Get the last word and be the better person?

[Hard Times]

Since people with BPD are often incapable of giving us proper closure, is it helpful to contact them one last time with your final parting words?  My exBPDgf broke up with me 4 months ago, painted me black, and has had me on silent treatment since.  She broke up with me over text message and I feel I never got proper closure since all she did was berate me and basically blame me for ruining her life due to a completely imagined abandonment.  In her mind I am the most despicable, awful person.  Yet, I'm wondering if I managed to contact her one last time with my final parting words for my own closure, with words of kindness, being the better un-sick person that she cannot be, what effect it would have on her?  Thoughts?   

[Want2know]

My guess is it will not give you the closure you are looking for.  Many of us thought that with one final attempt at closure with our ex's would bring some resolution, when in fact, it what it did is solidify that there is little hope for any closure that comes from them... .  it has to come from you, and if you feel contacting her one last time, in a kind way will help, then do it.  Just be prepared for a response that may anger you, or trigger you - if this happens, it would be wise to let it go, and not engage any further.

[LoveNotWar]

There's that old therapeutic trick of writing a letter to your ex but not mailing it. Pour your heart out, say what you need to say, put the letter under your pillow then get up the next morning, rip it up in tiny little pieces and let them flutter away.

My ex did apologize for hurting me and sending me to the hospital with severe injuries and the apology went something like... .  I'm so sorry but you made me do that... .  So closure from a BPD may be hard to come by.

[Hard Times]

Her last thoughts of me have been how awful of a person I am, I was curious if taking one last stand for myself and being the person I truly am, kind and respectful, rather than let her impose her "black" on me would be therapeutic?  And in some way give her that last positive thought to mull over and doubt herself.   

[Want2know]

Her last thoughts of me have been how awful of a person I am, I was curious if taking one last stand for myself and being the person I truly am, kind and respectful, rather than let her impose her "black" on me would be therapeutic?  And in some way give her that last positive thought to mull over and doubt herself.   

I do totally understand your thinking, and if it were not a disordered person, she might put some thought into it and revise her thinking.  Since she is disordered, however, most likely her thought process will not go where you want it to, and it may draw you back in during this vulnerable time of trying to detach.

You know you are not an awful person.  It was just an awful circumstance that you were in, that probably brought out behaviors in you that are not 'normal' for the person you know you are.  Getting to a place where you know you did the best you could, forgiving yourself and understanding that she is mentally ill, is about the best closure you may get.  It's a process, though, and you have to do what you feel will help.  We are here to give you advice along the way. 

[laelle]

Hard Times,  

Its a futile effort.  She will take what you say, twist it and throw it right back at you.  People with BPD can not accept their fault in much because they can not

process those feelings.  She takes her bad feelings and lays the blame at your feet.  As already mentioned, it will probably not give you the closure you are seeking

That lightbulb will never come on her.  She doesnt get it.  She cant.  She is mentally ill.

I know your hurting.  I understand because I have been there.  Give yourself a break and go do something for you instead of worrying about her.

You cant make good decision for yourself if your not in a healthy place.


 Laelle

[LetItBe]

what effect it would have on her?  Thoughts?  

I understand your need to find closure with her.  As others have stated on these boards, closure can only come from within, though.

There is no way of knowing what will go on inside her head when/if she receives a message from you.  If she has BPD, though, it will be interpreted through her disordered, BPD filter.  That filter usually means that no matter how kind we are, we are a threat and our motives cannot be trusted.

What effect will her response have on you?  Can you detach from wanting a particular outcome if you send her a message?

[LoveNotWar]

Hard Times, if you did give her that one last thought how would you communicate? Email, snail mail?

Like NonGF says, what is the outcome you are hoping for?

From my experience my exBPDh sees himself as the victim in this whole mess and anything I say or do is interpreted as ME victimizing HIM. I can't change the disordered way he thinks and I don't try because I don't want to deal with his disordered reactions.

