More Insight Into The Mind of my uBPDx (Detachment, Stage 3)

[Turkish]

For those new, since I haven't posted here about me in a while,

Then:

6 year r/s. Only recycle in Year 1. S4, D2 together. Physically separated since the beginning of Feb. R/s ended by her in early August, where two weeks later I found out she was cheating on me with a younger guy (enough to be my son, since I'm a decade older than my kids' mom) with blatant narcissistic traits, which was her pattern of men before me.

She basically fled our home, not properly planning it and leaving all sorts of her stuff with me. She was spending time with her bf and neglecting her duties and I took over the majority of the child care for many months while she all but threw her r/s in my face, lying to me the whole time that she made a "mistake" back in Aug, but they were just friends now. It wasn't a month after she moved out that she was celebrating her new Luv all over FB. Even posted a picture of him with my kids (though she dialed that back when we started having behavior problems with them all of a sudden). I blocked her back in Nov, but am still alerted now and then to things that were concerning. I've put up even more walls and told people who watch to not tell me anything unless they see some type of danger having to do with our children.

Now:

Out of the blue the other day, she emailed me asking for a box she left in the closet. I said, no problem, I'd bring it to her mom's house. I pulled it out yesterday, and some stuff fell out (no, seriously), so I took that opportunity to glance through it. One notebook had something to do with the kids, so being common interest, I looked at it. Took one paper that had some of my personal info on it. I keep their birth certificates in my safe (and she agreed that they were more secure with me), so with me it stays.

I found another of her journals. Previously, in the months she stayed with me, she had been writing in journals she left lying around our house. Nothing hidden. I was monitoring what she was writing as she did it. When she left and took most of her stuff, she left them both there, one in a very obvious place. It was weeks before she even asked for anything from my house, and I just slipped them back in with her other stuff she rudely left with me.

The new journal I found was actually one of her old ones, with entries earlier in the year I met her. Overall, in 7 years, it seems like she hasn't matured a bit on an emotional level. I skimmed it a bit. One thing that was interesting was the change in handwriting styles. It  was almost like she was a different person sometimes. Only one entry of a few dozen that was in cursive, oddly to me. The boyfriend who cheated and dumped her, whom she was still desperately in love with even 2-3 years into our r/s (until 4, basically) she idealized as her husband. This was when they were NC. The last two entries mentioned me by name, on endless page-long entries being thankful for a whole list of things. Even when we were just friends, she referred to her then NC boyfriend (who was with someone else) as her "husband <name>" This ties in with her idealization of me, because she later told me that when she saw me during a group activity, she said to herself, "That is the guy I am going to marry." There was only perhaps a 1 month spread between these two idealizations, if even that. The entries weren't dated, I am just estimating.

she was also thankful for her "ideal weight" which was an arbitrary 100 lbs. This makes sense since she was anemic when I met her, having gone vegetarian in the wrong way. Body and self image. If she were more perfect, he wouldn't have left her. Fast forward to this year, she was obsessed again with that arbitrary number, and bemoaning that she had just a little love handle, left over from D2. I never, ever, commented negatively on her appearance, but her new love object attachment is a young jock, so this makes sense. She can't change her inside much, so she changes her outside.

I also saw entries about the likely NPD she broke up with 8 months before we met, when I found her in Hermit-Waif mode. she ended up getting a RO on him, and he ended up in jail a year after they broke up on some unrelated matter. Bragged how he "got over" on this girl (she heard second hand in some strange coincidence, which I now may or may not believe the circumstances how word got back). I thought that she was never that into this guy, but just felt sorry for him, and felt utterly worthless so she jumped in with the first guy who came along. The new entries put it together more. He was a recovering addict, and she felt she was "rescuing" him. She did, however, fall for him for a little while. She then bemoaned the fact that why did she fall for these types of guys, and that why didn't she feel she was worthy enough of a guy who was doing so much better in life? She also had a chart comparing what she liked about both guys. (This is like the "Things I like about Turkish/things I don't like about Turkish" chart she wrote in the last journal she left on an empty shelf when she moved out. Objectification. Not seeing me as a person, but a collection of traits.)

Then enter Turkish. Typical BPD r/s followed until she abandoned me because of Transference, associated me with the pain of her father. She flat out told me this in a way near the end. "It felt just like my Father!"

Now she's gone back to the same pattern as before and I am sad. It's not really FOG, but sympathy, perhaps pity, though I don't project that to her. With our LC and co-parenting, I am nice as pie. Besides, there are some legal issues regarding the kids that are still hanging.

