Between love and hate

[Daniell85]

At this point I have decided to give up the fight for my boyfriend completely.

After spending about a year reading here and participating in the last 9 or so months, I have come to the conclusion that I am not trying to help stabilize a BPD person in a relationship with me.

I am not trained, beyond an undergraduate degree in psychology on these things, and I have pretty much lost the will to try and figure him out. That being said, I believe I have possibly been dealing with a psychopath or an NPD.

This is a person who has clearly take enormous enjoyment in tormenting me. His lack of empathy has stunned me over and over. The casual calm cruelty, the lies and cheating. The lack of remorse and the the indifference to the pain he deliberately causes the people close to him.

I have made many many excuses for him in order to justify to myself staying present, extending myself, opening myself. Only to get set up for a fall over and over.

I realized in the last couple of days with him, that he was absolutely misleading me in order to set me up for something. He sets me up, draws me into coming along behind him, and then SURPRISE a deliberate sucker punch. It is simply malicious and planned. I am not able to endure it and I see no end in sight of it.

He has been the love of my life. Absolutely I have loved with all my heart. I was encouraged to by him, and even a few days ago he was trying to get me to open up and be closer... .then suddenly as I relaxed, the drop into the hole he dug to push me into.

Is this BPD? If it is, it is an extreme case with someone who is making elaborate plans and has capacity to conceal and mislead.

I am deeply grateful that I did not marry him. I am not sure I will ever recover from this beyond a certain point due to the panic disorder I am now fighting and the PTSD from the abuse.

Yesterday I didn't know what to do, except I reached my limit. He abused me and in return I pushed him from my life in every way I could and made clear he was never welcome again. I lost my composure completely and I said a lot of things I couldn't have imagined myself saying to anyone, let alone someone I love.

After that was over, I went to bed. It took hours before I could stop shaking. I felt so cold.

I think BPD family is an amazing site and the members here are some of the most exceptionally compassionate and wise people I have known. I plan to stay and continue to try and process what has happened in this relationship and past parts of my life.

I am deeply sad and sorry to lose my own relationship, hopefully many of yours will heal and life will be well for those of you who continue the fight for your loved ones. 

[Notwendy]

Daniell,

We know that we can not make this decision for anyone else. However, you have come to a conclusion when dating someone that, even though you care about him, you do not want to spend the rest of your life with him, or be subjected to his behavior any longer.

IMHO, this is what dating is about. To learn about the other person and to make this kind of decision, one way or the other. It becomes more complicated to decide this after marriage. Dating gives you the space to do so.

I agree, it is not the job of a romantic partner to be someone's mental health counselor. It is not the job of the partner to be someone's emotional ( or physical ) punching bag. You have the right to choose to not be in a relationship with someone who does not treat you kindly.

And you did. This isn't easy, but you chose to do this for you. Good for you. Now is the time to grow, and to change and learn about yourself. If I had one piece of advice, it would be to not seek out another relationship until you have done the work and processing about this one. This way, you will not repeat this with someone else. You have already grown to this point. You are worth it.

This board has sections for healing and eventually dating again.

[Cat Familiar]

Daniell,

I want to give you a hug.    And I want to reassure you that things will get better.

It took me many years to exit my first marriage and that husband sounds a lot like your boyfriend. In his case, the lies and cheating just went underground and I'm grateful that I survived.

I would recommend that you seek counseling. I did that after I ended my marriage and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. I'm so much healthier emotionally now, but that didn't protect me from marrying another pwBPD. At least this one is a good person, not a sociopath or narcissist, like the first husband.

Best of luck to you as you transition the loss of your relationship. It's hard, but even harder when you've married your mistake.

