If I am absolutely honest, and with the benefit of a year of hindsight since my exBPDgf dumped me, and since my mothers death 2 weeks ago I now realise that my ex was very like my mother in her tendencies and even in some of her features. Scary I know but the whole oedipal thing works I think, I was trying to repair the relationship with my mother by projecting her on to my ex. I think my ex was projecting her father or mother or both on to me. Messy! and nearly ended in a successful suicide by my ex
Are you sure that was projection, CM? Projection was mine saying, in effect, that I was like her father (cheater, abandoner), yet in real it, she did those two very things.
I get what you are saying though. Mine is nothing like my mom on the surface, but share the depression, splitting and emotional dysregulation. After I realized it, resented it (I resented me,.maybe that was my projection?), I stubbornly hung on.
So despite my earlier longer response, I needed mine to be the mother I couldn't ever understand or fix. Zing!
The problem is, neither of them can be fixed. They are who they are.
On her side, she needed me to be her father. Now since she's cycled back to the younger ones (like those before me), she needs the unconditional infant love she never had as a baby...
Add what I realize now was her emotional incest, and I have a high functioning mess of a person. So tragic... .