What this all made me realize is that the disorder is so much larger than me, or us. And fighting it is mostly a losing battle. Even if I had engaged, she still felt these feelings so strongly, that lack of Self and sense of shame, that what happened may have just happened down the road, even if I had made it here in time to use the Tools. Her feelings were always lurking, awaiting a trigger. I did trigger her in the end a bit, but her father's uncovered affair last year triggered her increasingly juvenile acting out (something like "teen mom". I wish we had discussed it in our few lucid conversations we had months ago. Now, just accept her for what she is, even more disordered than I had thought. This is even more radical acceptance for me, and one of the last stages of my detachment.

My anger is fading, though not gone. I focus here, focus on me, work, our children, and protecting them. I sense they are attached to me more. No surprise, though I am very cognizant of not alienating them against her. I am trying to make her as small in my life as possible, both outside, and also in my mind and heart. Thanks for listening.

Turkish

[Narellan]

"Her feelings were always lurking, awaiting a trigger."

We know these things from researching the disorder, but when I read your post Turkish this just hit me like a lightbulb moment. I think I've previously just skimmed over this before, the way you worded it makes a lot of sense.

A few things stick firmly in my mind from when I first found this community. One of the first things someone said to me in my despair (about what the hell just happened) was

" it doesn't matter how good you are to him, he will still turn on you" BPD in a nutshell. But it comforted me and made me stop ruminating about what I did to make him leave.

Thankyou for posting your story Turkish. It's inspiring to me to see how far you've come. 

[Turkish]

"Her feelings were always lurking, awaiting a trigger."

We know these things from researching the disorder, but when I read your post Turkish this just hit me like a lightbulb moment. I think I've previously just skimmed over this before, the way you worded it makes a lot of sense.

A few things stick firmly in my mind from when I first found this community. One of the first things someone said to me in my despair (about what the hell just happened) was

" it doesn't matter how good you are to him, he will still turn on you" BPD in a nutshell. But it comforted me and made me stop ruminating about what I did to make him leave.

Thankyou for posting your story Turkish. It's inspiring to me to see how far you've come. 

Thank you Narellen (I'll accept the compliment... . though I will admit a little nervousness reading it... . will that ever get old? ).

She wrote, "Everybody cheats. Everybody abandons. Why do I think like that?" In addition, she told me about the cheating, "maybe this had to happen." I first was angry, at her taking no accountability. My T helped me later about a lot of it, "I sense your anger stems in large part from you expecting her to be who she is not. Why not just accept how and who she is?"

It took me until just recently to figure this out, and I can't believe it slipped past me (or I ran past it more likely), is that BPD is largely an emotional regulation disorder. I was focused so much on her lack of control of her despair/sadness (depression), and anger, that I didn't step back and realize that love too is an emotion. And she can't really control that. So now, as emotionally painful, and as intellectually frustrating as it is, I accept that she can't control her love. Desperately seeking out to attach to a Caretaker, or falling for the rancid honey dripping from the mouths of narcissists. Her core shame needs covering. We give that cover. Short of outright abuse, however, I am not responsible to keep her loving me. That's a heavily loaded r/s. If she loves me, great. If not, she's a free agent to go project that elsewhere. I don't control her, and I shouldn't be put into that position in the first place, though subconsciously as a Rescuer/Caretaker I did for so many years, which was more about me than her.

[Narellan]

Yes I see what you're saying. When I reflect on my r/s with my exBPD I look more toward the fear in him. I don't doubt that he adored/ loved me at that moment in time. But he was overcome with fear/ guilt a lot of times.

A mutual friend who knew my ex BPD said recently " he was always a scared little weird guy",

This was as a teenager. It certainly sums him up now, but I was offended and sprang to his defence as I was still in heavy fog. And love. It rings truer for me now.

Love, fear, intimacy, shame, guilt, hate, all disregulated in their minds. I can't even imagine how difficult it would be to live with this.

I like to think my exBPD started to fear his love emotions for me, and flight mechanism kicked in and he ran. It seems a common feeling of BPD sufferers to run when they are overwhelmed.

When they don't sense the danger anymore and the flight mechanism switches off they may attempt a recycle. I just pictured a rabbit running down their hole, then tentatively peeping back out but still on guard. My ex BPD took me rabbit shooting on a date. Just remembered that. He needed me to carry the dead rabbits. Lol