Birthday came and went... Nothing from ex

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

So today was my birthday... . I heard nothing from my ex... . We have been no contact for about a month now.

I guess I am not surprised I heard nothing from her but I was hoping I would nonetheless. Not sure why I want to hear from her, maybe to know she is thinking about me... .

Her birthday is in a few days and I want to tell her happy birthday but I wonder if that would be a bad idea... . I guess I want her to know I still care about her but I'm not sure if that would feed her ego in the sense that she treated me like crap for most the relationship but hear I am still pining over her... .

Idk I miss her, and wish she missed me. She always said I was the most important person to her and I times she made me feel that way... . But most of the time she didn't. How can you forget someone who meant that much to you so easily? I'm still grieving the loss of her but its like I never existed to her... . This is rough

[Ahhhh431]

So today was my birthday... . I heard nothing from my ex... . We have been no contact for about a month now.

I guess I am not surprised I heard nothing from her but I was hoping I would nonetheless. Not sure why I want to hear from her, maybe to know she is thinking about me... .

Her birthday is in a few days and I want to tell her happy birthday but I wonder if that would be a bad idea... . I guess I want her to know I still care about her but I'm not sure if that would feed her ego in the sense that she treated me like crap for most the relationship but hear I am still pining over her... .

Idk I miss her, and wish she missed me. She always said I was the most important person to her and I times she made me feel that way... . But most of the time she didn't. How can you forget someone who meant that much to you so easily? I'm still grieving the loss of her but its like I never existed to her... . This is rough

[VeryFree]

she treated me like crap for most the relationship

Why would you want to reconnect with a person that treated you like crap?

Were you really feeling better back then?

Do you really need or deserve to be in that kind of r/s?

On these boards you can find a lot of information about BPD, but also about us (the partners). Why we were in this kind of r/s. How we survived and for some: still trying to survive.

Read through that and try to look at yourself: why would you want to be in that r/s?

[Tired68]

I totally understand where your coming from, it's been a month and no contact , my bday is coming up on the 26th and had a trip planned with her to Puerto Rico and I busted her lying to me. I have not called or emailed or texted and neither has she.  The rug was swept out from underneath me. And yes here I am wondering , does she miss me , is she thinking about me, will she text me on my bday? This is the thing I think most of us on here were still in love with our exBPD before the rug was pulled. We never seen it coming and it hit us like a semi ! That is how I feel . Do I still love her yes , omg of course , we were together 7 years and married just last year. When I look back I wonder was it all a lie? Did she ever love me? This is what we are left feeling, it's not like we can just turn that switch off . I would rather have my finger cut off then deal with this heartbreak. It is paralyzingly painful. So here we are side swiped saying what the hell just happened? And when they go no contact on us when they are the ones who messed up got caught leaves us in a state of shock! For me she was making plans for us to do stuff a week before I busted her lying! That's the hard pill I have to swallow . I wish I can just turn my heart off cuz this REALLY hurts like hell!

[stop2think]

Ahhhh431,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

It does feel terrible when they completely ignore us, on days like this. I hope you had a wonderful Bday, and hope you have a great year ahead.

My exbf called me on bday after he broke up with me - but trust me i did not feel good about it although i know how much i wanted to hear his voice, and for him to call me.

I believe it would have been better if he had not called me, as he humiliated my feelings and actions by drunk dialing me. He always called his exgf (who broke up with him and married her next bf). on her BDAYs - he told me she is the only one he kept in touch with as she was his best friend too. I am sure he still has feelings for her, a soft corner for her.

Anyways, don't let their silent actions affect you any more. It is easier said than done but do not let them rent a space in your head or heart anymore.

[Validation78]

Hi Ahhh!

Happy birthday

What you are feeling is totally understandable. We know that logically, we're better off not hearing from them, yet we still wonder, and sometimes hope, that we will. Logic and heart are not always in sync, and it hurts.

I look at it this way, not hearing from him is probably for the best, and further evidence that he views your relationship differently than you do (did). Even though it hurts to know this, accepting the reality of it all aids us in our healing.

Best Wishes,

Val78

[mango_flower]

Just because she did not reach out does not mean that she wasn't thinking of you.

It was my ex's birthday a couple of months back. She had sent me a really nasty message the week before, including the line "I don't think we should stay friends".  So I ignored the email and also did not wish her a happy birthday the following week.

The day after her birthday she emailed me saying "You didn't even wish me happy birthday!" and a sad face emoticon.  I felt awful.

Her perspective: I didn't care and probably hadn't even remembered.

My perspective: I felt sad the whole day, was so tempted to email to say happy birthday, and thought of her every 5 minutes.

Just because you think she doesn't care and probably didn't remember, doesn't mean it's not true.  It means she just doesn't want to play nice.

Just because she's being like this NOW, it does not take away the fact that AT THE TIME, she loved you and you really WERE the one for her.  I know it hurts, God knows I know... .

But you will be ok!

This is just one day, keep plugging away, you're on the right tracks! x

[Ahhhh431]

I totally understand where your coming from, it's been a month and no contact , my bday is coming up on the 26th and had a trip planned with her to Puerto Rico and I busted her lying to me. I have not called or emailed or texted and neither has she.  The rug was swept out from underneath me. And yes here I am wondering , does she miss me , is she thinking about me, will she text me on my bday? This is the thing I think most of us on here were still in love with our exBPD before the rug was pulled. We never seen it coming and it hit us like a semi ! That is how I feel . Do I still love her yes , omg of course , we were together 7 years and married just last year. When I look back I wonder was it all a lie? Did she ever love me? This is what we are left feeling, it's not like we can just turn that switch off . I would rather have my finger cut off then deal with this heartbreak. It is paralyzingly painful. So here we are side swiped saying what the hell just happened? And when they go no contact on us when they are the ones who messed up got caught leaves us in a state of shock! For me she was making plans for us to do stuff a week before I busted her lying! That's the hard pill I have to swallow . I wish I can just turn my heart off cuz this REALLY hurts like hell!

