My story -- hoping it might help someone

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

I'm not here asking for help, advice or sympathy.  I've read so much over the months that I was obsessed with figuring out what happened in my relationship that I've already heard it all; much of it from this site (thank you, by the way).  I often wondered if I'd ever feel better and now that I do, it feels worth sharing.

I was with my udBPDexgf for two years.  It's the standard story.  She had had a few long-term relationships, but they were either with men she never really cared about or they were 3 months.  Like clockwork, after 3 months, she'd get bored or scared and bail.  She claimed that she'd never been dumped.  She had only male friends, many of them ex-boyfriends.  She was overly open about her past in ways that were either consciously or unconsciously meant to make me feel inferior.  I'm the typical codependent rescuer.  I bought into all of it.  We thought we were soulmates from the first date.  She moved in with me after only two months.  Every three months, some disaster would happen and she'd *almost* leave me, then ultimately stay.  Any time she felt upset or threatened, there was some major problem I'd never heard about that was my fault.  When she wanted a puppy and I didn't, suddenly she was pregnant.  Of course, she wouldn't take the pregnancy test in front of me and when she saw the doctor, I wasn't allowed in the exam room and when she came back, she'd apparently had a miscarriage.  I never told her I happened to see her Google searches for "how to fake a miscarriage" on our computer.  There were so many possible lies that I could never prove and so many things she said and later contradicted that I never knew what was true.

When we first started dating, she went on and on about a couple of ex-boyfriends that I felt threatened by.  Within a day or two of me leaving her, she slept with one of them and then told me about it.  Actually, she told me she hadn't slept with anyone.  Then, she'd slept with a bunch of guys, but that one was just for me.  Then, she hadn't slept with anyone.  Then she'd just slept with that one ex and it was all my fault because I made her feel worthless.  Is this starting to sound familiar?

I finally left her one night when she accused me of cheating on her, which had absolutely no basis in reality.  When I told her I was leaving, she started cutting.  When I tried to take the knife away from her, she tried to stab me with it.  I spent 12 hours keeping knives and pills away from her.  When she finally went to bed, I grabbed a handful of clothes and left.  When I went back to move out two weeks later, she had apparently made a bunch of new friends (she had no friends while we were together) and they had all packed my stuff.  I paid the movers extra to go as fast as they could.

I won't go into too much more detail about the past because I want to talk about the present and for anyone who's just getting out, your future.  For the first few weeks, I went NC.  She blocked me on Facebook, but after I couldn't take the phonecalls and texts anymore, I blocked her number.  After a few weeks, the time came where she went to Mexico on a vacation that I had already paid for.  She took her "best friend" who was a guy; a guy she lied to me about never sleeping with.  Because I was so distraught over the idea of her being on our vacation with another guy, I unblocked her and reached out.  That was the worst thing I could have done.  Master manipulator that they all are, I got seriously depressed and even tried to get her back.

I spent a week drunk in bed.  I was upset over her, my grandmother had just died (literally while I was moving) and my ex wife refused to even look at me at the funeral.  I can't tell you what happened, but I woke up one evening after having slept for something like 36 hours and I was fixed.  Suddenly, I was the positive, optimistic, fun person I used to be.  I wish I could tell you how I did it, but it wasn't me.  It wasn't anything I did.  Maybe I finally cried all the tears I had left.  I don't know.

I went back to NC after that.  I still hear from her every week or so, but it's always when she wants to tell me how horrible of a person I am, how broke and deserving of help she is or when she needs something.  That's probably the best thing that could have happened.  It made it so much easier to remember how she really was and not the image of her that I want to remember.  That image isn't real.  It's a combination of what she projected to me and what I projected on her.  It's fantasy.  Stop mourning it.  It was never really there, no matter how much you want to believe it was.

I spent so many nights obsessing over what may or may not be wrong with her, what may or may not be wrong with me, how I could fix things with us and how I could not make the same mistakes in the future.  I won't lie; that was valuable.  It was torture, but it was still valuable to get a real understanding of what really happened, who she is and who I am.  I'm 38 years old and I'm still figuring that out.

One day, that all ended.  Well, mostly.  On some rare occasions, I still have the thought of her with some other guy and get jealous or I think about the good times and miss them.  Then, it fades.  The reality of the situation kicks in and while I'm still jealous and still longing for what we had or I thought we had, the damage she did and the complete impossibility that we could ever have a healthy relationship kicks back in.

