Why I threw away two keys from my new frontdoor

[Depression = 72% of members]

Three years ago ended a crazy relationship with a heavy BPD girlfriend. The relationship with her lasted 3 years. She carried and probably carries all traits of BPD. ALL. The relationship would classify easily as THE textbook example of a borderline relationship. I classified as the ideal victim for her.

The aftermath of the relationship was terrible.
2 times in ER with heartproblems, big financial losses, had to move couple of times, needed to change career.

Today i bought a frontdoor for the house I am converting. The lock had three keys. Have kept one and threw away the other two.

Not saying that i wont give the key to my heart to the right person.
But i wont give her the key to my house.
Never I will give up control over that.

Too damaged?
Too scared?
My true self?
My new self after what happened?

Could probably throw in therapy sessions to find out.
But i wont.

Recovery, repair and entering a phase of happiness after utter and complete craziness is possible.
Also if you have just one key to your own frontdoor and threw away on purpose the other two.

Three year craziness and the aftermath made me to what I am right now.
I better and do accept that.
Trying to become again the person from before is just not realistic.
And I am quite okay with it.

The peace, the freedom, safety and independence of being on my own  with nobody being able to enter my house unasked with their own key is priceless.

That is how I came out of it.
And maybe at heart I was like that also before all the craziness.

I hope for you all you find your own happiness.
And if that is a different happiness after all that happened, than accept that as a new starting point.
That is what i learned.

[One key]

Three years ago ended a crazy relationship with a heavy BPD girlfriend. The relationship with her lasted 3 years. She carried and probably carries all traits of BPD. ALL. The relationship would classify easily as THE textbook example of a borderline relationship. I classified as the ideal victim for her.

The aftermath of the relationship was terrible.
2 times in ER with heartproblems, big financial losses, had to move couple of times, needed to change career.

Today i bought a frontdoor for the house I am converting. The lock had three keys. Have kept one and threw away the other two.

Not saying that i wont give the key to my heart to the right person.
But i wont give her the key to my house.
Never I will give up control over that.

Too damaged?
Too scared?
My true self?
My new self after what happened?

Could probably throw in therapy sessions to find out.
But i wont.

Recovery, repair and entering a phase of happiness after utter and complete craziness is possible.
Also if you have just one key to your own frontdoor and threw away on purpose the other two.

Three year craziness and the aftermath made me to what I am right now.
I better and do accept that.
Trying to become again the person from before is just not realistic.
And I am quite okay with it.

The peace, the freedom, safety and independence of being on my own  with nobody being able to enter my house unasked with their own key is priceless.

That is how I came out of it.
And maybe at heart I was like that also before all the craziness.

I hope for you all you find your own happiness.
And if that is a different happiness after all that happened, than accept that as a new starting point.
That is what i learned.

[gotbushels]

Hi One key 

The peace, the freedom, safety and independence of being on my own  with nobody being able to enter my house unasked with their own key is priceless.

This is a wonderful image. Thank you for sharing it. 

Being on the other side of a romantic relationship with a pwBPD is very difficult. If you describe her as having all the traits of the DSM, I think that is a very, very difficult person to manage. Your experience here must have been very difficult to go through.

I'm glad to see that you are taking steps away from those difficult experiences and placing them where the footing is better. I do think that you're on the right track with not being the person you were before. I do think the person you have and will become will be more aware of things and safer from such situations. In this way, we become better people from these experiences.

I hope you enjoy your new-found peace. Thank you for sharing your messages. 

[One key]

She tried to commit suicide 8 months after she moved in with me.
She Took  a big hand of strong sleeping pills with some strong alcohol.
Ran away out of the house shouting: "lets see how you will feel for the rest of your life, now that you are responsable for my death".

2 hours later she came back in. Limping because she was experiencing a numb feeling in her leg.
The first thing she said was: bring me to the hospital.
Instantly followed by:  dont leave me.

If you like count how many traits are there in just that one incidence.
Had I known about BPD that moment, I should have left there and than.
Now I know that it is impossible to live with real heavy BPD persons.

[jasmine-1234]

I am so sorry you lived through that, especially the dramatic suicide attempt.

It too much reminds me of a dramatic time I had in Mexico w/my ex, we were fighting about something ( I don't know what).  The power went out at our AirBnb and he had such panic attacks, but was too stubborn to leave.  He drugged himself with so much Xanax, I went and bought us a new hotel room down the street. I came back to see him kickboxing a tree, and had to pack up all of our stuff myself (I'm a little woman mind you). He practically destroyed the whole AirBnb. I barely barely got him to walk down the street himself, swerving the whole time to the new room, I got him finally on the bed so he could pass out all night.

Also when I told him to move out, he said the most dramatic thing, while he was sobbing his eyes out. Came upstairs and pointed at his red face saying "I hope when you water the plants I gave you, you remember this face forever!".

[One key]

When they are disregulated BPD can do the most bizar things. She tried at least 10 times to take her life in three years. At least she wanted me to believe she was going to.
With that She had bad luck with me, because i have nothing with suiciders.
Never had and never will have.
She was upping the drama with each attempt.
To get my attention.

The most dramatic time was when she was calling me while driving. She announced that she was going to crash into a wall. Than i could hear squeecking sounds of tires. Than phoneline dead.
Tried to call her and it gave disconnected signal.

Till she called from the same number couple of hours later.

I saw your other post. Quite dramatic too. I am out three years now. It does not bother me anymore.

