Why do these waves of sadness keep hitting me out of nowhere?

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

JHK, I will never believe that there wasn't love or that it was purely in the moment. I believe that there was love but that that love could switch on a dime, if there was any slight or created betrayal.

That what I believe was true love was switched off at the slightest sign of complication or the possibility that we might leave. The defense mechanism is to throw the love switch off. There was simply too much pure emotion in this. This might not be visible to someone who has only been in a relationship for 6 months or even possibly a year, because it takes that long to acclimate, but if you live with someone, day in and day out for 4 years, under the same roof... .they cannot keep that mask off indefinitely and I saw the mask off plenty and there were plenty of pure and loving moments that weren't simply her trying to fulfill a need. She didn't need to, she was secure knowing that I was there for her.

At least this is my opinion. I know that many will counter this and there are so many variations and we are talking about individuals. Feeling safe with a partner, is love and even more so for someone who is not used to having it.

My individual opinion and in no way an attempt to soften my current stance that my relationship is over and that it is for the best.

[LimboFL]

JHK, I will never believe that there wasn't love or that it was purely in the moment. I believe that there was love but that that love could switch on a dime, if there was any slight or created betrayal.

That what I believe was true love was switched off at the slightest sign of complication or the possibility that we might leave. The defense mechanism is to throw the love switch off. There was simply too much pure emotion in this. This might not be visible to someone who has only been in a relationship for 6 months or even possibly a year, because it takes that long to acclimate, but if you live with someone, day in and day out for 4 years, under the same roof... .they cannot keep that mask off indefinitely and I saw the mask off plenty and there were plenty of pure and loving moments that weren't simply her trying to fulfill a need. She didn't need to, she was secure knowing that I was there for her.

At least this is my opinion. I know that many will counter this and there are so many variations and we are talking about individuals. Feeling safe with a partner, is love and even more so for someone who is not used to having it.

My individual opinion and in no way an attempt to soften my current stance that my relationship is over and that it is for the best.

[jhkbuzz]

JHK, I will never believe that there wasn't love or that it was purely in the moment. I believe that there was love but that that love could switch on a dime, if there was any slight or created betrayal.

That what I believe was true love was switched off at the slightest sign of complication or the possibility that we might leave. The defense mechanism is to throw the love switch off. There was simply too much pure emotion in this. This might not be visible to someone who has only been in a relationship for 6 months or even possibly a year, because it takes that long to acclimate, but if you live with someone, day in and day out for 4 years, under the same roof... .they cannot keep that mask off indefinitely and I saw the mask off plenty and there were plenty of pure and loving moments that weren't simply her trying to fulfill a need. She didn't need to, she was secure knowing that I was there for her.

At least this is my opinion. I know that many will counter this and there are so many variations and we are talking about individuals. Feeling safe with a partner, is love and even more so for someone who is not used to having it.

My individual opinion and in no way an attempt to soften my current stance that my relationship is over and that it is for the best.

Everyone's r/s is different, so I wouldn't presume anything about yours   This is what I figured out for myself:  I had many of those warm, loving, intimate moments with my ex as well - they're what made the breakup so devastating.  But I am now convinced that her love for me was more childlike; which is still real but different than a healthy, intimate, reciprocal adult love.

She felt tremendous affection for me and she needed me.  But I don't believe she ever loved me the way that I loved her - I don't think she's capable of it because of the disorder.  I'm not being cruel or callous when I say this.

In fact, she once told me in an unguarded and intimate moment that she doesn't think she's ever loved anyone.  I think she understood on some level that what she felt for (past partners, me) was not "love" in the adult sense of the word.

She appreciated how steadfast I was, and how I took care of her.  At least for a while.  Her life improved immeasurably because I was in it (not being conceited). She appreciated that too.

But the emotional immaturity that arises from BPD precludes the possibility that she really loved me.

[jhkbuzz]

One more question.  Is "love that can switch on a dime" actually love?

[JRT]

Again, I am purging, I am sorry. Thanks for listening. It stinks.

She told me to leave, she told me it was over... .what was I supposed to do?[/quote]
Please don't feel any need to apologize. I am glad that I can help you thorugh your struggle if my only listening. I wish I could do more.

Your second statement struck a chord with me with something similar that happened in my r/s. On one of the 6 recycles that she and I had, I went back on the dating site that she and I had met on. Upon her return, she was simply livid that I had done this. My obvious argument was like yours: 'hey, you BROKE UP with me'. It seems to be a similar situation to yours but I wonder what they were thinking: were they just firing warning shots not really intending to break up or was there some other 'logic' that was being pressed here?

[JRT]

One more question.  Is "love that can switch on a dime" actually love?

