Borderline Collapse/Exhaustion?

[UmbrellaBoy]

One thing I've been reflecting on that was so frustrating in my BPD ex, but which also made the interactions always feel "so close" and thus enticing, like happiness was just over the hill, was that it felt like he was really trying for a long time to get things together. In spite of ambivalence and push/pull it felt like he knew his sense of self and desire was fragmented but was trying to hard to keep it all together, to put it together and move forward. But when he finally dumped me the most recent time, it felt almost like... .he had given up. Like he was just so exhausted from trying to assemble the fragments and keep a vision of personal unity and coherence... .that he, for now at least, just surrendered to the emptiness, to the path of least resistance, to the "default" non-choice of not being with me (among other things), of not making commitments, of no longer attempting to impose order on his inner chaos. In this way, I am very sad for him, and wonder if after a period of "rest" he'll try to start assembling the pieces again. But in another way I am angry, because his collapse had victims, and because he had the audacity to portray this "giving up" as if it were some sort of sign of taking up agency and responsibility and "making a decisive choice" when really, obviously, it was the opposite of any sort of decisiveness, but rather more like embracing his inner anarchy.

[toomanytears]

Yes Umbrellaboy, my experience is similar. My BPDh became more and more distant over the last few months and in retrospect he was disengaging. A new job with huge commitments meant he just could not cope with family life anymore and wanted to walk his own path un-encumbered with commitments that were too demanding. Anything outside work he finds hard to cope with. Bank statements, tax men, all these mundane pressures of everyday existence that other people take in their stride he finds very very hard. I think I just became part of the whole package of white noise that was getting in the way of his wanting to do his own thing. I've been a rescuer but also a persecutor, demanding he takes on these essential but tiresome jobs. He's left but hasn't fully detached. Meanwhile I'm waiting in limbo in the wings. I hope that therapy, which I'm starting soon, will help me find myself instead of the person I tried to be to appease him. That person in the end couldn't take it anymore and flipped. But I now I'm in a worse place without him than I ever was with him. I guess that's the drug of BPD.