There is BPD and a person you love, how do you reconcile detaching from both?

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

I am 26 days into NC (split me black, or discarded, not sure) with my now exBPDgf and to say it has been a struggle is an understatement. During my one year relationship I had no idea about BPD, I knew my girlfriend was emotionally unhealthy, all the BPD traits were there, including being physically abusive, but BPD is much more severe than I ever realized. I have been deeply wounded by this relationship and am doing everything to help myself with therapy, friends, family, etc, but reading about so many people with BPD, she likely isn't getting help and her suffering will continue.

I am having a very difficult time detaching from her, believing there is no one else who understands the gravity of her illness and despite reading how 'they survived before you, they will survive after you', it hurts to know someone I care so deeply for is suffering.

How do you detach from the BPD disorder (I need to save myself first) and reconcile with yourself leaving the person you love to their own path knowing how destructive it is to them?

[TheCodependent1]

I am 26 days into NC (split me black, or discarded, not sure) with my now exBPDgf and to say it has been a struggle is an understatement. During my one year relationship I had no idea about BPD, I knew my girlfriend was emotionally unhealthy, all the BPD traits were there, including being physically abusive, but BPD is much more severe than I ever realized. I have been deeply wounded by this relationship and am doing everything to help myself with therapy, friends, family, etc, but reading about so many people with BPD, she likely isn't getting help and her suffering will continue.

I am having a very difficult time detaching from her, believing there is no one else who understands the gravity of her illness and despite reading how 'they survived before you, they will survive after you', it hurts to know someone I care so deeply for is suffering.

How do you detach from the BPD disorder (I need to save myself first) and reconcile with yourself leaving the person you love to their own path knowing how destructive it is to them?

[C.Stein]

Detaching has been exceeding difficult for me as well.  Finding a way to reintegrate the good with the bad (disorder) has helped.  Still haven't completely gotten there myself but I am far closer than I was 4 months ago.

You, nor I, can do anything to help them.  The path they have chosen to travel is theirs and theirs alone.  If she doesn't seek help on her own, for her own personal health and benefit, then she will continue to travel the same path she is on now.  

I don't think my ex will seek help even though she knows something isn't right with her.  She will continue on as she has, going from one failed relationship to the next, blaming anyone and anything to avoid facing the truth about herself and how her actions and behavior impacts those closest to her.  It is sad but there is simply nothing I can do about it and there is nothing you can do about your ex.  As hard as it is this is something you will just have to come to terms with and accept.

[HarleypsychRN]

Man, I've asked myself the same question many, many times. Moments when she seemed genuine, looked into my eyes with what I thought was love and affection and just like Keyser Soze (The Usual Suspects) poof... .gone. THAT is the part that eats away at me (us... .the community). Mine told me she loved me one day and was gone the next when I confronted her about her splitting.

I don't have any answer for you other than this... .they are unhealthy and this is a manifestation that that utterly all-encompassing pathology. At the end of the day, perhaps that explains it all. You can't sit and dwell on that... .it'll eat you alive. Detach (it hurts like hell) and move on. Put one foot in front of the other and just keep going.

When she makes contact to check on the body (and she will to see if there is still a pulse) don't don't don't give in no matter how painful or how much you hope she will/can change. They don't change IMHO.

I begged mine to get back into therapy the next day after she left. Her response... ."I neither want or need your help". Forty-eight hours earlier she has proclaimed her love for me.

[GreenEyedMonster]

There is love and there are relationships.  They are not necessarily the same thing.

You can still love your ex in the sense of feeling human compassion for her, and hoping that she does well in life and finds happiness.

When you start feeling that she MUST find happiness with you, or that you MUST be the person who motivates her to solve her problems, or that you MUST be together or you can't be happy, you have a problem.  Most people think love and relationships go together, and that is normal, but in this case, you'll have to settle for feeling compassionate love for her while recognizing that a relationship is an endeavor that requires skill, commitment, maturity, compromise, and unselfishness.  Just like you wouldn't hire someone to plumb your house if they had no idea what to do with a pipe and a wrench, she is the wrong person to engage in a relationship.  That's just the way it has to be.  Sometimes it boils down to a practical decision, because love doesn't make all of those skills magically appear.

[blackbirdsong]

BPD is not an illness. There is no 'healthy' part of the person plus BPD part. Their personality is disordered. Complete personality. It is not like mental illness that you can isolate with medication so that healthy part of the personality can 'come out'.

All the good stuff (mostly idealization) and all the bad stuff (mostly devaluation) is under the influence of the disorder. Stop looking at her in this perspective (great part plus BPD). It is not true and it will make you unable to detach.

[Teereese]

  TheCodependent1

My r/s was decades. I was of the same thought ... .how can I just leave him, knowing his issues? I thought he needed me. I though I could help him. I thought I could prove to him that he was worthy of love. I thought wrong, for a very long time.

She will survive. She will find another, a replacement. She will carry on.

She may or may not get help.

