Push-pull and testing behaviours

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

I've been procrastinating on making this post today. I've known I needed to post since lunchtime, because I was feeling the urge to cry and yet writing in my journal wasn't hitting the spot. I figured I need to go public with this to help me to connect with my feelings. So, here goes... .


My BPDxbf and I have had some email contact recently after over 6 weeks apart (our longest of 6 splits since we started dating a year ago). I sent him this email:

"When I look back on what happened between us. I find myself torturing myself about so many things. I had such a deep sense that we were meant for each other, that we belonged together, that you were my man and yet we've gone our separate ways. I must either have been wrong in 'intuiting' those things or we made a mistake in splitting up. I really believed you loved me and I really loved you. It seemed so 'real' to me at the time. I want it to have been real, but I don't know what to believe anymore because I thought true love would conquer all, but in our case, it clearly didn't.

Did I mistake what I felt? I have an image of you in my mind and I connect that image of you with what I think is the 'real' you. Is that image of you just a fantasy based upon what I want you to be? Did I just think I loved you because you felt familiar to me? Were we not soulmates at all, just two people whose neuroses 'fitted' so well that it triggered all that childhood pain? Or was it that the love was real but the closeness was not sustainable for either of us?

I wish I knew because the prospect of letting my soulmate go for ever is too unbearable. If I knew it was just a mirage, that would help me. If I knew your feelings were no longer the same or that you've realised that they weren't what you thought they were, that would help too. What I imagine to be the tortured separation of lovers is awful.

The more I contemplate the prospect of never seeing you again, the more it all feels wrong UNLESS the love wasn't real anyway. I would rather see you occasionally for coffee and chit-chat than never see you again. I want to be able to be with you sometimes because I love you. I know it hurts when we see each other, but the not seeing each other forever, hurts me more.

I am wondering if we can find a way to meet as friends every now and then. At least we'd have salvaged something. Is it worth salvaging something? Have you already moved on? Do you still want me to love you enough to let you go completely? Can you contemplate me being with someone else? I can't. Do I have to?"


He responded:

"Hi. Give me some time to think things over. I'd like to meet for coffee but I've not been well the past few days. I've had a horrible migraine.

Let's take things slowly."


A couple of hours later, I realised he'd sent me a text suggesting a time and date for meeting quite shortly after he'd sent the email and I panicked, I literally wanted to run away from him and never stop running. This seemed quite ridiculous given everything I said in my email and how much emotion I had felt as I'd written it. Yet, all I could see was his 'neediness', it felt too soon, too desperate and I felt swamped. All he'd done was try make the arrangement I'd suggested to him. I sat and puzzled over my reactions and finally managed to calm down when I sat with the notion that it was me who was 'needy' rather than him. When I woke the following day, my anxiety returned. For a brief moment yesterday, I was relieved that we are back in touch and intending to try to work it out, but the anxiety and the urge to turn and walk in the opposite direction is strong.


Over the past few months, my reaction to receiving a text from my BPDbf has gone from delight to panic. I have experienced him as being needy and wanted to run away. At one point, he simply said to me: "Couples communicate!" and I know he's got a point. He frequently talks about me pushing him away. I have been blaming all this on him, telling myself it's a quite reasonable reaction on my part to his rejecting behaviours. But, when I have looked through the transcripts I made of the arguments we had by text, I'm not so sure that I wasn't reading stuff into his texts that wasn't there because I've been running away from him (emotionally speaking) and it was a convenient excuse to end it and thus get rid of the anxiety. Unfortunately, once we do end it, sadness and loss creep in and I regret our decision. We have talked a bit about my push-pull tendencies and my fear that if he gets to know me he will discover that I'm just an empty box with nothing inside.

Today, I took the online personality disorder test and scored highest on the Avoidant PD and next highest on the Dependent PD scores. There's no surprise there, when I look at it. When I've read the characteristics of PDs on another website, those two sounded most familiar to me. So, I have asperger's syndrome, which makes it difficult for me to anticipate how my BPDxbf will react to my words and actions. I have PD traits that create a tendency to want to both run away from intimacy whilst being too scared to leave. AND I love my BPD boyfriend more than anything. No wonder I am tortured and in conflict. I want to change this. Yet, it feels so unsafe... .I am really frightened of being found lacking, frightened of getting it wrong, frightened of being rejected. I want to run desperately but I feel like he is my soulmate, we are meant for each other. If I walk away from my soulmate, I have nothing left to hope for, nothing left to live for. It's a crazy situation and I feel like a crazy person.

