Need help understanding something

[Hopeful83]

  guys,

It's now been more than four months since the breakup, and I'm getting better/stronger each and everyday. I do, however, still slip back into bad days from time-to-time (yesterday was sadly one of them) when all my insecurities creep in and I find the whole situation quite difficult to sit with. But I deal with it the best I can and keep moving forward. I'm doing the right things, and I'm using this as the opportunity to finally heal those childhood wounds and get healthy.

The one thing I'm struggling to understand is that before all this happened (the bad breakup) I had ZERO inkling something like this was about to erupt. Is this 'normal' with BPD and non breakups? In 'healthy' relationships I'm told that usually there's a gradual deterioration; people fall out of love over time, people start wanting different things, and you start to 'sense' that it's not going to work out. I sadly have nothing to compare this to.

This didn't happen with us. We were still very much in love, planning our future etc. We were together in Thailand travelling long term (I'm using fake country names here to illustrate my point) and our plan was to settle down in my home country of France. He had to first go to his home country to get a visa in order to come to me. So we said our emotional goodbyes with the promise we'd see each other in six weeks.

This was in May and I never saw him again. The crazy behaviour started when he was home and told his mum he wanted to marry me. She wasn't impressed (I suspect she didn't want him marrying me because of cultural issues - strict Asian values), but made out it was all about money. She told him he wasn't financially secure enough because he didn't have a job at the time, told me we couldn't make a marriage work etc.  

After this, his behaviour became weird and we started arguing - could this be when he started to devalue me/paint me black? The next thing I know, we had a massive argument because he was telling me how he wanted to stay in his home country for a year to work and was essentially changing all of our plans, and two weeks after that he was then telling me he'd seen his ex (high school crush I'd call her), that he couldn't stop thinking about her, and he knew it wasn't normal and he was going to see a therapist etc.

I ended it immediately saying that I couldn't believe he was doubting our three-year relationship and plans of marriage after seeing some nobody ex. He did nothing to stop me, never rang me to ask me to reconsider it. Nothing. I found it SO odd considering how we had been together when I last saw him.

I sent him one final email a few weeks later to give him the benefit of the doubt, saying that I believed that the person who I had been with for three years wouldn't be acting this way if there wasn't something major going on, made an assumption that it was his family, etc. My sister was also battling cancer at the time and he'd shown ZERO consideration for that fact - weird considering how he cried when we first found out she was ill and had been very upset about the whole thing. How do they switch like this? Also (for better or for worse) I told him in the email that I really felt he needed to handle his childhood trauma because I felt it was affecting him in ways he didn't even realise.

The response he sent me TEN days later? That he'd been with me for three years out of guilt because he didn't want to 'abandon' me, that he wanted to prove to himself that he could love someone more than this ex, and that his rage was a result of the frustration he felt in the relationship. Ouch. Bitter pill to swallow, especially when I had zero reason to doubt his feelings for me over the three years we were together (he was always very affectionate, told me how he felt, told my mum I was the love of his life and the woman he wanted to marry etc... .but it was all out of guilt. Okay). Oh and this 'conclusion' came from his therapist, allegedly. Sigh - not surprising, though. Mental health care in his country is, well, the absolute pits.

I went NC after that. He was engaged within less than two months of us breaking up (funny how his mum had no problem with that, eh?).

Anyway I guess my question was, is it normal for someone to be devalued so quickly? Or do they start the devaluing process ages before and we don't even realise it? Over time and with everything I've read I do believe our breakup up happened due to a combination of his BPD traits (he has classic symptoms of it with his rage, falling for me quickly, the push/pull, the splitting, the mirroring etc) and him being manipulated by his racist mother. But yeah I guess I just can't get my head around how quickly it all dissolved. One minute "you're the one for me and I want to grow old with you" the next minute "I was only with you out of guilt, oh look I'm engaged to someone else now." Total mind mess.

Jeez, no wonder I was in a massive spin when it initially happened.

Hopeful

[enlighten me]

I can only speak from personal experience, With my ex wife the devaluation started years before the break up. I was blissfully unaware that anything was wrong until I was away working over seas and she dumped me. Towards the end of the relationship she was standoffish with me but it was nothing I hadn't seen before and she always seemed to get over it.

With my exgf the arguments and devaluation started a year before we split up. This was when she was pregnant so I put a lot down to hormones. I later bumped into one of her old friends who she had painted black and said that we had just split up. She was shocked as she thought we had split up before my ex got pregnant.

I think with a lot they decide that its not going to work and start detaching while still in the relationship. This could be why they seem to move on so quick as they have already mourned the loss of the relationship before it officially ended.

