I have just left and I feel numb.

[Beware of Junk Psychology...]

It's alright yellowflower.  You don't need to apologise to me. We're here to help each other remember? It's normal to feel confused or to want to engage with our partners for whatever reason. Remember feelings aren't 'wrong'. They can be constructive or destructive. No worries. If your responses all involve him for the time being, what are you going to do about it?

[gotbushels]

It's alright yellowflower.  You don't need to apologise to me. We're here to help each other remember? It's normal to feel confused or to want to engage with our partners for whatever reason. Remember feelings aren't 'wrong'. They can be constructive or destructive. No worries. If your responses all involve him for the time being, what are you going to do about it?

[yellowflower]

I feel like my only productive option is not to have any contact with him and to return back to my own country. I think I'm in real shock, I feel really disorientated and cold and I can't think straight. I have no idea where to go when I get back, I have just enough money to find somewhere else to live and then I will have to start trying to work again and get my little one into nursery.

I just can't wrap my head around the last couple of years or how everything has ended.

Even though I still have the urge to make contact and to try and repair things, I know this time that it is futile and something just keeps jamming that option for me.

So I am just going to have to go home start again and deal with the aftermath and emotions for as long as I have to.  :'(

[patientandclear]

Yellowflower, I relate to a lot of your story. Your  account of your deep effort to listen to and really hear him, and him accusing you of having some sort of malicious intent that inverted all your care for him and what he was saying to something bad and malevolent really resonated for me. That kind of distorted thinking makes is hard to build anything. I had a very similar episode, where I had a beautiful sweet discussion about something very important to my exwBPD, something I'd prepared very carefully for, and then at the very end, I said one word that he  misinterpreted (the word was "finally," meaning that we had finally managed to have this important conversation and it went well ... .And to him, that meant I felt he had finally changed his position to match mine, and I had had a secret agenda, and ... .. It was heartbreaking.) From the distance I have now I can see that that degree of mistrust makes it virtually impossible to build something good. All of my best efforts were corrupted to the point where they might as well not have happened.

Your decision to leave when he was being abusive is healthy, particularly when you have a small child involved, watching and learning. Once someone is testing you to see if you will ever speak up for yourself, differentiate yourself, protect yourself or leave abuse, and those healthy reactions are proof you don't care, you're truly btwn a rock and a hard place. There's no way to advance the relationship, unless you can keep doing those healthy things, not take what he says personally or seriously, but still not shame him, validate his feelings, and meanwhile, find a way to lead a meaningful life yourself. It's a pretty tough balancing act -- and something I bet your son would greatly prefer you not take on.

I really relate to that feeling you describe of something inside you inhibiting the impulse to resume the dynamic. There is some sort of saving self protecting superego factor that I do think stops us sometimes from destroying ourselves. On various occasions my equivalent of that has prevented me from continuing with my ex. I've been angry at myself over that because of the addictive pull I feel toward him and my genuine love for him. But I think that self protective instinct comes from intuitively grasping that his mistrust is too great and his insight too poor. It prompts me, like you it sounds like it has prompted you, to try to perform to gain his trust, but that is an unwinnable effort and also, a really unhealthy dynamic.

I would say that anything that needs to be said for closure or reflection may best be said later, when this is less charged and you've had time to let your perspective clarify.

[WoundedBibi]

I feel like my only productive option is not to have any contact with him and to return back to my own country. I think I'm in real shock, I feel really disorientated and cold and I can't think straight. I have no idea where to go when I get back, I have just enough money to find somewhere else to live and then I will have to start trying to work again and get my little one into nursery.

I just can't wrap my head around the last couple of years or how everything has ended.

Even though I still have the urge to make contact and to try and repair things, I know this time that it is futile and something just keeps jamming that option for me.

So I am just going to have to go home start again and deal with the aftermath and emotions for as long as I have to.  :'(

IMO this is the only truly kind, loving and useful thing you can do for you and your LO.

You are responsible for you and your LO not for your ex or how he feels.

Besides that, there is nothing truly kind, loving and useful you can do for your ex; he is so filled with mistrust, irrational thinking and PD filters, anything you say, no matter how kind or loving would be turned into something dark and sinister.

For now it is important that you and your little one are safe and away from your ex.

Then it is important for you to go back to your own country because things will feel different there; your own language, your own culture, familiar surroundings, familiar people, they will all make you feel safer and less alienated. It is easier to heal when you feel safe and more comfortable. Life is easier when you know where to find a doctor, a counselor, a T, help in finding a place to live, a new job, even just knowing what shop to go to if there is something you need.