If you're recently out of a BPD relationship, you're thinking you'll never get over it.  People will tell you that time heals all wounds, but you don't want to believe it because no-one has ever touched you, loved you and hurt you as much as the person you left or who left you.  I'm here to tell you that it will happen.  It may take more time than it did for me.  You will have scars from it.  You will feel better.  I promise.

The best advice I can give you is to learn from your mistakes so that you don't repeat them, but do your best not to dwell on them or blame yourself.  Force yourself to be positive and remember the times when you were happy before your ex.  I know you had plenty of good times before then, even if you've forgotten them.  Remember the times when you've liked yourself.  None of us are perfect.  No matter how much you blame your ex or yourself, the truth is that there is never one person who is responsible for the failures in a relationship.  Forgive the mistakes, but especially yours.  Try to learn from them and better yourself, but don't berate yourself for them.  We all make mistakes.  The only real failure is the failure to learn from them.

[MakeItBeOver]

I'm not here asking for help, advice or sympathy.  I've read so much over the months that I was obsessed with figuring out what happened in my relationship that I've already heard it all; much of it from this site (thank you, by the way).  I often wondered if I'd ever feel better and now that I do, it feels worth sharing.

I was with my udBPDexgf for two years.  It's the standard story.  She had had a few long-term relationships, but they were either with men she never really cared about or they were 3 months.  Like clockwork, after 3 months, she'd get bored or scared and bail.  She claimed that she'd never been dumped.  She had only male friends, many of them ex-boyfriends.  She was overly open about her past in ways that were either consciously or unconsciously meant to make me feel inferior.  I'm the typical codependent rescuer.  I bought into all of it.  We thought we were soulmates from the first date.  She moved in with me after only two months.  Every three months, some disaster would happen and she'd *almost* leave me, then ultimately stay.  Any time she felt upset or threatened, there was some major problem I'd never heard about that was my fault.  When she wanted a puppy and I didn't, suddenly she was pregnant.  Of course, she wouldn't take the pregnancy test in front of me and when she saw the doctor, I wasn't allowed in the exam room and when she came back, she'd apparently had a miscarriage.  I never told her I happened to see her Google searches for "how to fake a miscarriage" on our computer.  There were so many possible lies that I could never prove and so many things she said and later contradicted that I never knew what was true.

When we first started dating, she went on and on about a couple of ex-boyfriends that I felt threatened by.  Within a day or two of me leaving her, she slept with one of them and then told me about it.  Actually, she told me she hadn't slept with anyone.  Then, she'd slept with a bunch of guys, but that one was just for me.  Then, she hadn't slept with anyone.  Then she'd just slept with that one ex and it was all my fault because I made her feel worthless.  Is this starting to sound familiar?

I finally left her one night when she accused me of cheating on her, which had absolutely no basis in reality.  When I told her I was leaving, she started cutting.  When I tried to take the knife away from her, she tried to stab me with it.  I spent 12 hours keeping knives and pills away from her.  When she finally went to bed, I grabbed a handful of clothes and left.  When I went back to move out two weeks later, she had apparently made a bunch of new friends (she had no friends while we were together) and they had all packed my stuff.  I paid the movers extra to go as fast as they could.

I won't go into too much more detail about the past because I want to talk about the present and for anyone who's just getting out, your future.  For the first few weeks, I went NC.  She blocked me on Facebook, but after I couldn't take the phonecalls and texts anymore, I blocked her number.  After a few weeks, the time came where she went to Mexico on a vacation that I had already paid for.  She took her "best friend" who was a guy; a guy she lied to me about never sleeping with.  Because I was so distraught over the idea of her being on our vacation with another guy, I unblocked her and reached out.  That was the worst thing I could have done.  Master manipulator that they all are, I got seriously depressed and even tried to get her back.

I spent a week drunk in bed.  I was upset over her, my grandmother had just died (literally while I was moving) and my ex wife refused to even look at me at the funeral.  I can't tell you what happened, but I woke up one evening after having slept for something like 36 hours and I was fixed.  Suddenly, I was the positive, optimistic, fun person I used to be.  I wish I could tell you how I did it, but it wasn't me.  It wasn't anything I did.  Maybe I finally cried all the tears I had left.  I don't know.

