broken and tormented from an ex-boyfriend undiagnosed yet BPD.

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi im 36 years old, had a relationship with a 49 years old guy.The first months of our relationship was all great and perfect so we both decided to get married.I'm not sure what kind of mental disorder he has, since, he did not consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist after he abruptly broke up with me without any conversation between us. Before the separation,two months I was trying to communicate with him for he was so distant , cold and it seems we are room mates living together without intimacy, he was always telling me one day we will talk about it.then after 3 weeks he invited me to go out he then asks me to start talking so i told him about  i feel from the past few months  which he appeared he doesn't care about me, is he still inlove with me then he did not give me any answer but he said he will give his answers next time when we will have conversation again.

I was deeply hurt for whats happening between us so i went with a friend to have a weekend in a hotel just to rest.i came back home after then i did not give attention to him much, the next day We went to our lawyer for the processing of our application for marriage which took us over 2 years to handle it with the difficulties marrying him as a jew and im a non jew. He wasn't talking with the lawyer I was the only one who was talking there.we went out frkm the office of the lawyet then i said to him why he wasn't talking then maybe he wasn't interested anymore.

We arrived in the car then he was shouting and so angry about things from the past which we already talked about it before. The next morning his sister called me telling her brother is breaking up with me already so they want to help with the separation i was totally shocked then i sent him a message i want us to talk , learn and figure about what is going on between us and the problems too.he then answered .he wanted to be alone in the house so i went to sleep to my sister, came back the morning i hugged him and said hi and suddenly he pushed me away and calling his sister and his brother and wanted to call the police too.he was do afraid and accusing me of raping,hurting,and killing him and destroying his life lucky me his brother was on the phone so he heard everything in the background that it wasn't true.

The family helped me to get out from our rented house and he blocked me so i can't call him, i can't send him messages and i atttempted to see him with my dog in our rented house together but when he saw me he took the dog and ran inside with the dog and calling his siblings angrily that i was in the house and he wanted to call the police. till now im still hoping one day he will call me to come back i love him and even if  he has mental disorder ill go through with him, asks him to get treatment.i miss him soo much its going 2 mos.i haven't seen and talk to him.,what should i do he cut any communication from me and don't want to see me and he doesn't want his family to talk about our relationship.Im torn,im hurt and im in great pain from the separation and everything that happened between us.

I want him back.i want to help him to get treatment.how can i help him.please help thank you so much

[bt]

Hi im 36 years old, had a relationship with a 49 years old guy.The first months of our relationship was all great and perfect so we both decided to get married.I'm not sure what kind of mental disorder he has, since, he did not consult a psychologist or a psychiatrist after he abruptly broke up with me without any conversation between us. Before the separation,two months I was trying to communicate with him for he was so distant , cold and it seems we are room mates living together without intimacy, he was always telling me one day we will talk about it.then after 3 weeks he invited me to go out he then asks me to start talking so i told him about  i feel from the past few months  which he appeared he doesn't care about me, is he still inlove with me then he did not give me any answer but he said he will give his answers next time when we will have conversation again.

I was deeply hurt for whats happening between us so i went with a friend to have a weekend in a hotel just to rest.i came back home after then i did not give attention to him much, the next day We went to our lawyer for the processing of our application for marriage which took us over 2 years to handle it with the difficulties marrying him as a jew and im a non jew. He wasn't talking with the lawyer I was the only one who was talking there.we went out frkm the office of the lawyet then i said to him why he wasn't talking then maybe he wasn't interested anymore.

We arrived in the car then he was shouting and so angry about things from the past which we already talked about it before. The next morning his sister called me telling her brother is breaking up with me already so they want to help with the separation i was totally shocked then i sent him a message i want us to talk , learn and figure about what is going on between us and the problems too.he then answered .he wanted to be alone in the house so i went to sleep to my sister, came back the morning i hugged him and said hi and suddenly he pushed me away and calling his sister and his brother and wanted to call the police too.he was do afraid and accusing me of raping,hurting,and killing him and destroying his life lucky me his brother was on the phone so he heard everything in the background that it wasn't true.

The family helped me to get out from our rented house and he blocked me so i can't call him, i can't send him messages and i atttempted to see him with my dog in our rented house together but when he saw me he took the dog and ran inside with the dog and calling his siblings angrily that i was in the house and he wanted to call the police. till now im still hoping one day he will call me to come back i love him and even if  he has mental disorder ill go through with him, asks him to get treatment.i miss him soo much its going 2 mos.i haven't seen and talk to him.,what should i do he cut any communication from me and don't want to see me and he doesn't want his family to talk about our relationship.Im torn,im hurt and im in great pain from the separation and everything that happened between us.

I want him back.i want to help him to get treatment.how can i help him.please help thank you so much

[cosmonaut]

Hi bt   



Wow, I am so sorry for all of the pain you are going through.  Your story really resonates with me, because my ex also left me abruptly, without reason, and she has disappeared without a trace.  It has been the hardest experience of my life recovering.  I really am so sorry that you are going through something similar.

Relationships that include BPD often feature a push/pull dynamic.  I can see this in what you have described.  There are times when your partner wanted to be close, maybe even clingy, and then times when he sought to push you away.  This is very, very hard to deal with for us.  It is not normal, and it is very hurtful.  Our partners aren't doing this to hurt us, or to play games with us, however.  They are doing it because they are in tremendous pain and they are feeling crushing shame.  These are part and parcel of BPD.  But they are so hard for us to deal with.  I completely understand your pain, anger, and sadness at this.