Lifewriter

[Lifewriter16]

I've been procrastinating on making this post today. I've known I needed to post since lunchtime, because I was feeling the urge to cry and yet writing in my journal wasn't hitting the spot. I figured I need to go public with this to help me to connect with my feelings. So, here goes... .


My BPDxbf and I have had some email contact recently after over 6 weeks apart (our longest of 6 splits since we started dating a year ago). I sent him this email:

"When I look back on what happened between us. I find myself torturing myself about so many things. I had such a deep sense that we were meant for each other, that we belonged together, that you were my man and yet we've gone our separate ways. I must either have been wrong in 'intuiting' those things or we made a mistake in splitting up. I really believed you loved me and I really loved you. It seemed so 'real' to me at the time. I want it to have been real, but I don't know what to believe anymore because I thought true love would conquer all, but in our case, it clearly didn't.

Did I mistake what I felt? I have an image of you in my mind and I connect that image of you with what I think is the 'real' you. Is that image of you just a fantasy based upon what I want you to be? Did I just think I loved you because you felt familiar to me? Were we not soulmates at all, just two people whose neuroses 'fitted' so well that it triggered all that childhood pain? Or was it that the love was real but the closeness was not sustainable for either of us?

I wish I knew because the prospect of letting my soulmate go for ever is too unbearable. If I knew it was just a mirage, that would help me. If I knew your feelings were no longer the same or that you've realised that they weren't what you thought they were, that would help too. What I imagine to be the tortured separation of lovers is awful.

The more I contemplate the prospect of never seeing you again, the more it all feels wrong UNLESS the love wasn't real anyway. I would rather see you occasionally for coffee and chit-chat than never see you again. I want to be able to be with you sometimes because I love you. I know it hurts when we see each other, but the not seeing each other forever, hurts me more.

I am wondering if we can find a way to meet as friends every now and then. At least we'd have salvaged something. Is it worth salvaging something? Have you already moved on? Do you still want me to love you enough to let you go completely? Can you contemplate me being with someone else? I can't. Do I have to?"


He responded:

"Hi. Give me some time to think things over. I'd like to meet for coffee but I've not been well the past few days. I've had a horrible migraine.

Let's take things slowly."


A couple of hours later, I realised he'd sent me a text suggesting a time and date for meeting quite shortly after he'd sent the email and I panicked, I literally wanted to run away from him and never stop running. This seemed quite ridiculous given everything I said in my email and how much emotion I had felt as I'd written it. Yet, all I could see was his 'neediness', it felt too soon, too desperate and I felt swamped. All he'd done was try make the arrangement I'd suggested to him. I sat and puzzled over my reactions and finally managed to calm down when I sat with the notion that it was me who was 'needy' rather than him. When I woke the following day, my anxiety returned. For a brief moment yesterday, I was relieved that we are back in touch and intending to try to work it out, but the anxiety and the urge to turn and walk in the opposite direction is strong.


Over the past few months, my reaction to receiving a text from my BPDbf has gone from delight to panic. I have experienced him as being needy and wanted to run away. At one point, he simply said to me: "Couples communicate!" and I know he's got a point. He frequently talks about me pushing him away. I have been blaming all this on him, telling myself it's a quite reasonable reaction on my part to his rejecting behaviours. But, when I have looked through the transcripts I made of the arguments we had by text, I'm not so sure that I wasn't reading stuff into his texts that wasn't there because I've been running away from him (emotionally speaking) and it was a convenient excuse to end it and thus get rid of the anxiety. Unfortunately, once we do end it, sadness and loss creep in and I regret our decision. We have talked a bit about my push-pull tendencies and my fear that if he gets to know me he will discover that I'm just an empty box with nothing inside.

Today, I took the online personality disorder test and scored highest on the Avoidant PD and next highest on the Dependent PD scores. There's no surprise there, when I look at it. When I've read the characteristics of PDs on another website, those two sounded most familiar to me. So, I have asperger's syndrome, which makes it difficult for me to anticipate how my BPDxbf will react to my words and actions. I have PD traits that create a tendency to want to both run away from intimacy whilst being too scared to leave. AND I love my BPD boyfriend more than anything. No wonder I am tortured and in conflict. I want to change this. Yet, it feels so unsafe... .I am really frightened of being found lacking, frightened of getting it wrong, frightened of being rejected. I want to run desperately but I feel like he is my soulmate, we are meant for each other. If I walk away from my soulmate, I have nothing left to hope for, nothing left to live for. It's a crazy situation and I feel like a crazy person.

Lifewriter