Thoughts from a BPD mind

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

The comments here are all very good and insightful. I've been officially broken up with mine just over 4 years and it still boggles my mind. In the beginning she seemed so in love with me and so clingy. She allowed her toddler to call me "daddy" just a few weeks into the r/s and we were already planning to marry. I started talking to her not even a month after her SECOND divorce was final. I scratch  my head now. I never had fallen "head over heels" before and I let myself go with her. But like one of the articles here says we see more who they truly are toward the end of the relationship than we did in the beginning. The beginning of the end with her was just after our wedding shower when she "hung out" with one of her co-workers. Years later she admitted to having severe panic attacks and then of course blamed it all on me. They can seem so intelligent and make you feel like so much the bad guy even when you are not nearly at fault. I did my best to make up and just ask that she let me know if she was going to spend time with a member of the opposite sex. She said, "That's really hard." That was me becoming the "controlling" person. You really can't win. They will have the same chaotic kinds of relationships until they work on themselves enough or stop dating.

Confusing, is really the best word I can think of to describe the r/s, especially the difference in the beginning and how it ended. I'm as over it as I can be. I feel like once I've had a taste of a truly healthy and loving r/s it will be easier and easier and will become just another chapter as I spend my time with my real and loving wife and family.  I don't doubt that my ex believed she loved me at the time, but she really didn't know what real love is. Neither did I, I suppose.

[findingmyselfagain]

The comments here are all very good and insightful. I've been officially broken up with mine just over 4 years and it still boggles my mind. In the beginning she seemed so in love with me and so clingy. She allowed her toddler to call me "daddy" just a few weeks into the r/s and we were already planning to marry. I started talking to her not even a month after her SECOND divorce was final. I scratch  my head now. I never had fallen "head over heels" before and I let myself go with her. But like one of the articles here says we see more who they truly are toward the end of the relationship than we did in the beginning. The beginning of the end with her was just after our wedding shower when she "hung out" with one of her co-workers. Years later she admitted to having severe panic attacks and then of course blamed it all on me. They can seem so intelligent and make you feel like so much the bad guy even when you are not nearly at fault. I did my best to make up and just ask that she let me know if she was going to spend time with a member of the opposite sex. She said, "That's really hard." That was me becoming the "controlling" person. You really can't win. They will have the same chaotic kinds of relationships until they work on themselves enough or stop dating.

Confusing, is really the best word I can think of to describe the r/s, especially the difference in the beginning and how it ended. I'm as over it as I can be. I feel like once I've had a taste of a truly healthy and loving r/s it will be easier and easier and will become just another chapter as I spend my time with my real and loving wife and family.  I don't doubt that my ex believed she loved me at the time, but she really didn't know what real love is. Neither did I, I suppose.

[Hawk Ridge]

Excellent thread... .helps me understand totally my addiction to her and how I went from a confident self assured person to the physically ill shaking shell I was when she left and for much of the last 9 months.  In the last 9 months, i have been a raw nerve gradually regaining my sense of self after her abrupt departure without reason following months of verbal degradation and silent treatment.  It occurs to me that my expwBPD must feel that raw all the time.  As I look back in horror over that horrible grieving period, I would not wish it on my worst enemy.  I would not wish BPD in my worst enemy.

[Caredverymuch]

The way he switched literally like a light switch from being a very gentle, needy, sensitive, committed ( i thought), absolutely and intuitively soft and  loving man for SUCH  a length of time to a cold insensitive, cruel, uncaring and horrifically hateful man while he watched me bcome so entirely bewildered with grief and professing such caring yet.  This latter part of the r/s man was absolutely unfathomable to me.  A true shock. Even to this day full knowing of the disorder.  Me, the independent level headed one, now the undone, entirely traumatized mess?  While the weak one walked away head high?   This was beyond night and day.

This man who opened up so widely to me.  Who sobbed very, very real and heartbreaking tears as he spoke of his fear of losing me, of his incredible need for me.  His love for me.  You cannot make those moments so palpable and real up.  You cant.

This very man up and walked out on me.  Overnight.  And bcame the other man.

I said these words so often to my T, and several times to my ex:  " SO many ppl I could predict even a fraction of this from, but NEVER this man.  Ever. " 

I could not have articulated my experience more accurately than you have. I feel exactly the same way. Thank you for your eloquent way of stating this. It makes me feel less alone, less the fool for falling for the act.

This is the core of why recovery from this experience is so very hard.  We simply cannot assimilate the two truths.  Our minds have to make room for both of these realities and they just don't fit together.  It can make you crazy :/

A member who posted here briefly when I first joined, NevestNA, wrote about the bizarre experience of slipping, without realizing it was happening, "from the adored to the adoring."  From that loving independent position to a posture of addicted need.  I have always really appreciated the horror she expressed upon realizing that that had happened.  She exhorted herself to "get up off your knees" when she understood what had happened, and she did, and she fiercely shut the door on the whole dynamic.

I haven't found it easy to do that.  The part of my ex that was sincere about loving me haunts me.  And that supports bargaining, which for me is a deadly temptation.

But the more I make myself see, the more I realize I was one in a long long string of women that abandoned child part of him had attached to in similar fashion.  It was no more true or eternal with me than with the others.  That has been a very harsh realization but it helps put the longing and the bargaining to rest.

.

patient, thank you for your feedback. We talk about trauma bonding and words like that often here. But, at least in my view, the real trauma is as you stated: This is the core of why recovery from this experience is so very hard.  We simply cannot assimilate the two truths.  Our minds have to make room for both of these realities and they just don't fit together.

