we talked about all of this stuff together ... lots

[corraline]

First off... . i feel like im on here way too much but if it helps me to get it all out then i will , its also helps to keep me from breaking no contact... . anyhow

As I have mentioned a million times, my ex partner had his back ground in psyche and counselling etc .

He had all of the books on his shelf with years of his own personal therapy on top of it.

Ive had my share of therapy too.

We talked all of the time about codependency, enmeshment, engulfing, withdrawing,  abandonment, trauma bonds, core wounds, boundaries, narcissism, emotional vampires  etc etc etc... . we had lengthy discussions and how it applied to our issues too.

BPD was never mentioned though

He was also very "teachery"  since he did teach as well and I learned alot from him about all of these things.

Unfortunately on the flip side  he displayed most of the BPD characteristics to a T

He also tried to encourage me to focus on myself, not get enmeshed and take care of myself and all of the things that this site and others suggest to get well from being with such a person.

It sounds crazy I know

Sometimes I wonder if he was trying to help me in a weird way.

But his behavior was cruel at other times, lying, cheating, manipulating, abandoning, humiliating, chain yanking,  scary stuff, projecting and the list goes on

He had two very different sides to him

I thought to myself today... . if i had known about BPD and we could have had a conversation about it  would it have made a difference?

I don't know... . we had the tools and the awareness.  But we kept doing the dance and it just didnt work out.

[drxap]

My BPD exgf knew that she was BPD and I knew about it from the very start. Knowing did not help our relationship at all, but I really had to live through the nightmare to really UNDERSTAND what BPD was. She would often use her illness as a tool to guilt me into staying with her, otherwise I would have left after 1 month before all of the real abuse started.

[myself]

It sounds like you did everything but give it a name. While living it.

There's FOG, which comes from inside of us, going back to the womb some say, and even further into previous generations. There are also ways people use FOG against others, to manipulate and control.

What was it, honestly, that kept you continuing to deny what was happening?

[corraline]

thanks for sharing this point

i feel a mixture of anger and sadness cause i wondered today if he would have come out with it could i have been a healthier partner and not have been so triggered ?

and im certain he knew but didnt tell me cause he woke me up very early one morning to ask me if i could trust him and not go into fear if he told me something about himself and proceeded to say nothing and claimed later that it was something that he might find he needed to share at a later date in his therapy process

i know he wanted to tell me something difficult.  it was probably this.

so i think to myself... . if he had been diagnosed and did share this with me he would be the one in fear that i would have dumped him .

so i think ok... . if i knew and i had some peace in knowing it was a disorder and could have had better understanding of what was going on with him , could i have been able to not be so triggered by his behavior?

You are saying that it didn't matter in your relationship.

im not sure i was strong enough because of my own stuff

i couldnt do it with the knowledge and understanding i had already about the issues and things i was already living.

[corraline]

@myself

i don't know

i have to think about that for a bit

[corraline]

myself

i think im going to have to take a little longer than a bit to get to the answer to that

thank you for bringing it to my attention

its actually kinda what my therapist is noticing i do


i know when i was a child i witnessed my dad betraying my mom and i was told that i was lying and not seeing correctly.  i know darn well what i saw.   i know what i felt too when we ( my little brother, dad  and I )went to visit that same lady i saw him with another time.  I knew it was wrong. when my dad had an affair with my moms best friend,my mom left  and he went into a deep depression and I told him it was his fault for cheating he beat me up.

Betrayal and abuse and lies and cover ups were a theme in my family and generationally too.

i uncovered some of it in a family constellation workshop i did a while back.

also things are being revealed to me now from both my mom and dad.   

accepting reality came at a cost to me in my family.

maybe thats what i was afraid of and why i denied what was going on to the full extent this time

not sure...

like i said... still thinking about it for awhile

[drxap]

Corraline,

Thank you for sharing that. I wonder how common it is that victims of pwBPD have had traumatizing experiences with their families. My experiences were not as bad as yours, but nevertheless it was very painful and still affects my romantic and friendly relationships to this day.

When I was a child, I started having doubts about our religion, which I expressed to my mom one day. She verbally disowned me and I have had issues with even having a conversation with her ever since. My father always treated me with serious contempt and still displays it to some degree today. My 3 older half brothers always treated me like a nuisance and abandoned me for most of my childhood.

