Shift in feelings, positive and negative

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

Hi all

I saw my BPDex yesterday. We have sporadic contact. Yesterday I felt something different when I saw him. I felt ... .  not much. I felt ... .  dislike; unease; disquiet. I don't want him around me again. I found him creepy. He was no different to how he's been before. It's me that's changed.

I felt disquiet with myself for having loved this man who sat in front of me talking negatively about the young widow he is currently seeing who is desperate for children and who he says needs to be 'tougher' for him.

This post isn't about him- it is about me. Why is it that I can turn away from him easily and with disgust when he treats other women badly? I can really dislike him for that, but I fail to see his own bad treatment of me?

What is it in me that allows this? It's what saved me from going back into a relationship with him because I see his abusive behaviours toward others but it's a failing in me that allows me to be manipulated and will allow myself to be manipulated by others. Actually I'm just editing this because he isn't treating me badly and hasn't done anything like he does to these other women. I didn't put up with any abusive behaviour. But I suppose I'm still worried that I might have.

Is this making any sense? I'm pleased with where I am because I do feel I'm really detaching fully BUT I'm horrified with myself for having been there. I'm not respecting myself very much for it.

[maria1]

Hi all

I saw my BPDex yesterday. We have sporadic contact. Yesterday I felt something different when I saw him. I felt ... .  not much. I felt ... .  dislike; unease; disquiet. I don't want him around me again. I found him creepy. He was no different to how he's been before. It's me that's changed.

I felt disquiet with myself for having loved this man who sat in front of me talking negatively about the young widow he is currently seeing who is desperate for children and who he says needs to be 'tougher' for him.

This post isn't about him- it is about me. Why is it that I can turn away from him easily and with disgust when he treats other women badly? I can really dislike him for that, but I fail to see his own bad treatment of me?

What is it in me that allows this? It's what saved me from going back into a relationship with him because I see his abusive behaviours toward others but it's a failing in me that allows me to be manipulated and will allow myself to be manipulated by others. Actually I'm just editing this because he isn't treating me badly and hasn't done anything like he does to these other women. I didn't put up with any abusive behaviour. But I suppose I'm still worried that I might have.

Is this making any sense? I'm pleased with where I am because I do feel I'm really detaching fully BUT I'm horrified with myself for having been there. I'm not respecting myself very much for it.

[tryingtogetit]

It is making sense alright!

And we all have things we can look back at and wonder about: "Why did I ever... .  ?"

Most people on these boards have (most likely) gone to Oz, to places they would never choose to go if they could have thought of it rationally, if they weren't lured to them bit by bit. And hopefully we will return from these so we can look back and wonder about we ever got there.

In a way it's a badge of honor. You were brave enough, goodhearted enough to believe someone. To trust someone and stand by them, walk with them wherever the road would take you through thick and thin.

Until you realized it wasn't the road that was treacherous, it was the companion.

It shows you are at heart a good, caring person.

[HowPredictable]

I saw my BPDex yesterday. We have sporadic contact. Yesterday I felt something different when I saw him. I felt ... .  not much. I felt ... .  dislike; unease; disquiet. I don't want him around me again. I found him creepy. He was no different to how he's been before. It's me that's changed.

I'm really detaching fully BUT I'm horrified with myself for having been there. I'm not respecting myself very much for it.

I know exactly what you mean, Maria1.  I also saw my Ex briefly over the holidays, after a pretty decent period of NC.   I felt a physical unease and intense dislike for him.  He looked different; he even smelled different to me.  And as I listened to him talk (all the while ticking off boxes in my head, of the BPD behaviors and thought-processes I could identify (and there were many)), I had the same reaction:  I could not figure out why I failed to see all his dysfunction clearly.

All I can say, Maria1, is that we must have put rose-colored glasses on, and we must have ignored red flags and we must have gone into the connection with a self-deluded hope.  I guess the old adage "love is blind" captures it to some extent, but I think for pwBPD the behaviors are insidious and well-hidden for a very long, long time.  Plus -- and this is a big element, at least for me -- the idealization and mirroring really blunts your senses, in terms of looking at red flags realistically.

[ConfusedMichael]

Hi Maria,

You are definitely not alone in this.  In fact I believe the majority of people have a blind spot in situations in which they have emotional investments in people or relationships.  I've always considered myself a pretty good judge of character, and by nature I have often considered myself quite cynical in the way I view the world.  But when it came to the relationship I had with my BPD ex, I turned a blind eye to all the red flags.  Most I did recognise at some level, but buried my reservations deep down.  There's no doubt in my mind that if I had been an impartial fly-on-the-wall to all those situations I would have had a very different reaction.

But, looking back, there really isn't too much I would have changed.  I trusted my partner completely.  I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.  When I feel that way about someone again, I want to be able to trust them just as much.  I don't want to be wracked by suspicion and insecurity.  Of course there is a fine line between being trusting/loyal and allowing yourself to be abused, but you've made it clear that in your own case that your partner did not cross that line with you.

You should be proud of yourself.  Both for the way you tried to cope with him when you were together, and for the way you can now look back with a different perspective.

This is the first time I've been back here for a while so I don't know how you've been doing apart from this latest incident, but I certainly hope that you are happy and well.

