Text book email exactly 3 months after my exBPDgf went no contact

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Well just as everyone expected around the 3 month mark of no contact i got a random email from my ex that says this

"i know im over a month late, but i wasnt sure to reply to you or not.

but anyways, thank you for wishing me a happy birthday and everything else.

hope everything has gotten better for you since everything that happened.

i just wanted you to be happy, i was just so much trouble for you.

& i understand why you blocked me on fb and everything.

be happy.

thanks for everything, take care of yourself."

Well thanks to all the love and knowledge I have got from this community it is so 100% obvious that she is recycling. I was thinking of not replying but then I thought I'm feeling pretty good i know how to handle this so i replied with... .

Appreciate it (ex's name). I can't complain things are going pretty well. Don't worry about it I forgave you a long time ago and I wish the same for you

Quite frankly the reply is more than what she probably deserves but although I am curious about what her intentions are i know she is bad for me. Has anyone else got a similar email? What do you all think?

[snappafcw]

Well just as everyone expected around the 3 month mark of no contact i got a random email from my ex that says this

"i know im over a month late, but i wasnt sure to reply to you or not.

but anyways, thank you for wishing me a happy birthday and everything else.

hope everything has gotten better for you since everything that happened.

i just wanted you to be happy, i was just so much trouble for you.

& i understand why you blocked me on fb and everything.

be happy.

thanks for everything, take care of yourself."

Well thanks to all the love and knowledge I have got from this community it is so 100% obvious that she is recycling. I was thinking of not replying but then I thought I'm feeling pretty good i know how to handle this so i replied with... .

Appreciate it (ex's name). I can't complain things are going pretty well. Don't worry about it I forgave you a long time ago and I wish the same for you

Quite frankly the reply is more than what she probably deserves but although I am curious about what her intentions are i know she is bad for me. Has anyone else got a similar email? What do you all think?

[snappafcw]

And Bang! She just replies with "I don't want you to hate me thats all"

All about her as per usual... .

[SurvivedLove]

Leave it at that.

Don't reply to her second message. Weather you hate her or not shouldn't mean anything to her, you're not together anymore and no longer a part of each others lives. She shouldn't worry a hoot how you feel about her.

It's ALL about her, as you say. "I don't want", "I need", "Me me me me meeeeee" (try to sing me me me me meeee and have a giggle at how it sounds! :D).

IF you start to reassure and soothe her, you can be sure to have her think the door is open once again for her to mind-bork you and I'm pretty certain you wouldn't want that, right?

[snappafcw]

I wont be replying i don't even want to. I guess my healing has come a long way However im just so angry that its still all about her but then I have to remember its the disorder.

[slimmiller]

Even if you were to reply and tell her to buzz off, I hate you blah blah... . It is still confirmation to her that she occupies space in your head and that is EXACTLY what she is looking for. Silence and only silence can do you any good in the situation at this point

[Murbay]

I totally agree with SurvivedLove, and not respond to the last message.

In many ways you have a little bit more closure for yourself now based on her first message. But the second one shows part of the motive behind it and that it was all about her. It wouldn't be a wise move to open that door again and now you have something to bring you more closure and keep moving forward.

I can relate to those messages because they were things my exBPDw said to me in our final month together and although not everybody is the same, my validation of those feelings actually made things worse. I opened a door that led her to believe she could then offload all of those responsibilities on to me and when I refused to accept them, things got much worse.

The comments that stood out were

"I just want you to be happy" my response "I am happy" led to "You obviously don't NEED me to make you happy, so why are you still here? You obviously don't care about how I'm feeling"

"I don't want you to hate me" my response was "I could never hate you, hate is a strong word. Besides I love you so much" led to acting out in the most extreme ways and creating extreme and random arguments in order to test that and to validate her own thinking.

So with your last message, it is better to have that as your closure and take away the positives that she thanked you for the relationship, she has wished you well and that she has some understanding. Regardless of whether she means those words or is using it to recycle, see the positives in what she said and find closure in yourself to keep moving forward now.

[snappafcw]

All good advice and you are right! I am blessed with a little closure i wish everyone was lucky enough to have the same. I wont be replying. In your own experience though if i stay no contact is there a chance she may stalk now that I won't respond to her contact. I know everyone is different I just don't know what to expect.

