22 Years and Out - Do you see some common threads in your life?

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

Hello everyone,

I've read and posted on this site over time and it has helped me enormously by reading experiences, behaviours and such.  I feel that my 22 year relationship (20 year marriage) taught me a lot and I'm just at the finish line of unravelling the finances and divorce.  Here are some of the things that I learnt and experienced over time and wondered if you could relate to any of them?... .

-   idealisation merged into years of push/pull, but enough to make me feel my uBPDh wanted to be with me and - importantly NEEDED me.  I could fix him, I could make him happy and then I would have a happy marriage (my goal). 

-  I believe that after him having years of insecurity, I could provide security - emotionally, financially, domestically, and this would settle our lives and he would want that as much as I did.  In reality, he brought constant drama, chaos, I waited for the next thing to drop from the sky at me and then I would bat it away, make it better.

-  I realised after two decades that the important thing to him was what HE NEEDED and I merely fulfilled a role.  It's no different right now, he hasn't asked how I am in years!

-  He was diagnosed with depression, then manic depression, then depression again.  I learnt that in a 40 minute discussion with a mental health professional, he was labelled and this gave me a reason to stay.  How could I leave someone, however they behaved, when they were ill?  Ironically, I learnt that wrong labels were constantly applied, the mental health professionals never asked me what was happening at home and had only his side of the story and he mirrored what he wanted them to know. 

-  Therapy for my uBPDh didn't work - £30K worth, I might add!  Because he mirrored and said what he wanted them to hear and then did what he wanted.  I won't go into the area of over zealous prescribing of psychiatric drugs, just to say that it made it worse.  I believed others would 'cure' him and we would have a marriage once more.  I felt relief that 'professionals' were involved and he wanted them to be involved - he portrayed that he hated the way he was and wanted help to 'fix' his overwhelming feelings of anxiety, depression, fears.  He went to his appointments, saw the doctors, it made no difference.

-  He pushed all his family away, after all, they would all abandon him in time so he was doing them a favour.  In time, he criticised all my friends and family and gradually post year 15, my contact with them was out of sight and sound of him.  Some friends didn't want to come over in case he was there, other friends didn't care but I was on edge.

-  I made excuses and more excuses.  He would talk about how he felt, his feelings, his depression, his de-motivation and to be honest, it was all about him.  He stayed in bed all day with depression, he couldn't sleep at night, he was irritable, and then there was the silent treatment.

-  If I said anything he didn't like, he would blank me.  If I called him, I feared that if I said something out of turn, he would hang up on me.  If the mobile line was bad or he was mumbling, he would put the phone down on me if I couldn't hear him.  The silent treatment lasted a couple of weeks in the early years and usually was followed by him running away (abroad for a holiday, camping with the dog, wherever).  In the latter years, I had months of silent treatment.  I could sit down next to him and he would behave as though I wasn't there.

-  In these past 4 years, I experienced the rage stage.  Threats that I would 'get what I deserve', a hard push that hurt my knees when I fell, smashing things in the lounge (generally, those that I liked), frightening me and the dog.  I started to run to neighbours as suddenly, I didn't know this man. 

-  The rage stage, for me, was his wanting out, forcing me to make the decision to end the relationship.  He knew that I wouldn't go easily as I'd put up with so much for so long, he had to step it up.  After threats to kill, a knife left outside my room (which he said was me leaving the knife and not him), threats to burn the house down, I called it a day.  All these threats were said when he wasn't getting his own way.  Then once he had regained control and got what he wanted, he thought he could come and visit with the dog after we've divorced. 

-  In this last stage, I saw snippets of the inside of him.  The manipulation, the ability to be prepared to lie to get whatever he wanted, the twisted thinking to paint me black.  It was exposed briefly but undeniably there. 

So, did I know this man who I adored, stood by for so long.  And what happened to me?  Our 'happy times' were generally on holidays - we travelled to many countries as I love to travel, and away from our home environment, we got on really well.  It was when we got home that chaos resumed.  I look back on those times with rose-tinted glasses, my optimism glimmering in the dark that we could have had a good marriage, if only ... .  It kept me there for many years. 







