How long did it take your ex with BPD to devalue you?

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

I started dating my ex boyfriend with BPD on September 26th. He had his first blow up on me on January 7th. By February 20th he said he had "absolutely no feelings for me."

By March 3rd he started having horrible anger rages. On April 7th he had what's called the "extinction burst" where he threw everything at me but the kitchen sink.

So it took 5 months for him to have no feelings for me. It took a little over 6 months for him to cut me off completely.

Is there an average time for this?

[Rocknut]

I started dating my ex boyfriend with BPD on September 26th. He had his first blow up on me on January 7th. By February 20th he said he had "absolutely no feelings for me."

By March 3rd he started having horrible anger rages. On April 7th he had what's called the "extinction burst" where he threw everything at me but the kitchen sink.

So it took 5 months for him to have no feelings for me. It took a little over 6 months for him to cut me off completely.

Is there an average time for this?

[turtle]

Hi Rocknut.

No... .   there's no formula or average time for how this unfolds.

When was the first time you decided that this kind of behavior wasn't okay with you?  How many more times did it happen before you decided to get out?

These are also important questions because it makes us look a why we tolerated such poor behavior.

turtle

[paperlung]

Took mine 5 or 6 months. Came out of nowhere. She broke up with me over the phone one night. I was shocked, devastated, and confused. She simply said she didn't love me anymore, that the spark was gone. Hours later she calls me back, crying, asking for forgiveness. We got back together after that, and she loved me again for a while.

[fromheeltoheal]

Funny, I left mine on September 26.

Everything was rosy for about 4 months, until she disappeared for 3 days, I suspected because she cheated on me, and turns out I was right, even though she never admitted it.  I broke up with her for a week, she pursued me all lovey dovey, we got back together, but it was never the same.  Within 2 months she was raging unbridled, and I had all I could take.

[Hurt llama]

Interesting to think back all the way to the beginning... .   we both fell in love at first sight... . was overwhelmingly powerful for both of us... .  

But it didn't stop her that night from telling me I was holding a fork wrong, or entered the restaurant ahead of her which is bad manners... . or that I was wearing my hat wrong or I made a mess in the sink after shaving... .

So I think she was devaluing me in 'real time' as loving me... .   SHe was ridiculous... . crazy... .   but she never really painted me black as I read about in most stories... . or only for a very short time... .   she would go ice cold... . and I would feel I could be dead in the street and she would have no sympathy at all... . but that was just a fantasy... . (umm maybe not?)

But from her she freely told me she fell into what she called 'infatuations' and they lasted 90 days.

She described perfectly typical BPD and it sounded so wrong to me and I knew it and said it but deeper and deeper I got ... .  

She was so destroyed by me ending the engagement after she moved her whole life to be with me that it was far worse than I ever realized... .   She's so far incapable of trusting again and letting go with anyone else.

It does feel good in a way but at the same time, I am suffering the same fate as I doubt I will love again... .   It feels over... . and that's not as terrible as it sounds... .   I have two kids with my ex wife... . one out of college and the other in school... .   I'm doing great in life (sorta) and not feeling like trying with anyone else again right now... .

My ex? We ended things a few days ago, so it should take a good solid week or two before she's back in bed with her ex or cycles through a male friend.

Now she would laugh in my face about this... . I have to say... . I really don't know what she will do... .

But to answer your question... .   it seems 90 days in the magic number before her love or infatuation turns to scorn, criticism and just comparing them to me... .   a man who is as 'unreal' to her as she is to me... . ouch.

[Rocknut]

It took just over 90 days for my partner to change.

We had 2 defining moments. We spent christmas day together. We went to a local park. We wallked through something called "the galaxy of lights." There were hundreds of beautiful christmas trees. We walked through the trees, holding each other, kissing, glowing with what I thought was absolute love.

Exactly 2 weeks later he told me he, "Rushed in to the relationship, needed space. I was invading his space."

12 days later I met his mother at dinner. She loved me. 6 days later he was on drugs constantly, chose to ignore me.

It happened pretty rapidly.

