Feeling Desperate and Lonely

[Aletheia]

Hi all, this is my first post off L1

It's a month down the line and 2 weeks since I attempted to get my ex-girlfriend to talk (via text, inviting a meeting) about what happened between us.

All I got was, "Stop, it's over. I have no hesitation repeating that. Do not contact me in any format and as I said before, please respect my decision."

It hurts so much that only days before I last saw her I was reading bedtime stories to the children, putting the buns out, setting the dishwasher before bed... .Every regular, close 'family' activity. We did not live together.

We had an argument after she asked what was wrong with me. I was a little discontent that I didn't feel I really mattered in the relationship and her actions were often distant. I started to gently, sensitively, tell her how I felt and she went off like a bomb, accusing me of a host of rubbish stuff and I now know, diverting me from my point of getting her to look at herself.

I had to leave in the end as I was so upset. I said I needed space.

She sent me 5 texts of I love you, you're my missing link, I know I have got issues, I'll get them sorted, if it wasn't for the eggshell moments we get in so well... .Etc.

I did not go running back but kept a dialogue going.

I was angry and knew the relationship was not good. I think she suspected I was going to end it (which i would not have done, preferring to talk first) and did it first.

Now she hates me.

I cannot cope with the fact that she can just write me off. Want no contact. It kills me to realise that I am perhaps the rebound from her marriage, the next guy... .and there is possibly another next guy around or on the way.

HOW CAN IT MEAN SO LITTLE TO THEM?

It hurts so much... .

[GreenMango]

It's really painful when you try to have a heart to heart and it gets twisted around and then the sudden cutoff.

You didn't do anything wrong trying to address your feelings... .know that.  It's the mature thing to do in a regular relationship.  It usually doesn't go well with someone with BPD.

Do you have some support in other areas right now?

[Aletheia]

Hi GreenMango and thanks for replying.

I have lots of friends whom I am driving mad, I'm sure. They are there for me though.

I am aware that need to look at my pain and issues to grow but it's so painful.

Even when she ended it she really quoted at me the reasons for my discontent I had brought up, rather than citing her own. That struck me, like many things, as if she didn't really have her own thoughts and was kind of mirroring my feelings.

I saw her in the park with the kids on Sunday. I stayed away and left after a while. It kills me to not walk over and start talking to her. It just feels as if our arms should be around each other.

Obviously, my feelings and hers have not been in sync at a deep level.

I feel like a fool and one who has been slandered and devalued by her.

How can I feel this and still want to be with her?

IM GOING CRAZY thinking about her just getting on with life, on her own (for a while) with the kids etc whilst I am in this pain.

[willbegood]

Even when she ended it she really quoted at me the reasons for my discontent I had brought up, rather than citing her own. That struck me, like many things, as if she didn't really have her own thoughts and was kind of mirroring my feelings.

Strange how you say something to them which you wonder if it even sank in there head. Then they turn around and use the exact same thing on you! Same thing happened to me.

It's very easy to consume ourselves thinking about what they're doing now. It's a tough deal. We opened ourselves up to someone and let them into our lives and were completely hit on.

We need to take back control of our lives  which is very difficult. Each day I'm trying to come up with something small I can do to get back on track to my normal happy life.

Hang in there. It's a bumpy road but gets better with time.

[GreenMango]

How can I feel this and still want to be with her?

Is this the first time this has happened?

[Aletheia]

Hi GreenMango

There was a girl about 10 years ago with whom I had an almost identical experience and felt the same way. Five years ago there was a woman, whom I left, who had marked narcissistic traits. Again, although I left her, once it became clear that there was no going back I fell apart. It took me a couple of years and psychotherapy to get over her.

I feel that in essence I also ended this recent relationship. Although my ex- sent the text saying she wanted out, in my mind I knew it was not going to last. Some vestige or seed of self-respect/esteem/Self was telling me what to do.

It's just that I triggered her abandonment issues by not responding as she needed and she hit eject first and that left me feeling like this.

It still really hurts. I cannot do anything or myself. I seem to lack the self-love to want to... .

[GreenMango]

Even if you know its not going to work once you are invested it still hurts.

The preemptive eject button is a little scary huh?  Before this relationship I had never really seen what rejections fears were like in real time.  It was an eye opener for sure.

I was wondering if this has happened with her before.  Was the relationship rocky?

[Aletheia]

When I met her I knew she was working her way out of an abusive marriage. I even told her that she needed to be divorced by 18 months before I would get involved. Ha! As we got to know each other over 6 months I became convinced that she was emotionally sound and truly had moved away from the marriage over time. Ha bloody ha!

