Being the other guy in a failing long-distance BPD relationship

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

Hello all. I've been reading a lot of threads here and I'm happy to see that it isn't just me going through all of this. I'm currently in no contact mode with this girl. It's been eight days so far, and I think I've been using the time productively (mainly because I think I realized during my attempts to reconcile with her that the end was inevitable), but I'd be lying if I still didn't have some questions about why things ended like they did, and after researching BPD, I've come to the conclusion that she falls under this category or at the very least, has some BPD tendencies. This will be long, but I'll try my best to give a timeline from my perspective.

So here goes:

I've actually known this girl off and on for about 3 years in total. We first met on a dating website and found that we had a lot in common. She and I usually couldn't maintain contact due to a lot of issues going on in our lives. The first time we talked for instance, we talked a lot through e-mail. Suddenly at one point, she just completely disappeared. Three months later, she popped up again out of the blue wanting to resume things again. In retrospect, this was the first warning sign. It turns out that she had a boyfriend, as she mentioned to me when we picked things up again that she didn't view him as being "responsible enough" for her. I forgave her since I figured with her being single and with her at least having the honesty to admit that she was at fault here, we could start anew. We talked for a month or two again, and things were cool, but out of the blue, she gave me the silent treatment for absolutely no reason. I did my best to try and talk with her without being overbearing, but it got to a point where I just told her that I would give her space, since it seemed like she needed it. I left her alone for three months, and I decided to try and get in contact with her again. This was the second warning sign.

It turns out that she had been going through some serious depression at the time, and shut everyone out of her life intentionally. She apologized to me profusely, and I mentioned to her that I understood her plight, but that she needed to realize that I wanted to be there to help her through whatever she was going through. She apologized again and mentioned to me that she wanted to be the best friend she possibly could to me. I took her back again. I sent her this cool gift in the mail to lift up her spirits a bit, and she was extremely grateful for it and said that no one had treated her as well as I did, etc. Things were cool again and we talked for a good four months. During that time, life sort of hit me hard as well and I fell off the map completely. I'll admit, since I didn't view things as being "serious" then, I had told her that I didn't want to meet in person just yet while I was going through some issues, despite her insisting that she wanted to. I also afraid that I was falling too hard for this girl; in retrospect, that was 100% accurate. She contacted me six months later saying that she missed me. I messaged her back under a different e-mail to let her know that I was OK, but she didn't recognize it was me for whatever reason (whether she knew and just figured she would get back to me later, I don't know). Regardless, we didn't speak for an entire year.

During that time, she had gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend. At the time, I didn't know this; I messaged her again and she seemed happy to talk to me again. Things sort of rekindled quite quickly. We were talking again and she seemed really into me. I was there for her in more ways than one during a time when she was going through a lot. She was being harassed at work (she never went into full details about this), didn't have much money to keep paying for her rent, and she was being berated by her boyfriend at the time. She kept on telling me how much she valued our friendship and how much I took her stress away, etc. and how she wanted to repay me for everything I did for her. I told her that I really did care for her and I wanted to be there for her. At this point, I had fallen for her completely.

The conversations we had that followed were pretty awesome (from my POV) and we always intended on meeting up soon after she was done with her nursing classes/clinicals/licensing test. So we kept on talking it out to keep things going until then. I've always prided myself as being someone more observant than most, and I started noticing some inconsistencies pop up at times. I'll list a few of them here, because these were when the warning signs REALLY started flaring up:

- She started mentioning a "friend" a lot. It wasn't just the typical "my friend and I" type of talk. It seemed like she wanted to say "my boyfriend and I" but couldn't for whatever reason. The reason was simple: she had gotten back with her off and on boyfriend behind my back. I always felt that these vague mentions were her way of testing me to see how "oblivious" I was and to see just how much control she could have over me emotionally. I picked up on this pretty fast when she first mentioned "the friend" to me, but I stuck through it with the vain hope that she'd see that I was the better guy for her.

- She never mentioned what happened to her following her quitting her job and her housing situation. I always assumed that she had her father help her out with the rent, or she moved in with a girl friend of hers. In actuality, she had moved in with her boyfriend. She vaguely mentioned to me at one point later on down the line that she had to "leave" where she was staying at, and I have to assume she had some kind of issue with her boyfriend again. She never mentioned having to "leave" again after that message, and I logically assumed that she had decided to stick with her boyfriend.