[SurvivedLove]

I wont be replying i don't even want to. I guess my healing has come a long way However im just so angry that its still all about her but then I have to remember its the disorder.

I can understand the anger. I too have gotten absolutely furious (fear based anger) when my ex has attempted to butt into my life using mutual friends, my friends and latest, his mothers FB.

Behavior like that from our exes is disrespectful and BOOM, we're right back in the lack of respect they showed us throughout the relationship - no wonder we get ANGRY at them!

Forgive yourself for being a normal human being who gets angry when someone is trying to mushroom you and leave it at that. You already know it's her illness speaking and you can use that for YOUR good. "It's not about me or anything I did. It's about feeding her sick ego and that isn't my job anymore".

And then laugh all the way outside into the nice, sunny warmth there .

[SurvivedLove]

All good advice and you are right! I am blessed with a little closure i wish everyone was lucky enough to have the same. I wont be replying. In your own experience though if i stay no contact is there a chance she may stalk now that I won't respond to her contact. I know everyone is different I just don't know what to expect.

Yes, there's a pretty strong chance that she'll come back to haunt you later down the road.

My ex did, likely because he needs some sort of validation that he still has me under his spell.

But I'm sticking to my own path now, I'm not gonna even take a footstep down his winding road. That one is his to walk, alone or not, not my problem. He's NOT MY problem anymore and your ex isn't yours. Keep reminding yourself that when ever she pokes or prods at you - Feeding the troll won't make it go away.

[Murbay]

As you rightly say, every pwBPD is different and they all respond in different ways.

Despite the fact my exBPDw decided to end the marriage literally overnight "Because we love each other so much" she still wanted us to be best friends, for me to tell her everything that was going on in my life, to keep validating her, to keep reminding her how perfect she is and to keep taking responsibility for her feelings. She did all of this on the premise of "who knows what will happen?, we could be Liz Taylor and Richard Burton and find ourselves back together again" I actually played along with this for the first few days because I didn't know any better, found this site and it validated what my T was trying to explain to me. She even went as far as telling me that she was getting her passport renewed so she could travel to me if I NEEDED her.

All it took was for me to send a neutral e-mail to answer a couple of questions she asked and she went full on rage. Cut me out of my children's lives, filed false allegations, tried to get the police involved although I was several thousand miles away at the time and just turned nasty.

Despite that, every single week so far without fail, she has been in contact one way or another. Either by sending requests for a game, using friends to ask questions, trying to contact my family members and when that failed, using resorting to using 7yo step-daughter because who would turn away a child? To finally sending e-mails herself, demanding answers and giving deadlines to respond. I'm lucky in the sense that she didn't tell me about the allegations, or that she NEVER wanted me to contact her again, she actually called my T and raged all of this at him. He was the one who contacted me out of concern, because he was her T initially until he figured out what he was dealing with. He cut off the contact with her to help me because he considered her very dangerous, unstable and in denial.

The last e-mail I got from her was on Saturday (she always tries to make contact on a weekend) asking for an address to post some things to me that she had found. I have remained NC and intend to keep things that way for my own health. There is always the chance of being stalked but as many others will tell you, once they have another supply, those things tend to subside. I know for a fact that my ex stalks step-daughters father on Facebook but she never sends any messages, only checks up on what he is doing. Though several months ago she did call a company she believed he was working at to see if he was. She told me she was doing it as a favour for a mutual friend. I'm certain now that he knew she was BPD because he left very quickly, told her she was broken and unlovable and went NC.

So yes, there is a chance you might be stalked or a chance she might stalk from afar. But you have your life back now and all you can keep doing is moving forward, setting up your own boundaries and living a happy, healthy life for you.

[snappafcw]

Thanks Murbay and I am so sorry for what you have been through.

This actually my second BPD relationship now the first girlfriend was possibly Bi Polar as well. I have noticed a difference between the two. The first girlfriend would rage and go crazy while the second one was passive aggressive. Now that I am advanced in my healing I can see these relationships were just as much my fault because of my own issues i hadn't faced and I don't see myself as a victim much rather a winner because I have learnt so much about myself and how to take my life back and like myself again. I just wish the same for each and everyone of you. I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed or wake up another morning because of being that lost and depressed. It does get better. At least it did for me. Thank you BPD family.

[Murbay]

Snappa, thank you though, like you, I don't view these aspects negatively and if anything I am grateful and appreciative for the opportunity it brought so we can examine ourselves.

