the conflict between head and heart

[VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?"]

"It takes time for your heart to catch up to your head."

Two therapists have told me that.

I am still waiting for it to happen.

In my head I know she is poison to my soul. Yet my heart continues to override my head and has me plotting and scheming how to get her to recycle. I know without a doubt that unless she gets help and can change the same toxic garbage will eventually happen between us if she does recycle.

I have found myself attempting to engineer her breakup with my replacement. I have already managed to put a size-able dent in her trust in him. It was already weak but I know what caused her to not have trust in me and have manipulated her, using my inside knowledge. I have set a chain of events into motion that I believe will cause her to leave him, but then again I cant be certain because I know I cannot trust what she says.

I find myself holding on because I cannot get closure from her. She says she doesnt want me right now, may never want me back, that she doesnt want our old relationship back. I am using her inability to tell me that she wont come back as an excuse to not detach. 

She says she cannot forgive me for taking our children from her.  The ironic thing is that if one of us does not deserve forgiveness it is her. She put me through hell, yet I still yearn for her to return.

This is so difficult. I know in my head that I should detach and move on. My heart will not let go... .

[papawapa]

"It takes time for your heart to catch up to your head."

Two therapists have told me that.

I am still waiting for it to happen.

In my head I know she is poison to my soul. Yet my heart continues to override my head and has me plotting and scheming how to get her to recycle. I know without a doubt that unless she gets help and can change the same toxic garbage will eventually happen between us if she does recycle.

I have found myself attempting to engineer her breakup with my replacement. I have already managed to put a size-able dent in her trust in him. It was already weak but I know what caused her to not have trust in me and have manipulated her, using my inside knowledge. I have set a chain of events into motion that I believe will cause her to leave him, but then again I cant be certain because I know I cannot trust what she says.

I find myself holding on because I cannot get closure from her. She says she doesnt want me right now, may never want me back, that she doesnt want our old relationship back. I am using her inability to tell me that she wont come back as an excuse to not detach. 

She says she cannot forgive me for taking our children from her.  The ironic thing is that if one of us does not deserve forgiveness it is her. She put me through hell, yet I still yearn for her to return.

This is so difficult. I know in my head that I should detach and move on. My heart will not let go... .

[suffering_parent]

The heart is treacherous... .

[Lao Tzu]

Dear Papawapa,

     Your post brings back some memories to me.  I won't bore you with them, but suffice it to say that you will do better at winning this battle between your conscious and subconscious mind.  The problem is that, despite the power of the subconscious, it has no voice so logic has no place in changing how it views things.  For me (and I'm probably a little weird), I learned to fight the emotion it generated with counter-emotion I could cook up in my conscious mind.  So, when I felt like I just had to be with her and nothing else mattered (a very serious thought, right?), I forced myself to laugh my @ss off at the sheer stupidity of what I was saying.  Would I really walk through fire to be with someone who screwed most of the guys she ever met?  That's pretty silly.  When I'd think about how incredibly special she was I'd counter with pulling out my already prepared list of all the really rotten, low class and sometmes near illegal things she did -- that I knew of -- and yell right back at my "heart" that she really was a piece of cr@p, not someone deserving a pedestal.  Finally, when I thought of how she needed saving from her terrible situation I thought of a very funny story I read on this site.  One of the Aussies here analogized a woman falling off a boat, nearly drowning the rescuer and then swimming off to another boat (with no evidence of ever actually needing rescue).  She would tell the next 'captain' about how the previous one had shoved her overboard and then ... .(wait for it)... .SPLASH!

     Fight fire with fire, my friend.  You can't debate your subconscious verbally, but you can do it with the same non-verbal coin of the realm it uses -- emotions.

     One more thing "I find myself holding on because I cannot get closure from her" translates to a guaranteed failure for you if uncorrected. You'll NEVER get closure from her.  What do think, this is a normal girl and a normal r/s?  Unicorns will rule the Earth before that happens. You need to figure out what you really want with your life and start working to get it on your own.  Waiting for a very sick girl to fix herself enough to actually help you will be a very long wait. She actually can't fix herself, but you can get better.  Work on that at least half as hard as you've been working to mimic Machiavelli and you'll be shipshape in no time, Captain.

LT

     

[Learning_curve74]

You'll NEVER get closure from her.  What do think, this is a normal girl and a normal r/s?  Unicorns will rule the Earth before that happens.

Wow, now I'm pretty darn excited about the prospect of unicorns ruling the Earth! But if I could have my druthers, I'd choose dolphins instead. 

I feel like I did get closure from my exBPDgf. I saw that even though she gave it a shot at trying to make it work between us, she gave up so easily even though I tried my hardest. Because she doesn't believe in herself, I can only believe that we can never be together.

[Lao Tzu]

Hi Family,

     Well, there are exceptions to every rule, I suppose, but my point to Papawapa was that he shouldn't be waiting for closure from his pwBPD in order to move forward.  As a general rule people on this site and elsewhere discuss the fact that since pwBPD have a shame-based problem they have a very hard time looking back on their behavior at all and even more problem considering that they could ever have done anything wrong.  Yes, every person (including every pwBPD) is different, but there are strong patterns in the behavior of these folks suggesting that closure is extremely unlikely.