- 

[Tyrwhitt]

Hello everyone,

I've read and posted on this site over time and it has helped me enormously by reading experiences, behaviours and such.  I feel that my 22 year relationship (20 year marriage) taught me a lot and I'm just at the finish line of unravelling the finances and divorce.  Here are some of the things that I learnt and experienced over time and wondered if you could relate to any of them?... .

-   idealisation merged into years of push/pull, but enough to make me feel my uBPDh wanted to be with me and - importantly NEEDED me.  I could fix him, I could make him happy and then I would have a happy marriage (my goal). 

-  I believe that after him having years of insecurity, I could provide security - emotionally, financially, domestically, and this would settle our lives and he would want that as much as I did.  In reality, he brought constant drama, chaos, I waited for the next thing to drop from the sky at me and then I would bat it away, make it better.

-  I realised after two decades that the important thing to him was what HE NEEDED and I merely fulfilled a role.  It's no different right now, he hasn't asked how I am in years!

-  He was diagnosed with depression, then manic depression, then depression again.  I learnt that in a 40 minute discussion with a mental health professional, he was labelled and this gave me a reason to stay.  How could I leave someone, however they behaved, when they were ill?  Ironically, I learnt that wrong labels were constantly applied, the mental health professionals never asked me what was happening at home and had only his side of the story and he mirrored what he wanted them to know. 

-  Therapy for my uBPDh didn't work - £30K worth, I might add!  Because he mirrored and said what he wanted them to hear and then did what he wanted.  I won't go into the area of over zealous prescribing of psychiatric drugs, just to say that it made it worse.  I believed others would 'cure' him and we would have a marriage once more.  I felt relief that 'professionals' were involved and he wanted them to be involved - he portrayed that he hated the way he was and wanted help to 'fix' his overwhelming feelings of anxiety, depression, fears.  He went to his appointments, saw the doctors, it made no difference.

-  He pushed all his family away, after all, they would all abandon him in time so he was doing them a favour.  In time, he criticised all my friends and family and gradually post year 15, my contact with them was out of sight and sound of him.  Some friends didn't want to come over in case he was there, other friends didn't care but I was on edge.

-  I made excuses and more excuses.  He would talk about how he felt, his feelings, his depression, his de-motivation and to be honest, it was all about him.  He stayed in bed all day with depression, he couldn't sleep at night, he was irritable, and then there was the silent treatment.

-  If I said anything he didn't like, he would blank me.  If I called him, I feared that if I said something out of turn, he would hang up on me.  If the mobile line was bad or he was mumbling, he would put the phone down on me if I couldn't hear him.  The silent treatment lasted a couple of weeks in the early years and usually was followed by him running away (abroad for a holiday, camping with the dog, wherever).  In the latter years, I had months of silent treatment.  I could sit down next to him and he would behave as though I wasn't there.

-  In these past 4 years, I experienced the rage stage.  Threats that I would 'get what I deserve', a hard push that hurt my knees when I fell, smashing things in the lounge (generally, those that I liked), frightening me and the dog.  I started to run to neighbours as suddenly, I didn't know this man. 

-  The rage stage, for me, was his wanting out, forcing me to make the decision to end the relationship.  He knew that I wouldn't go easily as I'd put up with so much for so long, he had to step it up.  After threats to kill, a knife left outside my room (which he said was me leaving the knife and not him), threats to burn the house down, I called it a day.  All these threats were said when he wasn't getting his own way.  Then once he had regained control and got what he wanted, he thought he could come and visit with the dog after we've divorced. 

-  In this last stage, I saw snippets of the inside of him.  The manipulation, the ability to be prepared to lie to get whatever he wanted, the twisted thinking to paint me black.  It was exposed briefly but undeniably there. 

So, did I know this man who I adored, stood by for so long.  And what happened to me?  Our 'happy times' were generally on holidays - we travelled to many countries as I love to travel, and away from our home environment, we got on really well.  It was when we got home that chaos resumed.  I look back on those times with rose-tinted glasses, my optimism glimmering in the dark that we could have had a good marriage, if only ... .  It kept me there for many years. 







- 

[Reforming]

Hi Tyrwhitt

Even in the best of circumstances divorces are painful and difficult, but mental illness makes them even more fraught and hard.

