Thought being proven right would feel better...

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

I'm pretty sure my exBPD got fired from his job today - his job he loved more than anything, the job that gave him purpose.  On his DBT checklist, he ranked in as a 10/10 in importance.

There was a time, especially right after the split, where I wished all kinds of karma on him.  He had no qualms about pulling his paycheck while still benefitting from all the shared resources of our home... .or redirecting $6-8k his student loans without warning while running up the credit card saying he would pay it off when his student loans came in.  He spit in my face that he would just figure it out, since I was asking him how he planned to pay bills since he had never been able to in his life and it actually requires a number of matured emotional skills like impulse control and planning.  I had handled our finances with the agreement that it was temporary until he took classes to know how to balance a checkbook and had emotional management skills to prevent his own self-sabotage and impulses.

When we split, I sent a note to his family imploring them to check in on him and take extra care because during these self-sabotaging episodes he would stop seeing his therapist, stop his medications, drop into a deep depression, and would not be able to work.  This would put him at greater risk for self-harm, homelessness, and institutionalization.  I cautioned them that he was in a psychotic episode that his psychiatrist had prescribed anti-psychotics for and he needed an intervention.  I told them to watch for his inability to groom himself - watch for the beard and the unkempt hair because it only happens during dysregulation. 

His familiy responded by telling me to leave him alone and he just wanted a divorce from me.  It was so hurtful and isolating.  Thanks for making me feel like a valued member of the family. 

So now that he has a gnarly ZZ Topp Billy Gibbons beard that went from dark brown to salt and pepper grey (shh, he had been dyeing his hair), he has gained 25 lbs on an already hefty frame, he's off all his meds, has no doctors or therapists he's seeing.  I thought months ago during that seething period that I would feel better about being proven right, especially based on his family's heaping rejection and humiliation on top of his rejection.  His failures would show them that I wasn't crazy in reporting my concerns and asking for their help.  And now I see I was asking an incredibly stable dysfunctional system to stop being dysfunctional and stage an intervention to stop behaviors that they were all acting out themselves as well, a den of dysfunction as it were.  I would have made more progress talking to a squirrel about getting him help.

Instead, hearing that he's been fired, I don't feel satisfied or righteously victorious.  First, there were shocking feelings of anxiety from the cPTSD... .worries that I would have to absorb the lost paycheck and what that would mean in terms of paying bills and did we have food in the house we could eat.  I felt it bodily before I could think / understand it.  Then I felt a strong sense of empathy for him for the very bad day he is having.  I hoped he had found some way to comfort himself.  This is someone who was terribly abused as a child - so much so that it literally broke him, broke his brain, broke his psyche, broke his ability to form a healthy and full personality, broke his ability to form relationships with others.  He's spent his entire adult life sabotaging everything of importance to him.  And when the marriage fell apart, he returned to the safety (and wallet) of his abusive alcoholic father.  When depression hits him, he will stay in bed for weeks.  He regularly contemplates suicide. 

I feel no need to rescue him nor do I want to be there for him even as a friend.  He destroyed all that acting out the abuse he endured for years, and in reality abusing me.  But today was a moment for me that actually helps me see that I've let go and now I hope that this latest hitting the bottom of the barrel will be enough that maybe he does seek help.  Part of me fears this may be the thing that drives him over that final edge.  I think that hope sprang up after each self-saborage episode.  It was the one thing I could never really let go of.

Either way, I'm not involved anymore.  After he left, I realized it was like being married to a suicide bomber.  At any time, something could happen, and he would set off that bomb, and everything could be torn apart.  I lived in constant fear trying to pick up on subtle shifts, dissociation and dysregulation to understand how many weeks out we were from the total psychotic break where I would be the enemy threatening to divorce him.  I'm sure you all know the tune.  There were so many mini psychotic breaks in between.  And no one except his psychiatrists and therapists believed me.  So now I've been proven right... .and all I can think is here is someone who was so abused as a child, who alienated everyone who cared about him, having the second worst day of his life (his Mom passed from early onset Alzheimer's 7 years ago), and I wish him comfort and love.

