My part

[Perfidy]

I gave her power over me. Why? My need to care for others. Not the healthy need. I gave her complete control of my happiness. I wanted to be the source of her happiness even though i know happiness comes from within. How could my heart have played such a trick on my mind?I provided for every single thing in her life. She didn't work one single day in the almost eight years we were together. My thoughts and feelings revolved around her. She was poison and I knew it all along. I tried to end it many times because my head was telling me that I was going to get hurt and one day I would wake up alone. I saw all this pain coming from the start and tried to avoid it by giving and giving and giving. And then giving some more. I was controlling her and it wasn't fair to me. I wanted her for myself. This wasn't love.

[babyducks]

Waverider wrote once that a pwBPD can't self soothe, and we as nons cant self validate.

When the two come together it is a perfect storm.

We are people who give away our good, and within limits, thats okay.

Except with our pwBPD there were no limits.

The good news is now we can learn to establish them.

[Perfidy]

It really did seem perfect. In spite of all the crap. I was totally happy. I felt like nothing could possibly break us apart after all the crap we had survived through. As A matter of fact I am not even sure why we split up.

[Hazelrah]

It really did seem perfect. In spite of all the crap. I was totally happy. I felt like nothing could possibly break us apart after all the crap we had survived through. As A matter of fact I am not even sure why we split up.

My W used to say exactly the same thing, Perfidy.  We had a very tumultuous set of circumstances in our 3.5 year relationship and short marriage--death on her side of the family, potentially fatal heart/lung disease in her nephew, the long battle with cancer that eventually took my monther.  She'd say, "if we can make it through all this in such a short period of time, we can make it through anything."  It was a point of pride for us, and brought us closer together... . until she upped and left, of course.