The reality of actually breaking up is near/here

[firefighter5]

I'm almost too tired mentally, emotionally to write this.  I have posted one other time on these forums.  Four months ago, the big question was whether she should move into a new place with me from the old place we had been living together at for 2 years (both places are rentals).  I was super hesitant about her moving in with me and viewed the move as an opportunity to have some space through living apart to get some clarity and let things calm down. 

She did not like this living apart idea and it would pose to be difficult for her given her financial situation.  She said she would be "turning over a new leaf" in her heart.  It was music to my ears for her to accept some real responsibility and know that she needed to do some emotional work.  It was also so goofy and cute the way she flipped her hand over, back and forth, in front of her heart, expressing the leaf she would be "turning over".  I picked on her about it, we laughed.  Despite my previous hesitancy and feeling of needing space, as well as advice from this community, she moved in.

Thinking about it now, the hand gesture of turning the leaf was more accurate than I realized.  The leaf continued to flip, as it does, over and back over again.  Over, and back over again...

Now we have hit a wall.  Things haven't changed.  Not really, not enough.  There's still suspicions, assumptions, extreme over-reactions, blind rages, seemingly complete apathy at times, lack of clarity about events and both sides of any given argument, inability to be empathetic when her emotions are involved, and the worst - my not feelings heard, believed, or just generally trusted.

She broke up with me a a week and a half ago in an over-reactionary moment and I won't let her back pedal.  I've been carrying through on this break up and while it has been a bit messy and confusing, I am mostly sticking to my boundaries.  I have never done this before.  She doesn't want to break up afterall, she says.  She wants to try one more time.  She says, she just defended her PhD and so now she will be less stressed out and will have to work a real full-time job as opposed to working (or, often, not working) from home and coffee shops getting herself into trouble with overthinking and ruminations.  She says it will be better now.  She went to a meditation group for troubled (mostly, for addictions) individuals and acknowledged wanting to work on "emotional sobriety".  (She used to be an alcoholic when she was in her 20s but I don't believe the problem was ever alcohol, I believe it was BPD and the drinking was self-medicating.  During that time of drinking was the only time she had a relationship that sounds like it was any where near healthy, and she still keeps in touch with this woman as friends.  My theory is that she was "not BPD" during that time because the drinking and drug use was a sort of replacement for it.)

She has a job offer in the city we live in.  I have suggested us just taking space (back to that idea), by her moving out and getting a place of her own or living with a roommate, but getting a place of her own is pretty much impossible and a roommate idea has it's own complications.  Basically, she does not want to stay in this city if we are not living together.  She says she would go back home (on the other side of the states) to get her feet on the ground, look for work, and be somewhere comfortable where she can cry and be weird while we are breaking up.  Because her sister happens to be moving back home on the 26th (yes, her sister also lives on the other side of the states in the same city), she says she would road trip back with her.  That is in less than a week and a half. 

I have been so depressed, not sleeping well, this break up? has been affecting my work drastically.  I am not ready for a complete break up, but would really like some space to reflect and reset.  The only option with her, according to her, is a full-on break up.  And not only that, but she will be moving far away.

I am so conflicted.  I have been talking to a couple friends.  They think its a good idea to let her go.  But as we know here, it is not that easy.  And it's not so simple as my partner being a "controlling and manipulative narcissist".  She is controlling, she can be manipulative (but amazingly doesn't seem to understand that she is), and she does not have empathy when her emotions are heightened...but she is also sweet, and tender, and sometimes, so vulnerable and that is when I see that she is just a scary little girl just wanting all the warmth and love I could possibly muster.

Yes, I have mom issues.  My mom is uBPD as well.  And I have been trying to "save" my partner like I did my mom.  I am becoming much clearer (thanks to my partnership) about my codependency and am taking steps around my family to work on my own healing (another story).  My relationship with my partner is both highly triggering of emotional trauma with my family but I also worry that herein lies the opportunity for not just my partner, but also for me, to heal within our relationship.  I can't tell how much I am unhealthily clinging or if I am capable for having a healthier relationship with this person.  As it is now, I am afraid of her.  I don't see friends because I fear her suspicions and making trouble out it.  I fear her saying nasty things about me or a friend while in a rage a week later, not letting it go for weeks and months to come, and me thereafter being uncomfortable seeing those friends.  But, is this something I just need to stand up to, uphold my boundaries and needs, and continue to do despite her upsetness?  Do she and I both need for me to have a bigger backbone?  When she says I'm a bad girlfriend and she doesn't want to be with someone who ________ every week, storming out of the house, should I just let her have her BPD life while I have my life, somehow still maintaining our relationship?  How do I not NEED her to see more clearly.  I keep feeling like, and trying to get her to actually listen and believe me.  So much time and energy I have spent on this.  Eventually she may get me, but it seems fleeting and subject to her moods changing.  I hope my questions are clear.  Basically, if I love her as much as I do (and she does me, in her own way), do I just accept the lack of clarity, periodic intense emotional distance, and the fact that we can never quite be on the same page in order to continue to maintain a relationship with her where sometimes it's good.  What is reasonable to expect from a relationship?  I have been in a few but she is the only one I ever wanted to spend my life with.
I'm sad tired and overwhelmed.