As you say, understanding the abandonment fear 'eject button' is an education and it seriously upset me and focussed my mind on the fact that she was a lot more insecure than I realised.

From what I have read and come to understand, I think that rather than 'rocky' I would say the relationship was entering a phase where she was distancing, pushing/pulling me. I was beginning to notice that she was 'in some strange way' just not there for me. Despite increasing closeness and trust-building actions and events with the children and through my and occasionally our actions, I just did not see her level of investment I. The relationship with me increasing. She was just somehow distant. Except that is for increasingly frequent enticements to bed to the point where it just felt wrong. I now understand that she was probably trying to avert abandonment feelings and control me by sex. Sex itself was pornographic and abusive really. Great to start with but just felt very 'wrong' in the context of a loving relationship.

I shall post below my original, long, account of her history and my experience of her. I found out most of it in the last couple of months of the relationship.

I'm very interested in your opinion of things.

[Aletheia]

Hi GreenMango

Here is the general account of things:

When I first met her she was nearing the end of an emotionally and physically abusive marriage; something with which I think I naively assisted, as our initial friendship developed, over 6 months.

She was definitely 'vulnerable and seductive' as a type. As we got closer we could not believe how we felt. It was as if we'd finally met a partner with whom we felt relaxed and by whom we felt utterly appreciated. It was a mutual dream come true feeling. I now think that she had me, at least, totally idealised.

The relationship was to last 8 months after the initial 6 months growing friendship. During this 8 months I slowly discovered more about her family and early life. Looking at it now, it was perhaps the biggest in the universe:

HER HISTORY:

She has two brothers, one older, one younger. Her parents had an unhappy marriage and moved the family from Ireland to Australia when she was aged 12. Her mother was aged about 20 when she gave birth to my ex-.

I'm not entirely sure of timescales but her mother was/became alcoholic and over the next 8 years tried to commit suicide twice and deserted the family, after an acrimonious divorce and ran off with a neighbour, leaving the children with a controlling and often disparaging, emotionally abusive father. The youngest brother became a drug addict and alcoholic and the oldest brother is with a controlling, manipulating wife and 'stays for the children'. Both mother and brother are 'recovered' from their addictions. The father has remarried a dominating woman and has another daughter whom he often praises at the expense of my ex-girlfriend.

My ex- told me she was a naïve and well-behaved schoolgirl who was bullied.

She told me that aged 16 she was raped by a boyfriend, in the front of his car, on a date. Apart from angry brothers threatening retribution, nothing was ever done about this, in terms of informing the police etc.

Next, she describes episodes of being verbally degraded by a so-called boyfriend, as she was large-breasted. In general she has not described stable early relationships.

Next she returned to Ireland, aged 20-ish and seemed to engage in numerous relationships. Sex seemed to be an important 'validating' element in my opinion. She then had an affair with a high-profile partner in a law-firm, at which she had a modest job. She got pregnant and thought the man was going to leave his wife and marry her. Instead, he arranged to have her taken to an abortion clinic in the UK and returned to Ireland. She was then dumped and warned off.

Soon after she left Ireland and came to the UK. She met a man, the son of a wealthy company owner and took up with him. He turned out to be an alcoholic, cocaine using, pot-addicted, emotionally and physically abusive person. After 4 years and discovering that she was pregnant, she married him. The marriage lasted for another 6 years, ending officially, a couple of months ago.

In the course of the marriage there were 2 more children born. Why would you have children within such an abusive environment?

The children did seem to be very nice and well adjusted and she seemed to be a good mother, in general terms.

As we got closer and closer, I felt as if I wanted nothing more than to be with this woman and I adored the children and they me. We all shared so many wonderful, 'family' moments, although I did not live with her. She would look at me and tell me how wonderful she thought I was and how this was all she had ever wanted. We even went to dancing classes together and I truly thought she loved me as she so frequently said.

However, I began to notice several things that started to concern me:

• Having been attracted to bordline-type women in the past (this is obviously an issue in itself for me) I noticed that despite what I felt were increasingly bonding and caring moments with us and the children etc, nothing seemed to increase her level of commitment or confidence in the relationship.

• She would be hypersensitive to any small misdemeanour I may make. Small disappointments, like me being 25 minutes late to meet her somewhere, despite informing her and ringing and staying on the phone to her as I drove to the venue, would be met with fast escalating anger and what I found to be an extremely confusing, manipulative way of arguing which introduced so many variables that I never used to know what we were arguing about in the end.

• Nothing was ever her fault or even partly her fault.

• The most subtle nuance of change in mood in me would cause her mood to change. I felt there had become a constant low-grade bad atmosphere in the house, a very subtle disconnection and edginess.