Once you are back home, and you have found a place to live and a new job, then you can think about how to heal properly from this experience and look at the reasons you found yourself in these circumstances.

Meanwhile, keep posting here. We know how difficult a relationship with a pwPD is, how the end of it makes you feel like you've been run over by a truck, and the whirlwind of contradictory emotions that goes with either.

Don't doubt yourself, don't waiver, it is the only healthy decision for you and your LO. Remember you're responsible for 2 lives and your LO should have the best start in life possible, without a stepdad with a serious mental illness.

Let us know if there is anything you need, or you think we might be able to help you with that we can provide from behind our keyboards. 

[yellowflower]

Thankyou guys I'm just still sitting here in shock - I just feel like a veil fell off my eyes and I can see clearly, but I just can't believe that not only can someone be so unwell but that they can be so delusionally unwell as to think that their problems and behaviours are literally everyone elses fault.

I am in something of like a stupor at the minute at realising what I have just let happen for the last few years, all the warning signs that I ignored or didn't see or looked past at the time. I just can't believe it.

I keep running through things in my mind that he has said and shuddering, I have just realised that I am like a different person, I can barely bring myself to interact with other people as I recurrently hear his voice in my mind criticising and degrading my very being. Our relationship has consisted of him behaving like a wise all knowing guru, that had an answer for everything and was without reproach. That he could see more clearly and more insightfully and percieve people and the world at a level beyond regular people.

All of his ex-girlfriends he has diagnosed with borderline, and when talking about them would go into a state of being where he seemed to be reliving the breakups or the arguments(which he would tell me over and over until I knew the whole situation off by heart but every time he told me he would tell it as though it was the first time). His stories of his breakups would include him saying that he had done 'absolutely nothing wrong' it was *all* them and all their fault, that his was beyond reproach and that they were crazy b___es. The mother of his son can barely hold a conversation with him, the mother of his second son walked out when she was five months pregnant as she said he was abusive and *never* returned, he has never met the child. She literally walked out the door one day and didn't even take her things(I feel for him but I can't help wondering that people don't just do things like this for no reason) he thinks both of them have BPD. His next girlfriend(also diagnosed as BPD by him) was apparently a drug addict and the relationship extremely volatile.

I truly think that he hates women, he seemed to have the kind of attitude that I should have no problem to cook and clean and take care of the house and my son at all times, with no help at all, if I voiced anything I felt about that he would tell me I was ungrateful, that this is what life was about, that I was a feminazi, that some women enjoyed looking after their homes and husbands and children. It wasn't that i didn't, it just became questionable having to clean up after everyone as though I was a slave, with next to no thanks or appreciation. Then he would tell me I had NPD because I wanted 'appreciation' for doing things that should be natural to me. 

The conversations are mind blowing insane... .Me:'you assaulted me and you admitted assaulting me and if you keep assaulting me I will have to go to the police' ... Him:'oh typical ___ing borderline, makes up assaults and allegations and then threatens with them, well if that's what you want to do go ahead, we'll see what I'm capable of then, maybe I'll make some charges against you abusing your child'.

So, me stating clearly that I won't stand for any more physical abuse, physical abuse that actually happened(that he has admitted to and that I have recordings of him admitting to) is in his mind, me being 'borderline' he has just accused me of fabricating assault charges and then in the next breath threatened to fabricate allegations about me in vengeance about my son. My only gratefulness in that whole situation was by that point I had started hitting record on my webcam so I had a copy of our conversations, which I started doing not out of maliciousness(as he said) but because I was genuinely so confused, I would come away after conversations and think... .did I say that? Was I shouting?... .when I lisen back at them they are like the rantings of an insane person, nothing makes sense, the double standards, the hypocrisy, the threats, it's all just madness. Sheer madness. How can this be?

Do I have any responsibility to make any kind of informing of this to the police or am I better to just leave and thank myself lucky, I just keep thinking of the next person that is going to get caught up with him.

One day we were laying in bed and he started talking with some real sense of venom in his voice about a murder case that had happened in Canada. It was about a doctor who had snapped and killed his children, he goes on to say that he watched a few minutes of an interview that the mother of the children and wife of the doctor had made and how he didn't like her, she was a narcissist and full of it and how she played her part in it too. I say 'what do you mean?' he goes on to say 'oh the poor guy was probably just doing his job, bringing home the money, doing his best and she was just taking and taking only interested in superficiality and being a b___ and then she pushed him too far and he snapped, you know she has to accept the part she played in this too you know'.