Hello everyone,

I've read and posted on this site over time and it has helped me enormously by reading experiences, behaviours and such.  I feel that my 22 year relationship (20 year marriage) taught me a lot and I'm just at the finish line of unravelling the finances and divorce.  Here are some of the things that I learnt and experienced over time and wondered if you could relate to any of them?... .

-   idealisation merged into years of push/pull, but enough to make me feel my uBPDh wanted to be with me and - importantly NEEDED me.  I could fix him, I could make him happy and then I would have a happy marriage (my goal).  

I can relate to this. I stayed with my ex for a long time believing that somehow if I could fix things and make her happy - we would happy. It took me years realise that you can't fix anyone else. It's a hard lesson

-  I believe that after him having years of insecurity, I could provide security - emotionally, financially, domestically, and this would settle our lives and he would want that as much as I did.  In reality, he brought constant drama, chaos, I waited for the next thing to drop from the sky at me and then I would bat it away, make it better.

I wanted to rescue too and give her safety and security that she'd never had. Our relationship was punctuated by terrible crisis followed by periods of comparative calm, but even in these I waiting for the sky to fall on my head.

-  I realised after two decades that the important thing to him was what HE NEEDED and I merely fulfilled a role.  It's no different right now, he hasn't asked how I am in years!

I found this a very painful realisation, that need rather than love is the hall mark of disordered relationship. I actually believe pwBPD wantS to love and be loved but the disorder makes that very hard.

-  He was diagnosed with depression, then manic depression, then depression again.  I learnt that in a 40 minute discussion with a mental health professional, he was labelled and this gave me a reason to stay.  How could I leave someone, however they behaved, when they were ill?  Ironically, I learnt that wrong labels were constantly applied, the mental health professionals never asked me what was happening at home and had only his side of the story and he mirrored what he wanted them to know.  

I really sympathise with this. I think it's still very hard to get an accurate diagnosis and the right therapy and even harder if someone is resistant to getting help.  My ex had a family history of Bipolar and was sexually abused as a child, but she just wasn't willing to get help. For years I believed that these were the root of her problems. I knew nothing about BPD until after the relationship ended, but now that I do a BPD diagnosis seems much more likely.

In retrospect I realise that you can't help anyone unless they want to be helped and I wish I had focussed more myself and my own healing. Perhaps if I'd done that I might have detached sooner, but in truth I found it easier to focus on exes problems and not my own. Though the relationship caused me a lot of pain I've learned a lot about myself that I needed to learn in order to heal. I just wish I'd learned it quicker  

-  Therapy for my uBPDh didn't work - £30K worth, I might add!  Because he mirrored and said what he wanted them to hear and then did what he wanted.  I won't go into the area of over zealous prescribing of psychiatric drugs, just to say that it made it worse.  I believed others would 'cure' him and we would have a marriage once more.  I felt relief that 'professionals' were involved and he wanted them to be involved - he portrayed that he hated the way he was and wanted help to 'fix' his overwhelming feelings of anxiety, depression, fears.  He went to his appointments, saw the doctors, it made no difference.

Even the best treatment in the world is not going to be effective unless you really want to change. I think that's true for NONs and people with PD. Change is very hard and it only happens when we really commit and do the work.

-  He pushed all his family away, after all, they would all abandon him in time so he was doing them a favour.  In time, he criticised all my friends and family and gradually post year 15, my contact with them was out of sight and sound of him.  Some friends didn't want to come over in case he was there, other friends didn't care but I was on edge.

Mine did this too and it was difficult at times. She was very close to my family for a while, but by the end of the relationship she pretty much ended contact.

-  I made excuses and more excuses.  He would talk about how he felt, his feelings, his depression, his de-motivation and to be honest, it was all about him.  He stayed in bed all day with depression, he couldn't sleep at night, he was irritable, and then there was the silent treatment.

-  If I said anything he didn't like, he would blank me.  If I called him, I feared that if I said something out of turn, he would hang up on me.  If the mobile line was bad or he was mumbling, he would put the phone down on me if I couldn't hear him.  The silent treatment lasted a couple of weeks in the early years and usually was followed by him running away (abroad for a holiday, camping with the dog, wherever).  In the latter years, I had months of silent treatment.  I could sit down next to him and he would behave as though I wasn't there.