This is where I am now. I was told I was the best friend she ever had, she called me the best boyfriend she ever had... . yet she treated me like she didn't really like me in front of her friends -- she led them to believe that I liked her but she didn't like me like that... . But when she was with me it was like I was the best thing in the world -- do be honest it make me really insecure to think I wasn't good enough for her to have me be a part of her "real" life with everyone else. It was like she lived one life with me were we talked almost all day everyday but then she could continue her other life with everyone else like I wasn't apart of it. It made me feel like she was ashamed of me and made me try harder -- she told me her mom didn't think I was the one for her (her mom had never met me but knew I was 21 and she was 27) so this made me insecure and try to prove myself as well... . She told me that her friend and roommate didn't approve of us but then also said she led her to believe she didn't like me but I liked her... . How could it be both? Idk I'm just confused about what the heck it was and what happened... .

She made me feel great about myself during times and then when she treated me like crap I held into the good times. I thought if I tried hard enough maybe she was always be like the good times, and now I fear someone else will come along who she sees as good enough and will give him the good times all the time. Is this insecurity on my part or does it sound like it wasn't about me but about her disorder?

[papawapa]

the "good times" are only temporary for them. she will never find lasting happiness unless she actually gets help for herself. I know its not much, but take solace in knowing that you have a much easier road to fix yourself and to be happy in the future while she most likely never will.

[Cooper10]

First of all, HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY! I hope that despite waiting for a text message, you were able to celebrate with friends and enjoy your day.

I'll offer my own story for the sake of empathy and perspective; I hope it will help.  I know exactly how you're feeling, though unfortunately I can't take away.

My first birthday that I was with my ex was just shy of a year into our tumultuous "relationship."  We had officially broken up about three and a half months prior.  For the first two months, we maintained strict no contact, but he had broken that around month two.  He started a gratuitous text message conversation with me about two weeks before my birthday.  I participated in it, but didn't really encourage it.  Once that conversation ended, I heard nothing from him for the rest of the day or that next week. 

I am a huge birthday person and everyone who knows me (particularly my ex) knows that about me.  Somehow, despite the week or so of silence, I convinced myself that he was going to use my birthday to surprise me and fix everything.  That thought turned into a hope and the hope turned into an expectation.  I even checked my phone right at midnight on my birthday for a text from him.  Nothing.  And then nothing all the next day.  When I realized that not only was he not going to fix it, he wasn't even going to acknowledge my birthday (despite our having been talking a few weeks earlier), I completely melted down.  I didn't even realize how much importance I had placed on hearing from him.  He always has a rotation of girls coming and going, so I consoled myself (ha!) by trying to rationalize that in the short period of time since we had last spoken, he likely had already distracted himself with someone else's company and forgotten my birthday altogether.  Later, I discovered that he had wished happy birthday to our mutual friend who shares my same birthday--he had not forgotten, but had instead intentionally not wished me happy birthday.  The hurt was exposed all over again.

Fast forward one year.  In the interim, things started back up, a lot more crazy drama occurred, and I had been left in emotional hell.  At some point, I tearfully explained how hurtful it was that he didn't wish me a happy birthday, and he pretended to have no clue what I was talking about.  Finally, things ended explosively, and we had no contact for another five months.  About a month before my birthday, he resurfaced to apologize to me.  We made yet another vague attempt to work things out and that ended even worse than before, six days before my birthday.  Though he was the one to hurt me, he ended up calling me horribly hateful names and telling me to delete anything that reminded me of him and that he sincerely hoped that our paths would never cross again.  By this point, I thankfully had come to realize that my identity wasn't wrapped up in any of this and that none of it really had anything to do with me in the first place.  I told him I would honor his request, and that was that.

The night before my birthday, I told a good friend what a different place I was in from last year and how I expected nothing from him and was really looking forward to spending my day with my wonderful friends.  Yet, to my surprise, my first happy-birthday text of the day came from him.  It was like a caricature of a text message, overflowing with well-wishes and exclamation marks and emoticons--this, despite the impassioned cursing and vowing to excommunicate me from his life six days earlier.  He even referenced how he owed me a "happy birthday" from the previous year despite the fact that we weren't talking.  It was so over-the-top, I couldn't tell whether this was his way of apologizing without actually apologizing, he was mocking me and meant to be cruel, or he just truly had dissociated from our last interaction to such an extent that it was as though it never happened.  I deleted the messages without responding.

In any event, feelings are feelings and whether your ex treated you horribly or not, no one can say how you "should" feel.  You'll get to a birthday when you're not waiting to hear from her, and that will be amazing.  You just have to get there though, and I don't think there's a rule for how you do that or how long it takes.  I hope you don't have to go through much more hurt to get you there, but you very well may.  I don't think that you should wish her a happy birthday, not because it might feed her ego or really for any reason related to her--I think you need to resist for your own sake.  Right now it may be hard to do that because your head and your heart aren't aligned; you know in your head it's not a good idea, but you really really want to talk to her.  When I was in that place, I just had to robotically obey the wisdom and good advice of my friends and family and resist my impulses to reach out to him until what I wanted to do actually aligned with what I should do.  Any contact is opening a door and when that happens it's another setback to recovery.

[SockMonkey]

im going through this now. my bday came and went, and I thought he might use it as an opportunity.  he didn't.  his bday is today and I actually thought about reaching out. im not going to... . he will just say something ugly if he even responded.