Guilt

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

Am 5 month no contact and I'm doing fine but I must admit I still experience the odd period of guilt over things I said to her. True, upon reflection she manouvre me into each situation. She was seeking a reaction, seeking jealousy...

I found myself acting completely unlike ME. I'm a chilled out person who seldom gets wound up, frustrated.

I have almost 50 years of life experience, but I allowed her to torment and confuse me. I do find working through each memory and what specifically led to me saying such things helps.

It also reminds of the complete lack of respect she illustrated time and time again.

Ultimately, I suppose I should look at it as a positive as each time it reinforces my determination to stay away from her.

[Technique]

Am 5 month no contact and I'm doing fine but I must admit I still experience the odd period of guilt over things I said to her. True, upon reflection she manouvre me into each situation. She was seeking a reaction, seeking jealousy...

I found myself acting completely unlike ME. I'm a chilled out person who seldom gets wound up, frustrated.

I have almost 50 years of life experience, but I allowed her to torment and confuse me. I do find working through each memory and what specifically led to me saying such things helps.

It also reminds of the complete lack of respect she illustrated time and time again.

Ultimately, I suppose I should look at it as a positive as each time it reinforces my determination to stay away from her.

[fromheeltoheal]

it reinforces my determination to stay away from her.

Yes, that is a positive use of whatever feelings we feel after these relationships end.  And although the best way to handle abusive and/or disrespectful behavior is to confront it directly with open, honest communication about how it makes us feel, or just ending it and walking away, abusers have a way of eroding our confidence because we make them matter to us, and in that state we can use 'protest behavior', as it's termed, which is actually a good thing because we're standing up for ourselves in a way, maladaptively, and we may say things we wouldn't have said if we were more centered.  The most important thing is to forgive ourselves, in whatever way that works, a critical part of detaching and healing.  Take care of you!

[ShadowIntheNight]

Am 5 month no contact and I'm doing fine but I must admit I still experience the odd period of guilt over things I said to her. True, upon reflection she manouvre me into each situation. She was seeking a reaction, seeking jealousy...

I found myself acting completely unlike ME. I'm a chilled out person who seldom gets wound up, frustrated.

I have almost 50 years of life experience, but I allowed her to torment and confuse me. I do find working through each memory and what specifically led to me saying such things helps.

It also reminds of the complete lack of respect she illustrated time and time again.

Ultimately, I suppose I should look at it as a positive as each time it reinforces my determination to stay away from her.

Am out about the same length of time as you. The way she ended our 9.5 yr relationship infuriated me to the very core of who I was. I never raised my voice to her except maybe once or twice, was always patient with her push/pull crap, never criticized her in an unseemly manner, always listened to her respectfully whenever she was upset about something. We lived in different cities & were in a lesbian relationship. She had been married for 10 yrs and has two kids who I loved and they loved me.

The whole thing began with her talking to me less and less via phone, then via text, then nothing until one day on my birthday she mailed me a birthday card and enclosed a typed note to tell me she had been dating men during the summer and that she and her sons were on a new "path." Without all the details, thru literally thick & thin I had stood by this woman's side and she can't even be respectful enough of me and our life together to call and tell me she is wanting to go.

After I read the note, I immediately phoned her and she didn't pick up. Talk about gutless. When it went to voicemail, I let loose with a torrent of anger the likes I never knew I had within me. It was completely uncharcateristic on my part.

Looking back, I don't know if she expected me to call and do that or if she wanted me to cry and beg her not to go. I am sure she never expected to hear the words I told her though. It took two weeks, but I ended up regretting it, terribly. I finally apologized in November after no communication from either of us. I sent it to her via email. Her words? We both need to think about the truth behind my words and that she was now rethinking our entire relationship. There wasn't a single word from her accepting an ounce of responsibility for her role in provoking me. In essence, she scapegoated me.

And that's what led me here. I couldn't understand how there was no acknowledgment of any of her actions. And when I googled "ex scapegoating me" it returned link after link about NPD and BPD. When I started reading, my jaw dropped. There was our whole 9.5 yr relationship laid out on the internet.