• Early on in the relationship she would answer my FaceTime calls with such an idealised, child-like voice and expression that I felt uncomfortable.

• I would often find her staring at me, when on the sofa and when I'd smile and perhaps say "What?" she would just continue. It was impossible to break her gaze. This happened once when we were out dining. As we took coffee in the lounge, I had cause to make a minor complaint to the waiter and when I looked back she was fixated on me. Again, I could just not make her speak a word. I have since learned that this was likely dissociation.

• Sex was basically, pornographic, abusive and demeaning. Initially, I found myself participating and enjoying it but quickly it just didn't feel right. It was as if she was deeply invested in feeling good, the 'better' she could do it, the 'more' she could do for me. As if being abused made her feel good. Additionally, looking back, I think whenever she felt she was losing me she would don a negligé and want to go to bed. God forbid if I would say, as I once did, that I was tired. This was instantly met with, "You don't want to have sex with me do you... ." She would say I was the only guy who had ever been able to cope with her sexually. That said, she was very difficult to make climax. The fact that it took 40 minutes of fairly rough handling to achieve did not lead to a relaxed, gentle, loving feeling around sex. Sex was always directed to be 'hardcore'. She could climax with a vibrator easily. Desensitisation from years of bad/no sex with her husband and using a vibrator instead may be a reason why she found it difficult to climax without one. She claimed her ex-husband would take 3 minutes and then leave. When she said, "What about me?" He would just say, "I'll put on a DVD and you you can get your 'buzzy' out." Although I thought this was gross, I do have a certain amount of empathy for the lengthy, mechanical, difficult task he would have regularly had to help her to climax. In the context if a long-term marriage, I feel this would have needed very sensitive handling.

• She was wracked with anxiety and would have numerous aches and ailments in her neck, shoulders and abdomen and  would often rock her hips all night in bed. Her hair would fall out, although not in clumps but would block shower drains etc.

• She was obsessional about waxing body hair. Everything had to be removed. She said that from the time she saw her first pubic hair she wanted it removed. She was always asking me to use a laser hair remover on her.

• As a 5'4" woman she had gained weight in her marriage and become 14 stone (200lb) BMI 33. She had managed to lose this, to 9 stone (126lb) (and keep the weight off for 2 years, before i met her and had recently had surgery to reduce her breasts and remove excess skin from her previous obesity. This is a good thing but she did not used to eat properly and often ate only a few slices of bread all day. She would be highly motivated to run 4 miles 3 x a week.

• If I kissed her spontaneously she would go almost woozy and would continue to kiss and hold me FOR AS LONG AS I WOULD STAY. Seriously, it just didn't feel right. I experienced it as if she turned into a little girl attaching to a father figure rather than being a woman.

• I once playfully suggested, what if we one day had a baby. Well, she almost went into a trance, eyes wide and dreamy. Bearing in mind we were months into the relationship she would often be thinking of and suggesting baby names.

• As time passed, the more time we spent together the more distant I found her to be. I often tried to get her to reconnect and she would genuinely seem to try but then distance again and then later accuse me of being controlling.

Several, arguments flared over time, usually around me having an emotional need for a change and in the end we had a most trivial argument after she sensed I was a a little distant. She was right, as I was feeling upset that she was often not emotionally present for me. I said I would discuss with her why I was upset but (knowing how quickly things had erupted in the past) that we must be adult and talk it through gently and calmly.

Well, I got about 20 words out before her accusations, blame and anger erupted. Within moments I was inundated with more argument-threads and confusing comments than I could deal with.

We argued for about 40 minutes, despite me trying to keep her focussed on the one aspect of importance,  before she went quiet and put her head down. I said to her that she had told me in the past how she would do that to her abusive ex- as she knew it would wind him to oblivion but not be enough to make him hit her. At this point I told her I was going to leave and let us calm down.

As soon as I was home I received a text asking if I wanted to talk. I gently declined, explaining that we had not resolved it yet and I need time to calm down and re-group my thoughts. I then received a multitude of texts saying, "I love you", "You're my missing link", "Apart from the few egg-shell moments, we get on so well... .", "I've never met anyone like you, I can open up to you. Normally, I close down now, but I'm wearing my heart on my sleeve here... ."

Rightly or wrongly, I just found this empty. I just felt like a parent to a child and wanted this type of thinking and feeling to be combined in an adult response to my adult approaches, not thrown at me after the event.

Anyway, despite a few texts back and forth the next day to keep contact, within 30 hours of telling me "I love you" etc as above, she ended it and demanded I remove my belongings from her house.

