How to tell someone that the reason why you left is BPD?

[blackbirdsong]

How to admit that fact to someone?

How to admit to yourself that this is the reason? And not to feel like $#it.

I am feeling like I left someone who has a cancer. What is the difference?

Physical disability also demands a lot of sacrifice, a lot of compromises... .

But it feels different. Is it just my excuse?

The feeling is much worse because I didn't spend too much time to actually try more (4 months). I left, because I didn't understand what is going on, was exhausted of irrationality without an explanation. Really, reached emotional edge. My behavior was everything that lessons here learn you not to do.

I mean I tried validation and stuff, by instinct, something that works with other, non-BPD people, but in this case you need to do different, more complex-type of validation.

She is pretty aware of her problems, is in therapy, even tried to learn me how to cope it with this. I suppose I really didn't understand it, never had a contact with something similar... .

How to explain this to someone, to yourself? That we are not together because of the parameter that we cannot influence?

What is your experience, how did you cope with this?

I believe this is also a problem with, me just cannot accept that I cannot change/fix something. The 'virtue' that often helped me in my education, career is now killing me.

I guess, the ultimate answer is "just let go", but there is something in my personality that cannot let go.

Maybe I should move to a different board after all?

To give my best shot, I feel like I didn't, considering that I haven't understand it.

To succeed or maybe I need to be heavily burned, like many of us here to learn my lesson?

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey BBS-

You tell someone, and yourself, that you left because the behaviors were unacceptable.  We are usually very confused by it all when we leave the relationship, and then we make it somewhere like this site, educate ourselves about the disorder, read other accounts that sound just like ours, and start to understand why our exes do what they do.  The fog clears.  And it's sad, we lose, our ex loses, the only winner is the disorder.  And we can't fix it. 

So focus on the behaviors.  We go into relationships with certain expectations, that the other person will be able to build a healthy relationship with us based on mutual trust and respect.  And then whoops!  Surprise, that wasn't to be and we're faced with mental illness, a first for many of us, a reenactment of childhood for others.  And it's easy to empathize and want to help, to the point that we put the other person's needs ahead our own, because their needs are extreme.  It's hard to be selfish when we're deep in it, but that's what's necessary: selfishness gets a bad rap, but really, if we don't take care of ourselves first we have nothing to give, which is the truth.  So focus on the behaviors and whether they were acceptable or not, along with accepting that you can't change or fix it.

And then, there's an opportunity here, an opportunity to find the gift of the relationship.  The 'fixer' mode you see as a virtue, in a lot of situations it is, but in some it might not be, and there's an opportunity to find another way to deal with situations where fixing it won't work.  What might that be?  What if everything happens for a reason and it serves us?  There's a gift in there somewhere.  Take care of you!

[thisworld]

So focus on the behaviors.  We go into relationships with certain expectations, that the other person will be able to build a healthy relationship with us based on mutual trust and respect.  And then whoops!  Surprise, that wasn't to be and we're faced with mental illness, a first for many of us, a reenactment of childhood for others.  And it's easy to empathize and want to help, to the point that we put the other person's needs ahead our own, because their needs are extreme.  It's hard to be selfish when we're deep in it, but that's what's necessary: selfishness gets a bad rap, but really, if we don't take care of ourselves first we have nothing to give, which is the truth.  So focus on the behaviors and whether they were acceptable or not, along with accepting that you can't change or fix it.

I so agree with this. With psychiatric stuff, it's not only about an illness. It's about how an illness is manifested in singular individuals at one point in their lives and how this psychologically affect others. That is behaviours. With Cluster B, that effect is usually damaging. You are not leaving someone because they have BPD. You are leaving someone because what they are offering to you - with or without the disease- is not satisfactory to you - no need to feel guilt because of this. This is in the nature of your relationship. This person agreed to be in an intimate relationship with you - it wasn't obligatory- which means they should have no problem with you having emotional expectations and your freedom to leave when these are not satisfied. Maybe another person with BPD would not do what she did to you and you would have agreed to stay. The truth seems to be that at this point, you are not motivated to wait for the change that may or may not come. You don't have to be. Also, there are a lot of psychiatric patients who choose not to be in relationships because they don't want others to be affected negatively. Those who choose to enter relationships should accept that there needs to be some mutuality somewhere. A disorder does not make us exempt from this. If it does, it inevitably changes the nature of the relationship. You become the caretaker. Whether you want to do that or not depends on you. Nobody can say anything about that.

As for the cancer analogy. To check the illness analogy, we can do a simple logic test. Replace the illness term with another illness. Would you feel guilty for leaving someone with severe ASPD, that is a violent and sinister, cunning psychopath? They are in Cluster B as well. In a sense, they are actually more ill than BPD. Does it mean that we should stay with psychopaths even more because they are even more seriously ill? In this respect, you are staying with the BPD not because she is ill, but also because she is not as ill as some other people. You can envisage staying because she is healthier actually. So much for the illness analogy.

Also, cancer is not a disease that causes severe personality changes in people as we know them. Neither does it necessarily include hurtful behaviour like dishonesty, lies, cheating whatnot. If a cancer patient starts doing these you may leave them as well. I'm thinking about this for myself. What would I do? If my partner had a fatal cancer and had only a bit of time, maybe I would agree with a freedom, a free pass for whatever, whatever they wanted to try in life. If my partner had a less serious cancer, something which would stay with them all their lives but not kill them - like they had more or less the same life expectancy as myself- and if they insisted on being a Casanova, I'd leave them. I'm mortal, too. I liken my ex's situation to the latter.