Hope

[honeysuckle]

I have been on and off this board for over two years. I have gone through all the emotions we tend to go through. I am in a much better place now. It took a lot of self discovery. In my opinion That is the way out of the misery. The more I looked at my past and my actions, why I stayed, I realized I need to understand ME. I spent so much time trying to understand HIM and BPD. We are who we are. At times I wished I never met him. I hated him. Filled with doubt and shame and like I was hit by a train and there was no one who understood. I didn't understand. I was broken mentally. I was effected physically. I cried. I puked. I was a lost. Once I turned all that energy into me and not him, things started to shift. I asked what was love. Why did this hurt me so deeply. Why wasn't I good enough. I was escaping my demons and taking on his. In the end I realized it doesn't matter if he loved me. A question I so desperately needed to be yes. I felt loved for a while. I also felt hated and thrown away. They all tie in together. What I felt was real. What I was dealing with was real. I was and I am a good person. Its not about him. He will be fine. He will find what he needs and it will last or it won't with the next girl. I can't think about that. What matters is that I find what I need. Closure was a fluid thing for me. I get it. He reconnects and then I re-question everything. Why? No Contact was what I needed to think about myself and stop obsessing about things I can't change. Did he mean to be cruel? Does that make my pain go away knowing he couldn't help it? I still felt the pain and abandonment. The meanness in his words and actions. His attempts to re-engage: a sign he still loves me? Or is is need? Does that change anything? Think about you. Why you have the reaction you do. For me, I think I felt safe knowing I made his life better and he would see how much I was willing to do. He would never leave me and I was special. He would see all I do to make him happy. But was he happy was I special? He said he was. He said I was. Was that his reality or mine? I can only go by what I know and what I feel. Trying to figure out what he "knows" and "feels" will only make things worse. I have learned a lot on this site and it has helped me though some pretty dark times. My advice to you out there going through this is not to be so hard on yourself and not to waste too much time figuring out the train that hit you. Try to get off the track and do what you need to take care of yourself. Compassion and understanding toward them is a wonderful tool we all want to have but at the end of the day it is just as important to have that for yourself. Give your self the same time and energy you gave them. This is what worked for me. I am happy again. You can be too. There is peace to be found if you take the time to get it.

Good luck to you all and Thank you to those of you who helped me on the way. 

[Ripped Heart]

Honeysuckle,

I'm really pleased you found solace on these boards and the journey you have taken. I'm here now because of finding myself in a r/s with another pwBPD so going through some of the pain of detaching again. It sometimes feels easier this time around as I was the one who pulled the plug because I knew where it was heading and chose to get off before it finally did. Though not without it's fair share of pain and heartache along the way.

It was by understanding what happened the first time around and having no control over anything that was happening, feeling the things you describe, the re-engagement attempts by my exN/BPDw which after 3 years still haven't stopped but I'm in a much stronger place in respect to that r/s. The words you speak are so true in every way, the biggest change we can make is taking care of ourselves.

I feel a lot of empathy towards my exN/BPDw, especially around her attempts to re-engage and see them for what they truly are. She hasn't changed, she has no reason or desire to change so every one of those attempts isn't because I was special or she realises the consequences of her actions, it's solely for survival, to keep the attachment alive. She has lost control of who she is so is desperately reaching out to take control of the one person she did have control over, to destroy and try to make me feel what she feels about herself right now. It's not about love, it's about needing to control, needing to win by whatever cost. And for those reasons, I feel empathy towards her because it can't be easy to be driven by those things rather than by love and mutual respect and for those reasons I couldn't possibly ever let her back in to my life and through that there is peace.