- She increasingly became more and more aloof. Our conversations were still great, but she seemed less inclined to talk to me about things that we were able to talk about before. Instead of being the happy girl I talked to, she'd complain about things more and more (not about us, but she'd look at things with a mean perspective regarding other people).

But yeah, it became very tough over time to stay in contact with her. She would text or message me back at the weirdest times or outright ignore anything I would send to her to initiate a conversation. Our conversations got to a point where it would be on her terms only; nothing more, nothing less. I found this weird, but I rolled with it just so that I would still have a chance to talk to her. Sometimes it would take her days or a week to respond to anything I sent her, and she acted like it was no big deal at all. I never expect anyone to reply back to me immediately, but the fact that it would take her as long as it did to get back to me made me realize that I was slowly but surely becoming less of a priority to her. I think she viewed it easy for her to "control" me. All of the compliments she gave me stopped being all that frequent and I found myself having to compliment her more and more to maintain her attention. Since I had fallen for her, I ended up trying harder to keep her interest in me.

All of this came to a head in late July/early August. I finally couldn't keep up the facade any more, as it was conflicting with my feelings. By this point she was working her new job and was getting even more distant. I had to tell her that I knew about the boyfriend. So I confronted her about it, and that was when the silent treatment began. I had mentioned that I didn't mind the boyfriend, and I would like to stay friends with her, but I didn't appreciate that she had kept it from me this entire time. I gave her a week before trying to initiate contact again, and she still gave me the silent treatment. She ended up blocking me and I had to send her an e-mail to get her to respond. She responded to me in a weird way, and it left me more confused than ever.

She said that the reason why she wasn't able to respond was due to her being shocked and mad at herself for not being upfront with me about it from the beginning, and that she found the relationship she was in currently confusing herself. She said that it wasn't "serious," and that she hadn't mentioned the boyfriend "out of respect to me." Then she said that she always wanted to meet me regardless of him, which was her way of downplaying things. She then apologized for being distant and for blocking me, and that she had been going through a lot since it was the anniversary of her mom's death, and when I had tried to reach out to her, in her words, she reacted "a bit emotionally." She then mentioned that she understood if I didn't want to talk to her any more, and this is the part that confused me the most; she seemed extremely willing to just let go of our friendship.

I told her that I still wanted to talk to her, but she continued to act distant by using the silent treatment, and she never unblocked me. It took me multiple messages over the span of a week and a half for me to get through to her, and even then, she did so very reluctantly. In a way, I feel this was her trying to make me out like I was the bad guy here. I (foolishly) apologized and asked for things to go back to normal, and she apologized by saying that "she was very tired" from work and that she didn't "respond well to emotional things." Now I can understand being tired from work, but the reality is, it shouldn't take WEEKS to get in touch with someone, and it shouldn't be such an uphill battle to do so. So for awhile in October, it seemed like she was at least trying to make an attempt to get in touch with me, but she'd still just abruptly leave a conversation hanging. I had mentioned that I was going to send her some early Christmas gifts I planned to send her in October and November; I sent her the first batch, and the day before the package arrived to her, the last contact I received from her was her sending me an e-mail saying that she was excited to see what the gift was. She asked me how my week was and it seemed like she wanted to talk, and I responded. After that? Nothing. No reaction regarding the gift, etc.

I sent her a text later during the week asking her how she was. Nothing. A few days later, another. No response. This is where I should have stopped, but at that point, I just had it up to here with the games she was playing, and I sent her a few e-mails telling her how much she was hurting me by doing the silent treatment as much as she was. I told her that while I had strong feelings for her, I was doing my best to respect her relationship (I really think that despite her saying that her relationship wasn't serious, it most certainly was; she was just saying this to keep control over me and to keep the status quo going). I told her that by ignoring me, she was repeating how things were between us before, and that we should be able to talk out our problems maturely. I said that I didn't want to lose her as a friend, and I wanted to know where we stood. I never got a response back, so I sent her a final e-mail saying that I'd be initiating no contact myself and that I would be deleting everything that reminded me of her. I told her that if she ever wanted to get back in touch again when she was ready to address the issues, she'd know where to find me and I left it at that.

