Contact after the breakup - what is this about?

Post breakup communications confuses just about everyone.  Why?  

Possibly we see the communication in a simplistic isolated way - not really considering the whole picture.  

Possibly because we are very conflicted by our owns feelings - do we want her/him or not?

Possibly both parties have become conditioned to recycling.

Possibly we are in an emotional cloud - seeing what we want to see rather than what is.

Below is a description the the different types of 'big break-up" communications recently received by members.  

The hardest question is, how can we tell which are which in real time?  How should we treat each differently?

Skippy

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Survey data about the communications we receive after the "big break-up"



Normal post relationship contact (6%*) - all the logistics and coordination stuff (returning the pets, the key, picking up things left behind, discussion about mutual friend, etc.).  

True, there might be attitude with this.  True your partner may have left somethings behind - or held some things of yours.  It may be about insecurity about leaving (so they are leaving few bread crumbs leading back) -  or a little anger -  or it's to avoid an emotional showdown (they may just want to wait to until things are cool to resolve these items).  

This is not a unique to BPD behavior.  There is often a lot of ceremony in a breakup of a relationship - especially if their were ongoing frustrations.  It happens in many relationships.

Overstepping Conventional Boundaries/Boundary Busting/Using you (50%*) - Inappropriate post relationship requests are not uncommon in a dissolved relationships with a person suffering from BPD. People with BPD may overstep the conventional boundaries by asking for friendship, favors, validation, even sex after having emotionally disengaged from the relationship themselves.

This is often misconstrued by us as another attempt to recycle. This can be very confusing, and even cruel to the us as the former partner. Understanding that this occurs and being vigilant about maintaining conventional post relationship boundaries is important. It might be emotionally hard to do.  

Remember,people with BPD are known to overstep personal boundaries in relationships and it stands to reason that they would do so post relationship. The motivations for the person with BPD are often selfishness and insensitivity rather than maliciousness.  Nonetheles, our hurt is the same.

If the person truly wants to get back - give it very careful consideration and go slow. If your partner wants to jump back in right where you left off it's a bad sign.

Post relationship fighting (28%*)  - This can been in the form of either blaming, or detailing the resentment, or raging, or showing off the new boyfriend, or a host of other angry/resentful things.

With a very angry/resentful people, it's not unusual for the anger to continue past the separation. Many couples do this.  There is a lot of anger associated with this disorder.  

For the person with BPD this is mostly about resentments that have built up and feelings of being violated or shamed.    The blame goes to you because the pwBPD doesn't want it to be because of their (bad) behavior - they ofte need to be the victim in their new life - it not about us.  

For us it is typically about feelings of betrayal.

Continuation's of of the breakup/makeup cycle (6%*) - While this is a small percentage of the post breakup communications, a recent bpdfamily poll suggests that as many as 75% of the relationships for members on the L3-Leaving have/had 4 or more break-up/make-up cycles.  See data here

Blackmail/Manipulation (<1%*) - This the most pathological of the post relationship behaviors.  Some pwBPD will use suicide or self-harm, threats of harm to others or property, or threats of false criminal accusations to manipulate the situation.

* = Percent of post relationship communications. Percentages reference

all i know and can say about this is this:

after any normal breakup i have had, we have both gone NC, at least for a good 6 months, to heal. 

i was ABSOLUTELY shocked when i heard from my uBPDex a day after she broke up with me over the phone, asking if i was okay ... .then the next day calling me to talk.  it baffled me.  i assumed this meant she was having second thoughts about the extremely abrupt breakup.  i was wrong.  i was in for a whole month of pushing and pulling after that.  definitely boundary breaking, and where she really messed me up.

I just read your intro post and it may be a good example.  One point in all of this is we tend to focus on the "here and now" when the answers are easier to see when looking at the bigger picture.

In your case, the "here and now" is your loving eyes for her, a wonderful touching gift from, tender music, a romantic experience, and warm words.  In the "here and now" it looks like a break-up/make-up.  

The bigger picture was a brief 4 week relationship and back to ex, said she was incapable of a relationship (with you), said couldn't be satisfied by one person (which explained your role).   In the bigger picture it looks like boundary breaking (60% category).  She didn't want you as #1 - she wanted you to be #2 or a bridge relationship.

