Getting through the first few months

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

First ever post - I separated from my husband of 20 years 3 months. He hadn't had any significant episodes in over 5 years, then bam one beginning of April and then catastrophic one at the end of May. I left during the last episode, and it is the only time I have left in 20 years. Long story short, he exploded in a nuclear fashion, went after our elsdest daughter and I on facebook and followed up a few days later by sending 10 hours worth of abusive and threatening texts to our eldest daughter. I had never seen him go after one of our kids like that and we ended up getting an emergency restraining order to stop him going after her further. Since then he has vowed to never talk to either of us again, and has pretty much kept to his word. All messages have to be sent via his uncle, which makes anything to do with the splitting of assets, kids, divorce etc a major pain.
He unfriended me on facebook the night it happened, and then switched to posting publicly. He is still saying awful things about me and is constant in his belief that our daughter and I are the bad guys in all of this. It's messing with my head so badly that he is being so good about money and most things I ask about, but then is so hateful in every other regard. He is diagnosed with BPD, was on medication until about 18 months ago and in therapy until the end of last year. We have always had very frank conversations about BPD and he has always owned his illness and episodes - except this time. He refuses to believe that BPD has played any part in this and is telling everyone how happy he is now that he is free from me and our abusive relationship. He has lost contact with most of our other children as they refuse to talk to him until he fixes things with myself and my daughter. I never thought he would cut things off this coldly, we have always been able to maintain amicable relations every other time. I get that this is the final discard, and I know so many of the BPD mechanisms in play - so why then does it still hurt so much after 3 months? Why do I miss him so much at times?

Any feedback from anyone who was with their BPD partners for a significant amount of time is very welcome. I ask for long term, not to minimize the pain shorter term relationships have cause, but because it would help to look at similar experiences. I feel like I'm rambling, but thank you in advance.

[BodieBoo]

First ever post - I separated from my husband of 20 years 3 months. He hadn't had any significant episodes in over 5 years, then bam one beginning of April and then catastrophic one at the end of May. I left during the last episode, and it is the only time I have left in 20 years. Long story short, he exploded in a nuclear fashion, went after our elsdest daughter and I on facebook and followed up a few days later by sending 10 hours worth of abusive and threatening texts to our eldest daughter. I had never seen him go after one of our kids like that and we ended up getting an emergency restraining order to stop him going after her further. Since then he has vowed to never talk to either of us again, and has pretty much kept to his word. All messages have to be sent via his uncle, which makes anything to do with the splitting of assets, kids, divorce etc a major pain.
He unfriended me on facebook the night it happened, and then switched to posting publicly. He is still saying awful things about me and is constant in his belief that our daughter and I are the bad guys in all of this. It's messing with my head so badly that he is being so good about money and most things I ask about, but then is so hateful in every other regard. He is diagnosed with BPD, was on medication until about 18 months ago and in therapy until the end of last year. We have always had very frank conversations about BPD and he has always owned his illness and episodes - except this time. He refuses to believe that BPD has played any part in this and is telling everyone how happy he is now that he is free from me and our abusive relationship. He has lost contact with most of our other children as they refuse to talk to him until he fixes things with myself and my daughter. I never thought he would cut things off this coldly, we have always been able to maintain amicable relations every other time. I get that this is the final discard, and I know so many of the BPD mechanisms in play - so why then does it still hurt so much after 3 months? Why do I miss him so much at times?

Any feedback from anyone who was with their BPD partners for a significant amount of time is very welcome. I ask for long term, not to minimize the pain shorter term relationships have cause, but because it would help to look at similar experiences. I feel like I'm rambling, but thank you in advance.

[Baglady]

Hi Bodie 

Another long-timer here (in a quick nutshell - my exBPDh had a psychotic break after 21 years of marriage (27 year relationship). Over the span of several weeks, he split me black, verbally raged at me for days at a time, assaulted me (I had to hide out in a hotel for a week from him).  We divorced in 3 months and within weeks he was juggling two girlfriends and "had fallen in love".  I had never even heard about personality disorders prior to all of this.  Never occurred to me that my ex had a mental illness because he was relatively high-functioning (although many questionable behaviors that I tolerated make sense now in hindsight).  Although you have the benefit of knowing that your partner has BPD - it still seems that we both arrived at the same place in our long marriages.  I'm so sorry        A BPD discard after decades is it's own special form of hell.

Of course you miss him and of course it hurts.  Those of us in long term marriages are so naturally enmeshed with our partners that it's hard to know where we end and they begin.  Your significant other has been a constant in your life for decades and then poof.  My discard was brutal (all the more so for not having a clue what on earth was going on) but the aspect that makes it even more hurtful in my view is the sheer speed of the event.  I'm guessing that you still don't really know what hit you.  My ex also rubbed in how happy he was without me and smeared my name to all and sundry.  It is irrational behavior that is deeply hurtful to a loyal non-BPD partner of decades.   

You have to take good care of yourself and allow the grief to come to the surface.  Sadly, I found for me that there was no way but through.  It does get better with time.  Support from a therapist was vital to my recovery as was this site.  Keeping revisiting - we get it when so many don't.

Hang in there.

Warmly 

B

[legalboxers]

Good Evening Bodie:

I know the feeling. She unfriended and blocked me. A day after I told her do what you want she posts a pic of her and some other guy on her page. Here is the thing. She never posted pics of us together. She posted how we are married and how I never gave up on her, but she gave up on me. I read the latter part. For me, this lasted 5 months. Which felt like eternity. I had to live on the seat of my pants which person I had when I woke up in the morning, and will I be single the day after.

[BodieBoo]

Thank you both so much. I still feel the shock to my core. For years I said he was a really good man who hated the things he did during an episode - ill him, wasn't the real him. Now however, I have to recognize that it was all him. The man who so easily threw away our lives and walked away from his kids - that is him. It's been almost three months, he knows he can reach out but won't. I logically accept that this is it now, but that part of me that still loves him keeps thinking - well maybe...

I swear hope can be the most destructive thing in the universe sometimes. I don't want my husband back, but I do miss my best friend,

[Baglady]

Hi Bodie 

The surreal, shocky feeling is so destabilizing and all encompassing.  I truly feel for you  .  For the better part of a year, I kept waking up every morning thinking that my nightmare was over and that normal life (pre-discard) would resume.  I also hung on to that feeling of hope for a very long time.

I'm 2 and 1/2 years out now and finally feeling like I'm finding my feet again (bear in mind that I had no idea what BPD was during my discard and divorce so please don't use my healing time as some kind of measuring stick for you).   For the longest time, I also felt the same feeling of missing my best friend but not wanting both Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde back. 

At this point though,  I've worked through things to the point that I no longer see my ex as my best friend.  I feel like my marriage was a huge con job (whether unconscious on my ex's part - I have no real idea).   My ex-best friend was a fake, a false front, a non-real person who cruelly manipulated me and my best loving intentions to benefit himself and his needs only (I'm not blameless either - I played right into his hands due to family of origin issues that I'm working on).  What I really liked about him were the things that I liked about myself that he mirrored back to me.  Once I bumped up my self-esteem then I found that I really don't want his fake friendship anymore.  I'm learning how to be my own best friend.  A real best friend would never, ever treat us in this shoddy way.

Be kind to yourself.  We are a little like widows in that the grief cycle is the same.  We are processing the loss our BPD partners and all our memories with them in the same way as if they had passed.   It's an unacknowledged grief by society - no flowers or casseroles for us - but the depth of loss is the same if almost harder to bear because it is so irrational.

Keep checking in - so many wonderful folks here walked the path of grief with me.  We hold each other up.

Warmly, 
B