I'm hoping this means I've gotten to the point of both letting go and to where I am feeling loving kindness for someone who so very much hurt me.  I guess we all that have over developed sense of empathy - it's how we are able to see past all the crap in the first place.  The peace comes from wishing him well, but also wanting the distance and safety of the life I've built since he left.  I can't disarm his suicide vest, but I send him quiet warm thoughts and be grateful that he is out of my life and took all his chaos with him.  Today was just another day in the chaos that is his life and it's not impacting me, only him.

I am deeply grieving the relationship I thought I would have and am looking very objectively at the one I actually got.  With NC and time, it has become clear as day how very damaged he is.  I feel like part of my grieving is also the loss of my own innocence that extreme abuse exists in this world and that some people who are abused as children never get better.  How is this fair?  It has me confronting my own entitlement and privilege.  There are people who grow up in war torn areas, people who go to bed each night without a home or without food.  The world is deeply unfair.  For me, tonight, I am focusing on gratitude for the life I have, for good friends I can talk openly with about what is happening, for my adorable sweet dogs, for my job that fills me with purpose, for the safety I am feeling in my own home again, for the generous gift of healing given by time and fellow travelers.  And I am wishing my abusive exBPD some comfort for the bad day he is having.

[HopinAndPrayin]

I'm pretty sure my exBPD got fired from his job today - his job he loved more than anything, the job that gave him purpose.  On his DBT checklist, he ranked in as a 10/10 in importance.

There was a time, especially right after the split, where I wished all kinds of karma on him.  He had no qualms about pulling his paycheck while still benefitting from all the shared resources of our home... .or redirecting $6-8k his student loans without warning while running up the credit card saying he would pay it off when his student loans came in.  He spit in my face that he would just figure it out, since I was asking him how he planned to pay bills since he had never been able to in his life and it actually requires a number of matured emotional skills like impulse control and planning.  I had handled our finances with the agreement that it was temporary until he took classes to know how to balance a checkbook and had emotional management skills to prevent his own self-sabotage and impulses.

When we split, I sent a note to his family imploring them to check in on him and take extra care because during these self-sabotaging episodes he would stop seeing his therapist, stop his medications, drop into a deep depression, and would not be able to work.  This would put him at greater risk for self-harm, homelessness, and institutionalization.  I cautioned them that he was in a psychotic episode that his psychiatrist had prescribed anti-psychotics for and he needed an intervention.  I told them to watch for his inability to groom himself - watch for the beard and the unkempt hair because it only happens during dysregulation. 

His familiy responded by telling me to leave him alone and he just wanted a divorce from me.  It was so hurtful and isolating.  Thanks for making me feel like a valued member of the family. 

So now that he has a gnarly ZZ Topp Billy Gibbons beard that went from dark brown to salt and pepper grey (shh, he had been dyeing his hair), he has gained 25 lbs on an already hefty frame, he's off all his meds, has no doctors or therapists he's seeing.  I thought months ago during that seething period that I would feel better about being proven right, especially based on his family's heaping rejection and humiliation on top of his rejection.  His failures would show them that I wasn't crazy in reporting my concerns and asking for their help.  And now I see I was asking an incredibly stable dysfunctional system to stop being dysfunctional and stage an intervention to stop behaviors that they were all acting out themselves as well, a den of dysfunction as it were.  I would have made more progress talking to a squirrel about getting him help.

Instead, hearing that he's been fired, I don't feel satisfied or righteously victorious.  First, there were shocking feelings of anxiety from the cPTSD... .worries that I would have to absorb the lost paycheck and what that would mean in terms of paying bills and did we have food in the house we could eat.  I felt it bodily before I could think / understand it.  Then I felt a strong sense of empathy for him for the very bad day he is having.  I hoped he had found some way to comfort himself.  This is someone who was terribly abused as a child - so much so that it literally broke him, broke his brain, broke his psyche, broke his ability to form a healthy and full personality, broke his ability to form relationships with others.  He's spent his entire adult life sabotaging everything of importance to him.  And when the marriage fell apart, he returned to the safety (and wallet) of his abusive alcoholic father.  When depression hits him, he will stay in bed for weeks.  He regularly contemplates suicide. 

I feel no need to rescue him nor do I want to be there for him even as a friend.  He destroyed all that acting out the abuse he endured for years, and in reality abusing me.  But today was a moment for me that actually helps me see that I've let go and now I hope that this latest hitting the bottom of the barrel will be enough that maybe he does seek help.  Part of me fears this may be the thing that drives him over that final edge.  I think that hope sprang up after each self-saborage episode.  It was the one thing I could never really let go of.