In my case, he has been this way for so long, he doesn't want to get legitimate help. At times, he sees the problem but only as it being caused by someone else ... .his father, mother, sister, me, my family,  his boss, coworkers, job, friends, the clerk at the store who looked at him wrong, the guy driving on the highway that passed him, the cat that crossed in front of his car ... .

He surrounds himself with those who fall for his victim stories and feed his needs. He dumped therapy several times.  

You didn't cause it, you can't control it, you can't cure it.

You are doing everything you can for yourself and you should remain focused on you.

[TheCodependent1]

I appreciate all the comments, it seems like all of our relationships are clones of one another, maybe not exact, but eerily similar.

Not long after writing this post I found a notepad under a stack of papers, it was a daily journal she was keeping for a couple of months while we were together. Her journal contained a lot of introspection, not an acknowledgement of a disorder, but most certainly a recognition of pushing back, sabotaging, being overly emotional and many times stating how she was very hurtful to me.

I don't believe this is a woman who is incapable of understanding her behavior, or the impact her decisions and actions have had on her life, because it's clearly written in her journal. I know I can't save her, but how I can consciously arrive at a decision  to move on when there is such self-awareness in her?

Argh!

[HarleypsychRN]

I appreciate all the comments, it seems like all of our relationships are clones of one another, maybe not exact, but eerily similar.

Not long after writing this post I found a notepad under a stack of papers, it was a daily journal she was keeping for a couple of months while we were together. Her journal contained a lot of introspection, not an acknowledgement of a disorder, but most certainly a recognition of pushing back, sabotaging, being overly emotional and many times stating how she was very hurtful to me.

I don't believe this is a woman who is incapable of understanding her behavior, or the impact her decisions and actions have had on her life, because it's clearly written in her journal. I know I can't save her, but how I can consciously arrive at a decision  to move on when there is such self-awareness in her?

Argh!

The thought that there is the possibility that they can/will/might change is the hook that keeps many of us connected. I  choose not to entertain those thoughts.

[philo beto]

Hey CoD1,

I agree with GEM detach with love and compassion.


This persons issues have been there long before you came along. Everyone on here  at one point was a "White Knight" my ex chased me for 20+ years thru 2 failed marriages on her side, i was her wholy grail (her words loved me since college, the one that got way) however in the end none of us can give them what they truly desire and that is the "unconditional" love lost at childhood IT IS IMPOSSIBLE. All healthy romantic adult relationships are based on conditional love, they only people we love unconditionally are our children. I Feel that most Bpd people are on that constant search to find the partner that will love them unconditionally (safe) which is practically impossible (I would debate that many daddy daughter romantic relationships work because the man is giving the woman what she lost in childhood, just replaying, will accept all of her actions as a dad would not saying healthy but makes sense it would work). I am not perfect, i have issues,  I will make mistakes in a relationship but those mistakes are what eventually breaks up the relationship. When the illusion is broken that this relationship will not be "unconditional love" the spiral occurs and its hard to get back there.  In a healthy relationship it would have the result of bringing two people closer together. healthy people are accountable and forgive strengthening the bond

We forgive our children for everything on their paths to adulthood while teaching them accountability, that is unconditional love. You as a partner cannot help but calling out bad behavior i.e., cheating, lying, etc. That is healthy.

1,000,000 affairs, lies, bad decisions, etc can never replace the hole that is the lost unconditional love. They look to intensity and attention(all the planets revolve around them) vs. love. They are intimacy anorexics but will not eat because that only conjours up deep seeded fears of abandonment. Healthy people look inside they look outside because its safer out there with strangers than the monsters and damons inside.

I'll share a story with you regarding my ex and what i was up against it sone times is bigger than us but our ego won't let us see that.

I once asked my ex's mother why we had to lie to her father (parents divorced) about our relationship and timing, a fair question being we were 41. Her reply "if he knew the truth, he would hurt her and her children deeply". Does that sound like unconditional love to you? Whats worse her mother can't even stand up for her and go to war, just enabling emotional abuse. Both of these parents abandoned her at 13 and the cycle still going strong. To this day that conversation makes me a tad queasy.

In the end when she broke up with me somewhat out of the blue, and I got a little testy saying some hurtful but very truthful things to her (things that a healthy relationship would have discussed long ago.) She told her mother what i said, her mother told her "she would disown her if she came back". She came back of course, she reached out, tons of fun, i started to feel uneasy, she flipped, lied to  her parents and her best friend we only were together twice, i was stalking and was a jealous ex. Meanwhile her best friend smells a rat emails me and i told her the truth, but she still lies to friend who then dumps her as a friend. She was so worried that she would lose the love/acceptance of her parents she thru our relationship away. My family knew i was giving it one last uneasy shot and their response was 1. You have a life that 99.9% of all men would kill for (tis true) why do you wanna go back to that ? 2. It is you life and we just want your happiness, if its there do what makes you happy we love you! Even someone who has everything to the outside world has self esteem, self worth and codependency issues.