Is this at all correct?  I just read your intro post.

i have no clue what she wanted from me.  i guess a bridge relationship.  but she sure acted like we had something special.  if i was a bridge relationship, it was a bridge from her ex that she cheated on with 4 different people, to her current, whom she physically and psychologically abuses, and has moved in with her 2 weeks after they started dating.  with the new one, my ex is a completely and totally different monster.  but we don't speak anymore.  bottomline i need to accept is that it's over, and i'll never understand it.  wish she just would've left it over the night she broke up with me, that's all.

I'm not skip but I think you are right.  Under non BPD circumstances people can continue to be in contact.  But in this case it's in you best interest to be NC.

Ouch, this subject hurts. I was the inappropriate one for boundary busting. As I reflect on the behavior however I think it was due to my absolute devastation as to what happened and me trying to make sense of it all... .Plus I had not gone through something like this prior, no experience to draw from...

I was stuck in "magical" thinking, thinking if I explained things well enough the person I knew would return and talk to me. Then I was stuck in "helping" him, I knew I didn't want a intimate relationship with him anymore, didn't ask for one, but hoped for a friendship of some sort. The friendship was under one condition... that we discuss what happened and have closure.

When I went N/C I would hear from him and get sucked back in, other times I didn't get sucked in. He asked me for friendship, immediately, then three times in emails, he even detailed how it would happen-over time.

Here is the kicker, had he not been so emotionally abusive that last day and flippin cruel in his comments, I would have been okay with N/C and friendship down the road. But then, it would have meant our relationship was healthy. We weren't a healthy couple.

I was working through all of this and decided no to the friendship. I was so flipping confused, how could a guy rip me apart and then email such kind things, write a loving letter, and then NOT address the emotional abuse. The best thing I could have done is just not emailed him or called and left a message. Sometimes though when we gain our personal power back we have to let the other party know that... .plus I decided telling him he was a narcissist was in his own good.

Yikes, I am so embarrassed to admit this. Anyway I lifted the block on my email, wrote him a note telling him no the friendship, stated he was an abusive guy, the relationship was a mistake on my part AND emailed information on attachment and narcissism. Such a loving act  .

I have learned a valuable lesson here... no matter how much I hurt, am confused, etc. I will not do this again. PERIOD. I hurt me in the long run through prolonging the emotional pain and I gave up my personal power.

The most confusing aspect of this disorder was the boundary breaking.  I did not know anything about BPD when I was left for someone else after he promised a life together with me.  I naturally went nc as I am not one for running after people when they have made a decision to leave or I leave.  I just couldnt get my head around the texts within days asking if I was ok... .it totally baffled me.  Since then (over 18 months ago) the boundaries have been broken and stomped upon countlessly.  When someone blocks you from facebook, emails, texts, home phones and sits under the window when they ring the doorbell until he leaves, it is a huge statement to a normal person that you really dont want them around anymore.  The disorder barges through this every single time.  The filters pwBPD must have in their mind completely  obliterate any normal thinking and processing.  It is this which has confused me, made me ill and has totally engulfed me for so long.  He is now engaged and moving into a house that they have bought together... .he still is trying to engage me?  Moving on to the blackmail, well, there we go, it happened a few days ago, even after all this time ?.  He wants to leave his fiance and the house move and move into rented accomodation so he can eventually be with me again.  He asked me to look after his great dane for him until he moves out and if I didnt look after him he would have him put down.  The craziness of his mind is astonishing.  The break up make up cycle only happened when we were supposedly together, it was on and off for 2 years.  Its only thanks to this site that I did not return when he finally left, where I got my strenght from I dont know!  The fighting aspect came from me when he finally divulged to me a few months after he left the shere horrendousness of his cheating behind my back.  His thoughts were if he told me everything I would forgive him and we could return to the original relationship.  I was insensed and reacted with anger, hurt and frustration.  Finally the normal contact was very rare.  There were moments of clarity which is the hook that keeps us by their side.  Looking back though over the last 18 months his disorder is escalating to levels I have not seen before.  It used to be a 3 month cycle when he would contact, usually when he would argue with his girlfriend, there is now no pattern, its still erratic but comes in more frequently.

Tippy

I have to say that I am so glad I don't have a phone right now.  Haven't had one for over a month.  If I need to communicate with anyone, I email them or use facebook, and at times, have gone to my work which is a 5 minute drive to use the phone there (I have a key).  It has been glorious because I have a feeling that if I were to have a phone, there would be a lot of angry calls or texts.  Now, if he needs to communicate, he needs to find me or go through a mutual friend.  Since he "doesn't want to see my face", there is very little direct communication.  I think this has been a god send.