Either way, I'm not involved anymore.  After he left, I realized it was like being married to a suicide bomber.  At any time, something could happen, and he would set off that bomb, and everything could be torn apart.  I lived in constant fear trying to pick up on subtle shifts, dissociation and dysregulation to understand how many weeks out we were from the total psychotic break where I would be the enemy threatening to divorce him.  I'm sure you all know the tune.  There were so many mini psychotic breaks in between.  And no one except his psychiatrists and therapists believed me.  So now I've been proven right... .and all I can think is here is someone who was so abused as a child, who alienated everyone who cared about him, having the second worst day of his life (his Mom passed from early onset Alzheimer's 7 years ago), and I wish him comfort and love.

I'm hoping this means I've gotten to the point of both letting go and to where I am feeling loving kindness for someone who so very much hurt me.  I guess we all that have over developed sense of empathy - it's how we are able to see past all the crap in the first place.  The peace comes from wishing him well, but also wanting the distance and safety of the life I've built since he left.  I can't disarm his suicide vest, but I send him quiet warm thoughts and be grateful that he is out of my life and took all his chaos with him.  Today was just another day in the chaos that is his life and it's not impacting me, only him.

I am deeply grieving the relationship I thought I would have and am looking very objectively at the one I actually got.  With NC and time, it has become clear as day how very damaged he is.  I feel like part of my grieving is also the loss of my own innocence that extreme abuse exists in this world and that some people who are abused as children never get better.  How is this fair?  It has me confronting my own entitlement and privilege.  There are people who grow up in war torn areas, people who go to bed each night without a home or without food.  The world is deeply unfair.  For me, tonight, I am focusing on gratitude for the life I have, for good friends I can talk openly with about what is happening, for my adorable sweet dogs, for my job that fills me with purpose, for the safety I am feeling in my own home again, for the generous gift of healing given by time and fellow travelers.  And I am wishing my abusive exBPD some comfort for the bad day he is having.

[heartandwhole]

Hi HopinAndPrayin,

Your post touched me; thank you for writing this. I can relate to what you have written, and I think many of us here can.

I think the anger that we so understandably feel can easily morph into compassion when we realize that many people do harm because they have been harmed and/or are hurting to an extent that we can't always see or understand.

Many of us have been harmed and become kind and loving people. Some of us don't. Or can't.

I remember one day I was ruminating on relationship issues I had with my father. I felt so angry and hurt. Just really wishing he had tried harder to be the father I needed. I was absolutely SURE that he should have and could have done better.

Then one day I realized that he couldn't have done any better than he did. With the state he was in, all the experiences he had had up to that point, the skills and understanding he had, I now believe he did the best he could have at the time. That doesn't mean the child in me doesn't still wish he was more present for me, but today I feel free of the resentment that I was carrying, which has left more room for love and compassion toward him in my heart.

Do you think that you are seeing something similar in your ex-partner? That he is dealing as best as he is able at the moment?

heartandwhole

[marti644]

Hi HopinAndPrayin,

I echo H&R and thank you for your post! Much of what you are processing I am going through as well. I found out recently that my ex was hanging out with some pretty unsavoury characters and was not doing well. Right after the split I would have been delighted to hear she was heading down the dark path she was on.

As time has gone on I just feel sadness (not pity) that she is choosing the life she has. Like you, I wish I could have done more, but it wasn't my choice or life to live.

Looking objectively back now, I see that there was nothing I really could have done to make the relationship that I wanted or needed to be happy. Now my life is much healthier, and my mental health has never been better. Two days ago I was sitting on a beach and there was a beautiful sunset. I was mourning the loss of the love I had for my ex. We really did have some great times together.

While we can never be together, and our lives are forever split, I have promised myself that I would live my life to the best of my ability and always carry with me the thought that if both her and I had been whole at the time of our relationship, that we would live our lives the way I am trying to live mine now. I am working to turn the dream and fantasy of our relationship into a real, pragmatic reality, not just a dream. Therapy and being alone for a time are the best things I am doing to make this happen.