I hate that I didn't just say adios when I read the note. Had I known anything about this illness, I would have. She's a therapist. We talked lots about mental illness over the years, but BPD never came up. Not once in all that time. All you can do really is let what you did go. She has never apologized for her stuff. We haven't spoken since last June, but she calls several times a month from a blocked number and hangs up after I've said hello. So there's something still going in with her, tho I have no idea what. This whole thing saddens me about the last 10 yrs of my life. I don't get them back, and I don't get to look at them as happy. They feel like a lie now.

I understand your pain and on occasion I still feel guilt over what I said. But I don't feel it over anything within our relationship. I'm as fine and upstanding a person you will ever meet, and I know she knows that. But the way she chose to end us haunts me day and night.

[raisins3142]

I wrote a post a while back that was basically what the OP wrote.  When I felt betrayed and hurt by her at the end, I let loose.  I'm sure it hurt her.  I still feel guilt over this.

I agree with others that we have to forgive ourselves somehow.

After reading the OP, I'm thinking that with my ex, and maybe others with BPD, they only view something as cruel if it was overtly and intentionally cruel.  When I said hurtful things, it was very apparent that I was trying to inflict pain.  However, when she gave me the silent treatment/devalued me/ignored my communications and misinterpreted them, embarrassed me around others by her actions (even if unintentional and due to low social awareness), and lied to me about important things and small things alike: she was being cruel each time.  In fact, the amount of pain and confusion she caused is great.  It was just spread out over time and not in your face and not necessarily intentional, but it was still treating me in an unloving way.  I don't think she ever really acknowledged that, and I'm the cruel one because of a few outbursts when under extreme duress.

Perhaps that perspective might help some others, surely it seems like a common dynamic in these relationships.

[ShadowIntheNight]

I wrote a post a while back that was basically what the OP wrote.  When I felt betrayed and hurt by her at the end, I let loose.  I'm sure it hurt her.  I still feel guilt over this.

I agree with others that we have to forgive ourselves somehow.

After reading the OP, I'm thinking that with my ex, and maybe others with BPD, they only view something as cruel if it was overtly and intentionally cruel.  When I said hurtful things, it was very apparent that I was trying to inflict pain.  However, when she gave me the silent treatment/devalued me/ignored my communications and misinterpreted them, embarrassed me around others by her actions (even if unintentional and due to low social awareness), and lied to me about important things and small things alike: she was being cruel each time.  In fact, the amount of pain and confusion she caused is great.  It was just spread out over time and not in your face and not necessarily intentional, but it was still treating me in an unloving way.  I don't think she ever really acknowledged that, and I'm the cruel one because of a few outbursts when under extreme duress.

Perhaps that perspective might help some others, surely it seems like a common dynamic in these relationships.

You say common, I say frustrating. I have never in my 54 years known of a single person who would do the things she did and then get pissed because I let loose on her AND never acknowledge her responsibility in having created the scenario to play out the way it did. Never.

I know she knows what she does is somehow wrong, I found a letter to me where she said she was not proud of the push/pull that she had done within our relationship. So I know she knows her behavior is screwy. But now I am being given the silent treatment when she really deserved to be run over by a truck for her cruelness. The lying and cheating disturb me particularly deeply.

She owes me a large sum of money. tens of thousands of dollars. I'm not decided that I won't file a lawsuit to recover it. And in actuality the suit would be more to publicly humiliate her rather than get the money. That's how angry I still am of her actions, guilt be damned.

[ogopogodude]

I am perplexed as to why YOU feel guilt just because you said some things to your signif other (that was most likely as a matter-of-fact, straight forward statements of truth). 

I used to feel guilty but that went away in time.

Myself,... I feel absolutely zero guilt. Not one bit. Nada. Goose-egg.

Bpd's are MASTERS at making those around them  feel this way, ... .this is how they operate.

Shed the guilt, dude, ... .

I did.

It feels great.