Hi,
Looking back to my relationship I realize that I've been much to long in a period of trying to break away from her.
The first two and a half years I mostly looked for the problem in what I've explained here in my last post in the topic :
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=205141.0When she actually cheated on me, I was decided to get out of the relationship and we had seriously longer periods without any real contact but she also used her daughter to work on my feelings, the kid liked me a lot, so she even used her own daughter for her own goals, not really knowing what she actually did, that is what we see as manipulation. Mama misses you, I miss you, mama is feeling very bad about what she did,... . etc etc.
When I look back at my relation I do not feel any anger anymore, or even some kind of hate. The more I learned about BPD the more I understood things and could place things. Now my goal on that matter is to make people understand it better. See the warning signs, and tell them if they don't want to get help or don't keep their word in doing the therapy to the end, get out, it has no future... .
For that reason I'm writing my book, it was and is a very good therapy for myself, and after that it's chapter closed.
I don't feel any guilt, I do understand that my anger and frustrations that came out after some time must have done damage also to her, but I'm not a therapist, and I did not know what she had. The situation we were living in with her very egocentric husband did trouble my view for a very long time.
Reading that some people in a relation with a BPD, say that they tried to change people into their ideal, is something I did not do. I tried to improve her on the matter of self confidence, she had about 20 or 25 photo's in her marriage of 10 years, with me she had largely around 200 in mostly two and a half years. In some of these she was actually looking into my eyes for rather along time when they were taken. I tried to make her understand that stopping a relationship is an emotional process and even when there's a child, both parties need to keep some distance for a time to let the wounds heal. To let go. I told her how important it is to speak about feelings such as the loss of her aunt, and some of these things acually worked on the longer term, but I also realise that due to the lack of identity, she was under the influence of too many people... . Trying to please everyone in a way.
I have accepted things as they are. I may not be happy with that, because she really needs help, because she is doing serious emotional damage to her daughter, and more to her self, but that is the way it is. Even if she ever reads the book, and found out about it, I do not expect her to change. To understand. I hope that one day she does understand she has a problem and that her life can get so much better, but I don't know if that day will ever come.
Coincidence is something I do no longer believe in. Friday I was with the members of the retirement home of my mom (all in wheelchairs) on a walk when we ran into some girls playing in the front yard of their home and they came to look at us passing at their home. One girl had her name on a colorful piece of carton, the same one as my ex stephdaughter, which is not very common at all, and people made remarks about her beautifull name, bringing back some memories, for a short moment.
In the evening I attended the opening of new museum, and when entering the gate of it's garden at arrival, some pipers outside were just rehearsing a song, it was our song. They were just there 'accidently' as they were only to perform on Sunday, today. And very 'accidently' they had to play that song when I walked in. It was also the last one they tried out. Coincidence does not exist, I don't believe anymore in it. Don't know why it had to happen, but I realised it was just an echo from the past... .
Reg
