Much of the thread consists of letting go of the dream. I think that's one of the most difficult things to let go of when detaching from a BPD.
1) “I feel pretty humbled these days. And i feel the loss of a dream (and the belief that I will never have this dream again is sad)” ~Skip
2) “With my BPD, I was sure as sunshine. She was perfect for me in every way. On paper, she still is. I imagined a wonderful life with her. The dream was concrete, real, "so close I could almost touch it", to borrow a line. When the cracks in the dream started to appear, I refused to acknowledge them, took more and more responsibility for cementing them over, bridging the gap. I thought I could do it, that I had the strength to hold it together for us, that the dream would be realized and everything would be good. But lately it's become apparent to me that I still grieve over the loss of that dream. I was lucky for the turn of events that allowed me to leave. I could easily have kept trying at that dream for years.” ~ Silent Alarm
3) “I stayed w/ him b/c I loved him Or maybe I should say I loved who I THOUGHT he was.” ~Sapphire
4) “my partner was really the perfect person, and i don't say that lightly. the opinion wasn't based on trivial evidence or wishfulness. he passed every possible test my suspicious system and hair-trigger gut could devise. what warnings there were were so faint and ambiguous that even if i run into them now in other people, i have a hard time knowing what clear decisions to make about them. to walk out on him when he showed his first incident of truly weird behaviour wouldn't have helped me in the least. it wouldn't have left me with anything but the evidence that i clearly couldn't trust the evidence of my own eyes and instincts. i might have got out, but i would have been permanently frozen in limbo, unable to know what to make of anything in any person.
Even his weirdness was pretty ambiguously weird. his craziness was like a watermark on paper: it's genuinely, seriously there, but you have to look for it and you have to tilt the paper to find the focus that will show it to you. even when you find a piece of it, it's the same colour as the rest of the paper it's printed on. i really did need time and experience to let me get a grip on the nature of it, and understand where and how and why it was all wrong. i couldn't have gained anything by leaving sooner. “ ~ Meredith
5) “i think i stayed because i was over-confident in myself. i thought i could study the colorful wierdness, understand it, fix it and make it go away. problem would be solved. i thought that if you really want something -- hard work will pay off. Big error in judgment on my part. Like a lot of others who have replied, i also got sucked into my own dream. since i thought i could make him "get better"... .then nothing was standing in the way of realizing my dream relationship. “ ~ Jdee
6) “Back to the dream ... .it caused me to go back and revisit Motherless Daughters for the first time in many years. WOW! A few quotes jumped out at me! We tend to grab for intimacy as a form of narcissistic need. "When a motherless woman attaches to a romantic partner so quickly and completely, her attraction often derives not from mutual affection but from what she hopes HE can give to HER." She goes on to state that ALL people feel this to some degree, but motherless women feel the deprivation that causes this more profoundly than others. People who were well-mothered have an emotional foundation that is lacking in the less-mothered. So we begin romantic relationships one step behind, looking to establish an emotional base.
Here is interesting stuff... .lacking parenting we are more vulnerable to feelings of abandonment and worthlessness, and both fear and desire relationships as adults. We then often deny or ignore signs of a troubled relationship (understatement here on bpdfamily!), insisting that we can be special and worthwhile enough to make it work... .the child's cry for the absent parent to remain. I guess I stay trying to prove myself lovable enough for my mother/partner to stay. If I am trying to recreate the relationship with my mother in order to get it right, which may be true... .WHO WOULD EVER CHOOSE TO LEAVE THEIR MOTHER, even if the relationship was bad? Boy, that seems to explain a lot, for me anyway.” ~In the Light
7) “Many people have qualities of perseverance; they like to see a task to completion and don't give up easily. When in a commitment these qualities are applied until enough time passes that a different and shocking reality of the insidious nature of BPD dawns. This was true for me. When I did learn about BPD, it was intellectual; it took more time to understand on a deeper level how dangerous it is, and that the illness was more powerful than any strength I brought to the relationship. Oh, I complained and remonstrated with him. But I was exhausted and spent, and knew trying further would only destroy me. The relationship was poisonous, and while my pride suffered, at some level I was relieved. That didn't make the pain any less. I still had to process the why and how and what if's and should have's... .and struggle with the emotional turmoil while my rational mind informed me it was best. That reconciliation of mind and emotions has been the hardest for me. I've finally reached enough equilibrium where I can strengthen the neglected parts of me. It may have taken me longer than others; we all go through our various paces of grief and anger before attention to our deeper selves (other than tending our fresh wounds) is possible. About the "watermark" metaphor, by Meredith, posted again here below:
even his weirdness was pretty ambiguously weird. his craziness was like a watermark on paper: it's genuinely, seriously there, but you have to look for it and you have to tilt the paper to find the focus that will show it to you. even when you find a piece of it, it's the same colour as the rest of the paper it's printed on. i really did need time and experience to let me get a grip on the nature of it, and understand where and how and why it was all wrong. i couldn't have gained anything by leaving soon. I think this is a great description of how subtle the BPD behavior can be, and how difficult to recognize... .why it may take us so long to really "see" it, or why we feel "gaslighted" or that we are going crazy! ” ~ Lann
8) I stayed because I "thought" or was "conditioned" to believe that I was the one. She told me that ALL her other relationships were meaningless and were stop-gaps to finally getting together with me. It was ME she had wanted all along. Yes, like a jackass I fell for it, hook,line and sinker.
