Feeling Lost

[Derrick]

Hello, I was in a relationship for over 2 1/2 years with someone who was diagnosed with BPD. I met her at work and our romance accelerated rapidly. I was divorced for a year, she was in the process. Our relationship was a fairytale... .at first. I never felt so in love or loved. She was younger and very attractive. Sex was great and we spent all our spare time together. Then it changed suddenly. I tried to peak her interest by proposing. she blamed me for looking at females or even being in the same office with one. Our good time would change in a second and would require lengthy conversations to make things right. She has a new job and all the signs of separation were there. She broke up with me and now acts as if she never met me.

I lost myself in this relationship and I am looking to rebuild my life again.

[whtjusthappened]

Be glad you didn't invest years into the relationship, or worse yet, get married to her, and find yourself with divorce number 2.  You are feeling lost.  Does that mean you want to try and get her back, or you are confused about how a BPD break-up seems to come without warning or make any logical sense?  We have all been where you are at some point, and it is confounding to say the least.  Now would be a good time to get yourself into therapy, as I see a red flag in your proposal to an unstable woman not long after you just got divorced.

[FrenchConnection]

Hello, I was in a relationship for over 2 1/2 years with someone who was diagnosed with BPD. I met her at work and our romance accelerated rapidly. I was divorced for a year, she was in the process. Our relationship was a fairytale... .at first. I never felt so in love or loved. She was younger and very attractive. Sex was great and we spent all our spare time together. Then it changed suddenly. I tried to peak her interest by proposing. she blamed me for looking at females or even being in the same office with one. Our good time would change in a second and would require lengthy conversations to make things right. She has a new job and all the signs of separation were there. She broke up with me and now acts as if she never met me.

I lost myself in this relationship and I am looking to rebuild my life again.

I feel for you.  I can relate.  My exBPDgf sounds just like yours.  She made our relationship a fairytale.  In fact, she had a way of becoming everything i wanted in a woman... .  So for me i thought i had found the perfect girl.  Then little by little there would be small "red flags" that appeared in behavior.   Small enough that it was easy to overlook because you think you have found the perfect girl.  You want to believe the best for yourself... .so it can be hard to be objective.

Mine also began to get upset at me if SHE thought i was looking or noticing another woman.  She also got very jealous about my female co-worker who shares an office room with me.  She would ask me about her and ask what we talk about and if i know about details of her life.  It was all a trap to find out if i was speaking about personal things with her.  She would get angry with me because i knew my co-worker had a boyfriend.  But when my exBPDgf talked with her male co-workers or had lunch with them it was all fine.  Same thing with Facebook, she hated any woman on my friends list who was pretty or attractive.

It took many long conversations to bring our relationship back to order.  But i knew at any moment it could tip toward anger and rage with her.  I never knew what one conversation would bring one day to the next.  It really began to demoralize me.

Once the relationship ended i also felt lost.  That was 1 month ago.  But since then i have been reading about all the other stories here on this board.  Talking with good friends.  Talking with my parents.  Processing everything.  And most importantly, realizing that what my intuition had been telling me all along was correct.  That this person has issues that are much bigger than me or our relationship.  And because of those issues there is no possibility of a relationship with her.  Not a loving, enduring relationship.  So now i see the only future for me is forward.  Not behind me.  And i can put one foot forward each day at a time.  The pain of the loss of love (what i was feeling) is still real and still hurts.  Some days are better than others. 

Feeling lost at the end of any relationship is normal.  We invested so much of ourselves into someone.  It takes some time to "find" our way again.  It's a process.  Just know that you are not alone because i am going through this with you too.  In fact all of us are going through this who are here on this board.  So you have a lot of good people who can talk with you and share with.

Learn from this experience.  Because it will help you find the right person once you are ready to start looking for love again.  This time the right kind of love.