I went back to NC after that.  I still hear from her every week or so, but it's always when she wants to tell me how horrible of a person I am, how broke and deserving of help she is or when she needs something.  That's probably the best thing that could have happened.  It made it so much easier to remember how she really was and not the image of her that I want to remember.  That image isn't real.  It's a combination of what she projected to me and what I projected on her.  It's fantasy.  Stop mourning it.  It was never really there, no matter how much you want to believe it was.

I spent so many nights obsessing over what may or may not be wrong with her, what may or may not be wrong with me, how I could fix things with us and how I could not make the same mistakes in the future.  I won't lie; that was valuable.  It was torture, but it was still valuable to get a real understanding of what really happened, who she is and who I am.  I'm 38 years old and I'm still figuring that out.

One day, that all ended.  Well, mostly.  On some rare occasions, I still have the thought of her with some other guy and get jealous or I think about the good times and miss them.  Then, it fades.  The reality of the situation kicks in and while I'm still jealous and still longing for what we had or I thought we had, the damage she did and the complete impossibility that we could ever have a healthy relationship kicks back in.

If you're recently out of a BPD relationship, you're thinking you'll never get over it.  People will tell you that time heals all wounds, but you don't want to believe it because no-one has ever touched you, loved you and hurt you as much as the person you left or who left you.  I'm here to tell you that it will happen.  It may take more time than it did for me.  You will have scars from it.  You will feel better.  I promise.

The best advice I can give you is to learn from your mistakes so that you don't repeat them, but do your best not to dwell on them or blame yourself.  Force yourself to be positive and remember the times when you were happy before your ex.  I know you had plenty of good times before then, even if you've forgotten them.  Remember the times when you've liked yourself.  None of us are perfect.  No matter how much you blame your ex or yourself, the truth is that there is never one person who is responsible for the failures in a relationship.  Forgive the mistakes, but especially yours.  Try to learn from them and better yourself, but don't berate yourself for them.  We all make mistakes.  The only real failure is the failure to learn from them.

[Consumed]

Ahhh. Thank you. as you heard before, you typed my story. Thanks. It's bizarre how in middle age, you wouldn't think the brain could be so blind-sided by another human's behavior to this extent. Sometimes I think, how could that much "Holy Crapness" park itself right under my nose and be disguised as a promising future only to flip upside down and backwards to open the big tent at the Manipulation Caravel. Really did feel like an Evil Circus. Thank you 'Make It', Feels great to always know there are people that went through the same thing that I could never explain to someone who hasn't.

[Broken Dreams]

Thank you. 

[MakeItBeOver]

I was married for 10 years to someone who blamed me for everything and I accepted that blame.  Even now, years after our divorce, she still takes no responsibility.  I had my only other long-term relationship with someone who was even more toxic.  The ex-wife was passive-aggressive and closed off.  The ex-girlfriend was irrational and unpredictable.  I blamed myself for both failures for a long time.  I left my ex-wife because I realized that it didn't matter whose fault it was; we couldn't make it work.  I left my ex-girlfriend for a similar reason.

I still struggle with it, but if there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that you can accept and try to correct your faults without blaming yourself for them.  The same is true for the other party.  You can realize their issues and separate those from who they are as a person.  That doesn't mean you should accept and live with them, but you can understand, forgive, still see the toxicity and realize you can't go back. 

Every time I read a story that sounded similar to mine, I felt a little better.  If even one person feels a little more hopeful about their future because of what I shared, I'll be happy.

[MakeItBeOver]

One last thought:

To those of you who feel tricked or fooled into staying in your dysfunctional relationship, stop pretending you're innocent.  If you stayed more than a few months, you let it happen.  Your ex wasn't evil.  He/she was handicapped.  Granted, handicapped in a way that hurts like a MFer.  My point is that you allowed it.  You let someone manipulate and abuse you.  Spend some time analyzing your part in what you may see as your victimhood.  I can say with 100% certainty that you have some work to do on yourself.  If you didn't, you wouldn't have let it happen.  You're both guilty.  You're not bad people, but you both have issues that need work.  The good news is that your issues are probably easier to work on.