Who was my ex, really?

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

Hey, thank you all for responding to MY response.  I don't want to take over this thread... .but I do want to explain a little more where I am at, as I really feel like I am living a reality show of sorts.  I know we all have our stories to tell, but this has been a ride like no other and has me concerned that maybe where I am stuck, is in a period of time where I don't fit in.

I realize now that my BPD left not only because it is his pattern but because he found me boring.  He made several statements that REALLY made sense once it was over.  One very important one was at the end when he said, "I can't be myself when I am with you... .".  I was so puzzled as to what he meant.  He said this to me after we had learned he was BiPolar,  he admitted he stayed on all the internet dating sites because he NEEDED the validation, and a bunch of other crap I won't go into.  But my point is, I loved him unconditionally.  Was ready to stick it out and attend therapy with him, what ever it took to make it work because I loved him.  We never fought.  I thought we were an amazing couple.  I was really so blissfully happy. And he dropped me on my head with no emotion.  Like we never shared anything special.  And we were to be married just days before.

Fast forward to now, he has a NEW soulmate.  One that he started seeing in September.  A person that is 180 degrees of me.  She is a fetish model, earns a living doing weird stuff online, stuff I never even knew existed, much less people would pay money to see you do.  She is trashy, self centered, vulgar, etc.  She plasters herself naked and otherwise all over the Internet... famous in her sick circle.  A real attention whore and also BI POLAR.  Loves to make it clear that they are BOTH Bi Polar like it is some dame cool club or something. She is CRAZY.  And I mean that sincerely, she is off the charts nuts. And when I see them together in pictures, I now realize,he was PRETENDING to be the wholesome, Christian, all American family type guy he portrayed with me.  THIS, this is who he likes, this type of person is someone he can "be himself with... ".

It just makes me want to curl into a ball and never think of romance or a relationship again.  It frankly scares the out of me.  Case in point.  I go to the store today and the man working there is pleasant and nice looking and I immediately think, "he appears normal, but is he into something weird and creepy?"  I mean I realize I never knew my ex.  I was going to marry him.  I brought him around my children, I paraded him around my business and social circle thinking I had found this amazing, down to earth, solid guy and people were so happy for me.

I am humiliated.  He now parades around a 40 year old woman who supports herself making videos of her sucking her own foot, or dressed up as a Super Hero and smothering other women!

I don't hold up in my home.  I have lots of friends.  I do things like sailing with the girls, comedy nights, dining, festivals, work events, my social calendar is full. I just don't feel safe anymore putting "that part" of myself out there.  It holds no interest for me.  I was once sexual and interested in staying fit and toned.  Now, I almost feel like who cares, no more pressure to look like that anymore, as I don't want to be naked with anyone anyway... .so who cares?

I am a NORMAL (or what I thought was) well rounded person.  I am domestic, I like to read and create and stay active.  I love being a mother.  I love to cook and be involved in my community. I am very prominent in my business community, I sit on various boards and love helping people.  I believe in God.  And I am very loving and affectionate with my friends and family.  I was the best ME I have ever been in this relationship.  Which was why I pushed so hard to figure out what happened when it suddenly crashed because I knew it wasn't normal to just drop someone after being in such a stable, solid relationship.

I realize now that my love for him was not real.  Because he was not real.  I was all some Fing performance, so damn act he has put on for years, only the leading lady changes.  I have met and become friends with four, COUNT THEM FOUR, women he has done this to before me in a three year period.  And we are all in some ways messed up because of it and stunned at who he REALLY is these days.  I feel grateful I didn't get some sort of sexual disease out of the deal.

I wish I could say I am lonely, or a miss sex and romantic gestures but I do not.  It's like I had a lobotomy when we ended, no ghosts pain from removing him from my life, I feel nothing in that respect.  I do not wish for him back.  Nor do I want contact EVER.  I just wish I could have the time back he stole.  The person I was when I met him is gone.  I wish I could be that naive woman again.  I don't like the world this opened me up to view.  I wish I could erase it all... .

[sirensong65]

Hey, thank you all for responding to MY response.  I don't want to take over this thread... .but I do want to explain a little more where I am at, as I really feel like I am living a reality show of sorts.  I know we all have our stories to tell, but this has been a ride like no other and has me concerned that maybe where I am stuck, is in a period of time where I don't fit in.