I did not feel inclined to argue as some deep part of me wanted out. However, I did attempt to seek some closure, a week later and requested that we speak. She responded by saying that she didn't love me, insisted that I respect her decision and not to contact her ever again by any method.

How can it be possible to have trust to the point that you are reading bed-time stories to her sweet girls and boy and kissing them goodnight and looking after them, in her short absences etc and then, within hours, the same woman apparently hates you and never wants to see or hear from you again?

Even though I knew somewhere I wanted out and it wasn't healthy for me, my head is spinning and my body is in an emotional pain that would bring a gladiator to his knees.

I feel I've been massively idealised and now devalued. I've obviously gone from being Mr Wonderful to The Devil himself, in a virtual instant. I now start to see that closeness was never genuine with her. Nothing truly increased her level of intimacy with me.

[peas]

I would often find her staring at me, when on the sofa and when I'd smile and perhaps say "What?" she would just continue. It was impossible to break her gaze. ... .I have since learned that this was likely dissociation.

That gaze thing is certainly strange. My ex did it to me, too, early in the r/s. I was making dinner at his house and I look over to the living room, which was in direct sight line to the kitchen, and he was sitting on the couch staring at me as my back was turned to him while I was at the stove. I didn't know how to read his face. It looked like adoration mixed with disbelief and sadness. I smiled at him. But it did catch me off guard.

The next day is when he first told me he loved me. About five months later it would be the opposite -- leave him alone and he wants nothing to do with me.

[Emelie Emelie]

I understand the loneliness and desperation.  I felt that way for a long time.  Still do sometimes.  It's awful and frightening.  And sometimes you feel like you're absolutely losing it.  I sent a lot of dumb text messages to him.  I am almost three months out and far from "recovered" but it IS getting better overall.  (Well not today but that's a different story.)  I'd listen to people tell me it would get better (on this board) and I just couldn't see the path to it.  But it's there.  I did read the Journey from Abandonment to Healing.  It's helpful.  Take it a day at a time.  Sometimes you have to take it an hour at a time.  Sometimes a minute at a time.  But know that you really are okay.  You can deal with these painful feelings.  They are just feelings.  They won't kill us.  (Although sometimes they sure feel like they will... .but they won't.)  One day at a time.

[Aletheia]

Thank you, everyone, for your support.

I think, in all the ups and downs, my mind is finally becoming able to knock her off the pedestal upon which I have, almost unconsciously, placed her.

Again, reading first hand accounts here, from you guys I am starting to get some clarity.

I can see:

• How she is a deeply conflicted woman and a child of mind, deep inside.

• That despite her waif-like vulnerability she is in fact harbouring rage which emerges, i) through her eyes, very often, when she 'lasers' me with them, if I say something she dislikes and ii) through her inappropriate anger towards me whenever I had a need or had 'let her down'.

• That her incessant sexual overtures were actually about control and stabilising her extreme fear of abandonment. If I'm worth f**king and I'm a good f**k I'm worthy.

• I was clueless as to the almost constant, hyper-vigilant, turmoil that went on in her head. So little, I now believe, was spoken. It was all acted out.

• She was not going to intellectually make the grade for me. In fact she was a little immature in her views and I was not able to discuss much with her. I was blinded by my original feelings from the 'Vulnerable Seducer' initial phase.

• This is a big one for me: She actually wanted to get me angry and row. I am now convinced that despite me feeling she was averse to it, as her ex-husband had been violent, she was actually comfortable with however the hell it made her feel. God knows she was happy enough to blow up and get angry at me. I was SUPPOSED to get 'recycleed' up by her 'I love you', 'You're my missing link' rubbish, in order that we could resolve the row by pretending it was all ok. There's me thinking I had set her off by being so terrible and frightening her so much. What a load of cr*p. That was her pattern.

• That when I felt vulnerable, needed some adult support etc, it wasn't there in a connected, mature way. Instead, I got left feeling I was wrong and inadequate for asking for support. IT'S SUBTLE AND YOU'RE PROGRAMMED BY YOURSELF AND HER TO THINK YOU DON'T DESERVE IT.

• That anyone who can switch from trusting you to put her children to bed, read them bedtime stories and watch you with 'loving' approval as you engage and play with them, tell you they love you and then is able to shut you out, devalue and slander you... .is not right in the head. They are so paralysingly fearful of the pain of losing you that they mitigate the pain by rejecting you first.

• When I saw her in the park with her kids on Sunday and she surreptitiously glanced over etc, as you do, it was about HER and wanting to see me look at her. Aggrandisement and arrogance... .nothing more.

• She is what she has PROVEN she is and not what I hoped she would be. She is a dangerously unstable woman.

