Walking away with a semblance of style

[Depression = 72% of members]

Hi

I have been in a typical push pull, on and then off again relationship with a very beautiful, very high functioning, but undoubtedly borderline girl, for a year. She has never been diagnosed and never accepted any responsibility, always calling me 'dramatic', but that's by the by.

We got together again two months ago, slept together once and then she did one of her favourite tricks, withdrawing affection and love. Always promising, never delivering it, there was always a reason, she was busy, she was moody, not today etc  etc. And all the time she'd try and get more and more favours out of me, help, whatever.

I know I shouldn't have even let it go this long, but I do have feelings for the girl and wanted it to work out.

Anyway, finally I had enough, and walked out. I guess I have to be honest, after all the crap I have put up with, total devaluation, her insulting absolutely every part of my personality and, together with her vicious little cow of a sister, basically trying to bully me in my own home, I want her to hurt a bit.

Part of me wants her to stop taking me for granted, go away and think about her actions and come back with a better attitude. I wish that could happen, but I kind of doubt it ever can.

So as I left I told her that a relationship, or friends with benefits, or whatever she wanted to call it, without benefits, is just friends. And that she is not a good enough person, never has been, never will be, to be just friends with. She just doesn't meet my minimum standards for 'just friends'.

So just curious, have I just burned this one to the ground for good? Will she hate me? Will she actually think about what she is doing?

I'm a bit lost at the moment, I know I am better off without her, I know life is not meant to be like that. I know she was actually only a great girl in the first two months I knew her, after that it has been more or less Hell, but part of me still longs for that fictional girl to come back.

[Frustratedbloke]

Hi

I have been in a typical push pull, on and then off again relationship with a very beautiful, very high functioning, but undoubtedly borderline girl, for a year. She has never been diagnosed and never accepted any responsibility, always calling me 'dramatic', but that's by the by.

We got together again two months ago, slept together once and then she did one of her favourite tricks, withdrawing affection and love. Always promising, never delivering it, there was always a reason, she was busy, she was moody, not today etc  etc. And all the time she'd try and get more and more favours out of me, help, whatever.

I know I shouldn't have even let it go this long, but I do have feelings for the girl and wanted it to work out.

Anyway, finally I had enough, and walked out. I guess I have to be honest, after all the crap I have put up with, total devaluation, her insulting absolutely every part of my personality and, together with her vicious little cow of a sister, basically trying to bully me in my own home, I want her to hurt a bit.

Part of me wants her to stop taking me for granted, go away and think about her actions and come back with a better attitude. I wish that could happen, but I kind of doubt it ever can.

So as I left I told her that a relationship, or friends with benefits, or whatever she wanted to call it, without benefits, is just friends. And that she is not a good enough person, never has been, never will be, to be just friends with. She just doesn't meet my minimum standards for 'just friends'.

So just curious, have I just burned this one to the ground for good? Will she hate me? Will she actually think about what she is doing?

I'm a bit lost at the moment, I know I am better off without her, I know life is not meant to be like that. I know she was actually only a great girl in the first two months I knew her, after that it has been more or less Hell, but part of me still longs for that fictional girl to come back.

[thisworld]

Hello Frustratedbloke

And welcome to bpdfamily!

I'm sorry for what brought you here but I think you'll find a lot of parallels here - lots of members (including me) have similar stories. 'Semblance of style' doesn't sound so bad by the way, I wish I had a bit of that myself.

It sounds like you have gone through all phases (vulnerable seducer, clinger, hater) of a relationship with a person with BPD, experienced a recycle and you naturally have some resentments. Anger is normal at this stage, I find lessons on this board helpful in terms of finding out how to use it constructively. Educating ourselves about BPD also helps us make sense of what has been going on and we find answers to many questions.

Because BPD is an attachment disorder, at some point we become triggers for our partners' disorder and then it is very difficult to go back to the initial mirroring phase. Even when we recycle, as soon as the attachment is strong again, the same cycle begins - but this time, it usually takes shorter. So, yes, you may have burned this one for good. How do you feel about this nowadays?

Whether she will hate you or not depends on whether she splits you black. It has happened to many of us and there isn't much we can do about that either. Feelings equal facts in BPD and this isn't something we can change. In my personal experience, I was split back during the relationship without my knowing, I went No Contact and my ex turned volatile (I received some scary hate messages) but he tried to recycle me. We are "friends" now, which means I'm reserved for  support but he is constantly looking for replacements. As of now, he doesn't hate me - which doesn't mean that he isn't telling other women how much I hurt him in this relationship and things like that.

