NC broken; first a text, and now a call

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

This past March, my BPD exgf very abruptly initiated NC, citing that she had met a new man and they were "serious". Though I'd been trying to get her to stop her almost constant calls and texts to me for months by that point, it still came as a shock to me; there was no closure, nothing. Just a proclamation that she had met a new man and, within a month, he had replaced me as the "love of her life".

Two days ago, she texted me to let me know she had gone through a storage unit she and I had once shared and found some things I'd missed when I moved my stuff out. In the same message, she said, "I've been thinking about you a lot." That was bad enough, but yesterday, she called me. I didn't answer, but just seeing her number on my phone was sufficiently shocking. She left a voicemail, and I can't even bring myself to listen to it; just the fact that she contacted me brought back more feelings than I feel prepared to cope with just now.

I guess I'm just looking for advice--- I would like my belongings, but I just don't feel mentally okay to deal with this. Have others had the same situation? What did you do?

[fortunes_fool]

This past March, my BPD exgf very abruptly initiated NC, citing that she had met a new man and they were "serious". Though I'd been trying to get her to stop her almost constant calls and texts to me for months by that point, it still came as a shock to me; there was no closure, nothing. Just a proclamation that she had met a new man and, within a month, he had replaced me as the "love of her life".

Two days ago, she texted me to let me know she had gone through a storage unit she and I had once shared and found some things I'd missed when I moved my stuff out. In the same message, she said, "I've been thinking about you a lot." That was bad enough, but yesterday, she called me. I didn't answer, but just seeing her number on my phone was sufficiently shocking. She left a voicemail, and I can't even bring myself to listen to it; just the fact that she contacted me brought back more feelings than I feel prepared to cope with just now.

I guess I'm just looking for advice--- I would like my belongings, but I just don't feel mentally okay to deal with this. Have others had the same situation? What did you do?

[justanotherguy25]

Do you have any mutual friends?  I would suggest getting someone else to go and pick up your things if you have to.   You could also get her to give permission to the people at the storage facility saying that it is ok for you to enter. 

Best of luck to you.

[willy45]

Forget the stuff. It is just stuff. Your health is more important. You've been living without it for all this time and it doesn't seem like you even remembered. So, if you did forget about it, keep forgetting about it. If you hadn't, start to. It is only stuff.

Mine does the same thing to me. The 'I've been thinking a lot about you'. Don't pay any attention to it either. Trust me. I've taken the bait before and it sucks.

[fortunes_fool]

I just keep foolishly thinking it's possible to gain some kind of closure. I want closure so badly, and things ended so abruptly. I feel like I need to tell her all the ways in which she hurt me... . but what would be the point? She'll never acknowledge it. Just as she did when we were together, she'll turn it around on me, and I'll be back in the exact same spot. Has anyone actually managed to gain closure from a BPD ex?

[Banshee]

This may be the worse advice you will ever receive but let me explain.

I'm one of those exes that was kinda just upped and left and he  became more and more distant until he was GONE. I mean physically , emotionally and verbally GONE. It was the saddest part of the break up. To watch someone literally disappear into the dark like that  is heart wrenching. He wouldn't talk , he wouldn't explain he had nothing left for me at all. I kept saying if he would just talk with me just once I would feel better, That was then and now I know I  most likely wouldn't have  got anything out of it but it STILL would be nice if I had that choice. He denied any communication, I had no say so.

So what I'm saying is if you want your stuff and  she is willing to accommodate that  and you have something you have to say or ask , I say go for it, because you never know when that shut down  and shut out could happen.You will ask yourself or fight with yourself for not getting or taking a chance to say your peace...

Sorry this isn't what most ppl recommend , I was kinda struggling while reading your post and remembered the times I could have met up and spoke and chose not to. I  thought I had plenty of time. I had no idea how this BPD worked and how quick they turn on you.

I wish you the best and hope everything works out,hang in there we  have all been there ... sending  hugs-2

[OutOfEgypt]

I agree with the others for the most part.  If you can have someone else contact her to get the things, then great.  Otherwise, who cares.  If you didn't even know the stuff was missing, then you won't miss not getting it back.  This is about her trying to see if she still has you on her hook.  She wants to know that she can come in and out as she pleases and you will STILL be there.  She wants to see your reaction and to see how easily she's "got" you.  

I don't really agree with Banshee, though I understand it totally.  I tried the "say your peace" thing, and it really didn't work.  It led to endless rabbit trails with her, arguing, crying, and more reason for her to think that I am mean and she's a victim.  It only made me feel WORSE after a few days, because I realized how much emotional energy was again thrown back into HER.  But I know how it goes.  We imagine this really validating moment (like in a movie where the bully is finally defeated) where we get to say everything we want, and they just look at us, stunned, realizing that everything we said was true, and we walk away with a sense of peace and closure about the whole thing.  Or maybe they finally "see" and, though you decide to part ways, you both do it with a new found sense of peace and mutual understanding about what happened.  