• Despite feeling she was a good mother and I still generally believe this, I now see how she almost certainly, unknowingly, draws the children in to her orbit and gains validation and the unconditional love that she needs, from their affections. I wonder how this enmeshes them and how she will cope when these 8, 6 and 4 year olds turn into rejecting teenagers.

• She is a Professional Victim with a subset of friends who have been 'trained' to enable her.

• I could go on... .

As you know, even with this increasing awareness, I still feel empty and hurt and used and unable to summon my own strength to love myself enough to motivate from within.

It scares me to think that I am stripped emotionally bare now and must rebuild/reparent myself and create a person who is able to stand alone and confident enough to create his own world rather than try to attach to others'.

Worse, it fills me with thoughts of inadequacy and anxiety that SHE is just getting on with her life whilst I am forced to go through this.

Of course... .I am on the road to freedom while she continues blindly on the road to Hell.

[goldylamont]

As you know, even with this increasing awareness, I still feel empty and hurt and used and unable to summon my own strength to love myself enough to motivate from within.

It scares me to think that I am stripped emotionally bare now and must rebuild/reparent myself and create a person who is able to stand alone and confident enough to create his own world rather than try to attach to others'.

Worse, it fills me with thoughts of inadequacy and anxiety that SHE is just getting on with her life whilst I am forced to go through this.

I think it's really important to identify the things that make us more fearful so that we can start to address them, and your last statements seem to show a great deal of self awareness and self reflection. I empathize with the anxiety and worrying. I think you should look at the inadequacy as a complete ruse--you weren't inadequate for her. Nothing could have filled that void, in fact, with my uBPDx I feel like it made her happiest during the breakup when she could slander, devalue and try to make me (or her next few boyfriends [not kidding]) feel as if we were inadequate. She'd yell it to the world, but this isn't true. So, I know it doesn't feel like this all the time, and that's OK, but just know that this is just part of her scheme during the devaluation phase. And, you have to wonder how much of the negativity she's said about her ex husband is true--how much of this was his issue rather than just her slander?

We had an argument after she asked what was wrong with me. I was a little discontent that I didn't feel I really mattered in the relationship and her actions were often distant. I started to gently, sensitively, tell her how I felt and she went off like a bomb, accusing me of a host of rubbish stuff and I now know, diverting me from my point of getting her to look at herself.

I had to leave in the end as I was so upset. I said I needed space.

She sent me 5 texts of I love you, you're my missing link, I know I have got issues, I'll get them sorted, if it wasn't for the eggshell moments we get in so well... .Etc.

I did not go running back but kept a dialogue going.

I was angry and knew the relationship was not good. I think she suspected I was going to end it (which i would not have done, preferring to talk first) and did it first.

Now she hates me.

Aletheia, is it possible that before or shortly after this argument there was another man involved? Not saying that she actually cheated physically but possibly emotionally during this time? In my situation, whenever there was distancing involved, there was another man involved. Could be someone they're phoning/skyping/texting rather than seeing, but still. I see the 'argument' as you asking fairly and reasonably to understand more about the relationship. Her reaction and subsequently working you up to the point where you had to leave angry--sounds like a tactic so that she now was free to do what she pleased (perhaps with another person). My ex would distance herself when she had some other toy to play with, and if I would, in the nicest and most respectful way try to understand what was going on, she'd try to make me feel inadequate or tell me she didn't find my insecurity attractive (total total bs and abuse). If I continued to try and understand, again, being completely nice and understanding, she'd get nasty and try and get me to react badly. This was a pattern. We know that pwBPD don't like being alone. So if they're pushing you away... who else is there to give them validation? It could also be a close plutonic woman friend. But something to think about. The hating you phase could have started before you two separated, however after finding a new victim and not needing you for emotional support any more then they can hate fully without having to depend on you (hence the "don't ever contact me again" text messages). Not sure but wanted to give this perspective.

[Aletheia]

Hi goldylamont

Everything you write is pertinent. Thank you.

It is my most honest appraisal that there was not physical unfaithfulness. She has a very close, mainly female, enmeshed, enabling cohort of friends and could have been talking to them. Her main ally is her mother, who loves with the rest of the family in Australia. I realise that makes her alone and she would say she felt alone at times when she was bringing up the family. Her relationship with her mother was like a child to a mummy though. Every night long talks and lots of reassurance and advice. Once we argued evasive I felt upset that after out very first disagreement her mother was fully appraised within hours. I'd rather hoped that as I was new to her mother we could have kept it to ourselves.

When I broached the subject she exploded with "I will not be told who I can and can't talk to. If I want to talk to my mother I shall... ."  I said I was not censoring her contacts at all, just trying to remain descreet. The dispute just died away.

