my body, my popularity, basically everything.

The bad outweighed the good at the point I ended it for good!

I pulled so much strength to not give in to the sweet talk, crying, flowers, letters for everybody here.

I didn't know if I could have survived another recycling round had I chosen that route. I couldn't do it it to myself again.

It was a gift I gave myself to end his game!

Rifka

[Conundrum]

Nobody matters to them past the point where you have nothing that they want from you anymore.

It's horrible but true!

While not invalidating that sentiment, I do find it polemical. "Mattering" to a disordered person is highly subjective. When invested (as we all are) an individual's perceptive judgments of another's psyche, will or emotions will naturally be colored by their own desires.

At a certain point our relational desires may not matter to a pwBPD. Those desires run concurrent with (a non's) suffering. Suffering triggers shame. Often, through no fault of our own, we become the sentient embodiment of blame/shame triggers.

Therefore, defense mechanisms arise which we interpret as malfeasance. An inability to sustain relational norms without a mirror, overwhelms the circuitry. Fuses need to be reset or the system is in dead stasis. It is impossible to repair the malfunction. The programming was hard-coded eons ago. It is both generational, and environmental. Patterns replay, as the will to survive is challenged. That will fails more frequently, evidenced by a suicide rate approximately 400 times the national average.     

What remains consequential is that we matter to ourselves. Participating in a relationship with a disordered person is an abstract process--perhaps falling under metaphysics.       

             

[Rifka]

What remains consequential is that we matter to ourselves.    

We need to matter to ourselves, fix ourselves, heal ourselves and deeply learn to love ourselves.

[Loveofhislife]

Rifka:  as I continue to acknowledge, your voice is an important and needed voice here.  Please stay with us, as we continue to struggle--but not to the detriment of your own healing.  In children's mental health, we talk a lot about risk and resilience factors not dissimilar to how we look at assets and liabilities on a balance sheet.  We evaluate a need to decrease their risk factors and increase their resilience factors (community, church, grand parents, team sports, parental involvement, etc.)  It seems you are well grounded with lots of resilience factors.  You are an example for many of us here who tend to get stuck. I would challenge you to recognize one important variable.  Many of us have had the very resilience sucked right out of us, and we are left wondering why did we allow that to happen.  Conundrum--(love that word, that wine, the meaning and that name):  it is a conundrum in the truest sense of that word that they detach from the very thing they claim to want the most:  unconditional love and acceptance.  As far as the claim about suicide rates--would be interesting to know the suicide rates of nons in relationships with pwBPD... .would be hard to calculate with good data, but I'll bet the statistic would be staggering.

[Rifka]

Love of his life,

I see we are both at post 200 today. I feel great and so hope that others can jump out of this entangled mess of confusion and despair.

I feel the pain, hurt and anger in the posts. I remember my pain, it's becoming a memory instead of daily gnawing at my gut.

My ex will not contact me and I will not contact him. There is no reason!

How or what could help move people forward here,  or help to open eyes to facts to stop the pain and heartache?

What can make nons realize how wonderful they are? How much they deserve? How much they have to give of their beautiful selves? How to build up the broken self esteem? How to accept they gave all they had to give plus more, but there could never be enough, not because of any fault of theirs? How to stop feeling guilty for being good? How to trust yourself again?

These seem to be many of the questions that I ask myself when reading here lately.

My healing is great! I have done everything possible to get back to my past life before my exBPDbf.

Thanks again for all of the help received here!

Rifka

[fromheeltoheal]

An inability to sustain relational norms without a mirror, overwhelms the circuitry.

Plainly put consequence of not having a self of your own.

What remains consequential is that we matter to ourselves. Participating in a relationship with a disordered person is an abstract process--perhaps falling under metaphysics.

And best left to thrillseekers and masochists, although it is a very effective school for those in need of an education about themselves, even if we need to crawl away, diploma in hand.

[Vivienne]

Beautifully said Rifka.

[drummerboy]

Rifka,

I agree with most of what you say but there can be a physiological reason that some of us have such a hard time letting go and moving on.

When we fall in love as deeply as most of us did with a BPD a process called limbic transference / imprinting takes place where our brain is actually re-wired as a result of that "love" The attachment can be so deep because the only time anything similar has taken place was from the love our parents gave us or in some cases we have never felt love that deeply, something we missed from our parents. The book I'm reading "A general theory of love" really explains the changes that occurred in our brain as a result of our relationship with a BPD and their showering of "love"

My advice is if you are taking a long time to get over the BPD relationship it might be time to go to a therapist. That it's not because of the BPD but rather something in us that is having trouble letting go.

Because of this relationship I am dealing with stuff that I have carried around since childhood, its a slow process but long overdue. It's about me now, the BPD was just the catalyst. I know I am becoming a much better person, I'm seeing some great changes in myself already and there will be many more to come.Its so wonderful that something so great can come out of this horror movie.

[fromheeltoheal]

Because of this relationship I am dealing with stuff that I have carried around since childhood, its a slow process but long overdue. It's about me now, the BPD was just the catalyst. I know I am becoming a much better person, I'm seeing some great changes in myself already and there will be many more to come.Its so wonderful that something so great can come out of this horror movie.