I needed to be accepted by someone, and a pwBPD was the perfect person to fulfill that need for acceptance with all of the initial idealization that they bring to the table.

[corraline]

Hey... .

Did you ever think when u were being idealized that it seemed a bit over the top?

I did ... . i questioned him

When i got the i love you more than any other woman ive known after only two months and he is 61 yrs old... . thats alot of love history for him anyway... i thought hmmm... . somethin's kinda dodgy about that

He said it was how he felt at that moment

Hmmmm... . still dodgy really

Lotsa i blah blah you more than any other woman stuff...

I thought wow ! Imagine being the best he's had at pretty much everything.

My feelings i admit felt pretty intense for him too but cant say almost everything topped the scales.

What was you feeling when u heard the idealization stuff

Did u trust it ?

[Lady31]

My opinion is that it really doesn't make a difference.  Maybe to some degree it helps you not take things AS personally, but we are still human and that is practically impossible.  When you are subjected to abuse, mentally you can draw the line/wall off on some level to distance yourself, but the seeds of that trauma still hit your core, no matter what you tell yourself from an analytical/logical perspective.  End result is still you being drug down, not built up.

It also still leaves you with a major problem - you will NOT have a fulfilling, balanced, healthy relationship.  Your needs are not truly met, and cannot be.  You can't change the person with your understanding or attempt at controlling your own responses.  All you do is potentially take the edge off their extremes, and even then it doesn't always help.

I knew my exh struggled with this for a couple/few years before finally following through with the divorce.  He was not officially diagnosed, but it was clear as day - perhaps even other PDs as well.

No, it would not have made a difference in the log run in my opinion.  I believe there are cases where these people can make a tremendous recovery - but it is not based in any way, shape or form on you, your knowledge, or you mastery of "handling" them based on that knowledge and understanding.

And since it is not based on you in ANY way - then you can safely conclude that you having been armed with any knowledge at an earlier date would not have been the game changer.  PERIOD.  To think otherwise is to delude yourself into thinking this disease is not what it TRULY is.  If you don't place the sole responsibility and possibility on the pwBPD, you have already deluded yourself and have lost the battle anyway - you don't actually belong IN the battle.

It's a battle you cannot fight. It's a battle you cannot win.  You are only a spectator.

[corraline]

Good point Lady31

[RecycledNoMore]

Someone here bpdfamily once told me this... .

" BPD exists to deny itself"

PwBPD, lack the ability to " look inward" because they have no sense of self.Couple that with black n white thinking,all good or all bad a pwBPD cannot see themselves as " bad"

I tried foolishly to " inform" my ex with the revalation that he had BPD,needless to say it did not go down well.

See splitting.

You cant fix this corraline.Im sorry.

[corraline]

Well i didnt think i could fix it

I thought i may have been able to b not so triggered

I also thought that if i wasnt so triggered my reactions would not have triggered him more

But mayb that comes from him saying we triggered eachother too much and my ignorance about BPD

What about those on the staying board

I have not been on there really but i have assumed they r looking for ways to try to maintain some reasonable amount of healthiness by learning about BPD

What they can do to support themselves and their partners ?

[seeking balance]

I thought i may have been able to b not so triggered

since BPD triggers can be based on real or perceived events, you cannot control if he gets triggered, you can only control your own responses. 

I also thought that if i wasnt so triggered my reactions would not have triggered him more

sure, but to be fair - dbt therapists have their own therapists because it can be so triggering.  If you were not actively in your own T and have tools of your own, this is a relationship riddled in conflict.

But mayb that comes from him saying we triggered eachother too much and my ignorance about BPD

What about those on the staying board

I have not been on there really but i have assumed they r looking for ways to try to maintain some reasonable amount of healthiness by learning about BPD

What they can do to support themselves and their partners ?

yes, this is the goal of the staying board.  Read the lessons & workshops if you want to learn more - it won't hurt you to learn more, but be mindful that posting on that board has very different guidelines.

Once the dysfunctional dance starts, it is hard to repair with relatively healthy people.  Having a person with a PD involved makes it even harder to repair. 