LT

[charred]

Unicorns rule! ... .uhh, sorry.

My head and heart were at odds for a long time... but getting my head to fully understand the situation and totally accept reality started changing my heart's reactions.

The pwBPD had to fill some deep need you had for you to put up with the insanity and abuse that comes with the BPD r/s. I was stressed out over my pwBPD and saw a T, who recommended mindfulness. Mindfulness, once i finally caught on to it dropped my stress level to about zero. Without the stress I was able to think more clearly. I kept most the emails my  pwBPD sent in the last few months of our r/s... .and they were nearly all nasty/mean.

Understanding that it wasn't love that kept her coming after me, but need... .and that no matter what I did it didn't make her happy, in fact nothing did... helped to start accepting that it could never work. Read up on attachment theory and found it explained her affliction (BPD) ... .but it also explained my own issues. My mother's mom died when she was 5 in childbirth with my aunt. My mother was dropped off to her grandparents who raised her till she was 13 and her dad came back remarried. Young kids (like the 2 sisters my mom raised)... are traumatizing to my mother... and I can't blame her for it, but she is terrible with little kids... and was with me. I am insecurely attached, avoidant even. Years ago was diagnosed ADHD because I was a fidgety mess... but it was due to how I was treated... with mindfulness, I can relax and don't have ADHD symptoms. What became clear was that I too have an attachment problem, I keep people at a bit of a distance to keep from getting hurt. My dad is a malignant NPD doctor... and none of my close family have had anything to do with him for over 12 yrs now, as he is such an ass. Keeping people at a distance leaves you with a  hole where close intimate relations should be, with friends and lovers. The BPD person ignored my boundaries and got close to me, all but forced it really, then ripped my heart out.

The thing that took some thought was realizing that I had issues before the pwBPD, she didn't cause them, and nothing involving her, would fix me. She took old wounds and opened them fresh and poured salt in them. The real issues were mine to deal with, and came down to connecting with people... .overcoming the fear and being vulnerable and connecting. Brene Brown's books helped me to understand it. Accepting that my exBPDgf was never going to change as she had no intention of it (and I had known her over 30 yrs... .she had changed during that time... .got much worse)... helped take the focus off of her and put it on me and my problem.

Once my blinders to reality came off (that my pwBPD was not a dream girl, but a disordered at times dangerous woman)... the acceptance of the situation left me no longer even wanting to check her FB pages. Its taken a year of NC, but my head and heart are pretty close together now... .they sure were at odds to start.

[Learning_curve74]

Well, there are exceptions to every rule, I suppose, but my point to Papawapa was that he shouldn't be waiting for closure from his pwBPD in order to move forward.  As a general rule people on this site and elsewhere discuss the fact that since pwBPD have a shame-based problem they have a very hard time looking back on their behavior at all and even more problem considering that they could ever have done anything wrong.  Yes, every person (including every pwBPD) is different, but there are strong patterns in the behavior of these folks suggesting that closure is extremely unlikely.

Hi LT, I agree 100% with everything you wrote here. One problem some of us nons have is that we believe Closure = pwBPD admitting their "wrongdoings". I believe "closure" is acknowledging and being at peace with the fact that detachment from our BPDexes is in our own best interest (and possibly theirs as well).

The thing is that being at peace with detachment is harder to arrive at than acknowledging it is the best path for us. That is the lag between "the head and the heart". We have to choose to take the first step, then the next step, and the next after that... .and after awhile the momentum will carry us. It's simple physics, the law of inertia: an object at rest tends to stay at rest; an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

She says she doesnt want me right now, may never want me back, that she doesnt want our old relationship back. I am using her inability to tell me that she wont come back as an excuse to not detach.  

papawapa, how do you reconcile your first sentence with your second sentence? You won't listen and believe what she says nor what she is doing (she is hooked up with the replacement) but instead want to believe in something that she never said (she never said she wouldn't come back)?

I'm not trying to be mean to you when you're down, but remember that denial and projection are coping strategies that are not exclusive to pwBPD. Do you feel that some of what you're feeling falls under those two strategies?

[mitchell16]

Understanding that it wasn't love that kept her coming after me, but need... .

This line really helped me. Just reading that struck home.

Break up number 4: didnt heard from her for 3 weeks. I get a late night call and her telling me how much she missed and that she was having surgery a week away. I rushed to her. We recycled. She had surgery. I took off work to take care of her. Once she got back on her feet she started an arguement and suggested we spend some time away from each other. Arguement was how come I didnt have the dish washed. There was two plates dirty. made sense afterwards she didnt have anybody else that could take care of her. her beloved friends that she put before, had a vacation planned, another friend is to old to help her up, her child is undependable, here today gone tommorrow type. I was it.

Break up Number 5: we hadnt spoke in 5 weeks, last time we spoke she was rude ( found out she had someone else in mind) got contact from her. She had bought her house, closed on it. She wanted us back together, she missed me and we should be doing house thing togther. We recycle. I used my truck to move her, help remodle it, and after its was done, the devauling set in again, I couldnt do anything right and then another break up.

Last break up last break up lasted two months. We recycled, as soon as we got back together she wnated us to take her child (23) on a  vaction which I was all for it. As soon as vaction was over about a month later she no longer needed me again. I help pay half his expenses.