So to sum it up, I did everything I could to at least still be friends with this girl. I gave her a lot of my time and I tried to be there for her when she needed me, especially after a year of us not talking to each other. I fell for her, and the good times that we had talking to each other were real (for me at least). The sad truth is, she couldn't find it in herself to be there for me when I needed her, and she felt a need to keep up a lie between us the entire time that we talked. She has a lot of emotional issues (she has a strained relationship with her dad after her mom's death and has battled bulimia issues in the past) and she seemed to legitimately like that I was a family guy. But why she tried to make it out like she was "protecting me" from knowing of the boyfriend (she was trying to protect herself) really baffles me. She has a tendency to cut and run when she's faced with drama, but as I told her in the last e-mail I sent her, she had to have known at some point that this "drama" would pop up eventually.

While I think I've been doing well with the no contact, I can't lie that it stings knowing that she's going on about her day as if I never existed at all, and for someone who "valued" our friendship, she seems to have zero remorse about things while I've been affected by it more than I thought I would be. I know it was just a long-distance relationship, but it makes me grateful that I didn't actually meet this girl in person, as I would have been hurt even more by her. She made me feel that I was in the wrong many times once the silent treatment began, and she made me lose confidence in myself. Towards the end, I just began to feel inadequate and wondered what I was doing wrong that she felt the need to get back with her boyfriend; it also makes me wonder how she's able to maintain friendships in her every day life if she's perfectly fine with erasing me from her life.

But yeah, that's my story. I'm still confused, and I think I always will be. I left the door open in case she ever wants to talk again as a common courtesy, but the silent treatment and no contact has really enlightened me to the fact that she most definitely has some BPD tendencies and that I will only get hurt again if I let her into my life once more. I have no intention in revisiting something that brought me as much pain as it did, and if she contacts me again, I won't respond. I'm planning on taking the time to heal and look after myself. It's been hard, but although I'll always have questions in my mind about whether or not she really felt anything for me, I'm planning on just appreciating the good aspects of the friendship and moving on as best I can.

[Flameheart]

Hello all. I've been reading a lot of threads here and I'm happy to see that it isn't just me going through all of this. I'm currently in no contact mode with this girl. It's been eight days so far, and I think I've been using the time productively (mainly because I think I realized during my attempts to reconcile with her that the end was inevitable), but I'd be lying if I still didn't have some questions about why things ended like they did, and after researching BPD, I've come to the conclusion that she falls under this category or at the very least, has some BPD tendencies. This will be long, but I'll try my best to give a timeline from my perspective.

So here goes:

I've actually known this girl off and on for about 3 years in total. We first met on a dating website and found that we had a lot in common. She and I usually couldn't maintain contact due to a lot of issues going on in our lives. The first time we talked for instance, we talked a lot through e-mail. Suddenly at one point, she just completely disappeared. Three months later, she popped up again out of the blue wanting to resume things again. In retrospect, this was the first warning sign. It turns out that she had a boyfriend, as she mentioned to me when we picked things up again that she didn't view him as being "responsible enough" for her. I forgave her since I figured with her being single and with her at least having the honesty to admit that she was at fault here, we could start anew. We talked for a month or two again, and things were cool, but out of the blue, she gave me the silent treatment for absolutely no reason. I did my best to try and talk with her without being overbearing, but it got to a point where I just told her that I would give her space, since it seemed like she needed it. I left her alone for three months, and I decided to try and get in contact with her again. This was the second warning sign.

It turns out that she had been going through some serious depression at the time, and shut everyone out of her life intentionally. She apologized to me profusely, and I mentioned to her that I understood her plight, but that she needed to realize that I wanted to be there to help her through whatever she was going through. She apologized again and mentioned to me that she wanted to be the best friend she possibly could to me. I took her back again. I sent her this cool gift in the mail to lift up her spirits a bit, and she was extremely grateful for it and said that no one had treated her as well as I did, etc. Things were cool again and we talked for a good four months. During that time, life sort of hit me hard as well and I fell off the map completely. I'll admit, since I didn't view things as being "serious" then, I had told her that I didn't want to meet in person just yet while I was going through some issues, despite her insisting that she wanted to. I also afraid that I was falling too hard for this girl; in retrospect, that was 100% accurate. She contacted me six months later saying that she missed me. I messaged her back under a different e-mail to let her know that I was OK, but she didn't recognize it was me for whatever reason (whether she knew and just figured she would get back to me later, I don't know). Regardless, we didn't speak for an entire year.

