is depersonalizing even possible? what am I doing wrong here?

[allovertheplace]

Hi everyone,

Self-doubt is eating at me more than usual today. After the end of my long-term relationship with my BPD exbf, we spent months no contact and then reconnected. Our dynamic switches from I love you, I want to be with you to I never want to date you or commit to you, I don’t want to say I love you or be really romantic, but it’s always sexual and intimate and much more than “friendly” at the least. In the past 5 months we’ve had periods where he’ll go out of his way to tell me he loves me regularly and wants to hang out almost daily, then we’ve had times when we won’t see each other for a month (we go to separate universities) and me asking to get together is an annoyance.

We’ve been in the latter phase for a little while. He’s told me that his mind changes 24/7 and rationally I know that this is a part of his emotional dysregulation and would probably be happening with anyone he was with, but it feels impossible to depersonalize. During our breakup he said some terrible things - that I was physically repulsive, that he’d never loved me in the “right” way, etc. - because our breakup was so sudden and the person I’d known for 3 years transformed overnight, I was in a state of shock for months where those comments just replayed in my head. I really internalized them, not knowing that he had BPD at the time. I don’t have any standard of comparison with other relationships, so it’s hard for me to tell what’s “normal” or healthy, and what is probably attributed to BPD.

I feel that I’m constantly balancing on a tightrope, caught between wanting to respond to his affection but not show too much that will trigger him into thinking I’m clingy, or wanting to be assertive without coming off as too aggressive so he’ll paint me black again. It’s very jarring to have a genuine crippling fear that his “I love you” feelings and attraction could change at a moment’s notice for no reason at all.

The sexual stuff specifically is hitting me today. The last time I was with him he initiated things, as always, and it was great. But last night when I put myself out there he responds sort of strangely then
stops answering and I feel so embarrassed, even though a month and a half ago he was literally begging me to do this very same thing.

It’s difficult because I truly follow his lead with everything - I’m working on being less reactive to his bizarre behaviors and trying to negotiate boundaries (none of these have made any difference yet though). He was the one who initiated hanging out with each other and acting the way we do, the sexual/intimate stuff,  and the romantic/feelings-based stuff in the first place, he had to pull me out of my skepticism. When he expresses those things I respond to them and when he pulls back I do too. So when I do put myself out there in any way, I’m just responding to the emotions/desires that he recently expressed. I always feel and want those things, but I have to shut off my expression of them when he pulls back because lately he’s very anti-commitment and the fear of engulfment is pretty apparent.

In Feb, for example, I visited him - we spent 5 great days together and  he expressed all of these feelings that he said he’d really been thinking about, then told me he wanted to be in an open relationship (anti-commitment as I said) and he went as far as texting my best friend and telling his father that we were “together.” He told me he wanted to see me asap, called/facetimed consistently for a week and was very affectionate and overt with his positive feelings,  then one day he just recoiled when I responded in the same way I had been the entire time. Suddenly I was extremely clingy and needy for wanting to see each other, which he literally told me to plan. He responded with frustration, eventually told me he wasn’t sure what he wanted because it changes every 5 minutes, and we were back to neutral.

When I saw him a month later - he’s the one who begged me to visit and set the date, then a week later when I touch base it was the “I don’t have time for this, you’re so needy, etc.” After a big fight which was the result of me trying to explain my feelings, I ended up seeing him. Still intimate/sexual, but more standoffish and less romantic. Eventually I tried to very calmly walk away (with love, as it broke my heart and I don’t want that - the up and down just rips my self worth apart), which resulted in a 3 hour screaming match where he expressed how much he hated me and never wanted to date me, etc. but was adamant that we be in each other’s lives in the way we are now. I could repeat a bunch more similar situations, but you get the gist - constant confusion.  He'll blow up and clearly get angry, then retreat and not answer, then when I extend an olive branch and tell him I don’t want to fight he comes back with “Oh I wasn’t mad at all, just busy! There’s no problem!” and then I feel crazy and I’m sure that’s what I look like to him too.

It’s getting really hard to convince myself that it’s not my fault when I’m just responding to the feelings he put out there, and he’s giving me a response that either makes me feel insane, humiliated, worthless, or all of the above. Is there something I’m doing here that makes him not love me/not attracted to me without warning? Is that normal in healthy relationships? Again, I have no standard of comparison so even though my friends have been telling me that it doesn’t work this way for most of the world, I unfortunately expect him to be into me one day, then repulsed by me the next. But others have been saying that typically, feelings of love and attraction are consistent and don’t fluctuate like that.

But then of course he might come around and say “sorry I was just busy!” (I know that he did have friends over last night) and I will have spiraled for nothing. Lately since his last switch up we don’t talk more than once/twice a week so to have the only time in 7 days be this is triggering lots of anxiety in me. I hate that the fear of him shifting, bc I know it’s a cycle, causes me to doubt myself so much and analyze situations that I wouldn’t think twice about with anybody else. 

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