I realize now that my BPD left not only because it is his pattern but because he found me boring.  He made several statements that REALLY made sense once it was over.  One very important one was at the end when he said, "I can't be myself when I am with you... .".  I was so puzzled as to what he meant.  He said this to me after we had learned he was BiPolar,  he admitted he stayed on all the internet dating sites because he NEEDED the validation, and a bunch of other crap I won't go into.  But my point is, I loved him unconditionally.  Was ready to stick it out and attend therapy with him, what ever it took to make it work because I loved him.  We never fought.  I thought we were an amazing couple.  I was really so blissfully happy. And he dropped me on my head with no emotion.  Like we never shared anything special.  And we were to be married just days before.

Fast forward to now, he has a NEW soulmate.  One that he started seeing in September.  A person that is 180 degrees of me.  She is a fetish model, earns a living doing weird stuff online, stuff I never even knew existed, much less people would pay money to see you do.  She is trashy, self centered, vulgar, etc.  She plasters herself naked and otherwise all over the Internet... famous in her sick circle.  A real attention whore and also BI POLAR.  Loves to make it clear that they are BOTH Bi Polar like it is some dame cool club or something. She is CRAZY.  And I mean that sincerely, she is off the charts nuts. And when I see them together in pictures, I now realize,he was PRETENDING to be the wholesome, Christian, all American family type guy he portrayed with me.  THIS, this is who he likes, this type of person is someone he can "be himself with... ".

It just makes me want to curl into a ball and never think of romance or a relationship again.  It frankly scares the out of me.  Case in point.  I go to the store today and the man working there is pleasant and nice looking and I immediately think, "he appears normal, but is he into something weird and creepy?"  I mean I realize I never knew my ex.  I was going to marry him.  I brought him around my children, I paraded him around my business and social circle thinking I had found this amazing, down to earth, solid guy and people were so happy for me.

I am humiliated.  He now parades around a 40 year old woman who supports herself making videos of her sucking her own foot, or dressed up as a Super Hero and smothering other women!

I don't hold up in my home.  I have lots of friends.  I do things like sailing with the girls, comedy nights, dining, festivals, work events, my social calendar is full. I just don't feel safe anymore putting "that part" of myself out there.  It holds no interest for me.  I was once sexual and interested in staying fit and toned.  Now, I almost feel like who cares, no more pressure to look like that anymore, as I don't want to be naked with anyone anyway... .so who cares?

I am a NORMAL (or what I thought was) well rounded person.  I am domestic, I like to read and create and stay active.  I love being a mother.  I love to cook and be involved in my community. I am very prominent in my business community, I sit on various boards and love helping people.  I believe in God.  And I am very loving and affectionate with my friends and family.  I was the best ME I have ever been in this relationship.  Which was why I pushed so hard to figure out what happened when it suddenly crashed because I knew it wasn't normal to just drop someone after being in such a stable, solid relationship.

I realize now that my love for him was not real.  Because he was not real.  I was all some Fing performance, so damn act he has put on for years, only the leading lady changes.  I have met and become friends with four, COUNT THEM FOUR, women he has done this to before me in a three year period.  And we are all in some ways messed up because of it and stunned at who he REALLY is these days.  I feel grateful I didn't get some sort of sexual disease out of the deal.

I wish I could say I am lonely, or a miss sex and romantic gestures but I do not.  It's like I had a lobotomy when we ended, no ghosts pain from removing him from my life, I feel nothing in that respect.  I do not wish for him back.  Nor do I want contact EVER.  I just wish I could have the time back he stole.  The person I was when I met him is gone.  I wish I could be that naive woman again.  I don't like the world this opened me up to view.  I wish I could erase it all... .

[Turkish]

My Ex said the opposite when we were first hanging out, not quite romantic yet, "I feel like I can be myself when I'm with you." I recall thinking, "who else would you be?" I filed it away and attributed it to her social anxiety.

Like many, I looked back and realized that like many or maybe all here, a lot of who she was could be attributed to mirroring. She dissociated and became someone I didn't know for many months before she moved out.

I recall a thread on healthy relationships here which said something like: "If you think 'boring' is a synonym for 'stable and mature' then you have issues."

From how you describe yourself, you sound anything but boring, however. It's hard even in a healthy r/s to see ourselves apart from the mirror of our lover's eyes.

[anxiety5]

My Ex said the opposite when we were first hanging out, not quite romantic yet, "I feel like I can be myself when I'm with you." I recall thinking, "who else would you be?" I filed it away and attributed it to her social anxiety.

Like many, I looked back and realized that like many or maybe all here, a lot of who she was could be attributed to mirroring. She dissociated and became someone I didn't know for many months before she moved out.

