How to deal with discard?

[LightnessOfBeing]

Thanks jhk. Today was the worst day yet; he was in hyper cheerful mode, bounding around the house laughing manically and carrying on. And did I make the mistake of taking off my noise-blocking headphones so I could listen to him regale his grossgrossgross enmeshy, enably mother with a solid forty minutes of outright lies about our r/s? Haha, of course. The distortion/smear campaign has begun, and this is the real soul-killing terrain. The victim gets victimized again by being made out to be the abuser. "Infuriating" doesn't being to describe the experience. So many people here have been through it. God, when I think of the swath of destruction pwBPD cut through the world... .

I wish I had somewhere to get away to, but alas. Being trapped under the same roof is making all this exponentially harder. It's not quite true that money can't buy happiness; if Ed McMahon showed up at the door today with a giant check for me, I'd go from laying-on-the-floor-watching-suicidal-ideation-approach-slowly to 'hmm, this hurts but I'll be okay soon'. It's a lot easier to write off someone doing you cosmic injustices when you can just drive away with a million dollars and never see their face again.

(I noticed your Megan Devine – I've dipped in to refugeingrief a couple of times today, but it looks like mostly for-purchase stuff. And what I want doesn't exist, I know; I want a cure, I want the magic button that puts pain on pause so I can breathe, I want all of this erased, and to wake up tomorrow on a beach somewhere, with my housing and education and survival not imperiled  Sorry, that's just pure Vent.)

[LightnessOfBeing]

Thanks for the encouragement caughtnreleased. It actually does really help.

You hit the nail on the head – nothing is real with, in, or of them. And I can very much relate to your conceptualization of your BPDex as a ghost. One thing I realized early on with mine is that, a la Gertrude Stein, 'there's no there there.' The False Self theory of BPD and NPD makes sense, the development of a burgeoning self gets arrested, so what moves forward – and into our dating lives – is a mask, a cobbled-up edifice underneath which is just a little deformed, pained nugget of primal glob.

I've analogized my BPDh as a bit like those 'wind sock' figures you see in front of stores and such – when the wind machine is turned on, they're upright; turn that machine off, and there's nothing there. There's no self there, not in the way there is for people without a PD (who can still, of course, have serious problems), just an empty tube. Keep it filled with input from their entirely external locus of self-esteem and identity – you, the compliant self-object are the wind machine – and they can seem like a person. But pull that plug, and... .

Meh, I'm in the weeds a bit, I'm just trying to say it resonates. I'm trying, I am, to put my energy into things that can actually return that investment of time and care. It's hard to get through each day. I'm desperate not to lose school and work, I know I have to hang on to those, I don't want him to have literally destroyed my life.

[roberto516]

I've analogized my BPDh as a bit like those 'wind sock' figures you see in front of stores and such – when the wind machine is turned on, they're upright; turn that machine off, and there's nothing there. There's no self there, not in the way there is for people without a PD (who can still, of course, have serious problems), just an empty tube. Keep it filled with input from their entirely external locus of self-esteem and identity – you, the compliant self-object are the wind machine – and they can seem like a person. But pull that plug, and... .

Wow. That's exactly how it is. I kept her afloat with my humor, confidence and support. When my grandfather passed away and I asked her for emotional support because I was severely depressed she couldn't do it. I wasn't able to provide her with the air so to speak. And she couldn't provide it for herself or for me.

It makes sense why she is probably doing so well now. She has the new job which she is probably seeing as her "true calling" as she has done 1 million times before. And she seems to be doing fun things again. But once those things become monotonous or she gets sad there she will be... .a wind sock with no air. So she will find a new relationship/job/vocation/purpose or whatever it will be to keep her afloat. Very well put. Thank you for this.

I know how you feel. I too don't want her to destroy my life. And she won't. All of this pain is presenting to us a golden opportunity to really learn about ourselves. People who spend their lives in normal relationships with little stress in life don't even ever learn about themselves. In a way, we are really blessed. We have been pushed to the point where we are now raw and vulnerable to discover our true selves. I, for one, will one day be happy that I was beaten down and emotionally destroyed so that I could build myself back up and for the first time in my life get to know the real me. Maybe this outlook can give you solace as well. 

[Bushes]

I am very recently experiencing a similar situation so I wish I had any advice but I am as confused and wrecked feeling as you. What did jump out at me is the description of it being surreal. I have used that word in relation to my current experience more times than I have used it in my entire life up to now. Surreal. I wish I had some useful words

[LightnessOfBeing]

I likewise have never used that term as much in my whole life as I have while reeling through the experience of a relationship with and then discard by a 'person' with BPD. (Quote marks b/c they seem... almost like a different species? Pretty literally. Even a 'bad' person, a mean, duplicitous, etc person who -doesn't- have a personality disorder - they're still fundamentally human, there's still a soul or something in there. I don't know, I can't be articulate right now. I'm genuinely not trying to demonize them as a group, it's just intersecting with theories of the undeveloped and false self, the windsock, the 'emptiness' or ghostliness of people with this psychic deformity.)