Learning more about the disorder is probably the first step that you will want to take.  That will help you to have more context to understand what is happening in your relationship and why your partner is behaving in this very disordered way.  My ex left me out of the blue as well, and then she cut all contact with me without any explanation.  The reason that our exes are doing this is because we are a trigger for them now.  We never mean to become this, of course, and it's not in any way our fault.  This is entirely due to the disorder.  It's so important to remember that - this is not your fault, and it's not my fault.  This is the disorder.  Our exes are actually doing this because they became so close to us.  Because they became so emotionally involved.  In their disorder, this set off all sorts of fears about abandonment and engulfment.  And they didn't know how else to handle it except to run and push us away.  It's a very destructive, primitive way to handle these emotions, but that's the only tools they have.  They don't know what else to do to make the overwhelming emotions stop.

One thing that we must realize however, is that since we are a trigger right now (through no fault of our own), contacting our exes or chasing them is only going to push them further away.  For now, the best, most loving thing we can do is to give them space to allow their emotions to return to baseline.  And they can't do that with us triggering them.  That sucks, I know, but it's the best we can do under the limitations of the disorder.  In the meantime, I would recommend reading up on the Lessons on the Staying board.  Talk with the members there.  Let them support you through this.  And spend this time really focusing on yourself.  Be good to you.  Work on your healing and your mental health.  If your partner returns, then you can decide what you want to do.  But for now, give him space.

Keep posting, bt.  I am so sorry you are going through this, but we are all here for you.   

[bt]

hi cosmonaut,

  Thank you for sharing your informative experience.It gave me a heart and mind opening for  understanding the situation that happened with me and my ex fiancee. I understood that I am his trigger and sadly I can not help him .,its fully an awareness for me to disconnect myself from him for him to get better.Goodluck too.

and a million  thanks for your support and the bfd family for having me here its a great big help.

[cosmonaut]

I'm glad you are here, bt.  It is indeed very hard to realize that we are a trigger for our partners.  It's something that still makes me very sad regarding my own ex, so I can appreciate how painful this must be for you.  I hope that you will continue to post, however, and let us know how you are doing.  We understand, and we're all here to support you.  We know how difficult it is to love someone with BPD.

[bt]

Hi cosmonaut thank you ... .Is there any duration of time  you know when he will be back to the baseline? and how about your partner did she contacted you already? Thank you and Godspeed

[cosmonaut]

Unfortunately, the time it might take your partner to return to his emotional baseline is impossible to say.  pwBPD have overwhelming emotions.  They feel things to an incredibly strong degree - far beyond what most people experience.  Marsha Linehan (the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy) has described it as being a "third degree emotional burn victim".  That's to say that pwBPD are so exquisitely sensitive that everything hurts.  Just as a draft of air or the lightest brush of a sheet can be agonizing to a burn victim, the most routine of emotions can be experienced in extreme degrees by pwBPD.  Not only does this intensity exist, but it also takes pwBPD much longer than most people to recover from this - to return to emotional baseline.  So, they are feeling not only overwhelmed by the intensity of what they are feeling, but also by how long it can continue for them.  This can engender feelings of hopelessness - that things will never get better.  When a pwBPD is severely triggered, such as by us - the people who love them, they can become profoundly emotionally dysregulated.  And that can last for quite some time.  It's impossible to say how long this might last, though, because it is so highly personal.

No, my ex has not contacted me.  I don't want to scare you with that, though.  This is not the case for everyone, but it is for some of us, and that is the situation with me.  I don't know if we will ever have contact again.  When my ex left, she was seriously dysregulated and she was feeling consumed with shame.  She had said that she wanted us to remain friends and told me to keep in touch and that I could call her.  One of the very last things she ever said to me was "we'll talk soon".  But we never did.  All of my attempts to contact her went unanswered.  Eventually, I received a very cold text from her that said "This relationship is over.  Please stop contacting me."  And that was the very last contact we've had.  I've respected her wishes and have not tried to contact her again, even as it has been the hardest, most painful experience for me.  I do still miss her, and I wish we could talk.  But I am a trigger for her, and she can't deal with me.  Well, more specifically it isn't me myself, but all of the feelings that I stir up within her that she can't deal with.  It's impossible to say what the experience might be with your ex.  If you spend some time here, you'll see that members' experiences are all over the map.  I wish that I could give you a more concrete answer, because I know how hard this is, especially all of the not knowing.  Unfortunately, there's just no way to be able to.  That's why the best thing that we can do is the one thing we have control over: focus on ourselves.  Work on our own mental healthy, on building healthy relationships, on our healing.

[bt]

Hi cosmonaut i'm very thankful for you sharing your ideas regarding BPD truely i did not have any idea regarding mental disorder i haven't expected it too that it happened to my ex fiancee... . BPD family  is really helping me  to be able to understand more . It served as an eye opener for me not to put blame on myself. Im praying all the time that he will

Get help and be treated and maybe he will recover and i will not be anymore a trigger.

[cosmonaut]

You're most welcome, bt.

BPD is not widely known yet by the general public.  There's really little way you could have known what you were dealing with, and that is very common here.  Most of us didn't know anything about BPD until the relationship was over or nearly over, because we just didn't know what was going wrong.  It's the breakup that sent us searching for answers to things that didn't make any sense.

I'm really happy to hear that you are finding the site helpful.  We have a really nice community here, and I hope you'll continue to be a part of it.

[bt]

Hi cosmonaut you are absolutely right , my break up the way it was done was so cruel and he did not have emphaty... .he had given me 3 days to pack my stuff and leave the key of the house. his family was in great help to help me organize my things and plead  him to give some more considerations in giving me more time to organize. Last month he was threatening me to call the police if ill go in our house or send text messages to him .he told this to his family so they warned me not to do it... .but now im more aware about whats going on with him through BPD family So I can control myself not to send emails and text messages to him anymore.