[AskingWhy]

FF5, I am so sorry you are having to experience this.

You are armed, however, with knowledge of BPD.  You partner has a job, and I assume she is high functioning.  The Eggshells books states that he more functional a BPD is, the more likely they are to have NPD traits. 

You cannot control your partner, but you can control your attitudes toward her. 

What you are describing sounds like cycling where the BPD does the push-pull of idealisation and devaluing.  This is enough to make a non feel he is crazy himself.

My first uBPD H and I were married, but his M was so enmeshed with him that it didn't work.  In the end, he devalued me.  He came home from work one day and said he did not love me and, in fact, never loved me.  Then he left the house and I never saw him again.  Idealisation, devalue and discard.

I was devastated.  I became depressed for months, and went to work feeling like a zombi e.  You are talking to friends, but you may also wish to talk to a T to help you work through some difficult emotions. 

I am so please you are able to step back and see your own FOO in this and see your own codependency. 

How are you coping now?  I hope you continue to self reflect and see you are not responsible for the behaviour of your partner or your M.   

[Lucky Jim]

I am not ready for a complete break up, but would really like some space to reflect and reset.  The only option with her, according to her, is a full-on break up.

Hey FF5,

Beware of F-O-G (fear, obligation and guilt), which is how those w/BPD manipulate us Nons.  She is upping the ante to the sole option of a full-on b/u to twist your arm, in my view.  Suggest you decline to allow yourself to be manipulated.

LuckyJim

[formflier]

Lucky Jim has it nailed.

She is trying to manipulate you with a false choice...or forcing you to think her way.

If you are ok with a partial breakup (space..whatever)  offer her than and be completely clear that you will respect her decision if he has other needs and it has to be a full break up.

Then go on about your life. 

My guess is it will be eye opening for you to see.

Best of luck holding to your decision.  You can do this!

Best,

FF

[WitzEndWife]

LuckyJim is spot on. She is totally manipulating you into this "black and white" perspective to get what she wants. Your self preservation instincts have kicked in to tell you it's not a good decision to live with her any longer. You want your own space. If you go against yourself, you will be resentful and miserable. I know it feels like there's no winning here, but, okay, let's say worst case happens and she breaks up with you for eternity: yes, it will hurt, but will that hurt last forever? Likely not. Going against your own boundaries will hurt a lot worse in the long run.

I've been with NPD folks and now a BPD, and it's true that it's easy to consistently be angry and feel strong upset toward an NPD, but not as much with a BPD. During those long stretches of splitting, it can be pretty bad, but most of the time it's good or at least neutral. And that can continue to be an obstacle to happiness for codependents because we centralize our entire lives around our partner's moods.

The good news is you can get your power back. The challenge is to focus on yourself and home in on what you really need and want. Your instincts are signaling you - why? What would you want out of a partner you really enjoyed living with and wanted to come home to? Give that some thought and start focusing on doing things that you enjoy. It can be hard at first, and scary, but it can absolutely help change your perspective.

[firefighter5]

Wow everyone.  Thanks for all of your replies.  She left yesterday to drive across the country with her sister.  The past week has been such a wild ride, emotionally.  I mostly stood pretty firm about us having space, even if that meant that the best and most realistic way for her to take it would be to move back home to stay with her family 2,500 miles away.  There was a moment there where I almost leaned into her reassurances: That she knows she is ready to let go of past resentments, trust me, that she sees how for so long she had been thinking that she was protecting herself but that now she sees that she was just hurting me...  She said, just let us try a few more weeks. She agreed to try to see our old couple's therapist again...but amidst all of this, she sort of was the one who ended up saying, basically "Ok, you're right, our relationship isn't working like this and I can't be happy in this place.  You would be the only thing keeping me here."  Mostly, at that point, she was overwhelmed by feeling "unwanted" by me and didn't want to feel like she was twisting my arm.  It made her feel bad.  

The truth is, she is not unwanted.  She is very wanted.  But so is my sanity, sleep, health, and happiness.  The messed up part is that she does make me very happy in many ways, happier in certain ways than I have ever felt before.

And actually, we made 2 appointments with the couple's therapist to see if we could sort some of this out before I/we/she made the final decision that she would leave, AND we ended up keeping them even after we knew she would be going to CA.  We were hoping we could discuss communication strategies for our long distance "taking space" relationship.  We did a little of that, but therapy mostly veered toward discussing the most recent upsets that led to my uBPD partner to recently "break up" with me.  This was an opportunity for the T to ask my uBPD what she can do to help the relationship through difficult moments, that it's not just all about me needing to tweak this or that little thing - about how I communicate or interact with friends or whatever flavor of the month...  The T also asserted that we need to both be mindful of not contorting ourselves just so we can be with the other person.  I will say that my partner being the one to decide that we keep those 2 appointments, especially when she hasn't particularly liked that therapist...shows me that she is willing to confront things and get uncomfortable in order to attempt change.