[Caredverymuch]

Hello, I was in a relationship for over 2 1/2 years with someone who was diagnosed with BPD. I met her at work and our romance accelerated rapidly. I was divorced for a year, she was in the process. Our relationship was a fairytale... .at first. I never felt so in love or loved. She was younger and very attractive. Sex was great and we spent all our spare time together. Then it changed suddenly. I tried to peak her interest by proposing. she blamed me for looking at females or even being in the same office with one. Our good time would change in a second and would require lengthy conversations to make things right. She has a new job and all the signs of separation were there. She broke up with me and now acts as if she never met me.

I lost myself in this relationship and I am looking to rebuild my life again.

I feel for you.  I can relate.  My exBPDgf sounds just like yours.  She made our relationship a fairytale.  In fact, she had a way of becoming everything i wanted in a woman... .  So for me i thought i had found the perfect girl.  Then little by little there would be small "red flags" that appeared in behavior.   Small enough that it was easy to overlook because you think you have found the perfect girl.  You want to believe the best for yourself... .so it can be hard to be objective.

Mine also began to get upset at me if SHE thought i was looking or noticing another woman.  She also got very jealous about my female co-worker who shares an office room with me.  She would ask me about her and ask what we talk about and if i know about details of her life.  It was all a trap to find out if i was speaking about personal things with her.  She would get angry with me because i knew my co-worker had a boyfriend.  But when my exBPDgf talked with her male co-workers or had lunch with them it was all fine.  Same thing with Facebook, she hated any woman on my friends list who was pretty or attractive.

It took many long conversations to bring our relationship back to order.  But i knew at any moment it could tip toward anger and rage with her.  I never knew what one conversation would bring one day to the next.  It really began to demoralize me.

Once the relationship ended i also felt lost.  That was 1 month ago.  But since then i have been reading about all the other stories here on this board.  Talking with good friends.  Talking with my parents.  Processing everything.  And most importantly, realizing that what my intuition had been telling me all along was correct.  That this person has issues that are much bigger than me or our relationship.  And because of those issues there is no possibility of a relationship with her.  Not a loving, enduring relationship.  So now i see the only future for me is forward.  Not behind me.  And i can put one foot forward each day at a time.  The pain of the loss of love (what i was feeling) is still real and still hurts.  Some days are better than others. 

Feeling lost at the end of any relationship is normal.  We invested so much of ourselves into someone.  It takes some time to "find" our way again.  It's a process.  Just know that you are not alone because i am going through this with you too.  In fact all of us are going through this who are here on this board.  So you have a lot of good people who can talk with you and share with.

Learn from this experience.  Because it will help you find the right person once you are ready to start looking for love again.  This time the right kind of love.

This is a very profound post FrenchC. I shared the same experience as you and Derrick. Your insight is spot on.  Thank you.

[Derrick]

Thanks. I never knew this hell existed until this relationship! She was high-functioning and was able to hide it to most. Her family cornered me at two separate points and asked me if I ever met mean----, (name omitted). I think the grieving process is hard and I appreciate the support

[christoff522]

Everybody has a different experience, but shares many similarities.

I find one to be that they find someone who is lonely, depressed, looking for Mr/Mrs right.

They present themselves as that right person, someone who is a kindred spirit, and then the entanglement starts, we place our hopes in them and they their hopes in us, and it all eventually falls apart, usually with us bewildered and even more depressed than we were in the first place.

When we hit rock bottom we realise we need to separate and detach, hopefully without too much of our lives enmeshed with theirs (marriage, kids), and then we come back stronger than we ever were, determined never to let someone like that into our hearts again.

My advice Derrick is not to let this make you bitter, you have a great opportunity to take a personal inventory and work hard on how and why you ended up in a relationship with someone with BPD. Like attracts like, and what you wanted from her, what attracted you to her is a mirror that will show you what you need to work on, whether it be confidence, self-esteem or simply a life that has too many empty spaces in it that need filling.

You will recover from this heartache, and you will find yourself a much stronger person because of it.