Anyway, I'm sorry you're going through this trauma - it is a trauma, and I don't use that word lightly. Experiences with pwBPD violate core assumptions, expectations, realities, and trust in a way that is entirely unique from any other kind of negative interpersonal experiences. (sort of related to above - sure, a non-personality-disordered person can be horrible, do dreadful things to a spouse; but there's still some base of relationality that's intact, there hasn't been a violation of the most fundamental feature of human intersubjectivity itself).

As you know, you're not alone. Feel free to pm me if you feel like it, and if by some crazy chance you happen to live in central TX, I'm trying to set up a local support group. This site is invaluable - probably literally life-saving for some of us in these first days and weeks of the discard - but in-person support is so much more efficacious.

Everyone here keeps telling me to breathe, get through the days one day at a time. Survive another day, Bushes. We'll crawl until we're able to walk again.   

[Bushes]

Thanks you know we will get through this. I tend to not generalize but I think from here on out I have no choice but to place any BPD individual I may meet into the column of stay very far away as they are more alien than human. Even if that isn't correct I need to do it for my own emotional safety. You know now that I reflect further C. Used to refer to herself as a star child. And not in a hippie sense but with some imaginings of well I didn't take it too seriously at the time but in retrospect it seems to fit the bill. If she ever felt anything I would like to believe it was related to feeling alienated from the human race. As in feeling like an outsider and mimicking the words she thought may just turn her into a real human person if she said them often enough and convincingly enough. It's no wonder they can't keep it up I suppose it must be exhausting. mind you I don't think quite so exhausting as being the person watching the drama unfold and trying to contain it. Funny thing is I haven't slept for more than 2 hours straight since this whole theatre of the bizarre began that brought me here. And I just feel so very very tired.

[Lalathegreat]

Just wanted to say that reading this thread helped me so much today. I have felt so hopeless and alinevthe past few weeks. Reading your story and the replies has made me feel so much less alone.

Wish I was from Texas! 

[LightnessOfBeing]

Personally, I think staying away from pwBPD who aren't in treatment is a VERY good idea, Bushes. Although severity can vary slightly from person to person, most clinicians would tell you that pwBPD not in treatment aren't capable of being healthy adult relationship partners. And everyone here knows they're capable of a maelstrom of incredible destruction. Why woodchippers come with a big warning label and pwBPD don't is a mystery to me... .

I myself am clinging to the grounded, sound reality at the core of all this pain: I know, with absolute certainty, that I am better off without him. (I knew that when I was on the conflicted board, thinking of leaving him - he just beat me to the punch and flipped the dumper-dumpee roles.) After the anger, bitterness (especially at the d*** injustice of it all, how he got away with so much, cost me so much financially, etc.), and everything else goes out with the tide over time, I think what I'll mainly feel is relief that I only wasted three years of my life with him, rather than thirty.

This is a really hard time, is there anything you can do in terms of ensuring self-care? Especially around the sleeping issue, that's so crucial when a person in undergoing extreme stress. I hope you get some rest 

[LightnessOfBeing]

Hey Lala, glad to hear it helped a bit. These first days, weeks (and probably months) after the crash are, unpoetically, hell. I could never in my life have imagined I'd ever go through anything like this particular emotional experience - so completely different from any other kind. (I've recently thought back to the time before I had the experience of life with a Borderline - it seems like a different world, that innocence, not yet discovering what extreme, surreal, horrible things are possible in the realm of human communication/relationality.)

Anyway, what I just said to someone else is worth repeating, I think: WE ARE BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM. And that's not in a compensatory, turn-up-the-Gloria-Gaynor-and-flip-the-script-just-to-feel-better kind of way. They are plutonium. Without treatment they can't _not_ emotionally abuse people. Once we get past the pain, we might see that we've dodged a huge bullet. I'm already profoundly grateful that I only wasted a few years on a person who's incapable of being a partner, rather than decades. Maybe a "whew" awaits you, too.

You might not be in Texas, but you're not alone! Hang in there 

[Zemmma]

LightnessOfBeing... I have thought about the term "dodging a bullet," but it seems more apt to say that I took several rounds in the chest.

[kentavr3]

How to deal with discard? I am not going to be sorry for you! ENJOY it!  Image him as a monster from "Alien" movie. ) Image that you got rid of his infection and pushed him to the space.!

[LightnessOfBeing]

Touché,  Zemmma. I guess we didn't exactly dodge a bullet so much as escape the fatal bullet (which is what I'd consider wasting a whole lifetime with a Borderline) and walk away with bunch of shrapnel in us.

Sorry I haven't replied to your response specifically, I'm groping through the days still, and haven't replied to everyone.

You had a really bad experience. That's tough, a BPD bf on the heels of a deadbeat abandoning husband. Those wild distortions are mind-bending, I don't think I'll ever get over how vehemently they insist their version of things is 'reality.'

We're survivors 

[caughtnreleased]

"We are better off without them."
I think this is really the crux of it all. I encourage everyone on this board to challenge yourselves to reach new heights in your life when you recover. Follow your dreams (you know you have them), go as far as you can, be successful for yourself. Deny them the satisfaction of taking you down. Recover from your wounds, spread your wings, and fly. And don't look back.