I don't think so... .

[Getting_There]

Hello Limbo,

     This is exactly where I am right now.  B/U happened 3 months ago.  I try not to have contact, but I work with her.  She keeps trying to convince me to go get a drink with her.  Some days I'm fine with it... .But lately that is not the case.  Regardless, I am looking for another job.

      I ended the relationship because I knew that I was in a bad situation.  Lately, it has been particularly hard.  I believe it's so difficult now because I did not allow myself to properly grieve the RS directly after the b/u.  There was a time when I truly believed that she was "the one".  I know now that is not the case.  I understand that the person with which I fell in love does not exist; she was fabricated.  It's strange because I know that person isn't/wasn't real, but I still very much lost that person (I thought) I had.  It was real to me... .For a while... .

[LimboFL]

JHK, I understand your point. I guess what kind of confuses me about my experience were times like when she was away and over the phone she would say "I love you and miss you" It wasn't coming from a position of need, nor was it one of those moments in bed where she WOULD almost be childlike and say it. The former seemed like it was coming from an adult position while the latter came from the more childlike position.

While I have read reams on the disorder and know that the common view is that they are permanently stunted at an emotional level of a 4 year old (or similar age), I have to believe that like all of the variations we have seen on these pages, between one of our ex's to the next, that there are variations in how far one pwBPD has grown against the other. There is no question that the evidence is overwhelming that to a degree, there is commonality right across the board, there is a part of me that believes that the emotional arrest, could roll out in stages, depending on what and at what point in life the major impacts that jarred their emotional development occurred.

For example, while my ex's Mother was clearly very hard on, particularly her, one major impact in her life came when her Father was shockingly murdered, which occurred in her late teens. Her emotional grow may have been slowed by Mom but likely shut down at the Father's murder. To add to the shock of the murder itself, she was supposed to actually be visiting him, from out of town, when it occurred. I cannot even begin to imagine.

I am no psychologist but might it be possible that she has fleeting, short lived moments where she can feel the more mature love (late teen) as well as the child like love? I don't know but one thing is clear, from the exposure I have had over the last 3 1/2 years of awakening to mental illness/personality disorders, is that not even the scientific community has a firm grasp on anything because the human mind is such a maze and is so complex that there are no true definitives.

Note that in now way is my expressed belief an attempt to somehow convince myself that what she felt was true love and I would completely agree that it was likely never the mature adult love that you and I know, but I believe that the emotional arresting could be more of an evolution, than a firm stop at a young child's age.

Let's use an example of say, a young girl who is raised by a loving family and is then kidnapped at 16 and held in captivity by some animal (crushingly sad that this has and continues to really happen). She is rescued 2 years later. She has been forever scared and likely will have emotional arrest. At what point does she revert to when she hopefully and eventually finds someone to love and protect her? or in general?

Sorry to delve so deeply into this. I am really exploring more than I am trying to prove my point. I don't know. It is almost arrogant of me to question what has been studied and been research by scientific minds far far smarter than I, but I am just not sure.

I did feel that child like love but I also heard a completely mature and reasonable woman, that I loved, express her love for me in such a way that it sounded like, even it was for a brief moment, expressions of mature love and caring. A genuine, non crisis, expression of missing me. Again I am not reaching. At this point, it doesn't matter because it's gone. Nothing can bring it back and too much has happened that even if it did, I couldn't put myself through it, so this is more of an exploration.    

[LimboFL]

Getting there, how long where you with your ex?

[Mike-X]

One more question.  Is "love that can switch on a dime" actually love?

I think that I see where you are coming from, and my gut response is to agree that true love cannot switch on a dime. However, I also know that certain experiences certainly could lead the love in my to die rather quickly. So love for a person with BPD could be actual love that they imagine continuing indefinitely, but the delusional experience of the SO crossing one of those love-killing lines is also real to them.

Also, splitting and dissociation are psychological mechanisms that people with BPD seem to use to detach when anxiety and fear of closeness are triggered. So again, the love could have been real mature love, but when anxiety and fear trigger splitting and dissociation, that mature love can be switched on a dime.

[LimboFL]

Mike, I think that you hit the nail on the head. We may have been in a FOG, but I was not so oblivious to not be able to see real from not real, at least in terms of how my ex was, as a person. 4 years living under the same roof... .however, you are absolutely correct, while love might extend way past minor "injustices" and far beyond for us, I believe that pwBPD have a defense mechanism that auto pilots to the off position at the first sign that the SO can't be trusted (any infraction will do) in that moment they revert back to a defensive position of mistrust and they retract that love, immediately, unconsciously. It just evaporates.

At least this is my view.