During that time, she had gotten back together with her ex-boyfriend. At the time, I didn't know this; I messaged her again and she seemed happy to talk to me again. Things sort of rekindled quite quickly. We were talking again and she seemed really into me. I was there for her in more ways than one during a time when she was going through a lot. She was being harassed at work (she never went into full details about this), didn't have much money to keep paying for her rent, and she was being berated by her boyfriend at the time. She kept on telling me how much she valued our friendship and how much I took her stress away, etc. and how she wanted to repay me for everything I did for her. I told her that I really did care for her and I wanted to be there for her. At this point, I had fallen for her completely.

The conversations we had that followed were pretty awesome (from my POV) and we always intended on meeting up soon after she was done with her nursing classes/clinicals/licensing test. So we kept on talking it out to keep things going until then. I've always prided myself as being someone more observant than most, and I started noticing some inconsistencies pop up at times. I'll list a few of them here, because these were when the warning signs REALLY started flaring up:

- She started mentioning a "friend" a lot. It wasn't just the typical "my friend and I" type of talk. It seemed like she wanted to say "my boyfriend and I" but couldn't for whatever reason. The reason was simple: she had gotten back with her off and on boyfriend behind my back. I always felt that these vague mentions were her way of testing me to see how "oblivious" I was and to see just how much control she could have over me emotionally. I picked up on this pretty fast when she first mentioned "the friend" to me, but I stuck through it with the vain hope that she'd see that I was the better guy for her.

- She never mentioned what happened to her following her quitting her job and her housing situation. I always assumed that she had her father help her out with the rent, or she moved in with a girl friend of hers. In actuality, she had moved in with her boyfriend. She vaguely mentioned to me at one point later on down the line that she had to "leave" where she was staying at, and I have to assume she had some kind of issue with her boyfriend again. She never mentioned having to "leave" again after that message, and I logically assumed that she had decided to stick with her boyfriend.

- She increasingly became more and more aloof. Our conversations were still great, but she seemed less inclined to talk to me about things that we were able to talk about before. Instead of being the happy girl I talked to, she'd complain about things more and more (not about us, but she'd look at things with a mean perspective regarding other people).

But yeah, it became very tough over time to stay in contact with her. She would text or message me back at the weirdest times or outright ignore anything I would send to her to initiate a conversation. Our conversations got to a point where it would be on her terms only; nothing more, nothing less. I found this weird, but I rolled with it just so that I would still have a chance to talk to her. Sometimes it would take her days or a week to respond to anything I sent her, and she acted like it was no big deal at all. I never expect anyone to reply back to me immediately, but the fact that it would take her as long as it did to get back to me made me realize that I was slowly but surely becoming less of a priority to her. I think she viewed it easy for her to "control" me. All of the compliments she gave me stopped being all that frequent and I found myself having to compliment her more and more to maintain her attention. Since I had fallen for her, I ended up trying harder to keep her interest in me.

All of this came to a head in late July/early August. I finally couldn't keep up the facade any more, as it was conflicting with my feelings. By this point she was working her new job and was getting even more distant. I had to tell her that I knew about the boyfriend. So I confronted her about it, and that was when the silent treatment began. I had mentioned that I didn't mind the boyfriend, and I would like to stay friends with her, but I didn't appreciate that she had kept it from me this entire time. I gave her a week before trying to initiate contact again, and she still gave me the silent treatment. She ended up blocking me and I had to send her an e-mail to get her to respond. She responded to me in a weird way, and it left me more confused than ever.

She said that the reason why she wasn't able to respond was due to her being shocked and mad at herself for not being upfront with me about it from the beginning, and that she found the relationship she was in currently confusing herself. She said that it wasn't "serious," and that she hadn't mentioned the boyfriend "out of respect to me." Then she said that she always wanted to meet me regardless of him, which was her way of downplaying things. She then apologized for being distant and for blocking me, and that she had been going through a lot since it was the anniversary of her mom's death, and when I had tried to reach out to her, in her words, she reacted "a bit emotionally." She then mentioned that she understood if I didn't want to talk to her any more, and this is the part that confused me the most; she seemed extremely willing to just let go of our friendship.