Cat

[sebastian.l]

Hey Danielle,

I went through a relationship with my ex-girl with the same patterns. I was set up a lot of times, just to find something to push me away or criticize me after. For example, a very ridiculous every day situation. We both ride our bikes, when she starts racing in front just to tell me in 5 minutes that I am annoying when I am always behind her and would be a lazy guy an slow. It sounds trivial, but that hearing out of the mouth of your loved one eats you up. Especially, when later you're expected to not even dare to argue her bad behavior which happens in total different emotional dimensions. Like lying, deceiving and cheating. But they will always find a good reason why they acted that way. 'it was just a kiss with that the guy'. You are hurt because of that, well, 'I told you how I felt by that time and I said sorry. I know I made mistakes'. I heard this excuse over and over again. And it just made me feel like the guy, who doesn't have the balls enough to take her ___. She made me look weak.

But it's us who are the tough ones, the stabile ones. Otherwise you could never stand that long in the ___ storm like a rock. It helped me in recovering to describe some situations in detail here. Maybe this goes for you as well. If you want, here are folks to listen and share experience. So you don't have to feel like there is something wrong with you.

[unicorn2014]

  Hi daniell85, I'm sorry to hear that but it looks like you're not quite ready to go yet as you are posting on the deciding board and not the leaving board. Is this true?

[Daniell85]

I posted to say I was letting the relationship go. Lots of people have been pretty supportive to me.

I will be around the site, posting, but not as someone trying to keep the relationship.

The now ex boyfriend set me up repeatedly in the last several days. Two of the women, including the woman he cheated on me with began harrassing me online. He has been telling his former affair partner private things, and she repeated them to me. These are things from just the last few days.

Maybe someone else could cope, but I honestly can't.

Being painted black or whatever is bad enough, but to see he has betrayed my trust again with that woman. I was actually upset enough to tell her off and this is a HUGE crime to the boyfriend and it was just too much.

I refuse to be in the middle of all of that chaos. I get sucked in. Very importantly to me is that I end up acting like a person I really don't want to be.

Thank you to those who posted to this thread your kind words, I will do my best to heal and move forward.   

[Notwendy]

You have the right to make this choice, to let it go, and you don't even have to defend it to any of us. This is your choice. I am glad you posted here so that those of us who have known you through this can learn of your decision. I wish you the best in your healing and personal growth, and the hope for a happy relationship sometime in the future.

[LilMe]

Daniell85,

It is hard to break away, but I am sure you will come out the other side stronger and happier.  You deserve better!

There is a lot of great support on the detaching board.  They really help each other through the low times when you second guess yourself or the BP starts love bombing and such.  I hope you will stick around on the boards for a while for support and to let us know how you are doing!

[unicorn2014]

Ok I understand now, this was a farewell post to the deciding board and the next post you will make will probably be on the detaching board so I'll look for your name there. Congratulations on your decision!

[Daniell85]

It's not a farewell post 

I feel comfortable posting anywhere on the site. I am here to learn.

[Grey Kitty]

  You did something really hard. I want to say "good for you", except I know that it is going to feel pretty much everything but "good" no matter how right it is for a while now.

Wishing you peace

 GK

[Daniell85]

thank you

A little update to this, is one of the ladies who he has been persistently triangulating me with, wrote to me. She included all sorts of photos of her fiance and herself together. They are so obviously in love now and the devotion literally emanates from them.

I feel kind of like a jerk. I was totally furious with her and hating her because it looked like she was participating and persuing my now ex boyfriend. He really worked it to me, too. Denying anything was happening, while at the same time playing relentlessly on my hurt and fear by posting pics of her and him. Serious numbers. Like 20 a week.

Whatever is really going one, I can see he has been orchestrating it, deliberately.

I think the core of his motivations is he hates himself and is so angry about he how he stitched up his own life, he literally is wanting to make other people unhappy too.

He does have reason to feel trapped in his life. People feel how they feel... until they figure out a way not, too. While his situation has been difficult, I don't see where deliberately hurting me is actually helping his life really improve.


But, I am not currently going to engage in all of it. I guess he would have to do an immense amount of self work and progress in order for me to even want to talk to him again.

So it's back to floating around the site and picking up understanding about my own life, as best I can!