As they age - do they live more and more in the past?

[lipstick]

Hi all,

Just another question I've been pondering. As our exes age - do they live more and more in the past?

Seems like mine is, for sure. He will be fifty two next month. I've already posted previously about how he now lives on Facebook 24 / 7 and got great insight from everyone on that topic - so thank you all !

This is more about are our exes afraid to face the future as they age and their enablers pass on? Do they live in the past as it's "safer" and more "comfortable"?  Mine dredges up years old stuff. Has nothing new in his world. Do you think they hear the clock ticking? And it freaks them out? Losing enablers would be the ultimate abandonment to them, no?

When my ex loses his mother (biggest enabler), I can't begin to imagine how he's going to handle it!

All thoughts on this much appreciated as always!   

[Whitebread]

I've wondered about this as well Lipstick. 

My ex talked about his childhood/ teenage years a lot... .in fact I recall in our early days how odd it struck me.  Sure we all tell stories of growing up but this was different.  He would literally talk about it every day in some way.

Part of his tactic to reel me in was to talk about how awful things were for him, so I'd feel pity.  I know this because he repeated the same set of stories to my mother shortly after meeting her, and with my best friend, again, shortly after their first alone time without me present.

It was oversharing big time, but it worked on me, I recall feeling bad for him and feeling closer because he 'confided' in me.  Yep, me and everyone else as I learned much later on!

He definitely had a love/hate relationship with his mother (who I suspect was NPD/BPD/PTSD) and when she developed dementia and moved in with us he seemed to use her presence to dredge up the past in rants even more, sometimes directed at her. 

I guess it was his inability to forgive and forget ANY past indiscretions, even when faced with the truth that she wasn't that person anymore, that kept bringing that stuff up all the time.  When she died, he went into a severe depression for the next year or so.  His rages seemed to target only me after that too, whereas I was usually not the topic of them before. 

Oh, and he is in his early 50s.

I wondered about other pwBPD doing this too... .or, if it was a possible sign of early dementia in him. In my experience with several people afflicted with that Has been that they often have very very clear memories of their early days but very little short term memory as the disease progresses. 

The thought of him developing dementia on top of everything else terrified me!

[hergestridge]

I would say the opposite is true with my exwife:

Living a bit in the past would be healthy for her. But she is obsessed with "new beginnings".

It would bother her if I would bring *anything* that had happened in the past. First she would claim not to remember, then she would tell me not to bring up "old ___". And that could be the good memories.

We were together for 20 years, so it became kind of "groundhog day" in the end.

As a consequence, we never built a history together.