I recall a thread on healthy relationships here which said something like: "If you think 'boring' is a synonym for 'stable and mature' then you have issues."

From how you describe yourself, you sound anything but boring, however. It's hard even in a healthy r/s to see ourselves apart from the mirror of our lover's eyes.

Agree on all counts. Our ex's are exactly what we needed them to be in our most vulnerable moments early on. In truth, they were someone else before you met so don't take that part personally. They don't have a defined identity. They are chameleons. They change based off who or what is around them in ways that afford them the most positive or negative attention. The entire core of their issue revolves around their fragmented identity. They don't even know who they are.

I also recall the comments here or there and can connect the dots looking back. The one that sticks out is when we were discussing her ex husband and marriage. She was so hurt he left her, yet she'd tell me how they had no connection, he was "boring" and they had no physical connection. In the same conversation she would tell me that she never trusted anyone more, and that she was so happy even though he wasn't. ? I asked her, is there a chance you thought you loved him but didn't? She said, no I was in love with him. And I asked, what would you define as love? This was a major ah-ha moment. And it's a question I will use in the future. The awkward silence. The stuttering... .the hesitation. SHE COULD NOT DEFINE IT. She gave me some rambling nonsense that told me love to her is acts of service. She felt love for him when he'd help her. Like helping around the house or emptying the dishwasher. Buhhhhhh... .I was speechless. She sensed my reaction was really cautioned by the way she defined this. Then she asked me what I defined it as. I told her I think love is two people who are individuals choosing to be partners, by choice. It's understanding, it's compassion, it's empathetic, it's supportive, nurturing, it's enduring, it's not egocentric or passive aggressive. It's resolute and it evolves but if you find the right person it grows closer and in the same direction. I'll never forget the next day, she grabbed my hand and said I'm really finding that I love you a lot. And I said, really? Why do you say that. And she repeated to me verbatim the things I had said to her above, the night before. Que the twilight zone music.

She also once said to me, that I have an energy about me that's contagious. She wants to be around it and breathe it in. Well if that wasn't prophetic. AKA suck the soul out of me. AKA extract my emotions AKA direct my energy to her (because she's a proverbial bottomless pit without an identity as you see above she assumed mine in answering the love question)

I had no idea what BPD was when all this went down. In the land where we all live today in the present, these would be red flags the size of Texas. But then, it was just quirkiness that was benign and wasn't yet part of a pathology I could even have the knowledge to identify.

Knowledge is power. This should only happen to us one time. It's the old saying fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me. I possess a narcissist/BPD radar that could identify a female inflicted from 1000 miles away. And I will never again go beyond the moment I identify these traits with another woman. I will detach that very moment.

[Restored2]

sirensong65:  This is so unfortunate that you have gone through a betrayal of your heart in such a relationship, let alone to someone you were about to marry in just days.  As difficult as this is to accept, I think you dodged a HUGE missile with this guy.  He is not marriage material by any stretch of the imagination.  BPD people seem to have no empathy towards other peoples feelings when breaking up either.

 

Anyone living a double life of deceit and sexual deviancy like you described would find most "normal" people to be extremely boring.  These people are chameleons who live on the rush of adrenaline.  He presented an illusion to you of who he is and what your relationship was.

It sounds like you are quite depressed, which is more than understandable given your circumstances.  You say that you are a woman of faith in God.  I encourage you to seek God for your source of healing and restoration.

[saintjude]

  I'm so sorry to hear about your experience. It truly is an awful place to be. I can certainly relate.

I find myself with the same questions. Who was she? She certainly seemed very different from the person she quickly became... .although hints of what that would be peeked through in small and sometimes obvious ways.

 I remember her speaking of feeling like she was always "keeping the darkness at bay". That it was an ever present thing that she feared would eventually make its way out. It did. Many times.  I found out it was usually in affairs. This was something that existed long before I met her. We were married for 15 years... .currently in the middle of a divorce.

 In moments of vulnerability and transparency she would share of feeling "broken", and that who she truly was is actually vulgar and ugly. It was heartbreaking to hear, and even more heartbreaking to witness when she stopped her fight and gave into dysfunctions.

 By the end I simply could no longer go along with the roller coaster and heart ache. I loved her deeply, but I realized that it would never be enough. The only answer would be to end it and put myself through the heartbreak of a lifetime. Its an awful decision that none of us should have to make.

 

[Deeno02]

I have zero clue who she is or was. Im still in shock 6 months out.