I told her that I still wanted to talk to her, but she continued to act distant by using the silent treatment, and she never unblocked me. It took me multiple messages over the span of a week and a half for me to get through to her, and even then, she did so very reluctantly. In a way, I feel this was her trying to make me out like I was the bad guy here. I (foolishly) apologized and asked for things to go back to normal, and she apologized by saying that "she was very tired" from work and that she didn't "respond well to emotional things." Now I can understand being tired from work, but the reality is, it shouldn't take WEEKS to get in touch with someone, and it shouldn't be such an uphill battle to do so. So for awhile in October, it seemed like she was at least trying to make an attempt to get in touch with me, but she'd still just abruptly leave a conversation hanging. I had mentioned that I was going to send her some early Christmas gifts I planned to send her in October and November; I sent her the first batch, and the day before the package arrived to her, the last contact I received from her was her sending me an e-mail saying that she was excited to see what the gift was. She asked me how my week was and it seemed like she wanted to talk, and I responded. After that? Nothing. No reaction regarding the gift, etc.

I sent her a text later during the week asking her how she was. Nothing. A few days later, another. No response. This is where I should have stopped, but at that point, I just had it up to here with the games she was playing, and I sent her a few e-mails telling her how much she was hurting me by doing the silent treatment as much as she was. I told her that while I had strong feelings for her, I was doing my best to respect her relationship (I really think that despite her saying that her relationship wasn't serious, it most certainly was; she was just saying this to keep control over me and to keep the status quo going). I told her that by ignoring me, she was repeating how things were between us before, and that we should be able to talk out our problems maturely. I said that I didn't want to lose her as a friend, and I wanted to know where we stood. I never got a response back, so I sent her a final e-mail saying that I'd be initiating no contact myself and that I would be deleting everything that reminded me of her. I told her that if she ever wanted to get back in touch again when she was ready to address the issues, she'd know where to find me and I left it at that.

So to sum it up, I did everything I could to at least still be friends with this girl. I gave her a lot of my time and I tried to be there for her when she needed me, especially after a year of us not talking to each other. I fell for her, and the good times that we had talking to each other were real (for me at least). The sad truth is, she couldn't find it in herself to be there for me when I needed her, and she felt a need to keep up a lie between us the entire time that we talked. She has a lot of emotional issues (she has a strained relationship with her dad after her mom's death and has battled bulimia issues in the past) and she seemed to legitimately like that I was a family guy. But why she tried to make it out like she was "protecting me" from knowing of the boyfriend (she was trying to protect herself) really baffles me. She has a tendency to cut and run when she's faced with drama, but as I told her in the last e-mail I sent her, she had to have known at some point that this "drama" would pop up eventually.

While I think I've been doing well with the no contact, I can't lie that it stings knowing that she's going on about her day as if I never existed at all, and for someone who "valued" our friendship, she seems to have zero remorse about things while I've been affected by it more than I thought I would be. I know it was just a long-distance relationship, but it makes me grateful that I didn't actually meet this girl in person, as I would have been hurt even more by her. She made me feel that I was in the wrong many times once the silent treatment began, and she made me lose confidence in myself. Towards the end, I just began to feel inadequate and wondered what I was doing wrong that she felt the need to get back with her boyfriend; it also makes me wonder how she's able to maintain friendships in her every day life if she's perfectly fine with erasing me from her life.

But yeah, that's my story. I'm still confused, and I think I always will be. I left the door open in case she ever wants to talk again as a common courtesy, but the silent treatment and no contact has really enlightened me to the fact that she most definitely has some BPD tendencies and that I will only get hurt again if I let her into my life once more. I have no intention in revisiting something that brought me as much pain as it did, and if she contacts me again, I won't respond. I'm planning on taking the time to heal and look after myself. It's been hard, but although I'll always have questions in my mind about whether or not she really felt anything for me, I'm planning on just appreciating the good aspects of the friendship and moving on as best I can.