My T said in a BPD relationship, the most important aspect is not to remember those feelings at the beginning but how you felt at the very end. To use that as your grounding and basis for a boundary for when the recycle attempts begin. I think that is sound advice for anybody that finds themselves being dragged towards a recycle. We are the ones getting healthy, they are recycling because they aren't taking ownership of themselves so the only thing that is changing is our own perspective.

So in that sense, I'm not sorry for the things that have gone on since I use them as my boundary and ever day see just how crazy things actually were and thank my ex for allowing me to see which areas of my own life I needed to address 

Like you, it isn't my first time around and I see patterns in a previous relationship that I couldn't until now. Only that time I was in a much healthier place for the relationship to dissolve before it reached a damaging state. Also, what I lacked at that point to draw me in. Again. in your case, you are on top of where you need to be and the direction you need to go in. Also, you have that closure from this relationship so as long as you remember the reasons and the craziness at the end, it will help to keep you on track for where you need to go 

[fromheeltoheal]

After months of NC my BPD ex "coincidentally" sent me an email on what would have been the anniversary of when we met, and another email on what would have been our anniversary.  I saw through the mock coincidence immediately, and it all becomes so clear when you learn about BPD; she was using emotionally charged dates to see if she was still renting any space in my head.  I may have fallen for it, or even responded neutrally, but those would have given her at least a little of what she wanted.  I agree wholeheartedly that complete silence is the only thing that would give me what I want, because I'm all about me for a change.  Dammit.

[GreenMango]

Snappa where was her concern 3 months ago?  Probably the same place most of the ex-partners of members was - nonexistent until it mattered to them.

It's one of those passing things is my bet.   She needed something emotionally that is inappropriate and went for it because the need trumped other things.

My guess it isn't a recycle attempt - yet.  Keep stringing those texts along and it could turn into one.  It was kind to wish her well on her way - you don't need to fix her feelings for her though or get caught up helping her soothe.

Keep moving forward for you and you deserve to have people in your life who care on day 1 not month 3.

[snappafcw]

I couldn't agree more. Thank you so much for your support and its all good advice for others too in the same situation. This is what stuck out to me the most.

"Where was she for you on day one"

Exactly! I was always there for her and just like most of you I always put her own needs before my own and it was always met with selfishness, a lack of gratitude, harsh worlds or abandonment. She actually has some nerve after all she put me through to make some mediocre contact at best after so many months of not knowing where she had gone. What she was doing. Who she was with (id rather not know). even in her second email she made it about her "I don't want you to hate me"

I just feel so bad for her. Someone that selfish is going to go nowhere in life. I hope she gets help for herself so she can be happy but i guess thats no longer my concern. Despite everything i dont want her to suffer but i refuse to be involved.

[GreenMango]

I feel concern and compassion for mine too.  You feel that for her.  It's okay to have that.  Mines a survivor though.  I'm guessing yours is too.  It just looks different than we'd want. 

It's the behavior that goes with having BPD. The behavior undermines relationships.  The person has to want something different enough to do things differently - until then its the same coping methods and patterns.  And she'll attract people with mutual or complimentary life skills, if they don't have those they'll leave.  I thought mine had really unreasonable fantasies and wants compared to his capabilities and didn't really know how to get what he needed. 

But I had unreasonable expectations too - I expected this person to behave in a way that he couldn't, to understand things outside of his capacity.  So it cuts both ways and took awhile to finally accept that it wasn't going to happen.

Its sad business.  The reality of the disorder isn't real optimistic.

Hang in there and take care of you.  It's important especially if you are vulnerable right now.

[snappafcw]

Just another update. I found out through a mutual friend last night that my exBPDgf Is no longer friends with her Best friend of years. apparently my ex has completely gone off the rails and they had a falling out. Surprisingly he also told me the old friend knows where she is going in life and that my ex seems very lost (classic BPD right there) He also wanted to tell me more I said its not my concern anymore I don't want it to interfere with my heeling so he just made a point of saying from what he has seen I can do a lot better.

I don't take satisfaction in that my ex is miserable. In fact it is the opposite but it is not my job to take her sorrow away from her. Hopefully she hits rock bottom so she will get the help she needs. I care very much for her but I let go with love a long time ago. i want nothing to drag me back.