I tell you this because, it isn't my fault what has happened to her in her family. To think it is is egotistical. i will never know what it felt like to be 13 and having to dress my younger sisters, put them to bed, feed them, while dad is moved out with his mistress and mom has had a breakdown. I will never know what it feels like to have to leave a high school and friends that i love as a sophomore because nobody can drive me there so i have to go to a new school. I choose compassion and love because of that. I did not break it, cannot fix it (i wish i never tried), i cannot control it however i can have compassion and deep care for her as i detach and move on with my life.

[jhkbuzz]

BPD is not an illness. There is no 'healthy' part of the person plus BPD part. Their personality is disordered. Complete personality. It is not like mental illness that you can isolate with medication so that healthy part of the personality can 'come out'.

All the good stuff (mostly idealization) and all the bad stuff (mostly devaluation) is under the influence of the disorder. Stop looking at her in this perspective (great part plus BPD). It is not true and it will make you unable to detach.

^That! 

[hurting300]

BPD is not an illness. There is no 'healthy' part of the person plus BPD part. Their personality is disordered. Complete personality. It is not like mental illness that you can isolate with medication so that healthy part of the personality can 'come out'.

All the good stuff (mostly idealization) and all the bad stuff (mostly devaluation) is under the influence of the disorder. Stop looking at her in this perspective (great part plus BPD). It is not true and it will make you unable to detach.

I agree with you on this. I stopped looking so much at labels and concluded she is an immature train wreck.

[FannyB]

There was a very good quote on this Board a while back that said 'She is the disorder and the disorder is her'.  It's not like your ex has a nasty STD that can be cured with a shot of penicillin - BPD goes to the very core of who they are.

Blackbirdsong is right - the wonderful woman you fell in love with might also be a by-product of the disorder. Also, if it wasn't for the disorder you probably wouldn't have got together as one of her previous relationships may have endured or she might not have found you an attractive proposition if not viewing you through disordered eyes! 

The bottom line is 'the disorder giveth and the disorder taketh away' - you really can't separate out the good and bad bits of it IMO.



Fanny

[TheCodependent1]

Thank you for all the great replies, the different perspectives are very helpful. I know most of my difficulty in detaching stems from emotional issues of my childhood which were exposed during the relationship and it is this I struggle with most.

Blackbirdsong, you are correct, it is the whole personality that is disordered, there is no separating as I implied. The BPD disorder brings out the worst in my codependency and now I have to sift through the failed relationship wreckage to salvage myself when all I want to do is reconnect with her and make everything better again.

Time is the healer, but it hurts like hell right now.

[C.Stein]

The BPD disorder brings out the worst in my codependency and now I have to sift through the failed relationship wreckage to salvage myself when all I want to do is reconnect with her and make everything better again.

Oh how I understand the pain you are feeling and the desire to reconnect with the hope to make that pain go away.  I was very much in that place 4 months ago and even in the midst of that desire I struggled with truly believing it would/could be better.  This struggle is because if I am honest with myself and see the whole her and where the relationship was most likely headed there would have been nothing better about it.  There might be temporary relief but the hurtful behavior/actions almost certainly would not have stopped and if anything would probably have gotten worse.  Consider this when you are really struggling to move forward, it does help. 

[jhkbuzz]

Thank you for all the great replies, the different perspectives are very helpful. I know most of my difficulty in detaching stems from emotional issues of my childhood which were exposed during the relationship and it is this I struggle with most.

This is what people speak of as "the gift" of these r/s's - if you are able to receive it. Painful, unresolved wounds from childhood are reopened (ripped open!) and, if you can turn all of that intense focus from your ex and towards yourself, you can begin to heal them. I'm on that journey right now, with the help of a therapist.

[MapleBob]

There was a very good quote on this Board a while back that said 'She is the disorder and the disorder is her'.  It's not like your ex has a nasty STD that can be cured with a shot of penicillin - BPD goes to the very core of who they are.

The bottom line is 'the disorder giveth and the disorder taketh away' - you really can't separate out the good and bad bits of it IMO.

This is a great way of looking at it, and it feels very true to me and my experience with an uBPDex.

Because pwBPD feel such intense emotions, and because to them "feelings = facts", the great ecstatic/intoxicating/idealizing/probably-too-much early idealization phase is just as extreme as the terrible painting-black/discarding/devaluing/abusive/raging phase.

Their emotions are always a hot flame: they can forge steel and drive engines, or they can burn down your house. 99.9% of the time they'll wind up doing both, and it's not up to us nons to be able to control or "fix" or even understand living that way.

[TheCodependent1]

Thank you for sharing your story philo beto. My exBPD suffered through what I believe to be a BPD mother, intense, unimaginable emotional abuse as a child and then as a teenager the death a sibling. I am detaching with love and care for her, but from the distance I need to be healthy again.

I am using this experience to strengthen myself, the understanding of how I found myself in this relationship and what I need to do to heal, so yes jhkbuzz, it is a gift to my future self and I am reminding myself of it daily.

Truth is the whole situation feels surreal, I am still in shock over what happened as I never, ever believed or knew people were so mentally ill as to be capable of what BPD is.

Thank you folks, I appreciate all the insight.

"Accept what is, let go of what was and have faith in what will be."