And now she is gone.  And it feels so strange, but also backed up by a lot of conviction on my part that something inside of me upheld firmly enough.  Saying goodbye yesterday was so hard.  I helped her pack because she was having a lot of trouble focusing on it and needed help carrying things due to her recent achilles tendon injury.  She played a "trio" of Beatles songs on the record player that we danced to before she left and it was perfect.  Something I would have never thought to do as a last special moment.  Totally impossible to do but we did it and it was important.  I miss her a ton.  We want to make it work.  We want to view this time as committing to improving our relationship and both independently too (the latter, foremost).  I having been thinking about looking for a job in another state for next Spring/Summer.  That could bring me closer to her geographically.  She's also very much so in an up in the air place and not at all tied to where her family lives for longer term.  

Am I being too idealistic?  She is worried she will need too much reassurance from me and won't be able to handle the uncertainty.  That I will find someone else and end up just wanting to be friends.  I am worried that she will bail on progress once she starts getting more into her life over there and feels more space between us, or see my personal progress as proof that "I don't really want her".  Our worries are not dissimilar.  And we worry about the other person's worries.

AskingWhy, I do see a therapist.  I do a pretty good job of being candid and vulnerable in therapy, although maybe I could do better in explaining just how much I don't want to actually lose this person from my life, even though I also have strong intuitions about my more immediate, here&now needs of physical space and breaking of these unhealthy relationship patterns.  Although, haha, maybe this is apparent in the fact that I have been going through this stuff with my partner for as long as I have.

Lucky Jim, Thanks for that.  I did decline.  And yet, there is this interesting dynamic at play where her "manipulations" are often not really intentional, but reactions and stipulations based in fear and also in her awareness around what she is either actually unable to handle but sometimes what she worries she isn't able to handle.  It turned out she didn't need a full-on break up.  BUT she did need to move across the country if not live with me.  (And she really did need to do that.)

formflier,

If you are ok with a partial breakup (space..whatever)  offer her than and be completely clear that you will respect her decision if he has other needs and it has to be a full break up.

Then go on about your life.  

My guess is it will be eye opening for you to see.

Thanks.  I wonder if you had something in mind when you said that your guess is that it will be eye opening to see her response to a firm boundary around wanting to take space?

WitzEndWife,

If you go against yourself, you will be resentful and miserable. I know it feels like there's no winning here, but, okay, let's say worst case happens and she breaks up with you for eternity: yes, it will hurt, but will that hurt last forever? Likely not. Going against your own boundaries will hurt a lot worse in the long run.

Yep.  And I had been becoming more and more resentful and miserable over this past year.  Which would have been one thing if the option of talking about it and working through it was on the table, but it was not, as my uBPD partner has historically felt like she can't talk about her feelings and needs with me, and therefore could not tolerate me talking about my feelings.
(I see this to be based on an instance or two from the very beginning when I didn't know her very well.  And that she has not taken into account so many freaking times that I have listened, validated, and actively worked to problem solve and be compassionate with her.)  Additionally, my feelings and needs also made her feel accused or guilty or sometimes "made to feel bad".  And as much as I tried to stuff all of my needs and accompanying resentment down to fool her and myself, well, there's this little thing called passive aggressiveness...

And that can continue to be an obstacle to happiness for codependents because we centralize our entire lives around our partner's moods.

This is my part in it.  Sometimes I think "If I could have only taken her less seriously, let her have her moods, anger, rages and just walked away better...Maybe if I could have given her space at these appropriate times, (especially when she would suddenly and aggressively ask for and/or create it), I wouldn't be creating all this space between us now."  But her moods, and boy oh boy, the things she says, affect me greatly.  I have a huge fear of not being heard, understood, believed.  And I can become compulsive and a bit rigid about it when I am up against the accusations, gear shifts, story twists, phone hang ups, yelling over me... featured activities that my uBPD partner regularly partakes in.

The good news is you can get your power back. The challenge is to focus on yourself and home in on what you really need and want. Your instincts are signaling you - why? What would you want out of a partner you really enjoyed living with and wanted to come home to? Give that some thought and start focusing on doing things that you enjoy. It can be hard at first, and scary, but it can absolutely help change your perspective.

There is a lot I enjoy coming home to with her.  Actually a huge part of me adores coming home to her.  But another part of me was both fearfully waiting for the other shoe to drop while already needing consolation or understanding or responsibility taken about past infliction of hurt.  To be able to process feelings with her so I could move forward.  I was getting hardly any assistance with the moving forward while also continuing to be pushed back.  For various other reasons though, she has felt like home and family to me in a way no one else has.  I can still imagine a life with her, which is maybe a sticky mental place for me to be in.

A lot of this boils down to trust - her lack of it, for me.  And my more recent onset of lacking it with her.

[Cat Familiar]

Trust is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship. Without it, I'm not sure it's sustainable for the long run. That said, perhaps you can both heal your wounds during this time apart and perhaps come together in a healthier way.