-  In these past 4 years, I experienced the rage stage.  Threats that I would 'get what I deserve', a hard push that hurt my knees when I fell, smashing things in the lounge (generally, those that I liked), frightening me and the dog.  I started to run to neighbours as suddenly, I didn't know this man.  

-  The rage stage, for me, was his wanting out, forcing me to make the decision to end the relationship.  He knew that I wouldn't go easily as I'd put up with so much for so long, he had to step it up.  After threats to kill, a knife left outside my room (which he said was me leaving the knife and not him), threats to burn the house down, I called it a day.  All these threats were said when he wasn't getting his own way.  Then once he had regained control and got what he wanted, he thought he could come and visit with the dog after we've divorced.  

The silent treatment, the raging and the devaluation are all very hard to process. When you've experienced it over a long time it really leaves a mark and it takes work to process it and heal.

-  In this last stage, I saw snippets of the inside of him.  The manipulation, the ability to be prepared to lie to get whatever he wanted, the twisted thinking to paint me black.  It was exposed briefly but undeniably there.  

It doesn't make their behaviour any less hurtful, but I think that with A pwBPD shame and terror drive them to do whatever they think they need to do to survive.

So, did I know this man who I adored, stood by for so long.  And what happened to me?  Our 'happy times' were generally on holidays - we travelled to many countries as I love to travel, and away from our home environment, we got on really well.  It was when we got home that chaos resumed.  I look back on those times with rose-tinted glasses, my optimism glimmering in the dark that we could have had a good marriage, if only ... . It kept me there for many years.  

We travelled very well together too and I remember how close I felt to her during those times.

It's very to hard to reconcile the bright moments with the darkness and bring them together in one person. It can feel so confusing and contradictory.

How are you holding up right now?

Thanks for sharing

[Tyrwhitt]

Thanks so very much for your reply, it brought comfort to my whirling mind and what you said about periods of comparative calm but waiting for the sky to fall in resonated with me - at first, I believed the calm would conquer the storm and the storm wouldn't return.  But it dropped continually from the sky at me and expecting chaos became the norm.  And the light and the dark plays over and over in my mind, ultimately after the extreme emotional pain there became almost emotional numbness.

I alternate between realising that divorce gives me an opportunity to regain control on my life, live without fear and maybe... .be happy.  I still want to fix his world, be there when it crumbles, but I think these emotions will fade with time.  The divorce was instigated by me, but I felt I had no other choice and that he'd pushed me soo hard, in the worst possible way. 

It's left me distrustful, and totally unable to process the concept of a relationship ever again!  Friends and to get a new dog (as he has our dog, whom I adored) seem the best options going forward.  I think I've lost me along the way - yes, I kept working all these years, even studying, tried to indulge in new hobbies whilst we were together - but I lost the ability to feel free to say what I want, to laugh, to quite simply not have a situation (or him) to worry about, to fix, or to excuse to others. 

[once removed]

hi tyrwhitt,

i worry what you may go through upon exiting the relationship. i understand youve reached a real level of detachment and it will serve you, it just wont make you invulnerable. its a grieving process. youve likely done some, maybe most of it. my longest relationship (with uBPDex) was three years. i cant fathom a twenty year marriage in comparison. i dont at all mean any of this to weaken your resolve, quite the contrary. just that i personally struggled with wanting out of my relationship for the majority of it, and i was still far more vulnerable than id have thought myself. none of that was twenty two years. frankly, id congratulate yourself on achieving two plus decades of a romantic relationship. FOG may exist more than you think and may cloud your judgment. it may not.

"I realised after two decades that the important thing to him was what HE NEEDED and I merely fulfilled a role.  It's no different right now, he hasn't asked how I am in years!"

i did realize this after the fact. it helped me to learn that she played a role for me too. the last year of my relationship was different than the first two, and increasingly focused on her.