Anyway, my main feeling is that she was not overtly being emotionally unfaithful, rather just starting to sense I was beginning to question her being and ways towards me. That, I think caused her to be very insecure, hence the increase in sexual, seductive activity that felt out of place to the general mood between us.

Given I'd only just been introduced to one if her 'best' supports, sorry I mean friends and she was very protective of the children, I can't imagine she would introduce or want to be seen moving straight from me to another... .

Who can really know what she was doing... .?

[GreenMango]

Aletheia

You wrote down some observations of the relationship.  And her family.  I did an investigation like that towards the end.  The flags and conflict I chose to ignore I started to wake up. 

You also mentioned what kind of relationship you want.  I think its real easy to get stuck looking at this struggle from the outside in - when the most change and healing happens when we look from the inside out.  Like when you mentioned what you needed - being able to communicate was a good example.

Sometimes we pick a person who isn't capable.  Just a huge mismatch and sometimes people have histories that are so troublesome it never really leaves them.

Do you think she had the ability to be the kind of partner you need? 

[goldylamont]

It is my most honest appraisal that there was not physical unfaithfulness. She has a very close, mainly female, enmeshed, enabling cohort of friends and could have been talking to them. Her main ally is her mother, who loves with the rest of the family in Australia.

That's interesting Aletheia, while my ex didn't have a cohort of female friends who enabled her, there was one girl freind of hers who was always coming over to our house who played this role. And towards the end of the r/s she would spend more time with this girl (and I would use the word "woman" if it were appropriate) and less time with me. I got the sense that they were teamed up against me.

My ex's mother didn't seem to be an enabler though... although hard for me to figure out what their true r/s was like. The ex actually would bring up issues she had with her mother often--saying that her mother was unsupportive, etc., however I grew to feel that her mother was caring but just didn't support when her daughter was on the wrong path, thus my ex would throw her to the curb. She (the ex) was vocal on several occasions that she felt like I was trying to be in cahoots with her mom/family against her--basically she didn't like it if anyone called her on her isht. Thanks for explaining.

[GreenMango]

Do you think you could meet her expectations?

Looking at facts - like her need to not communicate?  Expectations regarding her behavior? Etc?

[Aletheia]

goldylamont

My ex's mother is a 'recovered' alcoholic and twice tried to commit suicide when my ex- was aged between about 13 and 18. She has recently apologised to my ex- for abandoning the family. Strangely, she has not been to the UK for many years and recently seemed to avoid having to do so due to a modest ankle/foot problem. I think she is simply avoiding coming for whatever reason. Strange to spend so much time on the phone but not actually come over to see your daughter, I think.

Also, my ex- had a 'best' friend, of a whole 2-3 years. I did not like her as she was so pitifully insecure and stressed and so far from able to be comfortable with herself that she had almost died of two ruptured, duodenal ulcers this year. They would write each other the most pitifully sycophantic birthday cards etc. It was child-like. They also both had an obsession with everything 'fairytale' and 'knight in shining armour'. Ironically, my ex- was extremely jealous of her friend at the same time and would talk about her with disdain if she so much as went to the park with a different friend and her children and not my ex-.

My ex's entire cohort of friends were weak, alcoholic, in bad relationships etc. Significantly, two or three of them would 'warn' me not to upset my ex-, or make her sad etc. I used to ask them to mind their own business but I also noticed how my ex- did not intercede. She was a professional VICTIM who had a cohort of enablers well trained to enable her. I see it so clearly now, as I re-assess everything.

[lisasport]

I'm going threw same thing. Keep strong.

[Aletheia]

GreenMango

Do you think she had the ability to be the kind of partner you need?

No. I don't think she was able to be the kind of partner I needed.

Do you think you could meet her expectations?

No, I do not believe I would wish to meet her fluctuating expectations.

Looking at facts - like her need to not communicate?  Expectations regarding her behavior? Etc?

I have moments when I hate the fact that she is not with me and won't communicate with me. I truly hate it. I would not be willing to accommodate her behaviours.

I think I knew this when I set the scene for her to leave me,  suddenly. I did not play her game and she 'wanted her ball back'. However, I still feel really wanton of the relationship. I know this is my fearful inner child wanting to avoid the pain that burns within me. The pain of being abandoned, unsupported and empty, as a child.

I am realising already, as I think i touched upon once here, that wanting her is just my little self wanting to take away the pain.

I currently find it almost impossible to do anything for me. I can't ride my bike, as I get a feeling of depression and guilt if I try and do something for me.

