Who else feels pity for their loved one?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

After two years I have to say that I am feeling more and more pity for him.
He is such a sad person. Like really sad. He's been horrible to me. Has put me through hell. Tried to destroy me. I hope I am not feeling too much pity because it might make me forget what I have been through but I was reading some things online that reminded me of how he used to feel. It is so sad. He will always feel so sad and insecure. I know he always wanted to be normal. He craved normalcy. He will never have it if he doesn't get help. He was intelligent but also very childlike. He always wanted to be liked and loved. He took everything very personal so I know he hurts daily. From how the delivery guy looked at him to how a secretary treated him over the phone. How horrible to feel every little irrelevant thing so deeply.

I will say. I am still angry at times but when I remember this. I feel very far from him. Like his issues that dominated my life at one time are so pitiful. The fact that he is probably still dealing with them is a very sad way to go through life. I don't like feeling this way either. It makes me feel hopeless. Like all those years didn't even put a dent in his issues.

Anyone else feel pity for their ex? 

[WishIKnew82]

After two years I have to say that I am feeling more and more pity for him.
He is such a sad person. Like really sad. He's been horrible to me. Has put me through hell. Tried to destroy me. I hope I am not feeling too much pity because it might make me forget what I have been through but I was reading some things online that reminded me of how he used to feel. It is so sad. He will always feel so sad and insecure. I know he always wanted to be normal. He craved normalcy. He will never have it if he doesn't get help. He was intelligent but also very childlike. He always wanted to be liked and loved. He took everything very personal so I know he hurts daily. From how the delivery guy looked at him to how a secretary treated him over the phone. How horrible to feel every little irrelevant thing so deeply.

I will say. I am still angry at times but when I remember this. I feel very far from him. Like his issues that dominated my life at one time are so pitiful. The fact that he is probably still dealing with them is a very sad way to go through life. I don't like feeling this way either. It makes me feel hopeless. Like all those years didn't even put a dent in his issues.

Anyone else feel pity for their ex? 

[once removed]

i feel compassion for human suffering of all forms.

i try to have understanding (not to be confused with excusing) for why people do destructive things, to themselves and others.

i think that both go a long way in our recovery, and detachment.

pity, specifically, is something i feel for a person who has no control over their circumstances. i dont want to pity a responsible adult. that is not to say i minimize the struggle that someone with a personality disorder would have in being one. in fact, it is a unique obstacle.

in general, with a person i have chosen not to have in my life, i love and wish well from a distance. their problems do not affect me.

I don't like feeling this way either. It makes me feel hopeless. Like all those years didn't even put a dent in his issues.

have you reached, or thought about working toward forgiveness?

[SettingBorders]

Here ... .me. 
I feel lots of pity for my (maybe soon to be ex) boyfriend. This is a co-dependency issue. A months after we started dating his mother was diagnosed cancer. Six months later she died. I remember well that I thought, I'd be an ass to leave right now. Was it love? I am still not sure. Was it pity? Damn yes.
The first year after her death I noticed characteristics in him that I disliked. I thought that maybe right now he cannot be the best he can be. I was too indulgent. He's having a difficult time, right?
Years went by and there was always something in his life that afflicted him heavily. It took time to understand, that he's actively searching the problems. Pity I felt until I understood.
And now I feel pity because he's him and couldn't even change if his life would depend on it.

I like what once removed wrote about the difference between pity and human compassion. It didn't strike me before, but now it makes lots of sence: We need to find our way to feel compassion with our BPD-people, but do not identify with their problems. The difference is, with compassion we allow bad feelings, with pity we try to oppress them, because we have the urge to fix their problems.

[bus boy]

I rarely feel anything for my xw. I showed her lots of love and compassion,  was a good person person to her. She treated me like a dog. I realize xw has an emotional disorder but that's no longer my problem or concern. Like my sister said this is 2017 not 1970. We have so much awareness and education about personality disorders that if xw refuses to get help that's not my problem. I feel more for my replacement. It took a lot for me to detach from xw, I am detaching more and more every day faster and faster. The only concern I have is s10. Keep your energy for your self, don't waste it. Grow, get strong and keep moving forward. Our ex's are not spending there good energy worrying about us unless it's to fool or manuplate us.

[Duped 1]

Hard to have much compassion for someone who was so awful to me.

[Stripey77]

Yes, often. And he has put me through emotional and mental hell. But when I look at the consistent theme of assumed hatred, that he preambles any attempt at reconnecting with, I can't help but feel sad. I have been consistent and never swayed from him, he has swung between deep love and deep hatred for me, to ghosting me for months to wanting to get close to me, sometimes because he has clapped eyes on me, sometimes seemingly out of nowhere. At every juncture, he has told me that must or should hate him, and this is said completely earnestly and honestly, never in a self pitying way or a way that makes me think he's just trying to play on my emotions. I can remember almost verbatim some of the things he has said to me, knowing he has treated me beyond horribly, and yet I never feed the monster that is BPD by saying yes, you're right, I do hate you. Because I don't, I feel sorry for him, as I have posted on other threads. He must be in a whole jumbled up world of emotional pain, one that I know he numbs with alcohol.