[expos]

I wrote a letter to my exBPD-wife about 5 months after our divorce.  It was my "closure/I really did love you/goodbye" letter to her.

She never wrote back... .  and I knew she wouldn't.  She already had moved on from us so what I said didn't matter to her.  For a healthy human being? Maybe yes. But not this woman.   

Once they paint you black and have no use for you, you are basically DEAD to them.  I don't ever forsee my ex-wife coming back into my life or ever talking to me again.  It's sad we can't even be on speaking terms. 

My therapist told me that me that in order for my exBPD to understand and really grasp the meaning behind a my closure letter, it would involve them opening old wounds and repairing herself.  Unfortunately, BPD's rather would sweep it under the rug and move on instead of facing the actual problems they have. 

[Lady31]

In my opinion you should let go of the need to do this.  I felt this same way with my H.  All throughout our marriage he would blame me, this or that was my fault.  If he acted out of line, I made him do it, etc.  He couldn't stand being married to me because I was the reason his life was so miserable.  On and on.

The thing is - I was trapped in this marriage so long thinking he was in the same reality as me.  The whole time I thought he TRULY believed those things about me, and I spent all my energy and analyzing and talking to try to convince him that all these different things weren't true.  That I really did love him.  That I really did care about how hard things were for him.  That I really did respect him.  That I didn't really think of only myself.  BLAH BLAH BLAH.

What I didn't realize is that all along HE ALREADY KNEW ALL THIS!  My actions during our marriage said this to him loud and clear.  I thought he just couldn't see, so I spent all that time trying to defend myself and help him to see thinking once he saw these things, all would be wonderful.

I finally realized that HE KNEW and there was nothing more I could do because he didn't WANT to see these things and say "Oh Lady, I see that's not what you meant.  I see you do love me.  I see you weren't being selfish and ungrateful."  He KNEW, but kept playing the game keeping me focused on it being about me so he wouldn't have to admit it was HIM.

Therefore, trying YET AGAIN to get him to see that isn't really who I was or how I felt is futile.  All it does is play even more so into their game.  If they can get you needing for them to acknowledge your value then they still hold the power. 

It isn't as though you need to do yet another act of kindness to convince them of who you are.  They CHOOSE not to acknowledge it because they don't want to have to admit who THEY are.  You have to realize they don't WANT to understand you and clear things up - they WANT IT TO BE YOU THAT IS TO BLAME.  And when you still need to prove to them otherwise, emotionally that still keeps you in the same place you were in while you were with them.

If I do decide to write a closure letter to my H (which I don't know that I will even waste the time) it would be more focused on my realization of who HE is, and not defending who I am. 

[KellyO]

I have done that, more than once. It did not give me any closure, it leaded to yet one more recycling, with the same results as before.  And when I honestly look deep in to myself, that was exactly what I was after. I was like addict trying to get one last shot. I said to myself I was trying to get free and I just wanted to get him out of my head, what I really wanted was just get in touch with him and I knew my part of the play very well too. As co-dependent person, my subconsious got better of me and I rationalized it as trying to get "my side of the story heard" and "give me closure to get me free". It is better for  yourself to be honest and try to find out what you are really after.

If your ex blaims you for everything (well, don't they always?), it will not change, your ex will not understand you and how you feel, because if he/she has cluster B disorder, it is impossible for them. There is one person in their universe, and it is them. You are much less significant to them than they are to you, remember that. They can say this is not the case, they miss you and love  you (just because they are the drama-queens of this planet), when reality is that they never even think of you.

[KellyO]

What I didn't realize is that all along HE ALREADY KNEW ALL THIS!  My actions during our marriage said this to him loud and clear.  I thought he just couldn't see, so I spent all that time trying to defend myself and help him to see thinking once he saw these things, all would be wonderful.

I finally realized that HE KNEW and there was nothing more I could do because he didn't WANT to see these things and say "Oh Lady, I see that's not what you meant.  I see you do love me.  I see you weren't being selfish and ungrateful."  He KNEW, but kept playing the game keeping me focused on it being about me so he wouldn't have to admit it was HIM.