Will your ex girl friend actually think about what she is doing? She probably would but I don't think she would arrive in the conclusions you expect. Actually, when we are surviving a break-up, this is one of the beliefs that keep us stuck. I relate it with number 10, 'Belief that they have seen the light' in this article:

Surviving a Break-up when Your Partner has Borderline Personality

Likewise, longing for the fictional girl reminds me of Belief Number 5.

It's very natural to have these and many of us find ourselves torn between contradictory feelings. How is your life going?

Please keep posting so that we can support each other.

Best,

TW

[Frustratedbloke]

Yes I think there are some similarities. I think she had friendzoned me while looking for replacements, but I just figured why the hell should I tolerate that? I wasn't just back-up, I was a security blanket and if she had her way I would have been her chauffeur and butler too.

I am actually OK with it, I think, I didn't get as emotionally enmeshed this time round. It would have been impossible, she got me at a very low point in life last time, to the point that I was actually surprised anybody would want me. I was coming off a business failure, living in a terrible apartment, I didn't feel like much of a catch.

In hindsight, I was perfect for her. I saw one of the other guys she was out with since, he looked half broken. She cannot handle people at full strength it seems.

The funny thing was I was constantly thinking if I get my life back on track, get financially set again, get this, get that, everything will be fine. I thought the first time was all my fault. I was a bit needy, I was insecure and I allowed myself to get flat out bullied on occasion.

This time I am in much better shape, have a nice place, emotionally I was much more centred and refused to  cave in to her mad crap. I was 10,000% better. She wasn't 1% better. So in some ways I think it's a good thing she came back.

If I have burnt it to the ground, so be it. I see past the BS now, she is not that amazing a person. She can be, sometimes, but she isn't, totally. So yeah, I think the recycle, even though it was doomed to fail, might actually be healthy for me. It gave me some power back and the chance to be the dumper, in my own way.

Just curious, why do you want to be friends with yours? I found mine to be totally self centred, like gave nothing and took everything. More from a man's perspective I know, if she was sleeping with me I could have dealt with that. Now she's not, nah... .

[thisworld]

Frustratedbloke, thank you for question. It is a question a version of which I ask myself from time to time to see how well I’m doing in terms of building  emotional and otherwise safety in my life.

My ex became volatile after I ended the relationship and went No Contact, I was very scared and wasn’t at a position where I could confidently protect myself legally and was stuck in my life circumstances between temporary dependence on an emotionally difficult mother (which happened thanks to this relationship). All this when I was also traumatised and also to a degree guilt-ridden as he was dependent on me at that stage - even though I had been trying to get out for a while. The therapist I worked with to increase safety in my life suggested I go Gray Rock, a sort of communication where I communicate but act so dull, so dull that my ex loses his obsessive interest in me and speeds up the replacement-searching process. This “dullness” also angered my ex and he sensed there was something going on I think. I was very anxious, too. My T suggested I increase attention a bit which would have some positive effects which would decrease my anxiety –narcissistic supply as she termed it. Things started to get better – hate and threats stopped. In this period, I tremendously benefited from communication skills like S.E.T and other tips here.

During this period I felt bad most of the time. Trying to use new communication skills with a man who was scaring me to death felt fake like I was trying to manipulate him. The thing is, I’m not scared of my ex as a person. He is a very pained person and he is like a child in many ways (but that child goes on to the arrogant NPD mode the moment he is slightly happier. He switches between these disorders that seem contradictory on the surface or that’s the way I perceive it due to how BPD manifests itself in some males.) But because he is an active opiate addict at the moment, the spiral from sadness to what he deems “parasuicide that went wrong” is very rapid and I simply didn’t have the power to deal with another overdose in my garden as well as its social and psychological pressures on me. I also discovered that when he is in this mode, he sabotages people so I contacted significant people and workplaces in my life giving brief information about the situation - without giving clues about him of course.

Then he unexpectedly moved to the only spot where I socialize in this Hobbit geography!

After some recycling attempts and crises, he is back to his mother's home now.