[maria1]

The idealisation phase in any relationship lasts anything from 3 months to a year. It's known as the honeymoon period and we ALL do it to a certain extent. It's human nature to only see the good stuff as you fall in love. Once that wears off we really get to know a person, faults and all.

I tend to be blinded by the faults once the honeymoon stage wears off because I am attached so strongly by that time, or my blinkers fall off in time and I realise that I was overtaken by a need to love that person.

I'm working on not doing that any more. I don't have BPD.

[Mightyhammers]

The idealisation phase in any relationship lasts anything from 3 months to a year. It's known as the honeymoon period and we ALL do it to a certain extent. It's human nature to only see the good stuff as you fall in love. Once that wears off we really get to know a person, faults and all.

I tend to be blinded by the faults once the honeymoon stage wears off because I am attached so strongly by that time, or my blinkers fall off in time and I realise that I was overtaken by a need to love that person.

I'm working on not doing that any more. I don't have BPD.

Yeah but there doesn’t seem to be a period after the honeymoon in the BPD’s eyes, once its over so is the relationship

[dsmoody23]

Yeah but there doesn’t seem to be a period after the honeymoon in the BPD’s eyes, once its over so is the relationship

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly.

The moment they feel as though the relationship is no longer all encompassing and perfect, they start looking for something else to make that feeling return. And they start hating you for not perpetuating it.

The moment I tried to regulate our interactions to a stable, sustainable long-term level was the moment I was accused of not loving her, not being attracted to her, not being attentive to her. But the reality was, you simply can't maintain the intensity of that initial honeymoon period indefinitely. Sooner or later, you have to re-balance your life to include all the other things that are actually important to you as well.

[maria1]

Yep- so at that point it's pretty obvious something is seriously wrong in the relationship right? But still we stay or feel awful that they leave.

So what's wrong with us we don't just say hey that was really crazy, shake ourselves down and move along?

[laelle]

For me, it wasnt really the time frame, but how I began to see a pattern that I didnt like and tried to talk to him about us changing it together.  He sent me a raging email and took off.  Some of my boundaries were being pounced all over.

It was 4 months that he went without a rage.  He ended things with me because he didnt like something I said.  I didnt agree with him.

[Vegasskydiver]

I think in my r/s with my exBPDbf the devaluization started months before I realized it because shortly after we started dating he was deployed to Iraq.  He would e-mail me daily and call every few days.  I thought things were perfect.  meanwhile in his head he was creating scenarios that I was running around with evey Tom , Dick and Harry.  Nothing could be farther rom the truth.  When he reurned from Iraq he was extremely clingy and insecure.  I did everything to show him how happy I was that he was home and a few months later everything came out.  he told me how i made him miserable in Iraq that he just "knew" that I was cheating on him and then came the insults.  it was painful beyond words because I loved this man with every piece of my entire being and he didn't even realize it.  There was nothing I  could do or say once the flood gates opened.  I had no idea what BPD was or what the next several years was going to bring.  I've been 4 months no contact and I still feel the pain.

[healingmyheart]

For me it was 6 months into our relationship.  I found out that my ex had a physical affair with a married women... .   the very person who introduced us and tried to get us together.  I confronted him... .   of course, he denied it.  I confronted him two more times til I finally admitted that I knew the truth and he finally admitted it.  But after that came the paranoia on his part and more lies, rages, etc.  It really was the beginning of the end.  In his eyes, I no longer saw him as this perfect man... .   I knew his shameful secret. 

The problem was that he continued a "friendship" with this married women.  When I told him I wasn't comfortable with that he assured me that he would stop all contact.  Well, needless to say, that didn't happen.  Found him texting her after I went to bed at midnight.  Phone records documented many midnight rendezvous sessions with her.  Sadly, the phone records also showed that he was getting emotional fixes from two other women... .   one of them was also married.  I was floored and felt so deceived. 

This married women was the one who got us together and ultimately tore us apart.  She obviously was just as addicted to him as I am. 

[LongGoneEx]

About two months into the fairly intense relationship I could tell she was getting prickly. Little things at first. She's a high functioning hermit, so it was a lot of passive aggressive acting out. At three months of F2F it became open raging and there's evidence she was probably involved with a replacement by then. It ended less than two weeks after her first big blowup (which she later denied ever happened).

