“Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist, keep on loving, keep on fighting, and hold on, hold on, hold on for your life.”
Today marks 4 months post breakup.
Its been tough, I’d have to agree with others who have said the fallout of a BPD relationship is one of the most devastating experiences they’ve ever had. Though my relationship was relatively short lived – approximately 3 months - it was nonetheless significant. She was my first love.
A little recap.
I remember how happy I was when she came to my college graduation with me and my family. We spent the weekend together and I took her to my Unitarian Church where I announced my love for her and how happy I was that I was able to share my graduation with her. It made it exponentially more joyful, I said. This only 2 weeks after meeting her,
…. Naïve? More so eager to believe.
In the end, she cheated. Let her ex pierce her nipples and poke her with needles. He Told her he was punishing her for cheating on her BF (yours truly). I knew she was sick, but… Holy Sh!t. I took her back after she told me this (I must be a little sick myself,
). Seeing her remorse and shame, it’s the only way I could deal with the trauma of the situation. By rescuing her I was really rescuing myself from feeling the intensity of the wound inflicted. If only I hadn’t gone back to her, if only I hadn’t taken the bait and allowed her to reel me back in, I never would have glimpsed that utter depravity that continues to haunt me to this day. But… I had to be drained of every last drop of blood, I had to lose all hope. And so I did, a week later when she told me her ex’s piercing plan for her while guilt tripping me in one of her dysregulated tirades. It was so disgusting I could do nothing other than breakup with her on the spot over text. I had reached my braking point.
Let the grieving begin.
So there’s this cliché: “everything happens a reason.”
Here’s what Boyd has to say about this idea…
EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.
Mysteries are not necessarily miracles. – Goethe
Life is a confusing mess. You get blindsided by a drunk driver. You fall in love when you least expect to. Your first born becomes an accountant. Things happen that bring you great pain or pleasure and change your life forever. To find your bearings amid such chaos, you choose to believe that these events happen for a reason. It was meant to be, you tell yourself, and this comforts you. But to live truthfully you must accept that there is no cosmic plan – just a story you tell yourself after the fact. As you try to weave each twist and turn of your life into some coherent whole, you artfully fashion the meaning you need. Things are not meant to be, they are made to mean.
Everything happens for a reason that I make up.
The meaning I have derived from my journey through the storm that is a BPD relationship has been nothing short of life changing.
The way I see it, the map I was using to navigate through life was in many ways flawed. Seeing as It was originally drawn in crayons as a child, it makes sense that there would be some grievous errors. I have been updating and revising this map as I have progressed through life; noting and correcting for disadvantageous beliefs and behaviors that have kept me stuck in certain locations.
However, some errors have been incredibly difficult to make out. I’ve used them as guiding principles for so long, no reason to doubt their legitimacy. These tendencies of mine remained hidden from my view – unconscious blind spots.
However, when my map – my lack of boundaries, toxic shame, need to rescue, fear of abandonment, indiscriminate desire to be loved, fear of conflict, tendency to take blame and criticism poorly, self-subordination, over idealization of love, etc – lead me into a mine field, it occurred to me that something, on some level, was somehow amiss.
Psychoanalyst Karen Horney defined neurosis as “a counterproductive way of dealing with relationships.” Now, prior to my BPD relationship, I knew I had neurotic tendencies, but thought I had dealt with the majority of them in Therapy. I did not realize how many were still lying beneath the surface of my awareness.
Yet, when the dysfunction started to set in and become the norm – a norm I helped to shape – I couldn’t help but notice certain neurotic traits and tendencies emerge. The way I like to put it is that prior to the relationship these tendencies were at such a low volume they could not easily be distinguished from the background noise of everyday life. But upon entering my BPD relationship, both of our neurotic tendencies met, and like when two equal amplitude sound waves are played in unison, our neurotic tendencies were amplified. As if each of us emanated a frequency, we harmonized with one another. We resonated together, but as the volume began to increase in a kind of feedback loop, our harmony began to clash into a kind of cacophonous dissonance.
Like the sound of finger nails screeching over a chalkboard, this dissonance is hard to ignore. One might say that these neurotic tendencies of mine were amplified to such an extent as to cross over the limin, the threshold of conscious awareness (note the word subliminal).
Now that I have been made so acutly aware of my neurotic tendencies and their destructive consequences (winding up in dysfunctional relationships), I am more than willing to change them. I have seen the errors in my mental map and am hard at work making corrections to ensure my path does not again stray from my desired destination – a loving and fulfilling relationship. I do not make these alterations with a sense of burden. I make them with a sense of conviction and passion. The conviction that I am worthy of a loving relationship and that I can have one. I believe I have what it takes to overcome the adversity I have faced, and to grow as a result.
To those struggling. Hold on for your life. Have faith that you possess the power to make it through this tragedy. Extract all the meaning you can from your failed relationship. Reflect, reflect, reflect. Do your best to forgive – not for them, but for yourself. Compassion, the Dali Lami said, is the wish to see all beings free from suffering. I know I certainly would like to be free. And I deeply want my ex to be free as well.
With the Dali lamas words in mind, ill leave you with the last words I spoke to my ex: I wish you peace and happiness.