[Mike-X]

Mike, I think that you hit the nail on the head. We may have been in a FOG, but I was not so oblivious to not be able to see real from not real, at least in terms of how my ex was, as a person. 4 years living under the same roof... .however, you are absolutely correct, while love might extend way past minor "injustices" and far beyond for us, I believe that pwBPD have a defense mechanism that auto pilots to the off position at the first sign that the SO can't be trusted (any infraction will do) in that moment they revert back to a defensive position of mistrust and they retract that love, immediately, unconsciously. It just evaporates.

At least this is my view.

I think so. Then if they find that they might have been reacting impulsively to their own confabulations when they retracted their love, guilt and shame can come in exposing their sense of worthlessness, and they then engage their arsenal of defense mechanisms to protect what fragile, low self-esteem they have.

[JRT]

Interesting course... .

In my case, I have more evidence that mine was just going through the motions than evidence supporting that there real love expressed by her... .maybe she loved the situation... .I might say that she even admired or appreciated certain things about me, but I am not at all convinced that real love was present in our r/s. Maybe... .just maybe it was there, but she was fearful of really expressing it for one reason or the next but there was simply little manifestation of real love. She put on a great act though... .(and some times it was a bad act).

[LimboFL]

Wow, Mike, I believe that this is exactly what happened in my recent two day recycle, I don't know.

The first night she was boozed and love bombed me hard, we slept in the same bed and cuddled but I wouldn't make a move for more because my trust radars were way up.

The next day, she pulled it all back, hard. I wasn't too phased because I was strong at that point, but I pulled away and split after i found evidence of a big lie.

I asked her, by text, to please never contact me again, told her that she prided herself on her honesty and she proved that she is anything but honest.

It was like a condensed replay of our relationship in one 48 hour period.

Why after three months of only a couple of exchanges, after a very difficult split with me running out the door just before new years, without notice, did she absolutely love bomb me? It was like the first night we met.

I have paid the cost of that for the last 5 days. Sensory overload and while I wasn't seeking the love bomb, it was so nice to be so close and intimate with her. I genuine and deeply love her still, even if I know it can new be.  She threw I love you's and I miss you's at me at least 6 times. In those cases, they were not pure but rather the excited child.

However, there were plenty of occasions during the relationship, where she was stone cold sober, when we weren't in a moment of hoped up emotions where she said it and those, I believe, were real and did sustain for as long as it took for me to make my next error. Then poof!

So heartbreaking! I will always feel robbed but... .

[jhkbuzz]

JHK, I understand your point. I guess what kind of confuses me about my experience were times like when she was away and over the phone she would say "I love you and miss you" It wasn't coming from a position of need, nor was it one of those moments in bed where she WOULD almost be childlike and say it. The former seemed like it was coming from an adult position while the latter came from the more childlike position.

While I have read reams on the disorder and know that the common view is that they are permanently stunted at an emotional level of a 4 year old (or similar age), I have to believe that like all of the variations we have seen on these pages, between one of our ex's to the next, that there are variations in how far one pwBPD has grown against the other. There is no question that the evidence is overwhelming that to a degree, there is commonality right across the board, there is a part of me that believes that the emotional arrest, could roll out in stages, depending on what and at what point in life the major impacts that jarred their emotional development occurred.

For example, while my ex's Mother was clearly very hard on, particularly her, one major impact in her life came when her Father was shockingly murdered, which occurred in her late teens. Her emotional grow may have been slowed by Mom but likely shut down at the Father's murder. To add to the shock of the murder itself, she was supposed to actually be visiting him, from out of town, when it occurred. I cannot even begin to imagine.

I am no psychologist but might it be possible that she has fleeting, short lived moments where she can feel the more mature love (late teen) as well as the child like love? I don't know but one thing is clear, from the exposure I have had over the last 3 1/2 years of awakening to mental illness/personality disorders, is that not even the scientific community has a firm grasp on anything because the human mind is such a maze and is so complex that there are no true definitives.

Note that in now way is my expressed belief an attempt to somehow convince myself that what she felt was true love and I would completely agree that it was likely never the mature adult love that you and I know, but I believe that the emotional arresting could be more of an evolution, than a firm stop at a young child's age.

Let's use an example of say, a young girl who is raised by a loving family and is then kidnapped at 16 and held in captivity by some animal (crushingly sad that this has and continues to really happen). She is rescued 2 years later. She has been forever scared and likely will have emotional arrest. At what point does she revert to when she hopefully and eventually finds someone to love and protect her? or in general?

Sorry to delve so deeply into this. I am really exploring more than I am trying to prove my point. I don't know. It is almost arrogant of me to question what has been studied and been research by scientific minds far far smarter than I, but I am just not sure.