[Changingman]

Interesting that when your family fragments you are left to the wolves emotionally. My mother doesn't talk to me or my next sister up, refuses to accept my sisters child is hers... . point blank ( she must have got it somewhere ). She had 8 years of not talking to my other sister. Dad was forced out when I was 9-10 sister fled the house at 14, this was just normal for us kids. One brother the golden child, he used to leave feeling I'll if I got any attention from mum. Amazing to suddenly see it so clearly after my particularly crazy xuBPDgf left. Waking up is wild.

Denial and projection is all you get, they really can't stand ANY responsibility for the parallel world they live in.

Closure is for healthy human beings, closure is for both people to accept mistakes for themselves so they can heal and learn and not feel awful about themselves. In these cases closure is an abandonment issue viewed through the black hole of BPD. We have to do it ourselves, forgive yourself for what has happened, it could not have gone any other way.

Bless your heart,

Changingman

[purpleavocado]

I think some BPD folks have moments of clarity in which they realize "wow, what I'm doing to another human being is the epitome of screwed up." And then they feel guilty, and the negative feelings cause them to act out in other ways, including more cruelty.

My ex used to say things like "I wouldn't blame you for cheating on me because I don't provide what I should in a relationship" (after having a huge fight about her nonsensical suspicions of me cheating) or "I don't know how to love someone without damaging them." And it used to hurt me, to know that she KNEW what she was doing, at least at times, but I wasn't "worth" figuring out how to fix it for. But I, too, stuck around, even long after we broke up.

So, I can really understand everything you're saying.

[Madison66]

corraline,

I'm sorry you are dealing with all of the confusion coming out of a r/s with a partner with BPD.  My 3+ year r/s with my uBPD/NPD ex gf was the epitome of confusing.  Our initial couple's T didn't know how to diagnose her since her strong PD traits crossed the lines between BPD and NPD.  She's a highly educated working professional who is high functioning.  Inside, she's a mess and she goes to great lengths to disguise what the outside world sees.  Her three young kids all suffer from anxiety and other developmental issues (Autism Spectrum, OCD and non age appropriate impulse control issues).  She takes an active role in the kids' treatment and also pushed for us to do couple's T when we were together.  Behind closed doors, she would display all the PD traits at me and her kids.  In front of a T, she was the master at projection and crazy making.  I felt like a frog in a blender!  At other times, things could be wonderful.  I continued to see the first couples T we went to as my individual T.  She is the only one who I believe really saw through the act.  Her constant message to me was that my ex gf would not change and most likely get worse, so I needed to work on myself and either leave the r/s or lower my expectations.  Given the amount of emotional abuse and then eventual physical abuse, staying was not an option.

I'm out of the r/s 100 days now and I can look back on it like it was another lifetime or some weird dream sequence from a TV show.  The key for me was to fully accept that I allowed myself to participate and to endure the abuse.  There is no way for me to understand her mental illness and how it manifested itself in r/s.  The confusion of it all wore me down for probably half of the r/s and the first couple months out.  I've let it go and am working on understanding my true self.  I don't try to place blame for why the r/s was so dysfunctional other than knowing the reality that when I eliminated her from my life, the chaos and confusion went away and I could live, love, laugh and grow again.  

Definitely keep searching for answers and also know that much of it may never be explained.  The only one you can hope to figure out is yourself.  Hard to accept, but ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh it feels so good!  

[kitsch]

Hi Corraline,

If it helps any, my ex too is a therapist and similar to your story we also talked about all the factors of a relationship and behaviors like codependecy, emotional regulation and triggers, ptsd etc... . Also when breaking up she would kind of preach to me about self care. Throughout the relationship she was quite critical, much of it I think BECAUSE she had the clinical training to do therapy with others. But having a intimate relationship is a different ball of wax than providing therapy in a work enviornment and books... In many ways my ex had less insight when compared to other ex's. and pretty poor self knowledge when it came down to it.So I know if I would have brought up BPD it would have been a disaster as it's never easy to tell anyone or hear you think they have a disorder... . especially a therapist.


Hang in there! I'm typing on my phone on the bus but saw this and felt a need to reply! So much more to say!