Hi family members
I will share my story, and my path of recovery that still goes on, hope you can identify similar stages in your recovery and we can discuss that. Also, hope you can give me an advice how to proceed.
During last two months I started my recovery process.
To summarize my relationship status: I was in a relationship for several months with BPDgf. I am 30 years old. This was my first relationship, a serious one at least. First time I felt something special, a love feeling towards someone else, she was someone with I saw a future as a possible option. She is in therapy, but not sure if she really fully admits BPD with all of its traits. The relationship started, as you all know, to be to stressful for me and I broke up with her. I felt really bad, wasn't sure it is the right decision, but something inside of me, some sort of inner voice told me: "This is a good decision. For both of you. You are at the edge of your mind. So is she. Something is wrong, both of you trigger something bad in other partner". So I left. She was really devastated by my decision. She said that she lost faith that she can fell in love with someone, and she feels awful because "her state and illness" are taking me away from her.
I am still not sure that I have made a right decision.
After some time, I broke NC, contacted her, we both said that we feel bad, said that we both hope that other one will find happiness.
After that she contacted me saying that she misses me, and would like to talk when I feel OK with that. I said that I am not ready for that step yet.
So, this is short intro and current status. Now with the real stuff... .
After I broke up I did several things:
- I knew, I felt that this was not a normal breakup, relationship. Like I said, I didn't have much experience with r/s, but some inner voice screamed that something is different here. There were too extreme points in this relationship. Push/pull, love/rage. I started to learn about BPD (once during our relationship, she said that her T mentioned BPD, but she "didn't see a lot of traits that BPD represents as symptoms". I really studied a lot about it. I found bpdfamily. Everything fitted. I found exact patterns of my relationship. I felt relieved - I am not crazy. Someone else experienced it. Classic story for all of us I believe.
- At first, I felt abused, victimized, and saw her as really bad person. But this didn't last for long. I would say extremely short period. Few days. Mostly because I started to learn about BPD. I also read a lot of confessions of BPD persons. And was able to see their point of view. And to identify some similar situations from my r/s and too see how my exGF felt in those situations.
- I started therapy for the first time in my life. I recognized some unhealthy patterns in my behavior. Mostly in my FOO, nothing too extreme (at least as I know for now), just not-so-easy life circumstances. I manage to form a good life environment (university, work, career, friends) but some inner issues remained and I am now working on this. I guess those issues attracted me to BPD and I wanted to save her.
- I am not a religious person. I don't believe in God that formal religions preach. Everything that has dogmatic preaching, instantly, pushes me back. Part of my character I assume (maybe another FOO issue ) But recently I started to read a lot of Buddhist materials, study meditation concept and I found something peaceful in it. Still, not that I believe that Buddha really existed or something like that, at the end it is not important, the things that I found useful for my recovery is the teaching, point of view. Aligned with this, I started to learn a lot about 'healthy' concepts of love, learning to love 'myself' more.
Well, this is in short what have I done. Believe me, in my life those are big steps. Mostly I have lived my life by following pattern, rarely stopped and thinking what am I really doing, too much of automatism. Like I said, this approach created 'a nice life from outside', but something was wrong from inside.
Now, about 'problems' with this point of view. I don't consider them as problems, but it fits in terminology that is often used in this board.
This type of thinking made me much more aware what is my exGF going through. I really see her point of view much better. I thought, during our relationship, that I understand, she is depressed, she has anxiety attacks, she has abandonment issues, I need to be there for here, ... .. But now I see that I didn't see it clearly. I wanted to understand but I didn't. That is a reason why I didn't react appropriately to her BPD symptoms. I took it to personally, it hurt my ego, and my ego is big. I don't blame myself for this. This was just something that I couldn't do at that point of time. I tried my best, really did.
Now, with all this 'understanding', accepting the things in the light they are, letting go the things that I cannot impact, I feel different type of feeling for her. i guess I reached something called radical acceptance. This is she.
Even while I am writing this post, I would like to go and just hug her. I cannot strictly identify the feelings I have. I am not sure if they are romantic. They are really compassionate.
I want her to be OK, to recover, to tell her that I understand. That someone understands, that someone loves her with all her BPD traits, in this moment, now, without observing past or future.
The thing is, my understanding is that if you are happy - truly happy, BPD shouldn't affect you that much. It is something you cannot control. it is their problem, not yours.
But we have so much problem with our ego, our narcissistic traits. We take it to personally because we have our own issues, our own self-image is not so stable and it hurts us.
Really, I think we have the same problem as BPD persons, but not in so extreme conditions. our reactions are more 'socially acceptable', but for me they have the same background.
For example:
BPD person: He looked me in a strange way. He hates me. He doesn't want to be with me. He is going to abandon me. :fear: :freakout: :yell:
nonBPD: WOW, she is yelling at me. Why would you yell at someone who loves you? I even brought her flowers today. Who would do this? Only a monster! She doesn't love me. She thinks I am a bad person.
The thing is, both reaction are similar. Both persons react on someone else's reaction in a way that they think.
BPD person reacts in a way that BPD reacts. I reacted as non. But in the background was also my low self-esteem. Now I understand that.