All the best,

Michael

[myself]

Maria, part of this may be that he is different with different people. He wasn't as bad with you, from what you say, so you didn't experience that as much with him. I frequently think of the 'frog in increasingly boiling water' scenario. Many of us didn't realize what was changing the temperature until the temperature had already changed. Having invested our hearts, time, and efforts into helping it be a real relationship with this other person, we kept trying instead of giving up. At some point, we walked, were pushed away enough to stay away, or however it happened. Because we faced Ourselves.

I saw my ex again awhile ago, it had been a couple of months. She looked different to me, too. How much of that was how I was now perceiving her, and how much was how she was perceiving herself, showing she was tired, hurting, etc.? I've also wondered how I looked to her. Did I look different? I think I did, because I had set some boundaries and was sticking to them. That made her feel she had to leave again, and she's been gone since then. She's tried to reach me electronically, but not face to face. Honestly, she looked as if she'd aged a lot in a short time. Even though it felt like, as you said, she was acting childishly and I was more of the adult. Our connections on the inside felt disconnected, shorting out, needing mending. Certain looks in her eyes made me wonder who she really was, and if she even knew. I felt love for her, but not like.

I'm glad for you to see your ex now for who he really is more than as a dream-version, as so many of us get caught up in. Sorry it has come to this, but there's no need to be down on yourself for where you've been, just keep looking forward to where you're going. You wouldn't even get there without coming from where you have. Seeing Yourself differently now.

[maria1]

Thank you all for your positive words and real support with this. It is a strange feeling. I think I am accepting him a little more as he is.

I have realised too that part of the fantasy he gave me was through music. He communicated something to me through music that I use to create a connection. If he sent me a link to a song I imagined the song was coming directly from him, that the words summed him up and his feelings toward me. But he didn't write the songs. I see that now.

One example is how, after he had ended the relationship and we'd gone for a walk where he'd look so down and asked me why he was always moving on, why he couldn't ever stand still, why he couldn't just stop and enjoy standing by bridges waiting for a particular bird to arrive, as we were doing on the walk. He asked me to stay but I left. I'd said you can't keep pulling me in and pushing me away- I can't take it any more.

The moon was really full and bright and he told me to listen to an album by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- The Boatman's Call. I drove home listening to 'Into your arms', one of the most amazing love songs ever written I think. I felt a if I was being torn to pieces.

I knew then that he was pushing me away but I didn't get why. You're right about the abuse myself and about him being different for different people. His father abused his mother violently and he appears to hate men who abuse women. His worst nightmare is becoming his father. I think part of my appeal is that I didn't take it.

But I was beginning to take it a little more when he ended the r/s. I remember feeling trapped, that I was starting to realise this wasn't good for me, starting to resent his treatment of me- he was demanding more of me and I was getting fed up with it.He shouted at me about a pudding and I left the room, went to leave but sat on the bed instead, not knowing which way to go. He came and apologised. I spent the whole night just wanting to be home in my own bed- I felt a deep longing for it but also felt as if I couldn't leave.

That looking different is part of detaching I think- we are able to stand back and see them with fresh eyes. I was ready for him to leave an hour before he did the other evening. That's never happened before!

[maria1]

My last post was straying away from PI really- what I'm getting is that I partly projected my feelings onto him- I projected Nick Cave's words into his mouth singing that song to me. But in part he was; he was trying to tell me that he loved me, or he was trying to make me think he loved me so that I would stay in the way he wanted me to. We shared more that day than we ever had but it made no difference- we still couldn't be together.

I can make up people's feelings before I know them, before they know them. I did it my most recent r/s but I wasn't feeling much so it didn't really matter. I used that ability to make up what he was feeling to decide he was devaluing me. Maybe he was, maybe he was just stressed and we didn't know each other well enough to communicate. But what I felt was niggles from him- so I worked out what those niggles must mean. Party over thinking but partly wanting an emotional statement from people who aren't able to give it to me, not straight forwardly anyway.

When we were talking before we split about stuff new guy said to me that he didn't want to say too much about the way he felt before he was sure himself. I thin he was alluding to the fact that his last girlfriend had directly asked him if he loved her and he didn't feel that so they'd split. I said that I was fine with that, that it wasn't what I was looking for, that it was way too early for that.

I know that if he had told me he loved me I'd have had to say that I didn't love him. But I also know there was a chance I might have said it back and carried on for a long time trying to convince myself I did.

Myself you wrote- Our connections on the inside felt disconnected, shorting out, needing mending. Certain looks in her eyes made me wonder who she really was, and if she even knew. I felt love for her, but not like.

I think that's just what happens as r/s end and we start to see the person without so much emotion attached. I'm seeing my ex without the emotion attached and I really don't like the idea of him going back to this woman and her having no idea of what he's been saying to me. Who is this man that can do that?

And is that something I can do too? 2 weeks ago I was sleeping with a man, intimately sharing my life with someone who I didn't really know at all. I trusted him, I believed what he told me but I didn't really know him. That disturbs me. He's gone back to his life and I go back to mine. We shared some deep moments and really talked about dark and personal stuff. It's such a shame that just all disappears in a puff of smoke.