[Hopeful83]

I can only speak from personal experience, With my ex wife the devaluation started years before the break up. I was blissfully unaware that anything was wrong until I was away working over seas and she dumped me. Towards the end of the relationship she was standoffish with me but it was nothing I hadn't seen before and she always seemed to get over it.

With my exgf the arguments and devaluation started a year before we split up. This was when she was pregnant so I put a lot down to hormones. I later bumped into one of her old friends who she had painted black and said that we had just split up. She was shocked as she thought we had split up before my ex got pregnant.

I think with a lot they decide that its not going to work and start detaching while still in the relationship. This could be why they seem to move on so quick as they have already mourned the loss of the relationship before it officially ended.

Hmmm, okay, so the process begins way before it comes to breaking point? How do they manage to carry on behaving like they did before? I mean, I cannot seem to recall a shift in behaviour, but then maybe I'm failing to remember something.

[enlighten me]

I think it starts slowly when the idolisation phase ends. They realise that we are not who they thought we were. The expectations at the beginning of the relationship are high and in the beginning we live up to them. As time goes by we do things that don't match up to their expectations. I think as soon as we don't start living up to these expectations then they start to detach. Its not a sudden thing and the more we fail to live up to expectations then the more they regret being in the relationship. Fear of abandonment could cause them to maintain the relationship. This could be why some of the arguments we had where so strange as it wasn't what was being said that triggered it but an accumulation of everything that we had disappointed them with.

[Sadly]

Mine came right out of the blue, no warning, from loving holding touching as we passed each other in the room, beautiful texts morning and evening and through the day if we weren't together., The texts slowed down, we used to put LU and LUL and lots of kisses. No more LU or LUL's less kisses. I asked if everything was ok. Yes! but it clearly wasn't. We stopped having conversations, he would sit at his end of the sofa and watch mindless tv and drink himself senseless.  Snap at me for no reason and that was that. If my leg touched his in the night he would pull away.  No more kisses goodnight and the sleep well sweet dreams that we said to each other became meaningless words, on his part not mine. I didn't have a clue. All ended in the space of a week though it painfully dragged on for months. I think I will feel the pain and confusion it caused me for the rest of my life. xx

[once removed]

The response he sent me TEN days later? That he'd been with me for three years out of guilt because he didn't want to 'abandon' me, that he wanted to prove to himself that he could love someone more than this ex, and that his rage was a result of the frustration he felt in the relationship. Ouch. Bitter pill to swallow, especially when I had zero reason to doubt his feelings for me over the three years we were together (he was always very affectionate, told me how he felt, told my mum I was the love of his life and the woman he wanted to marry etc... .but it was all out of guilt. Okay). Oh and this 'conclusion' came from his therapist, allegedly. Sigh - not surprising, though. Mental health care in his country is, well, the absolute pits.

my personal opinion and experience is that it is probably not that simple.

is there truth to it? yes, and certainly in the moment that he said it. once a pwBPD is triggered, i think there is a process (moment(s), years?) of conflicting feelings revolving around engulfment and abandonment, struggling with object constancy, among other things... .the reality that we are not and cannot be the solution to their problems, resulting rage and shame.

i think most of this we simply never see. keep in mind he told his mother that you were the love of his life. i think in that moment, and the moments you were with him, all of that was equally true. the feelings, for all of the reasons above, were simply not sustainable.

this is hard to word: it is my imagination that when he said he had been with you for three years out of guilt, that was spoken from the place he was in when he began the process (failed attachment) i described above. to recall the relationship on a continuum, in a balanced and complete way, is too difficult, and would be too great a pain. this was his version, in that moment, it is likely subject to change.

hope that makes sense. those are very painful words to hear, but i suspect it is far more complex.

[JRT]

Mine was completely out of the blue... .although we had recycled in the past, she had just moved in after having sold all of her furniture and had been in the house for only three weeks. We were making plans by her own prompting related to the wedding, having friends over going on vacation, etc. We had just ordered our wedding rings the weekend before! I have looked at FB IM's from the days and weeks before, photographs, emails etc and there was not even the slightest hint of what was about to take place.

I went out of town for work... .she was supposed to meet me there for a romantic weekend... .the night before I called her as I exited the plane. The next morning the usual kinds of texts... .in the afternoon I received one that said 'Our relationship is over... .I have moved out... .don't try to contact me'. She blocked me from contact everywhere, unfriended all of my friends on FB and, somehow, compelled all of her friends to unfriend or block me.

Like you, I have no idea how they can do things like this.