Slipped up, looked at old messages

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

I'm 21 days NC and I can't seem to take my own advice and not look at old messages from my exBPD. I wanted to look at our very first messages to see what our states of mind were at the moment things got started between us. Whatever useful information I was able to glean from these old messages was overshadowed by the emotional muck that got dredged up in seeing her written words. I need to be smarter about controlling this impulse I have to reconstruct the relationship. I tend to do this when I need a reminder of why I got out, but maybe it's time to delete everything so I can't do this to myself again. I'm pretty sure I'll never contact her, but reading old messages has no net benefit to my psyche either.

[Dunder]

I'm 21 days NC and I can't seem to take my own advice and not look at old messages from my exBPD. I wanted to look at our very first messages to see what our states of mind were at the moment things got started between us. Whatever useful information I was able to glean from these old messages was overshadowed by the emotional muck that got dredged up in seeing her written words. I need to be smarter about controlling this impulse I have to reconstruct the relationship. I tend to do this when I need a reminder of why I got out, but maybe it's time to delete everything so I can't do this to myself again. I'm pretty sure I'll never contact her, but reading old messages has no net benefit to my psyche either.

[Heldfast]

I had to delete all mine Dunder, so I know what you're going through. I had to erase it all. Don't reconstruct this, it isn't broken in the ways you think. Imagine putting a puzzle together with pieces that don't fit or with some missing, expecting to get the image in your mind to take shape... .you'll just frustrate yourself. Start a new message, if you need to journal who you are now, where you are now, what you want to be and how to get there. Miss her, sure, you'd be human in doing so. But you will drag yourself down in this if you try to reopen a door which at best leads nowhere, and at worst, to monsters. It's been tough for me, there is always a little compulsion to reach out, but I know that doing so would only hurt me, and trigger her... .i.e. hurt her too. I hope she is well, I wish her well, but she isn't, and does not want to be mine. And the beat goes on... .

[cosmonaut]

Yes, reading through all of those old messages probably isn't the best thing to be doing right now.  Don't be hard on yourself, though, I bet every one of us has done this.  I sure did.  It's part of the grieving process and trying to make sense of a situation that doesn't make sense.  It's also trying to hold onto that lost partner in some small way.

I have put everything I have from her away in storage.  I stored away all of the cards, the pictures, the little gifts and mementos I'd kept.  I downloaded all of the contents about her from my phone and put them on an external hard drive.  I couldn't bring myself to erase all of that, and I don't know if I ever will.  She was a very important part of my life - once, by far, the most important person in my life - and there's no point in trying to unmake that.  It happened and it was real.  Still, all of those old things are very triggering for me, and they are best left put away.  I have not figured out what I will do with all of those things if I should ever end up in another relationship, but that's not something I'm at all ready for anyway.

I'd recommend putting all of those things away so that you aren't tempted by them anymore.

[ReclaimingMyLife]

Don't reconstruct this, it isn't broken in the ways you think. Imagine putting a puzzle together with pieces that don't fit or with some missing, expecting to get the image in your mind to take shape... .you'll just frustrate yourself. Start a new message, if you need to journal who you are now, where you are now, what you want to be and how to get there. Miss her, sure, you'd be human in doing so. But you will drag yourself down in this if you try to reopen a door which at best leads nowhere, and at worst, to monsters.

Heldfast, what a great image and "explanation" of the experience of a r/s with a pwBPD:  a puzzle with pieces that don't fit.  Thank you for that.  It feels like it has 1000, small pieces that are hard to differentiate but with consistent colors... .so it looks like it will go together.  Looking at the loose pieces I decide it will be a beautiful and enormously satisfying puzzle once done.  But try as I might, making a gazillion different combinations, it just doesn't go together.  I think for the longest time it is ME.  I am inadequate.  Impatient.  Not able to see and make sense of what is right in front of me.  But it isn't me.  The puzzle pieces do not go together.  I cannot make  it work.  Because it isn't workable. 

Once I discover the pieces don't fit and that it is not my inadequacy, I realize that, ironically, I was right about "not seeing what was right in front of me."  It was there all along.  I just failed to consider an explanation that was broader than me.  And really, not even blaming the pwBPD.  I have to imagine my UxBPDbf may have felt like his whole life was a puzzle that didn't fit.  That sucks for everyone.  At least I got to leave.  Bless him, his family, and the people in his life who cannot leave.  Truly.  He was wicked smart.  Funny.  Insanely perceptive and articulate.  I had never wanted to hang out with and talk to a man so much in my life.  He was so cool.  Except when he wasn't.

A puzzle that really doesn't fit.   

I'm pretty sure I'll never contact her, but reading old messages has no net benefit to my psyche either.

Dunder, I feel you on this one.  Why should we go back to the "puzzle table," i.e. break NC?  What will it give us?  We just pick up the pieces and look at them wishing they would fit.  What is the point?  The pieces don't change.  They can't.  Because the puzzle hasn't changed. 

Hang tight, my friend