"He was diagnosed with depression, then manic depression, then depression again.  I learnt that in a 40 minute discussion with a mental health professional, he was labelled and this gave me a reason to stay.  How could I leave someone, however they behaved, when they were ill?  Ironically, I learnt that wrong labels were constantly applied, the mental health professionals never asked me what was happening at home and had only his side of the story and he mirrored what he wanted them to know."

my ex was diagnosed bipolar, and this was disclosed to me either early in, or perhaps even before the relationship began. she went off her meds upon the beginning of our relationship, and, if not foolishly, i supported her. she saw her therapist and went on some new meds nearly half way in. we bonded over this initially. she called virtually any acting out behavior a "manic episode" and so it seemed like i just ought to check out during them (any overwhelming/inappropriate behavior, raging, what have you), and wait for her to calm down. the funny thing is that in the last year there was total denial of "manic episodes" and everything was 100% my fault, not even possibly, not even remotely, 50/50. i chalked even that attitude up to "manic episodes", but near the end, i began taking on more and more. when i stumbled upon BPD it was by accident. i knew it by name only. i learned BPD is often misdiagnosed deliberately or not for a multitude of reasons. i dont know which is the case for my ex. at this point it doesnt matter. but even a wrong, or not exactly full diagnosis helped me at the time in terms of keeping sane. diagnosing her myself with BPD helped immeasurably afterward.

"Therapy for my uBPDh didn't work - £30K worth, I might add!  Because he mirrored and said what he wanted them to hear and then did what he wanted.  I won't go into the area of over zealous prescribing of psychiatric drugs, just to say that it made it worse. I believed others would 'cure' him and we would have a marriage once more."

my exes meds did nothing but lower her sex drive and maybe create some hyperactivity at night. meds, when "gotten right" can help. they are not a cure. that doesnt just apply to BPD. a medicated person with depression may experience immediate, even night and day relief of their problems, but they still have to adjust to the difference between night and day, right?

"he portrayed that he hated the way he was and wanted help to 'fix' his overwhelming feelings of anxiety, depression, fears.  He went to his appointments, saw the doctors, it made no difference."

as did my ex. originally she took on most of the responsibility. she didnt get as much treatment as you describe. the concept of recovery can be scary. if that recovery involves acceptance of a personality disorder, it can be even harder.

"I made excuses and more excuses.  He would talk about how he felt, his feelings, his depression, his de-motivation and to be honest, it was all about him.  He stayed in bed all day with depression, he couldn't sleep at night, he was irritable, and then there was the silent treatment."

living with someone with depression can be a challenge. it need not be seen as a life sentence. knowing what i know now, i could certainly live with or be with someone experiencing depression or having lived with it. you may not have known much about BPD either, so you need not kick yourself. i still believe in "in sickness and in health". but as you say, you "made excuses and more excuses", or at least you see it this way in retrospect. that suggests to me you were clued in that there might be more this, and i think thats good insight  

"If I called him, I feared that if I said something out of turn, he would hang up on me."

you may know by now that this is referred to as walking on eggshells. you may also know that many of these relationships have levels of evolution to them that many of us have in common. walking on eggshells was not a constant for me, but something i did far more than once. part of the reason i say that there may be unexpected pain ahead of you is the conditioning at work here. adrenaline may be at work. but the drama in general is often addictive. or for example, when if you decide to date again, you may expect the very same thing from the next person.

"The silent treatment lasted a couple of weeks in the early years and usually was followed by him running away (abroad for a holiday, camping with the dog, wherever).  In the latter years, I had months of silent treatment.  I could sit down next to him and he would behave as though I wasn't there."

i did not experience this directly, but many members here have, and the general consensus on this forum (i agree) is that its abusive. it sounds like a hell of a thing to deal with, months of your partner attempting to deny your existence  

"In these past 4 years, I experienced the rage stage.  Threats that I would 'get what I deserve', a hard push that hurt my knees when I fell, smashing things in the lounge (generally, those that I liked), frightening me and the dog.  I started to run to neighbours as suddenly, I didn't know this man."

