How do you shut off the hope when they leave it open-ended? It's killing me...

[Senra]

This is what keeps dragging me into the abyss, the hope that he will contact me relatively soon. I've tried deciding to decide the worst-case scenario which is that he has completely amputated me bc I triggered too much fear of failing and losing me or whatever the heck it was, but I'm trying to assume that this is an amputation and not a temporary "break". He was so weirdly dissociated the last time I saw him and it just feels really final bc it's so "other" to what our rs is like, I feel like he's just gone completely off the rails and giving up. But why can't I truly accept this? It would make it so much more bearable if I didn't have this hope :///////

[Senra]

He left it open-ended by saying "We'll see... idk... let's just see" and said he wasn't ready for a rs. So of course in my mind I'm thinking that he might contact me when he either gets out of this dissociative state and/or is "ready for a rs"... :'(

[Senra]

What happens is that I try to just accept that it's an amputation and not obsess/hope which means focusing on other things entirely but at the very same time I still feel the need to grieve/feel sad often, and this triggers feelings of rejection and abandonment, and then I'm right back where I started w the hope/need for him to contact me again. I'm trying all kinds of CBT things that help temporarily but I still keep falling/getting sucked into the abyss, it's like that's the setpoint that my mind wants to be at :'((

[Lou12]

Hi Senra

I know exactly what you mean and exactly how you feel when their is a total lack of closure. My ex abruptly left a year ago. For the last year I have endured silent treatments, mind games, loving me one minute to ignoring me and hating on me the next.

The one thing I found the hardest out of everything was the constant limbo I was left in about if he would contact me again or was this time the final time and it was over forever. It was soul destroying and made me physically unwell with anxiety.

The good news is it's not them you have to change it's you!

All the power lies with you in fixing all this hurt. I never quite understood the concept of 'you are the only one who can allow someone to hurt you' but it's so true.

A year later for me and after some pretty intense self work on me I now realise that all the anxiety and sadness I was feeling was actually part of my road to recovery.

I'm not telling you to forget your ex just accept that he is still their, he's more than likely going to be back but this next part of your journey has to be about you.  Read as much as possible about BPD then take your ex's suit of armour that he's placed over you and give him it back. This is his illness not yours. His life is his journey not yours. You deal with you. I watched a lot of videos from life coaches online and read lots and lots of material about toxic relationships. It helped me to heal and a year on I've grown spiritually, emotionally and physically. I am very aware that how I was feeling a year ago was all part of my road to recovery, embraced your emotions and take control of them. It's ok to feel what you feel after what you've been through x

[Senra]

Thanks for replying, I've actually been in a horribly abusive BPD rs already and this one really took me by surprise. It was nothing like that one and I was estatic abt this. It felt so healthy and right. I guess that doesn't matter now though, this piece of emotonal brutality should be enough to make me decide that this isn't the right rs for me, but unlike my last rs, I have not had much of a chance to do any real exploring within the rs of really how hopeless it is. He did actually abruptly end the rs another time earlier in the rs but it was in reaction to some extreme extreme circumstantial factors and I rationalized it and we had come up w a plan and I remember thinking "if this is BPD I'll figure it out pretty quickly bc he won't be able to keep to this plan"... but then for 3 months nothing, we actually didn't even have conflict. We also never saw each other (which was him pulling away but I didn't recognize it at the time and took it personally) and this started to trigger me bc I took it personally, which started triggering him I'm realizing now and ultimately triggered this shutdown... this was all through text however over the span of like a cpl wks maybe and it was all indirect at first and when we finally both melted down we never even got to discuss it really it just happened so quickly :/// But he also blatantly did not stick to the plan, which absolutely shocked me at first, that he would hurt me in this way again, but at least I know how and why.

