Missing him

[cyclistIII]

I miss him, you guys. I didn't for awhile but now I do again.

We never had a bad relationship; he went straight to cutting things off and bolting. We were two months of blissful "my heart has chosen you" "I will never leave you" blah blah blah etc, and then he freaked out and told me he was in love with me but was not able to be in a relationship.

He insisted on staying friends, which I went along with despite my better judgment, but he immediately became detached and unavailable, and kind of delusional (he would say he hadn't actually changed anything by breaking up with me, just "slowed things down" and he basically acted like a different person. Then after two weeks, he abruptly and without warning cut things off completely while painting me as the crazy one. His final text said, "Get help. Very disturbing. Stop calling me."

These behaviors combined with his own descriptions of his overwhelming feelings of fear and shame, his relationship history, plus just a million little things he tried to warn me about himself but which I only understood in retrospect, lead me to believe he has BPD, which means even if he did come back, I don't see a lot of hope for a healthy relationship. But GOD I miss him.

It stopped for awhile, but now it's back. (It's been 12 weeks since the break-up, 10 weeks since the even even more painful friendship break.)

Remind me that it gets better?

Thanks for listening.

[Lifewriter16]

Hi there Cyclist,

I have found that times of missing my ex so terribly that I feel I'll never get over it, come and go. I don't want to minimise what you felt for your ex or what I felt for mine in any way, but I have found that the times that I have missed my BPDxbf most have been when there has also been some kind of FOO grief floating around beneath the surface too. I've found that allowing myself to really grieve both for my BPDxbf and my past has allowed me to rise out of the terrible sense of missing him if only for a day or two. In my experience, a good day may follow a couple of bad ones and then the bad returns, but those bad days are always followed by a good one. It's cyclical a bit like riding a bike - the hills are hard, especially if you don't get the bike in the right gear first time (I never could manage my gears) but after every hill you get to freewheel down hill. So hang on in there, relief (if only temporary for now) is right around the corner. And hopefully, those who've been out longer will be able to tell us both that eventually we'll reach the plains and the hills will be a thing of the past.

Love Lifewriter

[toddinrochester]

Aww Cyclist. I am in the same position today. Somedays its fine and somedays it hits me like a wall. I can't explain it, I can't talk to my friends about it anymore because until you lived it you won't get it. I tried to tell myself this morning at 3am when I woke up and couldn't go to sleep that she is a very sick person and needs help and that I can't help her. But in the end that didn't work and I just cry a little and start wonder how this all happened to me. I waited five years for someone and I was incredibly happy. Probably the best I felt in a while. Now people will say you have to be happy with yourself before you can be happy with someone else and you have to be okay with being alone to be in a relationship. It all goes out the window at 3am.

[cyclistIII]

Thanks to both of you; my brain knows things already but somehow my heart listens better when someone else says it... .Love the bike metaphor, Lifewriter. And Todd --  3am is a hard time for not thinking about things in general, I would say, whether it's pain or stress or excitement; there are no distractions or defenses.

In other news, I just checked a calendar and it has in fact been only 10 weeks since the break-up, and 8 weeks since the "stop calling me, psycho" moment. Which makes me feel better on two fronts -- 1) that I have two weeks to catch up to where I thought I should be in terms of healing, whatever that means (ha!), and 2) that I'm clearly not counting the days since the break-up, and am in fact losing track of them as much as I do with everything else related to time. That seems like a good sign, right? :-P

[toddinrochester]

Yeah, its pretty tough at 3am. Seems to be when it hits me the hardest and yes there are no distractions but my dog is is happily sleeping. There was one day in the past 30 that I woke up and felt nothing and that felt amazing. That lasted an hour or two. This has been the hardest thing in my life. I haven't had an easy life and this takes it all.

[cyclistIII]

I think what I really miss, more than "him" (whatever that might mean) is just that feeling of being in love.

It was kind of the greatest feeling ever.

Sigh.

[Lifewriter16]

Me too, cyclist - I loved being in love. Somehow all life's problems faded into the background and I felt like I could take on the world.