"The rage stage, for me, was his wanting out, forcing me to make the decision to end the relationship.  He knew that I wouldn't go easily as I'd put up with so much for so long, he had to step it up.  After threats to kill, a knife left outside my room (which he said was me leaving the knife and not him), threats to burn the house down, I called it a day.  All these threats were said when he wasn't getting his own way.  Then once he had regained control and got what he wanted, he thought he could come and visit with the dog after we've divorced."

needless to say, this is highly abusive, and it clearly only escalated. i think youre fortunate to have gotten out, and that you responded to it by getting out. i wouldnt reduce this to unconscious or subconscious communication that he wanted out though. you can call it the wild swing from abandonment to engulfment, but it was an effort to control you, and it was highly abusive.

"In this last stage, I saw snippets of the inside of him.  The manipulation, the ability to be prepared to lie to get whatever he wanted, the twisted thinking to paint me black.  It was exposed briefly but undeniably there."

you mentioned youd felt you didnt know this man at various times. witnessing someone we are with become a different person is traumatic and messes with your sense of reality. its painful beyond words. but to be frank, sometimes its unattractive too, ya know?

"So, did I know this man who I adored, stood by for so long."

yes and no. theres nothing you experienced that wasnt "real" or was an illusion. it simply couldnt be sustained. you may not have experienced the 'dark' side, but you have now. so youve seen all sides. with time and detachment (easier said than done) you will integrate all parts of him.  

And what happened to me?  

you lost yourself in an increasingly enmeshed and unhealthy relationship. sounds like a conveniently easy way to put it, doesnt it? the first step is recognizing it. im not sure if its the second, but one of the most crucial steps is forgiving yourself for it. you will find yourself again.

"Our 'happy times' were generally on holidays - we travelled to many countries as I love to travel, and away from our home environment, we got on really well.  It was when we got home that chaos resumed.  I look back on those times with rose-tinted glasses, my optimism glimmering in the dark that we could have had a good marriage, if only ... . It kept me there for many years."

i would actually say that for me it was the opposite, holidays seemed to go predictably badly, but that wasnt always the case. sometimes they were spectacular and memorable. id encourage you to read a bit more about this. holidays, anniversaries, special times, can not only trigger a pwBPD, but reasonably trigger a "non", theyre stressful times. for any given person, there can be a tendency to cling to attachments, to avoid abandonment, to project an image of being surrounded, all kinds of things.

hang in there tyrwhitt   . youve processed a lot of this. i hope that the worst is behind you.

[arlers]

I totally get the posts above. Many thanks TyrwhItt for sharing your experience with us. My rs lasted 4.5 yrs then dragged on with recycles to 6. In the end oit was the silent treatment, the shut downs the abuse that made me leave - drove me to it. My ex I am sure is BPD - charming, beautiful but totally empty inside. It has taken me a long time to see that it was and s is ALL about HER needs being met. She has no real identity and often threatened suicide. She has never been alone and replaced me the first time within a month. She is now with another who has a toddler. I have been NC for almost 6 mths and I can clealrly see how my background of abuse made me stay way too long and live off the crumbs she fed me. We also had good times but these were always short-lived and in between chaos and drama of HER making. It has indeed been a HUGE lesson in life and love for me and really broke me up. However, I feel sure that I am stronger now and have never been as needy as she is. I am much more aware of myself now and much stronger now. It takes courgae to break out of our old behaviours and To stand up for ourselves but slowly I am doing so and learning to love myself first and foremost. Thanks again to all on these boards for shaeing.

[Trog]

The thought has dawned on me that truly my ex would have thrown her lot in with anyone who would allow her to deny her illness which she simply can not, despite 5 sectionings, own and refuses to be medicated for. She will for a few months but then comes off them and slides again towards the doors of the mental hospital, taking down as the 'cause' those closest to her.

I am not particularly my exes type and when we started dating she had options of which i was the most maluable and fed in most to her anti-psychiatry doctrine. There was nothing special or great about our matching and I am not truly sure she loved me early on, perhaps she grew to. Sentences like 'if I can't make it work with you I can't make it work with anyone' hit home and hurt later on when I patched the script together. It hurts to know I was 'just anybody' that would accept her insane behaviour and allow her narrative that there was nothing wrong with her. She wasn't with me for me at all, and all her actions & abide later bore that out. I'm Not special and that particularly pains me due to childhood issues. The day after we married she told me she did it 'because I wanted to throw a party for my friends' (another dagger in the heart) and yet when I left her the marriage was some golden promise that I shouldn't break.