Very nice.  That also might be the ultimate purpose of BPD, to help some of us get to that next level of our evolution and maturation (or in my case, kick me in the ass), the gift of the relationship.  And maybe folks who stay in pain long after the relationship is over are just banging up against their own reluctance to grow, nothing to do with their ex or the disorder.

[fred6]

My advice is if you are taking a long time to get over the BPD relationship it might be time to go to a therapist. That it's not because of the BPD but rather something in us that is having trouble letting go.

How long is a long time before getting a T? Weeks? months? Years? I just want my life back, but I know that it isn't coming back. The reality has set in, I'M ALONE! Gotta figure something out.

[Loveofhislife]

And maybe folks who stay in pain long after the relationship is over are just banging up against their own reluctance to grow, nothing to do with their ex or the disorder.

I think this is true in my case--as one of Melody Beattie's books is titled, "Learning to Let Go." I cling--like a dog on a bone; don't want to let it go. So, I chew and chew: long after the meat is gone. I recognize the loneliness I feel--I felt it before. I continue to be in withdrawal after having NO alone time for a year: I missed my alone time. I missed my friends and family and work. Now I miss him. So, there remains this longing... .I know I'm not ready for another r/s until I lose the need to gain validation from others. So, I just keep picking up that old bone and chew and chew some more, "banging up against my own reluctance to grow." But as others have written--it took this pain with exbfBPD to move me to want to change.

[fromheeltoheal]

And maybe folks who stay in pain long after the relationship is over are just banging up against their own reluctance to grow, nothing to do with their ex or the disorder.

I think this is true in my case--as one of Melody Beattie's books is titled, "Learning to Let Go." I cling--like a dog on a bone; don't want to let it go. So, I chew and chew: long after the meat is gone. I recognize the loneliness I feel--I felt it before. I continue to be in withdrawal after having NO alone time for a year: I missed my alone time. I missed my friends and family and work. Now I miss him. So, there remains this longing... .I know I'm not ready for another r/s until I lose the need to gain validation from others. So, I just keep picking up that old bone and chew and chew some more, "banging up against my own reluctance to grow." But as others have written--it took this pain with exbfBPD to move me to want to change.

Yep.  An old saying - "Everything I've ever let go of has claw marks all over it" has spoken to me more than once.  Change can be scary because we're out of our comfort zone, uncomfortable by definition, but it's where all the growth is too.  I'd love to say I voluntarily leave my comfort zone to grow on purpose, but really I need to be pushed there; borderline experiences can provide a big push, mine certainly did.

[Rifka]

Rifka,

I agree with most of what you say but there can be a physiological reason that some of us have such a hard time letting go and moving on.

When we fall in love as deeply as most of us did with a BPD a process called limbic transference / imprinting takes place where our brain is actually re-wired as a result of that "love" The attachment can be so deep because the only time anything similar has taken place was from the love our parents gave us or in some cases we have never felt love that deeply, something we missed from our parents. The book I'm reading "A general theory of love" really explains the changes that occurred in our brain as a result of our relationship with a BPD and their showering of "love"

My advice is if you are taking a long time to get over the BPD relationship it might be time to go to a therapist. That it's not because of the BPD but rather something in us that is having trouble letting go.

Because of this relationship I am dealing with stuff that I have carried around since childhood, its a slow process but long overdue. It's about me now, the BPD was just the catalyst. I know I am becoming a much better person, I'm seeing some great changes in myself already and there will be many more to come.Its so wonderful that something so great can come out of this horror movie.

Bauie,

Thanks for your response. Yes most of us did experience, not the best childhood in the world, mine included! I can't have a discussion with my own mother because she does not respect my boundaries. She is a control freak and still at my age of 52 next month, feels that her word is final with no debates or explanations for her words.

Her mom was my true mom and was filled with enough love to supply the world. She was amazing and I was so lucky to have her for 37 years of my life.

I would hope that most people want to give and receive love and maybe we are accepting a lot of crap that we shouldn't to get it or feel that we are loved.

We still need to focus on us and being healthy.

How many people are not sleeping, or eating right, can't focus, are forgetful, lacking energy, feeling body aches and headaches, laying in the bed, not getting out, missing work, missing fun and missing the beautiful healthy life that awaits us?

We may be angry, beaten up emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually, hurt, fearful. When is the day that we take the stand to take control of us again? Our health and well being? Our life, some peace and maybe true love in a healthy relationship where it is give and take both ways?

Yes I totally agree with your point that at some point it is about us and we have to deal with the fact that we can only fix us!

WE ARE SO WORTH FIXING!

Bauie,

You are doing great, as are so many people here.

Fred,

Everybody has their own speed and decisions to make and facts to face.

Do we want to get better? Start being selfish and think about us and fixing us! Try to not worry about them right now, fix ourselves!.

It's not easy to be selfish when we are so giving, but until we focus on us, it's really hard to get out of the quicksand!

It's not easy and again we will all have the time when it clicks or we let our egos stop getting the best of us! We fell in love with the wrong person, so what! We felt amazing love, which was us seeing the beautiful us! Hopefully we will all eventually see how great we are. The problem is that until we can accept the disorder and fully accept that we did the best we could. Nobody can make them happy, so it's time to make ourselves happy and deal with our own baggage before they came into our lives and fix us!

There is no time until you stand up for yourself and make it your time!

Riifka