I find it hard not to feel compassion, firstly for someone I fell deeply in love with and still do love, and secondly for someone who is clearly behaving in a way that no emotionally rational person would. This makes me believe his words are totally sincere when he says that I should hate him, and that really is very sad indeed. I don't think he knows why he behaves the way he does, he has described as 'the darkness' that takes over his brain. He says he has a really really dark side and that I brought out the best in him. He messaged me at length last year to suddenly blurt out, so to speak, that he needed me because maybe I could help him to heal, that everything about him is wrong, lots of things, and that his brain is injured. No emotionally balanced man who wants to appear masculine, strong, who is alpha male, who wants to be a protector... .would say such things. I think they are all real thoughts, and yes they make me feel great pity. Not just for him, but for myself of course, considering the awful things this 'darkness' has made him do and the suffering that has ensued. And I am quite sure I am not the first, even though I might have suffered greater consequences than others before me, because I think I probably got way too close. I feel pity for those who went before me, too.

He told me just last weekend, after going underground again on me for several weeks, that I am 'free to hate him'. But wanted to know where I was because he wanted to be with me.

He has told me that the problem is in his brain, and not me, there is no guilt for me, that the darkness took over.

That he needs me to help him.

That I should forget him and hate him.

That it's very complex but that I should hate him.

That he can't even explain it to himself, so how can he explain it to me... .(this was straight after telling me that he was joking about his injured brain)

That he doesn't deserve me after the way he treated me

That he doesn't deserve a love heart from me (just a text)



Do you see the common themes here? Self hatred due to a lack of understanding about why his brain is working the way it is, and then an assumed hatred on my part. He is incredibly lucid, high functioning and intelligent in all other aspects, and I suspect that my ex is constantly battling with that darkness in his brain which for some inexplicable reason makes him treat someone who adores him like his arch enemy.

That is definitely worth pitying, in my book.

[infjEpic]

Anyone else feel pity for their ex? 

From time to time I guess, but more for what made her who she is, rather than what she may have to endure now.
 
I think my level of pity is probably less than in the aftermath. I feel mostly detached now.

I read a lot of interesting posts from diagnosed psychopaths and people with other PDs on Quora.
It's very enlightening - they seem quite unanimous that criminal behaviour is always a choice. Can't pin it all on the disorder.

[Aesir]

I do at times.  I see that this affliction is making a smart person with so much potential sad, angry and lonely. Other times I don't because she's rather lash out instead seek help.

[Freida]

I do feel pity and sorrow for him as he is the product of emotional abuse but then I think of what he's put me through. He could get help but doesn't have the time to do it so he says. I can forgive him when I've put some distance between us.

[chillamom]

Hi,

I feel a tremendous amount of pity for my dEXBPD/NPDbf.  I think that's very much a major reason the relationship dragged along for so long.

It's been about 6 weeks since I broke up with him, and last night he sent me numerous articles on how deadly loneliness and social isolation could be, telling me how I was his only friend and how emotionally abusive it was of me NOT to continue seeing him and being there for him.  It is true that he has a nightmare of a family and literally no friends, and no job as well, so I feel pity, guilt, and every other shade of FOG as well.

I know at some level it's all manipulation, but I feel so cold and cruel not falling for it... .

[Dutched]

Isn’t    compassion   a better word?

To me pity is part of the belief that one compares oneself with another person.

Compassion to me is seeing it based on equality, al humans are a personality, are just human, therefore having a need, having feelings, having the need for justice.

I understand however that in “our” cases, we can use the term “pity” from our point of view.

I must say that I have compassion for exw., no pity.
Why? As exw is a human being, exw needs to be loved, exw wants to live her life as she chooses.
Exw got it.
Impulsive, constant being in an emotional rollercoaster, etc. ?
Yes, that is her life too, exw got it. 
Is exw thinking that she is not having a problem, but others during her life, justifying several cuts/deletes out of her life?
Yes, exw is, it was all justified from her point of view; others were the cause.

I have a normal human compassion for the ones around her too.
Those that (will) experience the same as I did.
 
I have a sister with Down Syndrome.
I don not pity her.
I love her deeply, have great compassion for her, protects her and stand up for her in areas where she can’t, etc.
She is living a happy live with a lot of activities she enjoys and with great people around her.
That is my sister, she, a human being, loved, in need of love and (as far as possible) a live as she chooses.


What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly tangled in the spiders web.
Both live their life