I don't know what that means yet or how to address it. I do know if I didn't feel like that I would not care about a crazy ex-girlfriend who was emotionally abusive and very peculiar to say the least.

[Aletheia]

I'm going threw same thing. Keep strong.

Are you willing to expand upon what you are going through, or have you elsewhere?

[GreenMango]

Defies logic huh?

I currently find it almost impossible to do anything for me. I can't ride my bike, as I get a feeling of depression and guilt if I try and do something for me.

I don't know what that means yet or how to address it. I do know if I didn't feel like that I would not care about a crazy ex-girlfriend who was emotionally abusive and very peculiar to saythe least.

The peculiar part made me laugh.   .  I agree. 

Depression can be debilitating.  It sounds like if you felt better this wouldn't be hitting you as hard as it is.  Are you doing anything for the depression?   I had massive anxiety and couldn't sleep when I was going thru this.  The doctor helped me with an Rx for it.  It helped.

FYI this kind of stuff is shocking.  I don't know if anyone is completely prepared to deal with it.  Maybe we shouldn't be willing to be prepared for it. Maybe its the kind of thing that most people usually run from instead.   

[Aletheia]

Well, feel ___ now. Came home around midnight on Saturday and couldn't resist a drive by.

Two cars in the drive, side by side, curtains not drawn in the guest room, dim light on inside the house... .

It could be a girlfriend staying, of course, another mother/friend invited over for a night out and stay over. If they were still up the curtains wouldn't be drawn I guess. Am I kidding myself? Wouldn't a mother/friend have her own kids to look after? I'm just torturing myself.

Anyway, now I feel like ___ and am convinced she has another guy. Seriously, after everything, all the 'I love you', 'You're my missing link' 'We are so good together' talk... .

Can she seriously be screwing someone else less than a month later? She was so upright about my car on the drive and the neighbours' thoughts etc. 

None of it matters because IT'S OVER, I know, but it makes you feel used and worthless to think you've potentially been replaced just like that.

Part of me feels awful and part of me feels resigned and part of me feels neutral and flat.

It doesn't say much for her if she can/has gone straight on to the next guy.

What do girlfriends think in private when friends do this?

Feel crap again... .

[GreenMango]

What do girlfriends think in private when friends do this?

I have one friend that does this - shingles from one person to the next. We've been friends since junior high school and she's like a sister.  Ive learned to distance myself to keep the relationship.  I love her but she has chaotic relationships.  I would never get involved if I was a man.  And she's gorgeous.

Mostly I hope she finds what shes looking for but I know her family is getting tired of her relationship issues.  They always come home to roost.

All my other girlfriends - well we don't do things like this and generally stay away from trouble.  You are the company you keep.

Sorry you saw what you did.  The mystery can be a real killer.

What are you going to do now?

[Aletheia]

I've got no choice other than to get on with it. I largely feel it makes no difference if it was a man or a woman. It's over. It doesn't radically change my pain. In truth, if I feel I knew her at all, I think it was a female friend. I have vague memories of her mentioning a friend with a Range Rover Evoque and I can see her needing the company at her house rather than being home alone. She did not like being home alone.

I am so sick of reading and thinking. My head is a frenzy of thoughts on BPD and a constant re-appraisal of the relationship and her. I'm sick of it and desperate for it to go.

Despite it all I just don't know what to think or if I even believe she has strong BPD traits. I just don't know any more.

My former post, a long written appraisal of the relationship, obviously reveals a history which would certainly leave her enormously damaged.

So, as will always be the case, I'm left with me. When I wake in the morning and the pain hits and I carry it all day, there doesn't seem to be anything to do but sit with it.

She has opened some very very deep stuff. I can just about see that if I can grow inside, I will understand more and not feel attracted to her.

[Aletheia]

I try and remind myself of all the reasons why I wanted to end it, when I feel really low.

• The feeling that whatever I did to cement the relationship failed to deepen her commitment.

• Her almost rageful responses to the most trivial circumstances of disagreement or disappointment between us.

• Her regular dissociation and trance-like stares on the sofa at home or out in restaurants, usually when there had been an emotive moment.

• The push-pull distancing that made her emotionally present one moment/day and absent the next.

• Her use of sex to ease her abandonment fears or anxiety, which left me feeling like a human sex aid. Sex was brutal, abusive, disconnected. Intense and fun to start with but ultimately empty. Every touch, every nervous moment was sexualised.

• The fact that she never said sorry it took any responsibility for her part in an argument or action.

• The fact that she did not show appreciation and understanding of my needs.

But mainly... .

