Opinions/Advice... Am I finally painted Black?

[BenTired]

Spent 3 years with high functioning dBPD exgf... They lying, the cheating (at least onephysical and several emotional), the rages,  dozens of suicide threats and at least one credible attempt. You all know the drill... . On St Patricks Day eve she was asking a lot of questions as to where I was or would be and if I was going to come see her... . I got suspicious and spent the night at her apt... She didn't come home till 9am... . She lied that she was with a gf, huh she doesn't make friends with females, saw a text and she admitted to sleeping with guy and having sex... 10 minutes later she denied it and said no sex... . yeah right, whatever... . I said I'm done and walked out... . While walking out she is asking if I want to take a road trip to her parents 2 hours away. I'm like what the heck?, are you kidding me? A hour ago you rolled out of bed with another guy... . Over the next few weeks she sent texts and emails and tried calling to recycle... . I refused all... . In late April, she admits to stalking me on local boards and shows up at an event she knew I would attend. She follows me for a few hours until I ditch her and leave without her knowledge. For the next 24 jours she is offering sex, sending pics of all our vacation photos etc anything she can do to get me to return as I'm "her one and only... Her soulmate... "" Insert barf here... For the next month, the text get more frantic as she says things like she has not moved on  and that she loves me and I will always be hers whether I like it or not

[BenTired]

In late may her job moves her 1500 miles away... . Can I get an amen... . I have one of her ex flings tell me that she is now trying to call him... .   In June a little flurry of texts when I fall for the trap text that... . There was a shooting near her work and "unfortunately she's OK"... . oh the drama... I text her back that she is fine and guy was already caught and she does a quick 180 and tells me whats going on in her life... . I knew I was suckered at that moment... . Texts went on for a couple of more days and then I threatened to turn her in and to please leave me alone... . Then in July, another little flurry of text and she is saying things like that she is not a bad person etc... . I then reblock her everywhere I can and anyway I can... . For the last month and a half or so all I hear is crickets as I try and piece myself back together. Buy now in some ways it's worse as I'm anticipating some word from her... . Now she's renting space in my head. I feel like I'm the crazy one... . It was good to tell her NO and have the power for the last few months. And make no mistake, I love her and care for her but DO NOT want her back. I know that her coming back would end up the same way and that she is not gonna change... . I'm so paranoid though that I keep peeking over my shoulder. I do not want to see her , touch her, be with her. It is over in my mind. But, its like many years ago when my house was broken into...

[BenTired]

I didn't rest well for months knowing that thieves had been in my house... . Thanks for letting me vent this out... . My friends don't really understand all of this... . I know the people on this board know what I'm talking about though... .

Phew! I feel a little better getting that out.

[Learning_curve74]

Hey Ben, sounds like you've been through the wringer. I think it's normal that she takes up a lot of space in your head, I know mine does otherwise I wouldn't be on the boards here so much! You're right, not many friends can understand it all, whereas it feels like everybody here understands all too well.

[papawapa]

No you are not permanently painted black. You have made yourself a ghost.

Painting black is when they rage at you, tell you they hate you, they will never talk to you or see you again, they want nothing to do with you.

[BenTired]

papawapa... . I'm a ghost? I don't think that I've heard that term yet. I sure don't like the sound of it though. Can you or someone else explain that one to me or direct me to some info. While she certainly did rage at me, she never said she hated me, never said she didn't want to talk to me or see me again and never said she wanted nothing to do with me... . So now what do I do? Sit back and ignore or wait for her to show up one day? The only time the word hate ever came up between us is when she would ask/text or email the weekly, " Do I love her or do I hate her?" I always looked at that as the black/white thinking. She also begged me a dozen times to tell her that I hated her... . Well now I'm confused... . I feel as if I texted or called that I would get an almost immediate response... .

learning_ ... . Yes I feel as if I've been through the ringer. That being said, some of the stories on here, especially the people who married a BPD or had kids with one, makes my 3 year stint seem like  cake walk. My hat is off to those people. Speaking of friends, I had one friend who spent time with her as I had him do work on her vehicle several times. When he initially found out that I blocked her on my phone, He told me that she was the kindest , gentlest and sweetest girl and that there was obviously some wrong with ME! 6 months later, he was there when she showed up at the event and followed me around for hours... Needless to say, she quickly changed his opinion and later apologized to me.

[Learning_curve74]

papawapa... . I'm a ghost? I don't think that I've heard that term yet. I sure don't like the sound of it though. Can you or someone else explain that one to me or direct me to some info. While she certainly did rage at me, she never said she hated me, never said she didn't want to talk to me or see me again and never said she wanted nothing to do with me... . So now what do I do? Sit back and ignore or wait for her to show up one day? The only time the word hate ever came up between us is when she would ask/text or email the weekly, " Do I love her or do I hate her?" I always looked at that as the black/white thinking. She also begged me a dozen times to tell her that I hated her... . Well now I'm confused... . I feel as if I texted or called that I would get an almost immediate response... .

learning_ ... . Yes I feel as if I've been through the ringer. That being said, some of the stories on here, especially the people who married a BPD or had kids with one, makes my 3 year stint seem like  cake walk. My hat is off to those people. Speaking of friends, I had one friend who spent time with her as I had him do work on her vehicle several times. When he initially found out that I blocked her on my phone, He told me that she was the kindest , gentlest and sweetest girl and that there was obviously some wrong with ME! 6 months later, he was there when she showed up at the event and followed me around for hours... Needless to say, she quickly changed his opinion and later apologized to me.

