Trying to overcome fear of letting go

[geesunday]

I was in a relationship with my diagnosed BPD girlfriend for a year and a half and we had  a mutual break up. The break up was hard on me but I worked  a lot to overcome it and we both went into other relationships for about 6 months. No contact during that time

Her bf broke up with her and then she contacted me and wanted to be friends. I was reluctant to do this but after about 3 months we tried to be friends. I was having a hard time being a friend because she continued to rely on me for emotional support. We were in this weird friendship for about a year and I finally told her I couldnt do it anymore. This was 6 months ago.

We've been in no contact and I made up my mind that I couldn't deal with her in the same way that she wanted. It was too heavy emotionally for me.

I feel better and I do not want her back as a gf and I do not particularly care to go back to being friends in the way that we were. i know that her idea of friendship would always be me helping her deal with her depression and that's not what I want.

All that being said, I feel fearful of letting her go completely and Im not sure why. I was the one who had to deal with a lot more of the emotions and it was draining whenever we were together as both gf and friends.

I know I can make the break 100% and no longer think of her with any affection, responsibility or obligation. I feel like, if I choose, I can move on completely and never speak with her again. But something keeps holding me back cause I feel like it would somehow be a betrayal of her.

How have others dealt with this feeling of guilt of finally moving on from someone and how do you overcome it?

[Creativum]

Hmmmm ... .Well there's a lot on here about how we become "addicted" to these people, and I think that's very true.  So there's that.

But I was talking to my own therapist about it and he gave me a very interesting analogy.  When we become parents, we have unconditional love for our children.  Our children are emotionally immature and it's our job to help, guide, raise them.  Even when our children beat us up, blame us, humiliate us, do things that make us fear for our lives and theirs, we still love them unconditionally and long for them to go back to being the sweet angels they once were.  We feel like we're responsible for their failures.  We forgive, forgive, forgive ... .they take, take take ... .they run away from home and we're crushed and long for their return.  No parent likes to turn their back completely and forever on the child they raised.  The relationships with our BPD exes aren't that much different, especially since to them, we constitute the other half of a symbiotic relationship necessary for their emotional survival.  Just like with our mothers when we're babies until we individuate.  Unfortunately, our BPD exes never individuate, and we become enmeshed in them in a parent-child type of emotional bond.

While no one likes to think of it as some sort of pederastic relationship we have with these people, at the end of the day, we are actually in love with children.  They might be fully grown and intellectually mature, and well past the age of majority, but emotionally they're children.  We adopt them and make ourselves responsible for them in a way that we simply shouldn't.

She's not your responsibility.  Let her go.  Easier said than done, I know.

[toddinrochester]

Its because of the emotional investment we have made in this person. You don't want to lose the time you put in and its a comfortable thing, someone you know. End of the day none of us like to be on the other side of this.

[geesunday]

Creativum- The analogy to parent and unconditional love makes sense to me. Im not addicted to the drama and its not anything I miss.

What I feel like is that I made a promise to myself that I would always be there for her if she ever really really needed me, like on the verge of suicide and called me.

Part of me is afraid of letting go of that sense of obligation and commitment within myself. I know I can extinguish that flame but, maybe like a child relationship, I feel like it would be a very sad thing for me to do.

[OutOfEgypt]

It's because they pose themselves as helpless children who need to be taken care of, and victims who need to be protected from the mean people out there, and it captures our instinct to nurture and protect.  Part of us likes having a one-way relationship.   It makes us feel good about ourselves.  But the dark side of it is that we're hooked into this twisted dynamic where we actually feel guilty for not being their knight in shining armor anymore.  But that was never how a relationship was supposed to be in the first place.  A relationship should be an emotional partnership, not an emotional rescue mission.  She's an adult.  Let her be an adult.  You can't save her, and the people who try to are just keeping her from getting the help she needs.