I did feel that child like love but I also heard a completely mature and reasonable woman, that I loved, express her love for me in such a way that it sounded like, even it was for a brief moment, expressions of mature love and caring. A genuine, non crisis, expression of missing me. Again I am not reaching. At this point, it doesn't matter because it's gone. Nothing can bring it back and too much has happened that even if it did, I couldn't put myself through it, so this is more of an exploration.    

I understand what you’re saying.  If you can bear with my (longish) story, I think you’ll come understand that my conclusions about the ways she “loved” me are pretty complex - and you might find some parallels to your own r/s.

 

I was with my ex for 8 years.  She was a quiet (waif) pwBPD, so there was no raging (but lots of extremely passive aggressive behaviors). There was much about her overall behavior that I found confusing, but I could never quite “name” what it was that felt “off” to me.

After we moved in together she became especially needy, dependent and insecure.  I loved her so I accepted these “quirks” about her and tried my best to reassure her.  Particularly stressful for me was her hypersensitivity and her hypervilligance – if my mood shifted in the slightest bit she was all over it, asking what was wrong, what she could do to fix it, etc. I now understand it was a trauma response (FOO issues for her), but at the time I didn't understand it at all, and I found it reeeeeeally stressful to try to constantly adjust my moods to maintain her emotional equilibrium. It exhausted me, and quite honestly brought out the worst in me.  Over time my patience wore thin and I was quick to become irritable.  If there is one thing I could go back and change, it would be that. ^

She had an 11 year old daughter when we moved in together and we quickly discovered we were on opposite ends of the parenting spectrum. My parents have been married for 55+ years and I was raised by a strict stay-at-home mom. Her parents were divorced when she was 5 and she grew up with a depressed, sometimes suicidal, sometimes absent (as in a go-out-at-night-and-not-come-home) mom. I tended towards strict (perhaps too strict), and she tended towards laid-back to the point of being neglectful.  We always tried to meet in the middle (and often did), but neither one of us were happy.

Things got really bad in year 4 when she began lying and cheating.  There was a lot about her behavior in the first four years that I found confusing, but I suddenly felt like I had woken up next to someone I didn't recognize – it rocked my entire sense of reality.  Gone was the person I had been spending my life with, and in her place was an emotionally absent, avoidant, dishonest, unfaithful woman whom I didn’t know. I still couldn’t comprehend what was happening and I stayed (in part) because I loved her and she seemed to be going completely off the deep end, but also because if I had thrown her out she would have taken my (then 15 year old) SD with her.

By about year 7 it finally dawned on me that mental illness might be at play.  I began to recognize that I was seeing different “personalities” at different times – sometimes a little girl, sometimes an angry teen, sometimes a pre-pubescent boy, sometimes her adult self.  I started reading about Dissociative Identity Disorder, but there was a lot that didn't 'fit.' Right around this time she began therapy and she and her therapist began to “name” these parts of her personality: Little M, teen M, adult M, etc. She told me that her therapist told her she was not dissociative, and that EVERYONE has these 'parts of self' that can come out at different times.  I understood that in a way; whenever I meet a friend during the summer at the local pool and we play water basketball, I can FEEL my happy 12 year old self come out to play!    But the difference was that, while mine came out only when I allowed it and because I was happy, hers came out unbidden (and for months at a time) as a response to stress.  It was still all very confusing to me.

To cut to the chase, even though she was in therapy she was still being dishonest, avoidant, etc., and our r/s ended in year 8 after I found out about yet another affair. Her behavior during and post break up lead me to these boards, where light bulbs started to go off all over the place for me – especially when I began reading about BPD waifs.

One of the most helpful things I’ve done is read about something called Schema Therapy, developed by Jeffrey Young.  He developed Schema Therapy for pwBPD to:

“….address lifelong, self-defeating patterns called early maladaptive schemas.  Over a period of 15 years, Young and associates identified 18 early maladaptive schemas through clinical observation. A basic premise of Jeffrey Young’s approach is that individuals with more complex problems have one or more early maladaptive schemas, which makes them vulnerable to emotional disorders.