As for the other pieces of the pie, I have experienced them only in glimpses... .not sure if they will occur in the future.  We really have only been fully separated for a little over a week.  Because he lives so close and most of our friends are mutual friends, and because this town is so small, I'm guessing I may experience more of the other pieces, at some point.

How to deal with them when they occur?  I think attempting LC to NC is the best way.  Also, to try to keep the emotion out of the communication when it does occur will be the key.  Difficult, but I think that is the best way to handle these people.

im a bit late to the party but its been a very interesting thread. I couldnt and didnt go NC. 2 very young children living with bpxw. My contact was often my measure of their coping (encouraged by T). My observation is that the styles of contact were not distinct and defined. In fact more often than not they would blend (bleed ?) into one another in the course of the single contact. A telphone call would encompass rage, then make up/break up, blackmail and even normality. It would flick from one to another without any apparent trigger or cause. An email would start professing undying love and end with a tirade of abuse. And in between the email would cover every other style multiple times.

I dont know that I would agree with the percentages of the pie. Certainly it could have been the pattern during a single contact but overall, I think the styles tended to be pretty even.

What I did conclude is that the communication (or style of contact) was not about me (or the kids) but was really just about the bpxw. Whether she was angry or sad, lovestruck or victimised had nothing to do with anything I had said or done but was only about how she felt at that moment in time.

Strangely enough there is a sense of relief when I had the "aha" moment and realised I played no role in the style of contact. What I then needed to learn was that although I didnt control the style of contact I was enabling the contact by maintaining the lines of communication. It took a while for me to step back from that too.

That is a very good point Little Doggy. To paraphrase you a little, it took you a little while, and alot of understanding of the dynamics at play, to be able to sucessfully erect and secure your own boundaries. Its hard to build something when you are completely confused about everything.

Looking back on history, there is a huge lesson that needs to be learned. We must come to an understanding of the dynamics, and thought processes that happen. Without understanding, we hold fear. In this fear, we hold onto victimization. In this victimization, we tend to think of people who are different than us as demons. In a land of various shades of grey, there truly is no black and white. There are no "all good" and "all bad" people.

Many events in history had mass casualties due to fear, victimization, and demonization. One that comes to mind is the Salem Witch hunts. Another is the Crusades.

In order to understand the dynamics at play, we must first put down our victimizations, and rise above it to see the bigger picture. It is only then that we will have the mindset to see that we aren't the targets, although it feels like it. Just like Little Doggy has here, he looked through his victimization, and saw that it was only about her, and her needs. Those things affected him, and his life. It was only through understanding that, that he could start to erect the proper boundaries to allow her to have her feelings and emotions, and not have them affect him. We can never take away anyones feelings and emotions, we can only control how they affect our own.

Quote from Want2know:

     "because they so quickly go back into the sweeping someone else off their feet mode, perhaps, while we are in post-break up communication mode, it makes things muddy.  You are dealing with someone who is putting so much energy into getting someone new, that their communication with the ex (us) is colored by pursuing this new person.  If there weren't anyone new in the picture, and their energy wasn't going towards that, there might be more post-break up communication issues than not."

Reading this was a light bulb moment for me... . You may be absolutely right. I to this day don't know if I was left because she was chasing somebody else, or just decided she had no feelings me all of a sudden, or wanted to focus on some new found cause to "wrap her life around". But, thinking of it through the context of what you wrote, it would sure explain the almost absolute zero contact from her from the day she left.  

Well my contact was her texting me after she moved away to where she used to live. Where she had already lined up her next victim that she flirted with on facebook. She gave him a bit of rope and now he's besotted with her. She also has a bloke whom I know she was having an affair with as he was the boss of a shop she worked in as a manageress. I found an email between them ,before I kicked her out, talking of having a meet up soon for sex. Anyway. She was texting me and I nearly went down to see her even though I knew she had these other interests. I decided notg to once I realised she was BPD. This was 3-4 weeks ago.