Hey Ben, my BPDex didn't typically rage in person. She was a master of hiding, deceit, lying, and cheating. She would speak poorly of people to me but be all peaches and cream to their face. There are a lot of people that think she is a very good and kind person, and there is that element to her, but they haven't seen the other side. She cannot stand for people to think she is a bad person, it drives her crazy, well... . crazier.   She also could be talking nice about one of her exes but the next minute be very angry about them. I am pretty sure she hates me right now for abandoning her, but I'm not sure what she is telling other people. A few days after I broke up with her, I broke NC by texting her and didn't get a reply. I am glad because it reinforced the idea that it was better for me to be NC, which for me includes not taking calls or texts from her close friends.

We can lose sight that pwBPD are not necessarily all exactly the same. So I don't know if what I say is directly applicable to your case.

Here is a question: does it really matter whether your BPDex has "painted you black"? If you are NC and don't want to be involved in her life, then maybe it's better to reach a state of detachment. If you don't want anything from her, then what difference does it make what she feels about you?

I can relate to letting BPDex rent way too much of my headspace. I know I spend too much time thinking about her, and it's very debilitating for me to the verge of physical illness.

[papawapa]

It looks like I may have misread your post. When we change our number/block their number, change our email, shut down social media, eliminate ways for them to contact us that is what I mean by being a ghost to them. I thought I had read in your post that you had done those things.

[BenTired]

papawapa... . You did not misread my post. I have blocked everyway that i Know of for her to contact me. I was just saying that I had never heard the term ghost before. I am getting on with my life and no plans of comtacting her or reconciling with her if at some point she tries to reengage me.  To much water has gone under the bridge for me to go back to all that drama again.

Learning... . I don't really care to much what she thinks about me at this point as I am done. My question about being painted back is about me and not her. My brain is still trying to wrap itself around the last 3 years and all the crazy crap that happened. I am trying to make sense of it. Maybe that's my mistake, trying to make logic of the illogical. I guess that I'm not conveying my thoughts very well through my words here. I guess the confusion in my head right now is what y'all are seeing. My ex did the things you mentioned- hiding , deceit, lying.cheating and rage. Extreme rage. I actually called 911 once as she started tearing up things in my house. I wish I could flip a switch and have it all go away or had a rest button. Hopefully soon, my mind will just accept all that has happened and will quit trying to male some kind of sense of it all. The sooner that day gets here the better.

[Learning_curve74]

BenTired, you probalby know all this stuff, but just in case, read this link to start if you haven't:

https://bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a102.htm

Especially good is the information written by a BPD sufferer in the sidebar to the right side on that webpage.

This is also a good link about how the BPD love relationship tends to play out if you haven't read it:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/how-borderline-relationship-evolves

To understand why any person says or does what they do, you have to try and think like they do. Don't think like yourself because that has NO bearing on what others do. When you think like a pwBPD, everything makes perfect sense.

Maybe this is stating what you already know but here my experience, maybe it covers some of yours. At the start my BPDex was extremely idealizing, thought I was the greatest thing ever. I could do no wrong, everything I did was "perfect". I know she wanted to be like me in that search for identity since she always felt empty, she even said something crazy like I was now "a part of her".    Of course, nobody is perfect and no two people can be 100% alike. So once the cracks started to show, it was a long way to fall since I was put up on a pedestal. One of the BPD traits is all-or-nothing, a.k.a. black/white thinking, it flipped easily to hate and thinking I was bad, trying to hurt her, or was going to abandon her which was functionally equivalent in her mind to being a bad person. Since her emotions fluctuated wildly, I could go from loved to hated and back very quickly, sometimes I could see it on her face out of the corner of my eye when we were sitting in the car or watching tv. She probably did not feel good about the way she was starting to treat me poorly, but she couldn't absorb it or take any responsibility for it, so she would start to withdraw in order to avoid these bad feelings. This caused me to try either of two things. If I tried harder to engage her, she would devalue me since who but a weak idiot would chase somebody who treated them poorly or chase a worthless nobody which is what she viewed herself as. On the other hand, if I started to withdraw myself instead, she could tell I was distancing myself from her but since a BPDer has problems being alone and needs other people to help soothe their raw feelings, she needed to be with others and that's where the cheating and lying come into play, but this is all at the same time as her being clingy because at the same time she still didn't want to lose me! High impulsivity and risk taking made it easy for her to jump on any guy within striking distance. When I caught her cheating, she gave the classic cheater excuse, "But he doesn't mean anything to me! I love you!"    Sadly, from the very start she had the self view that she is fundamentally unloveable and that all people will abandon her, and in the end the ways she acts turns it into a self fulfilling prophecy.

There's a book about BPD titled "I Hate You, Don't Leave Me" which bascially sums it up in 6 words. Your BPDex is now far away and hates you because you "abandoned" her, but you are still human contact to her, somebody who she had intense feelings about, and she may eventually reach out to you in the future when she changes her mind about how she feels about you. My BPDex always wanted to be "friends" with her exes.    Even the ones she painted the blackest of black with smear campaigns she would still stay in contact with, I even heard her tell one of them she loved him on the phone once, and this is somebody who she accused of physically assaulting and raping her.   

It's not called mental illness for nothing. 

[BenTired]

Yes ... . you are correct in that as the time and distance since I've seen her grows, I see the mental illness in all of this. I made 100's of excuses for her behavior while we were together but the longer we are apart, the clearer some of this becomes... .

Thanks for the info, opinions and the links to read. I appreciate it.