It never happens like that, though.  At least, not that I have ever experienced with my ex or in any situation that I've ever read about.  Saying your "peace" is essentially stepping back into the emotional vortex with her.  Nothing good ever comes out of that.  In fact, she would love nothing more than to know that you've been perseverating and ruminating about her for months.  You won't be validating you... . you'll be validating HER.  She doesn't care if you love her or hate her... . as long as you are still stuck on her somehow.  

Better to continue to detach and avoid ALL emotional involvement.  If you want to say your peace, look on Google for a few websites for anonymous letters that you will never send to the intended recipient.  You can write it up to her, and 'send' it to this webpage, anonymously, knowing she will never read it, but still be able to get it all out.  In my experience, however, it never feels like you really ever "get it all out".  After a while, it just becomes a self-feeding obsession with them to mill over all the pain and anger and hurt you have, so you reach a point where you just have to let it go.  Pour out your feelings to someone else, to God, to a therapist, or in a letter never given to her.  

But you aren't going to get that validating moment you want, not from her anyway.  You have to find that within, primarily, and from others who see things in truth.  Better to let that go.  :)etaching means letting go.  The need to get that validating moment is just another string for us to try and hold onto them, making our feelings and peace contingent upon them somehow -such as waiting for them to finally "see" what they've lost, which won't ever happen.  That is part of our problem, not the solution.  It blocks us from the solution, then end goal to our health, which is finally listening to what we feel and know and perceive and standing firmly within that, autonomously, not basing it on someone else's fragile opinion of us.

That said... . there have been a few times where my ex wife wanted to ask me why I didn't want to do something with her.  I could tell she thought it, and I almost wanted her to ask so that I could tell her something like, "I will never let you close to me ever again.  You are a seriously disturbed individual, and you are even more disturbed to even expect that I would want to have any emotional connection with you.  It shows how sick you truly are, having no real apprehension of the things you have done to me."  I imagine it feeling great, and it probably would at the moment, but it isn't worth it in my opinion.

[cosmonaut]

I just keep foolishly thinking it's possible to gain some kind of closure. I want closure so badly, and things ended so abruptly. I feel like I need to tell her all the ways in which she hurt me... . but what would be the point? She'll never acknowledge it. Just as she did when we were together, she'll turn it around on me, and I'll be back in the exact same spot. Has anyone actually managed to gain closure from a BPD ex?

I completely understand your desire for closure.  It's perfectly natural, and healthy adults are capable of doing that at the end of a relationship.  Unfortunately, it seems near universal that pwBPD are unable to do this.

For my part, I have never received any closure at all from my ex.  She broke up and then disappeared.  Just like that.  I don't expect I will ever get any closure from her.  I don't think I will ever even hear from her again, actually.  As many have said here, closure will have to come from within.  We have to provide our own closure, because our BPDexes are not capable of doing so.  I know that is not an easy task, and I am working to achieve the very same.

Hang in there, man.  I know it's a hard road.

[fortunes_fool]

I really appreciate the responses. I got my brother to agree to pick up my belongings from my ex, fortunately, so crisis averted, for now. However, when texting her to arrange pickup, I found out she's now living in the same city as me, instead of well over an hour away, as she had been for over a year. I get paranoid that she'll see me around town (I drive a yellow car, so it's not exactly hard to pick out of traffic), or that we'll randomly run into one another. I do want to see and talk to her at some point, because, as Banshee said, sometimes it's good to have just that last little communication. I see that as occurring some time in several months, though, when I feel far stronger. I managed to not say anything in my texts to her but what was needed to arrange for my brother to pick up my stuff; I didn't give in to her "I've been thinking about you a lot lately" bait. My suspicion is that she lost her job, broke up with the poor sap she reeled in and started NC because of, and moved back in with her father, who lives in the city where I do, because she said she's trying to "minimize" her belongings and doesn't have room for the things of mine she found. I know I shouldn't even have thought that far into it, but that's just another sign I don't have a handle on all this quite yet. For a moment last night, I had a vision of what would happen if I did see her now: she'd figure out some way to drag me back in, and next time I found my way out of the fog I'd be 40, not 31, and there would be some wicked divorce proceedings where she'd take everything I had left... .

Which reminds me that I HAVE come very far from the days after our break-up, when all I wanted was to call her and reconcile. I still have a box of her stuff that I can't get for another month (it's in a storage unit 100 miles from me), so I'll have another opportunity to talk to her, if I decide to at that point. I'm really doing my damnedest, though, to follow the good advice you folks have given; I already spent 3 1/2 years pandering to her every oft-abusive whim, and the last thing I need is to let myself be drowned in it again.