[LetItBe]

It became obvious he was devaluing me at 4 1/2 months into our first go-'round.  The second time, it only took about a month.

[Billa]

four months, then the first episode of false accusations.

[daze]

I was so much in denial and fog that I'm not certain when it began.  It became obvious after about 10 months.  Threw me for a loop, that's for sure.

[patientandclear]

Two months. Crusing along blissfully, then a weekend away that was the closest I'd ever felt to another person. Then back to our city & I had a hard work weekn & got laryngitis so we couldn't talk by phone in the evenings as we had been. Four days later, he was having anxiety dreams about jumping off a waterfall & driving the wrong way up a freeway. Two days after that, we were spending some time with my 6 year old daughter. He was goofing with her & accidentally hurt her feelings. She cried & I comforted her. By the time we returned to the table where he was, something big had happened. He excused himself politely & left & cancelled plans we had for the rest of the weekend. The one hour he spoke with me in person, it was "word salad" -- incoherent jumble of his childhood hurts & deprivations, & my problematic (too indulgent) parenting style. The next morning he told me by text it needed to end because it would put me in a bad position if he was constantly threatening to leave over parenting differences.

It didn't seem that he devalued me though--I didn't get angry at him & once I said, in utter confusion, that if those were his feelings I could see why he needed to not go further down the road we'd been on, so he wasn't very defensive and dug in.  At first. But two months later, whe I asked for NC, he had this whole counterfactual story of how I had refused to talk and fix it, the experience had destroyed him, etc.  We talked about trying again, but when I asked that he do some self-scrutiny to figure out why he'd left so suddenly, he lost heart & felt he didn't want to pursue it. That was four months after when we started dating.

[heyhey]

TWOoo WEEEEEKs... .  

[sunrising]

It generally took my ex a matter of milliseconds to start devaluing me.  We lived together for the last year of our 2+ year relationship.  During the year we lived together, she had (at least some of) her things packed up and ready to leave 3 different times.  I can't tell you the cause of any of the 3 instances and, in all 3 cases, things seemed pretty well fine in the days, hours or minutes preceding the threat to leave. 

If ever anyone threatens to leave me again for a reason I absolutely don't understand or even know, they will see me emptying their sock drawer for them within minutes.  It's just not supposed to be that way.  I've ended several relationships on less-than-desirable terms, but have done so since Junior High with a semblance of a reasonable adult conversation, out of respect for the other person and myself.  I take pride in that.

[turtle]

If ever anyone threatens to leave me again for a reason I absolutely don't understand or even know, they will see me emptying their sock drawer for them within minutes.  It's just not supposed to be that way. 

Yep.  That's exactly right.  "Love" isn't soul destroying and it isn't confusing either.

Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

turtle

[BPDdaddy]

7 and 1/2 years, two kids, an enabling counselor, and a Christmas vacation later . . . I'm a monster to her now.

[Vindi]

mine was within probably 3 mos... .   i was in a complete FOG, and to this day still am at times. I always find the best in him and hopes he changes for the better. Too many forgiving times from me to him, alot of resentment... .   now who is the sick one!

[lhd981]

As soon as anything went "wrong" in her eyes, mine would immediately withdraw from the relationship. Though I figured this was just her innate perfectionism. (In fact, both of these factors were red flags)

A few months in, I remember us having a particularly nice day where we went around and ran errands together, cleaned her apartment, etc. We acted like our usually cuddly/loving selves, and I didn't doubt the sincerity one bit. We ended up having dinner with either friends or her mother that night. In hindsight, one of those things was a stress trigger for her (red flag), and I remember us talking before getting into bed that night, when she nonchalantly says, as we were talking about relationships in general, "I mean, I don't really think that we're in a relationship... .   we're really more just friends". She wasn't even particularly angry when she said this, it was so "matter-of-fact" and it felt like a punch to the gut. Then she went on and said how she just doesn't see us as a real couple, etc etc. Of course, the next day she was hugging me, kissing me, holding my hand and saying how she loves me. Yep. Huge. Red. Flag. Which I ignored.