No, they don't. Bc there literally was NOTHING that "occurred" to make this change. No event. Nothing to look back on and say " Ahha, I see, it's bc of THAT."   Nothing that caused this very cherished and loving union to suddenly bc this other world horror.  So, for many of the nons here, this quite literally is the truth of our experience.

You lie together heart on heart for hours talking about everything and nothing with such openness. No pretense.  You go for rides together and laugh easily, enjoy ice cream and long walks and talks and music. You bcome real together. Very real. You are so comfortable in that very, very soft very genuine realness, which for many of us was years. Others, decades. And this is in no way something that feels like "an act."  It is your life.  Your r/s.  You are with the person you love. This is a place of very real love. Apparently for only one partner, post tense.

Then... .poof, they are gone. GONE. It is almost like that kind of dream you wake up from, heart racing, and are all sweaty saying to yourself as you reckon upon early dawn daylight and are so relieved; " WOW I just had the most HORRIBLE, SCARY dream, while still trembly, heart still racing.  Thank goodness it was just a dream!"

But, this is not a dream. This is our reality.  And,  it makes NO SENSE. The person you loved. Is gone.

And as you try to nearly stand up from the grief while your heart still says every moment of the day "Where are you, my love.  Where did you go?"

And your love, bcomes a total stranger.

You are aching. Searching. Barely able to lift you head in the morning.

And,  your love is already with someone new.

Has erased you. Your life together. Your r/s.

And hates you.

While you bleed from your heart.

No closure. No respect. No caring. No anything.

That's trauma.  Truly, beyond this board, there are no words to describe this kind of trauma.

[jhkbuzz]

"A member who posted here briefly when I first joined, NevestNA, wrote about the bizarre experience of slipping, without realizing it was happening, "from the adored to the adoring."  From that loving independent position to a posture of addicted need.  I have always really appreciated the horror she expressed upon realizing that that had happened.  She exhorted herself to "get up off your knees" when she understood what had happened, and she did, and she fiercely shut the door on the whole dynamic."

I am going to look up her posts... .she sounds very wise.

"You lie together heart on heart for hours talking about everything and nothing with such openness. No pretense.  You go for rides together and laugh easily, enjoy ice cream and long walks and talks and music. You bcome real together. Very real. You are so comfortable in that very, very soft very genuine realness, which for many of us was years. Others, decades. And this is in no way something that feels like "an act."  It is your life.  Your r/s.  You are with the person you love. This is a place of very real love. Apparently for only one partner, post tense.

Then... .poof, they are gone. GONE. It is almost like that kind of dream you wake up from, heart racing, and are all sweaty saying to yourself as you reckon upon early dawn daylight and are so relieved; " WOW I just had the most HORRIBLE, SCARY dream, while still trembly, heart still racing.  Thank goodness it was just a dream!"

But, this is not a dream. This is our reality.  And,  it makes NO SENSE. The person you loved. Is gone.

And as you try to nearly stand up from the grief while your heart still says every moment of the day "Where are you, my love.  Where did you go?"

And your love, becomes a total stranger. "

This is a beautiful and heartbreaking description of my experience... .of the experience of many on this board. 

"Where are you?  Where did you go?  I still love you... .can't you see? Don't you care?"

[downwhim]

Patientandclear and Hope,

You two described our loss to the core. So beautifully written. Unbelievable trauma and such a complete shock. We shared everything, our hearts, our future life together, our worries and our joy.

As I mentioned in another post, I know I will never love this deeply again. I am too afraid. I gave up too much of who I am and got so burned. I never want to go through this pain again, so I will never get as close to someone.

The icing on the cake is we thought it was REAL. And off they go with someone else.

[myself]

Tears in my eyes reading that, Caredverymuch, sorry for the pains that got you there but thank you for sharing those truths. Understanding, Acceptance, and the Bigger Picture include this wasn't just a game to many of us, a way to get away from our FOO or that we had something wrong with us. Love! This has been one of the deepest, strangest, best and most painful experiences of my life. I'm in no way perfect but I know that I was very loving with her. She had a real chance with me. She chose to say goodbye and to go along with the version of reality her disorder/combination of internal complications scared her into thinking was happening. It's like a battle between your heart and ghosts. But if your heart is haunted... .

That (half-drunkenly) said, I think pwBPD are constantly 'bleeding from the heart', frantically trying to stop it but they can't. Open to something better but unable to really follow through with it once it's there. In fact, self-sabotaging and damaging to others. So many of us were trying to find the balance of a common ground in our relationships. PwBPD, constantly bleeding from the heart, end up working overtime to bring us to their painful level and then can't deal with it once they know that's the reality. When they really see themselves in us (due to projecting and causing doubts and damage), they're gone. The disorder is a series of mirrors being used, distorted, smashed, denied, discarded, and ran from. All while the most positive possibilities go up in flames. B-P-D. Burned Personally Dynamic.

It's up to us to pick ourselves up, of course, but... .It's complicated. Emotional. Like thinking you woke up from a dream but finding you're still dreaming (which shows there's still personal work to be done?). We will move on, but will this also echo for the rest of our lives? Most likely. Like how a growth spurt can and does leave its mark. It becomes less a matter of 'letting go' and more 'this is how it is', but that doesn't negate the void of someone who said they were all-in with us not living up to it. It goes beyond fear or need. They disappeared! The silence alone is humongous. But as far as 'Thoughts from a BPD mind', what if anything could be thought and then said by our exes at this point that would right the wrongs, stitch the wounds, and fill in the cracks to make a smoother road for all of us, our exes too?