Six months later...

[kfry2679]

Hi everyone,

My situation is complicated (as I'm sure they all are). I spent all of last year in a relationship with someone who has undiagnosed/untreated BPD (though she did mention a couple of times that she often considered that she might have it). At the time we began, she was in a long-term relationship with a good friend of mine and I was married. The relationship evolved from an affair to me actually leaving my marriage/dogs/house/town (all of which I was quite happy with prior to meeting her), moving to a new city, and this person unofficially living with me after leaving my (now former) friend. It was intense, chaotic, and basically I feel like I have been stuck in all ten of the "thought traps" listed in the break-up section of the site since October. The things that occurred during the time we lived together are almost haunting.

She left me by "ghosting" my house at the end of September only to return and continue communication with me through most of October. The communication would start with something small and immediately descend into blaming me for a variety of things. I eventually sent an extremely mean and out-of-character-for-me email to her out of frustration and in the hopes of being done with it myself, but I found that I just simply felt bad for having done it. (She accused me of things and I responded with a whole lot of "F off" type messages but I did not wish her ill. I basically asked her to leave me alone.)

Since then, I feel like we have been "chasing each other around the internet." We block and unblock each other all the time on all the different social media applications (minus Snapchat which I deleted in Oct). I went two months without looking at any of her stuff, but then stupidly sent her a Twitter message in March that wished her well; I feel like I did this to appease my brain for having said all of the mean things I said in November. She never responds to me; she sends mean messages about me to my best friend (to whom she is ridiculously nice). Everything she says makes me feel like I am right back in the middle of the chaos even though we haven't seen each other since October 2 and I have since returned to my marriage.

I have never experienced something as all-consuming as this relationship and it is extremely distressing to me that it is now April and I am still dealing with the ramifications of everything that happened.

Recently, I believe she (and possibly her new girlfriend) created a fake blog to follow my blog. This has then extended to them creating a fake email address and a fake "character" who occasionally emails me and to whom I have returned emails because I feel a strong compulsion to continue to try to defend myself while conveying that I really did love her. This makes me feel genuinely disturbed. (She has never been one for internet boundaries, though. I have strong evidence that she was having someone hack my Facebook messages and was stalking me through Snapchat while we were together.) I have no idea what to do with this situation.

The most common things she said during our relationship were that I was "too smart" for her; that I wasn't actually going to leave to be with her; that I didn't actually love her; and that I was just lying and manipulating her to get what I want. I spent the majority of my days reassuring her in every way I could think of and it was (obviously) never enough. I am basically obsessed with trying to understand how I got myself in this situation and what it was that she has that led me to make some honestly disastrous choices that cost me a number of relationships. I find this obsession to be somewhat evolved from earlier on when I was scouring every inch of our relationship to figure out "what I did wrong."

The two complicating factors here are (1) I have a diagnosis of bipolar disorder and was manic at the beginning of the affair in January last year and (2) I work in the mental health field (as does my ex) so I think I am really beating myself up for not understanding this faster.

My relationship with her has made me feel every negative emotion toward myself, but I am unable to feel them about her and I don't understand why. I know I probably have some semblance of a "savior complex" but I literally never consciously thought I was "saving" her from anything. I was just completely immersed into "our" world and am apparently having an incredibly difficult time focusing on reality.

My wife is a fantastic person who knows every detail of this situation and is supportive of me in every possible way, but I struggle to continue talking about my ex with her because of how much time has passed. She also has no experience with BPD at all.

Anyway, I guess that is my intro. Thank you for reading and thank you for the info I've found on this site. It has already been extremely helpful.

[Mutt]

Hi kfry3679,



I’d like to welcome you to the bpdfamily, I’m sorry for the circumstances that led you here and I completely understand how it’s hard to get over a pwBPD yiu can do it if you follow the lessons on the site.

. I was just completely immersed into "our" world and am apparently having an incredibly difficult time focusing on reality.

You’re not the first member that is from the mental health relief as I understand I personality disorders are niche within the mental health community.

The level of comorbidity is so great that it is uncommon to see an individual with 'pure' borderline ... .

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK55415/

It overlaps many other disorders it’s difficult for professionals to diagnose it sometimes.

As you have already experienced a r/s with a pwBPD moves very quickly it’s easy to ignore the red flags when you’re living a different reality. I’d suggest to examine the beginning of the r/s what immersed you into that world?

[kfry2679]

As you have already experienced a r/s with a pwBPD moves very quickly it’s easy to ignore the red flags when you’re living a different reality. I’d suggest to examine the beginning of the r/s what immersed you into that world?

Hi Mutt,

Thank you for your response. I really appreciate it. The complication of my own manic episode at the beginning essentially caused the explosion, I think, and when that ended, the relationship was already in the next stages and I was hooked. The other answer is sex, which I've been reading about on other threads.

This is all so helpful. I wish I had found it months ago.

~kfry

[Speck]

Hello, kfry2679!

How are things going since the last time you shared?

We're here if you need to talk.


-Speck