An early maladaptive schema has been defined by Jeffrey Young as ‘a broad pervasive theme or pattern regarding oneself and one's relationship with others, developed during childhood and elaborated throughout one's lifetime, and dysfunctional to a significant degree.’ Therefore Early Maladaptive Schemas began with something that was done to us by our families or by other children, which damaged us in some way. We might have been abandoned, criticized, overprotected, emotionally or physically abused, excluded or deprived and, consequently, the schema becomes part of us.  Schemata are essentially valid representations of early childhood experiences, and serve as templates for processing and defining later behaviors, thoughts, feelings and relationships with others. Early maladaptive schemas include entrenched patterns of distorted thinking, disruptive emotions and dysfunctional behaviors.  Schemata are perpetuated throughout one’s lifetime and become activated under conditions relevant to that particular schema.” (taken from www.cognitivetherapy.me.uk/schema_therapy.htm)

What particularly caught my attention were the Schema Modes.  Schema Modes are “the moment-to-moment emotional states and coping responses that we all experience.  Often our schema modes are triggered by life situations that we are oversensitive to (our "emotional buttons".  At any given point in time, some of our schemas, coping responses, and emotional states are inactive, or dormant, while others have become activated by life events and predominate our current mood and behavior.  The predominant state that we are in at a given point in time is called our schema mode. All of us flip from mode to mode over time.” (www.schematherapy.com/id61.htm)

There are both healthy and maladaptive schema modes.  There is the “healthy adult” and “contented child” mode – but there are a plethora of maladaptive modes.  The listing of all the modes can be found at www.schematherapy.com/id72.htm.  When I read the listing I almost fell out of my chair.  Many of these modes described my ex’s state of functioning at various stages of our r/s.  

When we first moved in together she alternated between “vulnerable child” and “compliant surrenderer” modes. She was also often in “punitive parent” mode – towards herself.  She had an extremely critical inner voice that would continually tell her how (fat, stupid, insert-your-insult-here) she was.  Was she ever in “healthy adult” mode?  I think so, but the appearances of the healthy adult were few and far between.

By year four she switched into (passive-aggressive) angry child mode, as well as impulsive child mode.  Mixed in were bouts of detached protector mode, and that internal punitive parent voice began to be turned outward towards ME. No wonder why I couldn’t recognize who she was anymore!  The dichotomy was extreme, and it made my head spin for a very long time.  I suspect that “healthy adult” was also in the mix, and might account for the times that things seemed to get better.  But it never lasted, and eventually she would slip back into maladaptive modes of functioning.

So, to go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation…... did she love me? Yes, but sometimes as a healthy adult, more often as the needy 'vulnerable' child. Did she care about our r/s?  ‘Yes’ when she was her adult self, but too often ‘no’ when she was operating out of impulsive child mode. In that mode she was capable of bouts of impulsivity (lying, cheating) that destroyed our r/s. Did she care about my well-being?  Yes, sometimes – but sometimes not at all, especially when she was in detached protector mode.  :)id she see the good in me?  Often - unless she was in punitive parent mode, and then I was the meanest, most controlling, most worthless POS on the planet.

I think the truest thing I can say is that she loved me, but was unable to sustain her ‘adult-self’ love for me for any length of time.  She slipped into maladaptive ways of coping so often that a healthy, adult r/s was never sustainable.  It took me a very long time to understand that.

[Mike-X]

Very thoughtful analysis jhkbuzz. Thanks.

[JRT]

JHK

I read you post with interest and intrigue. My ex was also a waif/hermit (probably) but wasn't passive/aggressive at all. While I imagine that there were problems that she wrestled with whether they related to us, me her job, etc, the only ones that I had ever heard about were related to her son and his various problems (another story for another time). It was otherwise a very peaceful r/s (as far a I was made aware).

So, naturally I think that if she just didn't breakup from out of nowhere then we might still be living together and moving forward with our wedding. But as I read the myriad posts that I have since I have been here, I have more than once asked myself if that quiet condition of hers that did not including raging, cheating or lying (and all the rest of the classic BPD behaviors) was some thing that was subject to change, change dramatically later on down the road given a certain trigger or set of triggers/conditions/environment. If I am understanding this correctly, the article you had posted seems to suggest that a pwBPD seems to move through such modes. Is that the case? If so, what prompts this?

It might also explain her behavior with the breakup and aftermath. If they move through modes, I wonder if mine had done so yet in an express sort of way. It seems that the splitting and painting black usually require some time in most cases. Yet, mine seems to have done this literally overnight when I was not even in town. All was normal in the morning and in the evening, she had already moved out, sent a nasty notification text and blocked me for good (that was 6 months ago). There has been no communication with her at all but there has been SOME indirect communication and some signs and it all indicates EXTREME anger. If I am understanding the concept properly, this must also be a mode?

Apologies if I am barking up the wrong tree with this... .but it leads me to another question: if all of these various schema modes exists, is there any state of mind/situation/specific types of triggers that correlate to a specific schema mode?

[jhkbuzz]

JRT:  on my way out the door, will PM you later!

[JRT]

JRT:  on my way out the door, will PM you later!

Super! Please do!