Unfortunately, according to M Scott Peck, all relationships move out of that 'in love' stage eventually and both partners take a good, long look at who each other actually is. Then they make a choice: Do I stay and build a mature love or do I cut and run? I decided to cut and run... .

Lifewriter

x

[sas1729]

"Mature love". That is a great way to summarise it. Apart from the fighting (bad times), I only recently understood that the love I had with my BPDex (the good times) was immature love. That is precisely why it felt great. It was silly and fun when we weren't fighting. But how can a relationship last long term with a foundation of immature love? Playful and fun do remain, but in the end both people need to function as a team. My BPDex was not capable, I think, of evolving into a mature love, and I think the BPD was the cause of it. It was like a roadblock. Sure, we can talk all we want about the future, but without the actions to back things up we were getting nowhere. And this is outside of the fighting.

So yes, I understand what you mean when you say you miss being in love. There's a familiarity that is in itself intoxicating - because you can believe that you have stability and structure in your life. Your ex was supposed to be there at the end of the day, after you kick off your shoes and joke about leftovers for dinner. I thought that I had that, but how could anyone achieve that if there is no trust? And the trust could only come from actions. Meeting your needs and your ex's.

There will be someone else, someone more appropriate for you. I know it is hard and missing your ex is tough. But you will push through.

[AsGoodAsItGets]

mature - immature, hmmm, it kinda feels like falling in the deepest love and realizing this persons sick, their going to die of cancer soon, and nothing you can do will change that.  I feel your pain.  Sorry.  it sucks.  I know. 

[Learning Fast]

Definitely does suck.  Especially if you could somehow surgically remove the cancer (BPD) what would be left would be someone with many terrific qualities.  Sadly, as Good described, the diagnosis was terminal and beyond our control. 

[DaKid]

"Mature love". That is a great way to summarise it. Apart from the fighting (bad times), I only recently understood that the love I had with my BPDex (the good times) was immature love. That is precisely why it felt great. It was silly and fun when we weren't fighting. But how can a relationship last long term with a foundation of immature love? Playful and fun do remain, but in the end both people need to function as a team. My BPDex was not capable, I think, of evolving into a mature love, and I think the BPD was the cause of it. It was like a roadblock. Sure, we can talk all we want about the future, but without the actions to back things up we were getting nowhere. And this is outside of the fighting.

So yes, I understand what you mean when you say you miss being in love. There's a familiarity that is in itself intoxicating - because you can believe that you have stability and structure in your life. Your ex was supposed to be there at the end of the day, after you kick off your shoes and joke about leftovers for dinner. I thought that I had that, but how could anyone achieve that if there is no trust? And the trust could only come from actions. Meeting your needs and your ex's.

There will be someone else, someone more appropriate for you. I know it is hard and missing your ex is tough. But you will push through.

This is for sure one of the things I am trying to come to terms with. And accepting. As hard as it is. That does describe how we were too. It was great when we weren't fighting. But I could also feel the round block on not moving forward into the adult mature relationship stage.

It totally sucks and is so so sad... .

[Suspicious1]

For me, I think of myself as being like a recovering addict. It was that feeling of overwhelming love that I miss - that feeling of being so wrapped up that nothing can ever hurt you, that there will never be another love like it, that with them you are truly home. And I loved *him*, all the things that he was. Even the damage, and the vulnerabilities, and the fear.

What I couldn't live with was the massive come-down I experienced as soon as he withdrew that love. The cold-turkey, not knowing if I'd ever get another hit, not knowing when the withdrawal would even happen. It was like living a constantly interrupted life, where I couldn't make plans because I'd never know when I would be split black or white, and none of it was in my control.

I put myself through withdrawal because I couldn't live with the consequences of that particular drug anymore, but I still have times when I crave it. My brain absolutely craves the dopamine hit that I'd experience if he ever tried to recycle me. So I have to stay abstinent - I crave it from afar, but I have to make sure we are never in the same place at the same time, and I focus on abstinence and recovery. But still - there are days when I am tired, stressed or bored when I think he is the answer to everything.