The first six months were incredible it has to be said. The meeting of minds , the sameness, the quite incredible sex... .exquisite and probably never to be re-visited. Then it began to addle... .rapidly. End of story.
That's why we stay, because we fell in love with a facade. We didn't know it at the time and we can't believe that when the change happens the person you thought you fell in love with has seemingly disappeared. I fell in love with a beautiful, funny , witty , caring,challenging soul-mate. So much a potential partner in life and someone I committed to wholly. As the facade crumbled I ended up with a screaming banshee. Yet still you hope that all this chaos can become calm as the initial period was so , so wondrous. That is what one holds onto. Your ideal and also theirs. They cannot seemingly have calm. We want stability and reliability and a base to work from. ( I think) They seem to need and thrive on conflict , be it with us, another, or an institution.
I stayed because I stupidly thought my phlegmatic nature might rub off on her and that because I'd done alright in life by being ( I hope) decent. I could maybe make a difference. That difference... .the thing that attracted her to me and me to her ( she said it so many times... .) in the first instance will now be held forever against me.
I fought seriously hard for her several times but by the last time I too felt an underlying sense of relief. I didn't have the mental wherewithal to go any further. I'd basically lost a good deal of myself to her and the madness, I was exhausted, so to an extent unclenched everything and finally went with the inevitable Leave me here... .You go on without me." ~ Krakatoa
9) “Part of it was the boundaries thing, which also goes with the hope. i was also too hurt and shocked to breathe, but you know there's no point in putting that on the table with a BPD. even if they 'respond' to it, they find a way to make it a widening of the power gap. it becomes you in a weakened position and them in a stronger one, being benevolent and still feeling like they have all the control - because they do. you gain nothing; it's just the same tune played with a new orchestra. we never had that kind of relationship in the first place.
you need something deeper than hurt or hope or wanting, more ideological and more principle-based, to set boundaries, and you need the anger of those principles to hold them. at least i did. they have to be what you believe, not just what you want. i believed it wasn't okay to act like that. i believed it's not the kind of sht a person should take. i still do. and i loved him enough to put in the time to see what writing would end up on the wall.” ~Meredith
10) “I have finally realized that the flaw is not that I am not the perfect person she thought I was (when I was "white", and I realize I can never be her illusion; the real flaw is that she is not the person I wanted her to be, and convinced myself she was (a hurt person with a heart of gold, with the ability to understand and forgive and change), and likely never will be. If that's all there is, then it's no longer worth the struggle.” ~ ddz
11) “The underlying basis for both the attraction we feel and the difficulty in letting go of these relationships are very complex. I personally have made a multi-year study of it in my own life and am still not sure I have the answer. Some combination of unmet needs/behaviors from earlier life experiences, parental relationship patterns, self-esteem issues, fear of being alone, fear of being wrong, a highly romanticized version of love, an errant belief that we can "fix" it, an underlying belief that the situation is our fault, and a host of other potential issues are at play.
In the end, I think that understanding is less important than behavior. I still see my bp occasionally and despite all I know, I feel an attraction after spending time together. That is almost unbelievable to me after all I've been through. Since I don't think I am insane or personality disordered, I think it just reflects just how strongly I am wired in a way that this particular person triggers. It doesn't matter though. Regardless of how I feel, there is no way that I would act on those feelings and that's the bottom line. If I hadn't eventually found the strength to act against my feelings, I would have been stuck in this mess for many, many, more years than I actually was.” ~lml
12) “It doesn't matter what the heck happened to change him, just understand that you can't, he is mentally disordered, and you may be deluding yourself that he is like you. They are chameleon like; they color themselves to the environment. All you know is what you saw, and that was a lie. She was supply for my dream, I was supply for her personality disorder.” ~ Gulfstream
Lucky 13)
“One of my sayings is: Always tend your garden. If you don't you will have nothing truly yummy to offer. When you find yourself offering the seeds of your garden to someone else to eat. You better stop pretty quickly or you will soon have two people starving.” ~Traveler 