[VitaminC]

I am out three years now. It does not bother me anymore.

Hi there, One key,

I'm glad it doesn't bother you anymore. Time can be a great healer, although time does not heal all things all by itself.

How do you feel about it all now?

[One key]

feelng happy to be alive. This relationship almost killed me. First she tried to strangle  me. Later after we broke up i ended up in hospital twice with heart problems.

found my weak spots and faults and know they are with me forever. If i dont want to be exploited and abused again, i have to be very very defensive in relationships.

Also i learned that general perception of borderliners is perhaps politically correct but wrong. Borderliners are not to be seen as good people with a dysregulation problem when they are rejected or abandonned. When you see them as irrepairable sick or bad people fooling their partners by imitating love (great sex, endless compliments, soulmates in a day, lavendish gifts etc etc), in that case the processing of what happened goes much faster. There is no longing and no hoping in that case. You just blame yourself that you were stupid enough to have missed the red flags and stepped into it.

[VitaminC]

feelng happy to be alive. This relationship almost killed me.

It sounds like you suffered in this relationship.

found my weak spots and faults and know they are with me forever. If i dont want to be exploited and abused again, i have to be very very defensive in relationships.

What do you mean here, One key? What weak spots did you find in yourself? Did I understand you correctly?
How does being "very very defensive in relationships" work? What would you do or not do to maintain those defenses?

When you see them as irrepairable sick or bad people fooling their partners by imitating love (great sex, endless compliments, soulmates in a day, lavendish gifts etc etc), in that case the processing of what happened goes much faster.

Can you explain what you mean by "processing" as you use it here? What does that look like?

There is no longing and no hoping in that case. You just blame yourself that you were stupid enough to have missed the red flags and stepped into it.

Longing and hoping are very hard. Those can be excruciating feelings. It's natural to want to do almost anything to make that stop fast.

I'm wondering if one analogy might be an open wound that's sore and bleeding. It needs to be closed up, but there's some grit and dirt in there that should be cleaned out to make sure that there's no infection developing later.

We could, in that case, hurry up and stitch that wound up and put a bandage on it and some soothing cream that dulls the pain. The blood stops right away and the wound starts to heal up.

If we slow down, wait a while for the blood to slow naturally, then go through a longer and delicate process of cleaning out the dirt, and only then stitch it up and bandage it?  More blood has been lost, more pain was felt with the cleaning out, but then the healing can begin in earnest and we can trust that the scar will be proportional but not leave the skin any weaker and that there will be no infection.

What do you make of that analogy?

[One key]

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that gives you the reward feeling after you accomplished something. Due to some chemical unbalances and due  to difficulty judging if what i am doing is good or not, i am not making enough dopamine. So i hardly  ever have that feeling of satisfaction after an accomplishment.

Example: i scaled some high mountain peaks when i was younger. My team mates were in euphoria on the top. A dopamine high. Myself i felt nothing. Only practical things like what kind of gloves i wanted to wear on the way down.

Sex is also a strong dopamine producer.

So those are flaws or faults i carry in me.
Not producing enouh dopamine due to chemical unbalances
Poor self evaluation and self validating

On top of that i was travelling some years over hunded fifty nights per year, so i never managed to create a stable social environment around me. No relection opportunities with others.

Borderlines in te beginning praise for everything i do and did and if also giving me fantastic sex, than i produce finally enough dopamine, and i start to feel better over myself and my accomlishments.
That dopamine high is very strong and you want it back all the time.
I cant produce it myself so i get hooked very quick and very easy to someone who is givin it to me. And than start accepting all kinds of crap the boderliner starts dumping on you. Everything for the next dopamine rush. In the process loosing self esteem and your health.

So i know what made and will make me vulnerable and easy pray for a borderliner. Not very much i can do about it except building up a more stable social environment around me for reflection opportunities.

So i know pretty well what happened, why it happened and why it lasted that long. So that processing is done.
Dealing with it emotional became so much easier when i stopped seeing her as a good person with a disregulation disorder playing up every now and than. Somebody you feelcompassion for and you have feelings like she cant help it.

She was not a good peson. She is a bad person doing everyhing to feel not rejected and abandonned. Not somebody to feel sorry for.  she knows she is sick, refuses to change, does not finish therapy And just continues to destroy more and more lifes around her. Seven failed relations in twenty years of adult life, two kids wih no father connection, two fathers wit no kid connection etc etc.


Being defensive is being very cautious starting a relaionship. And if one day i may end up in a relationship, i will compartimentize it. Let her in in just some parts of my life. The parts she does not know, she cant manipulate and destroy.
And i will always have a safe place for myself. A place from which i have the only key.

[gotbushels]

Being defensive is being very cautious starting a relaionship. And if one day i may end up in a relationship, i will compartimentize it. Let her in in just some parts of my life. The parts she does not know, she cant manipulate and destroy.
And i will always have a safe place for myself. A place from which i have the only key.

I appreciate your thoughts on this. I told myself before that complete detachment was the pathway to not getting hurt. The upside is that your conversations reveal nothing that can be looked at as personal or something that can be used against you. The downside is that you're giving very little sense of your personality, which is part of the self. You make it harder for people to be with you intimately. Would you be attracted to someone where you get a very poor sense of a developed, communicable, or trusting personality?

So to get the rewards of a relationship, there is some risk taking and trust involved. Furthermore, by overbuilding walls against other future partners, we are simply not letting them in either. Any healthy relationships involve some kind of interdependence--though not enmeshment--I think.