It's a pity

[Seriously?]

I married my uBPDh on Valentine's Day. My family, including my teen children did not think I should marry him.  About a month before I asked him to leave for the final time, was when life got chaotic. He started to assign characteristics to me that are definitely incongruent with my personality.  He started remembering things differently than I did. For a bit, thought maybe I had said something to make him believe what he was saying. It had all come to a head in mid-June. Married for 4 months and it was all over. The last night we were together,  he started another argument over basically nothing and when I argued back, he shoved me around a couple of times. This was a boundary I was completely unwilling to let him cross although I see now how so many of my boundaries were loose with him. During the first month of my separation I was a mess. I think I was in shock.  I couldn't understand how things could deteriorate so quickly in the matter of a month. He did try twice to come back home, but got verbally abusive when I said I would only consider it with counseling and/or anger management first.  Our last conversation was about two months ago. He told me he never loved me and he was just trying to see how far I would go with my BS. I was never playing games,  which is how he made it sound. I had really been committed to building on what I thought was love and spending the rest of my life with him. I've been reading posts on this board for over a week. I am pretty convinced he is suffering from BPD. I am starting to understand how he must feel inside and I feel so much pity.  I cannot imagine how it must feel to want to have someone close to you so desperately only to push away through horrible behaviors once you get intimate. My divorce hearing is in January.  He did not answer the complaint I filed in late September,  but did pick it up from the post office. I behaved in ways in which I was not very proud. I had never raged or reacted in such a way in any other relationship.  Like I said, the bad part only lasted about a month and then he was gone. It's all very hard for me. I married him believing in our future. The last time we talked, in addition to telling me he never loved me, he also seemed to not understand at all why I was having trouble letting go. I am still having trouble with all this even though the more I read the more I see he was only acting true to his character and personality.  It is such a pity.

[fromheeltoheal]

I'm sorry you're going through that Seriously; wanting something stable and reliable with someone who is incapable is very difficult, especially when we find out they're incapable late in the game and thought they were at first.  A borderline mirrors to affect an attachment, yes, but also to assimilate the good they see in you as their own; there's one upside anyway, the man you fell in love with was your best traits reflected back at you, so you fell in love with yourself, not a bad thing at all.  Anyway, feelings are facts to borderlines, so as he got triggered with the intimacy and started the push/pull dance, reality warped to fit his feelings, which is where things like 'I never loved you' come from.

That's standard borderline BTW, apply as needed, and we all do stuff like that, but usually to a lesser extent and stay more grounded in reality.  BPD is a mental illness.

Here's a good article from this site that may shed more light:

https://bpdfamily.com/content/why-we-struggle-in-relationships

Take care of you!

[Pingo]

Welcome to BPD family, Seriously?.  I'm so sorry for what you are going through.  I can relate a lot to your story, it is similar to mine.  We eloped bc we both had the sense that others wouldn't approve.  We were married for a few mths, everything going wonderfully, then everything fell apart.  It wasn't stuff I hadn't seen before, but I had convinced myself the worst was behind us.  I was wrong.  We struggled for many more mths until we ended up in a fight and he physically tried to toss my out of our bed in a rage.  This was my boundary I wasn't willing to let him cross.  I ended the r/s shortly after this. 

A month or so after we split I sent a 'goodbye' letter which was not received well.  He replied saying terrible things, saying he's moved on and it's too bad I can't.  He acted like everything had been an act.  I didn't believe it though.  I think he was just incapable of dealing with his emotions so this is how he protected himself.  It was the kick in my butt I needed to start thinking more about my own healing and less about his.

This site has been invaluable for me, it made me realise I wasn't alone in this journey.  Keep posting and asking questions. Do you have support in going through this difficult time?

[Seriously?]

Thanks to you both. I am seeing a counselor and I still have my family relationships in tact. I have found no one truly understands. Those on this site do because you have been through it. It is a surreal experience. I went from feeling like I had finally found my soul mate to utter confusion. The beginning of the end was me checking his phone records due to seeing just a "Hey" text on his phone that was just from a number with no contact name. When i saw it, i just had this feeling in my gut.  He'd asked me to get his phone for him and it was right 9 the front 9 his screen. It wasn't snooping. I even asked him about it and for some reason it didn't ring true when he said it must have been a wrong number. I asked to see his phone then and it was all blank as if he'd never used it to call or text anyone but me ever.  In the next hour or so, I checked the actual phone bill and it came out he'd been in contact with a few other women. He apologized profusely.  I wanted to work things out. I even talked to one of the women in his presence who  said they had spoken on the phone a few times, but that was it. I was hurt over the emotional part of it, but relieved it didn't result in physical cheating. For about a week, he was his usual loving, attentive self. Then, he started accusing me of cheating and lying. Then he started horribly disturbing hours long arguments over what I considered to be trivial matters. He started getting paranoid and making things up in his head. Like I said, none of it made any sense to me. Now although he said over and over again he wants nothing more to do with me in life, he did not answer the divorce papers. I am hoping he doesn't show up in January and it can just be the end. The sick thing about me is I want him to contact me and tell me it was all a mistake. Then I wouldn't have to go on knowing and accepting I never meant anything to him. It hurts. I have not been in any contact with him since September 26. I used to look at his Facebook sporadically. It hurt when I saw he was in a relationship on there. It was with someone my complete polar opposite. She was obese, unattractive, and (most disturbing) with completely different values based on the content of her posts. I realized then that he is pretending to be whatever he needs to be to get his needs met. I did research and thought maybe he was a sociopath, but I see him as less aware and more instinctual in his behaviors.  Anyway, thanks for your support. Although I have a bunch of people who care, they don't really understand.

[fromheeltoheal]

I realized then that he is pretending to be whatever he needs to be to get his needs met.

Exactly.  Good awareness.  And underlying that is borderlines don't like themselves much and are mired in shame, a lot of which is that unstable sense of self, they literally don't know who they are and it changes on the fly.  Also, the 'pretending' is mandatory since borderlines are looking for people to attach to, to meet there emotional needs as you mention, but also to feel whole, merge, create a self they don't have on their own.  He could never be the open, honest, emotionally available person you probably want, not because he's mean or evil, but because he's literally incapable.

The work for you now is letting go of the person you thought he was, the fantasy, and the hope that goes with it.  That has nothing to do with who he really is, but it hurts nonetheless.  And yes, we understand.  Take care of you!