In fact I really believe that part of what is keeping him from contacting me is bc he is realizing that he has some serious issues that need to be addressed. I knew him in another context before we dated; I knew his rs history, he's NEVER done this to anyone in this way. I knew he had some issues but abruptly ending relationships that were strong and "healthy" and intense and free of conflict was not one of them. So I'm sure he is reeling from this as well and maybe still dissociated bc he KNOWS what a grevious thing he has done. He is self-aware enough to know that and to own absolutely everything abt this, he did do this even in the dissociative state he was in bc I drove to his house the night he texted me and was able to see and talk to him. He couldn't really explain anything but just said it was him, he was so so sorry, he thought he was ready for a rs but he wasn't, he couldn't believe he was doing this to someone bc his ex had always shut down on him in the past and he said "I know exactly how you feel right now and it's so brutal I'm sorry. I've been avoiding you bc I knew how upset you'd be and I didn't want to do this to you but it's how I feel I'm sorry." He patiently sat while I sobbed hysterically and asked him question after question that he couldn't process or answer. I asked him to just hold me all night while I cried most of the time. He said he still had feelings for me but couldn't really access them right now. He kept saying "Let's just see, idk, I really don't know, we'll see... " I know he is the type of person who is not going to want this to be a pattern for him so I do feel there is some hope for him. I think another person would have become psychotic at something like this and this would have likely made the situation more abt the girl being crazy and that would have been an easy way for him to avoid the fact that this is about HIM. I sent him a few messages right after this happened and then have been NC for a little over a wk now. I did notice a few days after my last message that he finally went on the texting app we use which I can only assume he did to finally read everything I had been sending him over the past cpl wks which he has not read yet so I was hopeful that he was coming out of his dissociative state and open to communicating me but I have not heard from him... maybe he is just processing everything still, he has to be... idk. I had told him there is no pressure whatsoever that we could just go back to the beginning in a sense if he was feeling triggered by the closeness and maybe we cld just hang out once a wk and not even talk abt this stuff. But I think he knows that this is a very pathological thing that he is doing and that it means something but he doesn't know what or how or why. Maybe this time for him has been absolute hell too, if he's out of the dissociative state. I just wish he'd let us have a discussion abt it. I as much as possible tried to minimize the shame of him doing this in what I said and my messages although seeing me that way... was probably extremely triggering to him. Knowing that I risked my career to even date him in the first place is something that I'm sure he realizes is also what makes this hard. There is a complicated backstory.

So idk, I hate the abyss I sink into, it does not feel healthy at all, it feels completely out-of-control and panicking. I can deal w feelings of sadness and loss but when it gets to that deeper level it's unbearable. It's all my issues w abandonment, apparently... I could try and frame this as an act of love for me that he's doing, NOT recycling and getting into an unstable pattern until he feels like he has this figured out, I think he knows I could help him sort it out but he also knows that obviously I am part of the issue so probably doesn't see that as very helpful obviously. Knowing him, he is feeling an exonerable amt of guilt and shame over this if he's actually feeling things again. It doesn't seem rational that this would last forever, knowing him, but then my abandonment kicks in and hyperfocuses on that aspect and feeling rejected and picturing him as having just amputated me and going on w life as usual although I really am not so sure at all that he's capable of that past the dissociative stage. Maybe he is planning on keeping in that stage for as long as possible hoping that I will have moved on eventually and he doesn't have to feel so bad... idk... I was going to wait until I actually WAS better to send him a message perhaps abt my things, when I wasn't feeling so desperate and needy for contact... and maybe at that point that would make him feel safer abt re-connecting w me at least for some closure, idk... although if I'm at that point then I wouldn't necessarily need it like I do now...

[Senra]

 Think that this took both of us by surprise bc he's never been in a rs where he felt this connected and "in love" before, our feelings and connection were SO intense. I think that his last rs he was more in the position of struggling w the fear of abandonment but our rs triggered the fear of engulfment, probably. I knew that he had difficult regulating strong emotions and processing things but I also knew his rs was full of conflict and that his wife had major issues also it seemed so it was hard to extrapolate that to our rs. He pursued me heavily and I put myself in a very vulnerable position dating him, but I felt like finally that this was The Guy so I took a huge risk for him. Which is another layer that makes this "ending" so crazy. That in the beginning he was so so insecure abt losing me etc (I recognize this now as BPD obviously)