• That she can say, after a row, in which she raged, despite me trying to calm her and eventually leaving the house, 'I love you', 'You're my missing link', ... .etc and then end the relationship 30 hours later and never wanting any contact again.

[peas]

Alethia, you have a good head on your shoulders. I think your r/s assessments are right on. It's just hard right now to see and feel that because you are so emotionally damaged.

These BPD r/s's make no sense to anyone, and that makes it more difficult when seeking support from family and friends. My mother, who never met my uBPDexbf, doesn't understand how I could have gotten so attached to and why I'm not over such a poisonous person. All she sees is an alcoholic sociopath who hurt me the whole seven months we were together. That's certainly the big picture, but she wasn't there day in and day out (she lives in another state) and she isn't the one who fell in love with him.

And like you said, this girlfriend opened up a lot of your own issues that you have had to confront. That's not so bad. My ex also brought out the most primal fears and hopes in me that had lain dormant or I had repressed.

Keep up the good analysis work you are already doing in examining the r/s. Even if some questions are never answered, as you heal you may not need the answers. My boyfriend and I broke up three months ago. Every day I think a little less about what went wrong and why. It's a lot to think about and rationalizing it just wears me out. 

[goldylamont]

Anyway, now I feel like ___ and am convinced she has another guy. Seriously, after everything, all the 'I love you', 'You're my missing link' 'We are so good together' talk... .

par for course. my exBPD told me, after we were apart 8 months, that she wanted to be back with me, that she thought of me every day, that she missed the way i smelled, that she missed waking up next to me in the morning every day, that she wanted to be with me. 24 hours later she "wanted to be single". and i don't know how long it took but as she started treating me like dirt about a week or two later i suspect this is when she started seeing her next guy, and instead of just telling me this she chose to devalue and degrade me rather than admit she was pursuing another r/s. she was stringing me along, perhaps not to be mean?, but just wanted to keep me around until she could find someone else... .and she knew i wouldn't stick around while she was pursuing other guys, so she either lied or used distractions from trying to keep me from finding out. all of this is to say that, a pwBPD is capable of telling you anything, that they 'love you' and that you are so important to them, and then in no time flat be pursuing another sexual partner. this is just who they are (to us at least).

Can she seriously be screwing someone else less than a month later?

Absolutely she can. My ex started seeing another man within a month of our breakup, while we still lived together. She lied and hid things at first, and then when I found out about their r/s she would underhandedly tell me things about their r/s to hurt me--when they started having sex and how good it was, how much better a person he was than me, etc. PwBPD need someone to lean on at all times, so if at one time your ex it telling you that you are her missing link, and then the next moment she's not speaking with you, most likely she has another missing link. It's just what they tend to do.

Who knows whether when you went past the house if that was another guy over. Can't say for sure. All I can tell you is that whenever my ex (post breakup) treated me distant or devalued me, it was because she had another man... .when she was having issues or didn't have a guy, she'd flirt or go so far as tell me she still loved me. Just the way they are. Recognizing this pattern, I knew the next time she started contacting me, acting all sweet, that most likely it was just because she had broken up with yet another man and wanted to use me for a while as a bridge before finding another. And, I verified through friends that she did in fact, just end a r/s, in horrible form, when she was calling me. So, this makes it easier for me to stay NC, b/c now I know from experience that this person's r/s to me is to only use me when they feel weak and throw me away when they have a new toy.

I think it's important to accept this reality to solidify your own boundaries as far as what you will put up with. Many people here will tell you that "it doesn't matter"--but for me, it did matter. I needed to see her behaviors for what they were so that there was no doubt in my head of who she was. This has helped me to stay away.

[GreenMango]

Some people can't be alone.

It takes the special out of it when you are quickly replaced. 

It hurts but it says this person can't be alone.  And if you aren't there someone will be.  Anybody. 

Seriously who wants to be an anybody?

[goldylamont]

What do girlfriends think in private when friends do this?

well, most likely her friends will fully support her. in my case she just told (at least 2 gf that i know of) that i was cheating on her and dating someone else before we broke up. a complete and utterly fabricated lie. but she halfway believed it to be true (b/c she cray). so this justified her seeing another person at the drop of a hat and cast me as a bad guy. her girlfriends believed all of this, wholeheartedly because they were her friends. it wasn't until a full year and a half later, when both of these women, independently began to seek me out because they thought my ex had mental issues that i was able to clear this up. but my ex has other friends who'll probably believe anything she says. i can't blame them though, i believed everything she said also while we were together. during our r/s, we had tons of issues, but i never distrusted her honesty--but you know, in reality she was lying about a lot of things. i didn't find this out until afterwards though. and, it's ok to me now, i'm just happy that i have this understanding now.