So I get the 'need' as opposed to love. Part of our work is to learn to value ourselves and entertain partners who see us as individuals, wondeful in our own right, not an appendage to their disfunction. It HURTS to know i married someone who felt that way, that i placed my love and trust in the wrong person but I am really hopeful for the future never to do this again we will all go on from here and have much better relationships with real love & respect.

[Tyrwhitt]

Thanks for all taking the time to respond and share your experiences.  A couple of things occurred to me reading through, firstly, the waves of my uBPDh being awake all night and then sometimes awake all day, too.  But, importantly, the disruption he brought with him being awake all night.  He would start doing bits around the house that he should do during the day, put lights on, even put the vacuum on a 4am!  I spent years with sleep deprivation and didn't say anything in case it triggered him to make more noise. 

The other thing that I realised is that he would never tell a direct lie but would 'play with words' and allow you to think something that was totally untrue with the response "I never actually said that".  He always said "you don't ask the right question" and so presumably, I never had a true answer.  That got tiring.

I've found in recent months, I've appreciated straight talking from others because I struggle massively with letting go of my 'excusing him' mentality.  No matter what he did, I believed there was an underlying cause, reason or feeling, and all these things were repairable!  When it came to the abuse side of things, I can't picture myself as being a receiver of such behaviour, the "it couldn't be happening to me".  I saw myself as the one who coped, no matter what was thrown at me.  There was one day when he chased me down the stairs and I truly believed he would kick the ... .out of me, but he didn't.  In a later conversation when I reminded him of this action he smirked and said "well... .I think you kind of deserved that one ... .".  It's memories like that that make me glad that I took the hardest decision that I've ever made.  And underlying all that, I would still be able to feel responsible for him, ... .!  It's a hard path to tread.

[Reforming]

Thanks so very much for your reply, it brought comfort to my whirling mind and what you said about periods of comparative calm but waiting for the sky to fall in resonated with me - at first, I believed the calm would conquer the storm and the storm wouldn't return.  But it dropped continually from the sky at me and expecting chaos became the norm.  And the light and the dark plays over and over in my mind, ultimately after the extreme emotional pain there became almost emotional numbness.

For the last few years I felt very flat and  bereft of hope. I think living with a disordered person can be hugely draining and it's a huge challenge to hold onto your sense of self.

I alternate between realising that divorce gives me an opportunity to regain control on my life, live without fear and maybe... .be happy.  I still want to fix his world, be there when it crumbles, but I think these emotions will fade with time.  The divorce was instigated by me, but I felt I had no other choice and that he'd pushed me soo hard, in the worst possible way.

Detaching takes time and I think it's harder when you have lot of history together. You can't just erase a huge chunk of your life and learning to reframe it from a very different prospective is really hard. It takes a lot of work, but you will do it. Try to be gentle with yourself and not judge the process

It's left me distrustful, and totally unable to process the concept of a relationship ever again!  Friends and to get a new dog (as he has our dog, whom I adored) seem the best options going forward.  I think I've lost me along the way - yes, I kept working all these years, even studying, tried to indulge in new hobbies whilst we were together - but I lost the ability to feel free to say what I want, to laugh, to quite simply not have a situation (or him) to worry about, to fix, or to excuse to others.  

I can relate to this and so can a lot of other posters. A big part of this is learning to trust yourself again. One of the reasons I felt so hurt is that I felt I betrayed myself by accepting my exes behaviour and not recognising what was actually happening. It's a wound that needs to be healed and I think that begins with forgiving yourself.

Being in a relationship with someone who has a PD is so multilayered,  complex and traumatic.

We all play a part, many of us NONs were vulnerable to these attachments in ways that we never understood until we were either deeply involved or the relationship was over. And even though the end of our relationship can feel devastating we deserve credit for trying the best we could to love someone who we believed was worthy of love. It's really sad that they weren't able to give us the love that we needed, but at least we have the power to heal and find happiness again. It's not easy, but many other have done it tell the tale.

Reforming[/quote]