Because I can only make myself whole, a lifelong project I must admit, that is my way of reconciling my compassion and connection to her. I do genuinely pray that she is doing the same, as I only wish her the best in life. Thanks again for sharing, really got me thinking!

marti

[Harley Quinn]

Hi H&P,

Thank you for sharing your feelings on this.  You post touched me too.  I share the same compassionate loving kindness for my ex now.  There is a lot of talk in some posts from those in earlier stages about how 'they don't care, don't love', etc. and I feel that my ex did care about his behaviour and did love me the best way that he could.  Within him is that broken boy that I recognised early on who simply doesn't have the skills to do better in relationships and that is his burden.  I am glad it is no longer mine, yet I feel no anger towards him for the things that he did and the hurt that he caused.  I have my own path to follow and I wish him well on his.  Releasing ill feeling is freeing for us and creates more space for our own well being.  Enjoy all the things you are grateful for and give to yourself that same loving kindness daily.  You so deserve it.

Love and light x

[jo19854]

His familiy responded by telling me to leave him alone and he just wanted a divorce from me.  It was so hurtful and isolating.  Thanks for making me feel like a valued member of the family. 

H&P,

You - just like i do - carry true love in your heart. Be proud of that. Hate and resentment wont get us nowhere. Unfortunately the love and empathy we have is feeding our powerlessness and pain we have to deal with.
Our spouses didnt understand that they could rely on us, unconditionally. We gave all we had, and in a way still hope for the best for them.
It hurts when family members who probably dont give a damn about his wellbeing at all respond that way.

My now xw (i call her B) is babysitting the grandchildren from her older daughters.

A few family facts to show what we are dealing with;

 - When B was visiting here in Holland in 2005 her daughter totalled her car in USA. She didnt even bothered to tell. The car was left on the spot of the accident and when B arrived home she got fined. Her daughter only asked when a new car was bought because she needed one.

 - In early 2008 older daughters visited Holland on my expenses, i drove them around in Europe. Payed for restaurants and trips. After two weeks they were dropped of at the airport, i didnt get a thank you... .nothing, the only thing they had to say to their mother was that my house was manly.

 - When B during a X-mas visit in 2008 to USA had a bad car accident ( 2 seizures, broken foot, concussion, broken stirnum, both legs bruised and face slammed on the steering wheel) i flew immediatly  to USA to nurse her after she came out of the hospital. We were staying in a hotel. Her older daughters visited and ask if they could drop of a dog because they wanted to go X-mass shopping. When they saw i was there they only said "Oh... Hi... "
 
- In 2010 I picked up B in USA, she had relapsed on alcohol in 2009 and went back in the summer , leaving me in Holland. She couldnt make it here without her children she said, and i knew that was the case. I was devastated. When she called for help in March 2010 she told me no one loved her and she had locked herself up in a motel with our dog for two weeks. She begged me for help and told me she came to the conclusion she should be with me and built up her life. I was "the only man she ever truly loved". Her daughters didnt visit her and didnt even bother to say goodbey.

 - Since 2010 until 2014 B spent 5 months in a specialised nursing home in Holland and nearly died,  she had a heavy foot operation, her legs were operated, her teeth were fixed, her gallblather was removed, and she got her chemo treatment in 2013 for a year. I never saw a card, never heard a phonecall, ... .nothing from her daughters.

As you have read my B suddenly abandoned me, writing "thank you for everything".
During all those years, even the year we got married I have never heard from the older daughters (nor her mother, brother and sister), they never asked how their mother was doing.

Last year i visited USA to find closure and kindly asked for meeting after i wrote in a note what happened. No one of her family showed up.

But still, my B goes back and is babysitting.

It hurts a lot to be kicked in the dirt. The sad part is they still have a mother, daughter, sister because it was me... .allways. Meantime i take care of the dog now that was bought by the daughter who's baby B is watching. The dog was shipped to Holland in 2008 after her daughter called her mother that the landlord didnt allow the dog. (Which was a lie because she bought another one, the one they left behind in the hotel)

Dont know if it helps, but when cluster B is in the family it spreads and the best thing is to completely stay away from them. With or without a spouse with that background. They are just self-centered, low and sick.

Stay safe, be strong, even when no one understands the pain this is all causing, we are here for you.

Thanks for your reply by the way on my earlier thread