3.5 months of NC with my exuBPD+HPDexgf - an update

[Fr4nz]

I suppose she was crying because she felt guilty (cheating)... .plain and simple. Anyway, this never happenend to me, but I suppose she expressed her guilt through other means (anger, nervousness, etc.)... .

[Sergeant online]

This is a superb post.  It focuses predominantly on 'her', and that's what's interesting, but what made us attracted (and are still attracted) to someone like that when most people can see the red flags?  So, to add a little science to our 'issues', may I offer the following?

I was in pretty much the same boat, although my wounds are fresher than yours. I will not elaborate - it is always more or less the same story with all of us - but I will say that I was wise enough to break it off myself. Well, more lucky enough, because the "wisdom" I attained only later.

What happened is that I met my anima, one of the Jungian archetypes of our psyches. In a man, anima is the ideal woman, the epitome of feminine, the great compensatory force mediating between the unconscious and the conscious. When I said that I met my anima, well... .That's wherein the problem lies. I didn't "meet" my anima as much as I projected her onto my diagnosed BPD ex girlfriend. How was that possible - and so much different from usual relationships? It is because women (I can only talk from male perspective) with moderate to serious BPD are very adept at mirroring. She only had to sit and go along and let my unconscious play out my anima on her... .

So, I was and am in love with my anima. Now, anima has a dark side as well, one that invites projecting our own shadow on our BPD partners. The shadow is another psychic archetype consisting roughly of everything we don't want to be. Luckily, my ex invited this projection with her typical BPD behaviors (extreme lies and manipulation) which made me leave her. I say "luckily" because continuing the relationship would ulimately destroy me. In the hindsight, that is the best decision I ever made. Does it still hurt? Yes, definitely! But, it hurts because she lend her body to my anima and personified her. She made my anima real. And once I saw my flesh-and-blood anima, it became excruciatingly difficult to withdraw my projections and leave her. It still is, but now I know that I had no other choice. I am suffering because I still identify her with my anima. I need to accept it, good and bad, and let my anima do its function - integrate my unconscious and conscious tendencies, that is perform what she does best - the transcendental function to further the process of individuation.

If the above sounds arcane, no worries - it is arcane. But Jung was an immensely insightful man. He met his anima as well and described her in pretty much the same way. It is a necessary part to have any degree of success in the individuation process (i.e. maturing of the psyche).

It was a difficult realization, but an important one, for me to realize that I am as much at fault, if not more, as my ex (since she doesn't know any better) to have involved myself in such a relationship. It came from my failing to "tame" my anima and accept her properly. In the end, such a relationship is like a magical spell - it unlocks the unconsciousness. And there be dragons... .

Depression, in Jungian view, is actually a motivatir by which the unconsciousness pushes us to reverse the one-sidedness of the ego. I am coming to a realization, in my case, that brooding over my ex is actually brooding over the dissapointment that she cannot be my anima, that no person can. Other relationships (the normal ones) don't put us into such depression because those girlfriends were emotionally healthy enough to stop us projecting our animas onto them. So, the breakups didn't hurt as much because it is not that hard to walk away from something external. The BPD relationships, on the other hand, are notoriously difficult to walk away from because we are convinced that these women are our animas. That's an illusion - they are merely personifications of our animas.

So, the fact that we just can't shake our exes off of our minds, and everything else that comes with it is, contrary to the Freudian reductionist stance, a way of our psyche trying to push us into restoring and continuing a stable process of individuation. Successful individuation cannot be achieved without integrating the shadow and the anima properly into our reality.

Good luck to you! And stay strong - you will get over it. Look at it as a challenge to grow - it really is that.