My experience exactly, thank you for putting it in words! I was like a hamster in a wheel trying to make him see I was not an awful person. If I would have been healthy person, I would have said to myself:" Why an Earth I would want to be with a person who thinks stuff like that about me?" And then I would have walked away and never looked back. But withholding and quilt-tripping made me just try harder and HE KNEW IT. I know it now too. Knowledge is such a good plase to be in 

[spaceace]

Thank you for this post. And reminder... .  exactly what you want to do, is exactly what I tried to do this past week. I wrote an email. Very thoughtful, careful in my wording, not to trigger anything negative. Wanting to have her hear me (my wife) that I take responsibility for my part and I am sorry. I told her I made mistakes. I told her I understand my words were hurtful. I told her it was done out of losing complete focus on our marriage when she left me for the 3rd time and I was angry after months of NC. I told her I was wrong for doing it. I ended all I wrote with a simple question. I want to know, do you want a divorce? Is that ultimately what has to happen between us?

My answer? She never responded... .  

It is infuriating to me. I have to let it go. Let her go. File the divorce paperwork and move on. What is the point? Her final text to me was, stop texting, calling and emailing me. OK... . really? If you want to keep this NC going, why write that? Just stay silent and let it go. You don't need to tell me to stop.

So, my thought is, writing to this person was a futile exercise that brought me no closer to understanding, to getting closure, and to feeling anything better about how this marriage came to a resounding stop on a sunny day 6 months ago.

I feel so undignified doing this. Why can't my wife respond? Why can't she see that I still love her? Why can't she talk with me?

All these whys? And I can only imagine, she is sitting there going, why can't he leave me alone.

In the end, you will do what you need to do. My thought, writing was useless for me. It may not be for you. But the aftermath of writing and not getting anything in return has only left me more angry, frustrated and totally out of sorts and I wish I didn't write a single word to her.

As a matter of fact, I just want to scream at her! What happened to you! Who are you! Why are you doing this!

So, in short... . LOL... .  writing to her didn't help me one bit, but it brought me further angst that I really don't want to feel. Just more work for me to do on myself thanks to this BPD condition... .

[lhd981]

Throughout the past 11 months of NC, I've written several letters, some hand-written and some typed. Always letters and never emails. Some were light-hearted, some were serious. Some even had cards attached to them. Do you know where they all ended up? In the trash. My trash, that is. I never mailed them out.

Mine broke up with me in a vitriolic tirade in the middle of night when she was snooping on my computer and allegedly found "evidence" that I was cheating on her. Of course, nothing of the sort had ever happened. I was beyond in love with her; other women didn't even exist in my life. But instead of attempting to have a conversation about it, she took the lowest possible road and began a slew of obscenities and vitriolic rage - not to mention her outright hitting me. The classic "shoot first and ask questions later" - except there were no questions. Even though mere hours before, we were holding each other, kissing, and exchanging I love you's, there I was, staring at an empty driveway as she drove off in the middle of the night. It was the last time I ever saw or heard from her. That was almost a year ago to the day and I'll never forget it. Many unanswered questions and zero closure. Sure, she did leave a note on my car when I went to pick it up from her house later, but I never read it. It's probably not a good idea that I do. After all, she prided herself in always getting the last word. It even said so on one of her social network pages.

Lady31 makes such an excellent point about the objectivity of your feelings and actions standing on their own, not needing the validation of your pwBPD. Their validation, after all, is subject to fleeting whims and rapidly fluctuating moods. Much like I wouldn't ask a blind person if one of my cars was polished enough to go to a car show, I certainly wouldn't expect my BPDexgf to "see the light" because I sent her a "final" clarifying letter. It would just start the cycle all over again.

Best of luck on your journey!

[tailspin]

Hard Times 

You don't need to have the last word to get closure.  All you need is a willingness to let it go.

tailspin