Last two weeks she contacted me late on a Saturday night. " can we talk without arguing" ? I was sucked in to answer her not to rekindle us but I'm totaly amazed byt the BPD illness now and wanted to see what she had to say. I answered her with "ofcourse" . Her next line was "have you been out?"  ME "yes . Have you? "  Her "Yes its the first time in weeks"

Well I knew this was another lie as she's been back to our home town and has been meeting someone she pulled just after we split. This fella is a bouncer and proberbly dosn't even want to get to know her that well. Just another sex partner.I couldn't help but say the wrong words replying of " I've been to see Frankie boyle tonight and even he wasn't that funny"

She just replied "I don't want a fight after having a good night out . I'm away to bed"

She only text me as her new bloke was at work and she had no male company. End of.

Agreed.  That would be very bad boundaries.  

I think people sometimes get caught in this trap... .we can see the bad boundaries on their side but don't realize that sometimes we have them too.

Joannak has made this point many times. Joe Carver, PhD also makes it one of his essays.  There is something far more powerful with them than no contact.  It's "no interest".

For example (not a criticism btw), hoping for a sex connection communicate is "interest". Blocking the email account and closing facebook actually shows interest.  So then the whole mutaul bad boundaries thing is in play.

"No interest" would be leaving the old facebook account open to her or having your computer delete email rather than kicking them back.

I'm just catching up this this thread now... .

In my situation we are mostly at Post relationship fighting and Blackmailing.

With my ex it's a lot about control and having to control me and the kids.  If we don't act as he wants us to then he expresses that we hurt him in some way.  He gets so upset and even cries in front of the kids when the kids don't want to do what he wants.  It just feels like a constant battle where I now just make it clear that he is not in control of me .  The truth is he was completely in control for a long time - I hate to fight so I just about always gave in.  When I finally said no more - things need to change and took my control back the relationship got very explosive!  Now I'm separated for almost 2 years and very close to finalizing the divorce.  My S16 reacted to the controlling behavior by basically completely cutting his dad out of his life.  S13 is struggling with the issue. And along with the control is the blackmailing - accusing me of many things that are not true and running criminal background checks on my friends. I keep hoping for things to cool down with him but hold no hope for that.  It comes in cycles... It will be quiet for a couple of weeks and then I will be hit with many accusations and problems.  I feel like I have to keep who my friends are very private because of how he invades they lives doing criminal background checks on them.

Common communication from him would be an email accusing me of keeping information from him. For example one of our kids is being tested to see if he has a learning problem.  I have emailed ex telling him of each appointment I made.  I have gotten emails back copied to his lawyer saying I haven't informed him of scheduled appointment. Since I do everything by email I have proof I did and just forward the proof onto him and his attorney.  I emailed him with my understanding of the testing process after the first time my son and I met the cognitive psychologist.   I got a respond saying that my thought are irrelevant to him and a complete waste of his time and to stop wasting his time with it.  I now just email short one sentence next appointment is so and so date and that is all.  He then gets upset that I'm not telling him more.  Can't win...  What ever I do gets attacked.  I just ignore the attack and communicate as little as I need too, just very professional emails.  The few times I have try to add anything personal to the conversation I would be told he has no interest on my thoughts and ideas.  

Communication is NC except email  or through lawyers.  I know there are other people he has been bad at in the past.  One for over 30 years and with all of them he has never moved past the anger part.  It scared me watching him talk about something that happened 30 years ago and how angry he still was with the person.  He is completely incapably of look at the other persons point of view in that situation and that scared me - the other person is one of the nicest people I ever met!  The anger was at the level where you would believe the event happened yesterday and not 30 years ago. So I'm not holding much hope that the Post relationship fighting stage will end.

He is hurting ... He takes the hurt out on me in what ever way he can.  With him it is so hard to figure out what he wants.  His actions seem to be opposite of what he wants.  He appears to feel hurt and want more information on his children, when I try offering it he attacks me. I just back off and start communicating just what I need to -  which hurts him because he really does want the information I emailed him that he attacks.  It's so crazy!  He also has huge issues with circular arguments and in the past I use to get caught up in these crazy emails with him that just would go on and on.  There is an insane one between him and the S16 that was the last one with the two of them because after that S16 decided to go NC.  Luckily it's all documented in email. I really think he highly enjoys these circular arguments and when he attacks me in email he really is wanting me to respond back to the attack.  I have found that if I say anything about how disrespectful his email was to me, then I would immediately get a 5 page ranting email back.  I now ignore all attacks, try to directly respond to the topic at hand,  and keep the email as documentation.

How can he and I develop some level of communication that works?  I don't see a way.

One of the best points I've ever read here.