At this stage he has come up with a narrative where we are friends and he has actually rejected me. This is very good that he doesn't feel rejected. That's the goal of Gray Rock, to make a person believe that they are leaving you so it doesn't become a big wound to the ego. Still, I'm in the rescuer category of course. This is our "friendship."

Coming to this point has taken slightly longer than our actual relationship I guess.

How do I feel about it?

I wish I could have gone NC and be free of all the anxiety and fear I experienced at a trauma-ridden moment in my life. That wasn't the case.

I acted in FOG (fear being the most prominent.) I also discovered during all this communication that my ex is more ill, more troubled with cognitive distortions than I ever understood him to be - this was partly hidden beneath strong emotional reactions during our relationship.

I'm coming to a place where I feel empowered, much more empowered. The lifting of immediate danger as I understood it helped me to think more clearly and I feel more ready to do protect myself fully in this Hobbit place.

I'm trying to do everything as honestly as I can - but without opening up my emotional world to him and protective Gray Rock white lies such as "I've got to go, the bell is ringing" are allowed. I have moved out of every space where silent emotional dynamics may occur-  like FB.

All this is very one-directional of course. He tells me about the multiplicity of ailments he has. I tell him that I'm ill, he doesn't ask what's wrong with me. The only times he contacts me are when he fears abandonment due to something else in his life and when he asks for something. (Never for fun) Hence, friendship in quotations.

I don't love him, I even don't think he is my kind of person, there is simply nothing that I find attractive about him - though I'm not 100 % detached. But, at this stage, I see no harm in trying to offer a bit of validation (only online and for a limited amount of time and only when he contacts me) when he is in trouble. It feels more positive than all the fear I had as well. He still tries to mirror and charm me from time to time with the rescuer theme, that doesn't work - I found it very off-putting in the mirroring stage as well, I didn't like the idealization.

So, this is where we are right now.

To me, friendship is something as valuable as a love relationship and it requires more actually. I can fall in love with people for a variety of reasons - some obviously unhealthy. But true friendship requires more match in values. We will never have a true friendship the way I would imagine it to be.

One friendship act I'm ready to do for him is that if he is in a very serious or terminal condition in a hospital, I'd not leave him alone there - unless there is no one else to help. I sometimes wonder why I'm ready to do this to a man who violated my emotions and my being in so many ways and am thinking about it. (More stuff for the Awareness forum:))

Have a nice day,

TW

[Frustratedbloke]

OK, then yeah, it sounds like you're not getting anything out of being friends either.

The funny thing is I think I maybe gave her the time to see what kind of friend she could be, the answer is absolutely awful. I bought her a Christmas present when we were still, sort of, on, and never got one back. It was just kind of typical and the weird thing is it didn't even disappoint me. It kind of showed me how low I have set the bar with her.

It suddenly occurred to me today, I mentioned she got me when I was coming off the back of a business failure etc. If I met her today, I don't think she'd have got a second date. In one of our two month off periods I bounced girls for far less serious problems than she had.

She just got me at the right time for her, the wrong time for me. But I gather that's pretty common too!

As for you, it sounds like the same sort of conclusion. What kind of friend would they be anyway? The same kind of lover they were: just terrible... .I don't hate her, she can be pretty cool, the thing that grates on me I guess is what I did for her.

If I'd done nothing, we'd have no issue. But they do have a habit of monopolising your life without giving a single thing back.

[C.Stein]

To me, friendship is something as valuable as a love relationship and it requires more actually.

I couldn't agree more.  Friendship is the core of any long term healthy relationship.  When all the passion and romance dies down, which it inevitably will, the friendship is what keeps it all together.  I believe this is a big reason why we see so many failed marriages in modern society.  People jump into marriage for reasons derived from passion and romance and the true friendship is not there.  When the passion and romance is all but gone there is nothing left except two people who are essentially incompatible strangers to each other.

[Frustratedbloke]

I think it's even worse than that in this case. It's like she'd taken everything good off the table and left me with the bad, led me on, lied, manipulated and when she was finally cornered and the lies weren't working she tried to repackage the same terrible deal and offer it as something new.

Their friendship would be just as bad as their company, but you know in advance you are just going to get the terrible side of them while someone else is getting the sweetness and light. You're agreeing in advance to become a vent for their dark side, you're helping them look better to someone else.

Nope, the other guy can get the whole package, see how well it works for them... .