So at that point I'm feeling pretty   and I say 'but it really shouldn't matter what anyone does, when it comes to your own children whom you love you will defend them with your life, not behave as though their are pawns to use to punish someone, if you choose to hurt or harm or assault someone that is *your* choice and yours alone and it is you who has to take responsibility about that, I'm sure the woman feels swallowed by guilt but are you seriously blaming her for what he chose to do? Because you're making me feel a little bit nauseous the way you're speaking'... .goes into minor rage about women being manipulative and calculating... .leaves room. I sit on bed kind of shaking.

@patientandclear yes I too could make the mistake of saying the wrong word, literally word, one wrong word that he would disagree with the meaning of, we had so many arguments where he would be raving about the word 'promise' or 'love' and yes also always thinking that I had an agenda, couldn't tell me what the agenda was but was adamant I had a manipulative agenda against him, to use him or abuse him in some way. 

It didn't matter that I left my home, left my country, cut almost all contact with my friends, devoted myself to starting a life with him, it wasn't enough, being loving was not enough, loving was not loving in the end, kind was not kind, the only thing that he semed interested in was criticising and abusing and calling it truth and love.

The problems he had with me were always backed up with 'everyone thinks so' 'your family thinks so' 'your friends think so'... .so my family and friends whom he'd never met all agreed with him that I was a 'vile narcissist', but at the same time I didn't have any family and friends and everyone dislikes me and I make people feel very uncomfortable just being around them but at the same time people only want to be my friend because I'm friendly and I listen to them, but at the same time he doesn't think I should be talking to the family and friends(that I apparently don't have) because they are all 'narcissists with their own agendas'. Then there was having to live in our apartment block where he would have conversations with all the tenants about the things I'd apparently done and then come back and tell me how they would all agree with him, that I was the crazy Irish woman, that everyone in Ireland is crazy anyway, it became that not only was I BPD but the whole of Ireland were sick narcissists with BPD, the whole country and that we were all '___ed'... .but... .he still loved me despite all this and wanted to help me and was reading all about BPD so he could help me with it but then flying into rages over almost anything at all but blaming me for that because he had caught BPD from me, but wasn't abusing me was just 'testing me to get to the bottom of who I really was' or just saying horrible and provocative things to see what was my reaction' but it was okay because I was a bully because I wasn't always doing exactly what he wanted at all times in all ways, literally, that was bullying him because I was forcing my 'ways' onto him but he couldn't possibly have BPD or be abusive because if I suggested he had BPD and he did he would react very badly to that(which he did) and it didn't matter anyway it wasn't really abuse and he wasn't really hurting me because he was talking to the 'other' me the 'vile b___' me, because I have two personalities the evil one and the kind one, and the only thing he was hurting was my ego and egos need to be hurt in order to grow and if I protested in anyway or tried to set any boundary at all I was just being a whiny ___ing victim, and needed to be abused some more, screamed at shouted at, slapped, whatever he though, for my own good and I should be very grateful for that, that he was willing to put himself out there like that for me... .      

How long will it take my brain to de-swell and repair from this?

[yellowflower]

That it was all about control, that I was trying to control everything, even though I tried my best to just do what he wanted and to give him respect and allow him to lead.

One day we were at some Bazaar and his son had left his lunchbag inside another room, no big problem, he just needed to get the lunch bag, he tells me to wait at the door with my son, everything becomes very intense and serious, he has for a long time now repeatedly talked about his consciousness and how insightful and 'aware' he is, how he is so very vigilant and aware in all ways and all times, beyond normal consciousness, so we wait at the door, it's taking a while to get this lunchbox, he comes back and starts taking to the woman who has the keys, my LO needs to go to the bathroom, I tell him THREE times I'm taking him to the bathroom, I'm taking him to the bathroom ok? The third time I put my hand on his chest and look at him and say 'Bathroom, we'll be in the bathroom ok?'

We go to the bathroom, now bear in mind we're in a building five minutes away from our house and the room is not that big, he comes into the bathroom demanding to know where I've been and why I didn't stand where he told me too and wait. He is really incensed by this, takes personal affront that I didn't respect his orders and then basically says that if my LO had to stand there and pee his pants that's what we should have done rather than move from where he told me to wait. But the problem in our relationship was that I'm the one who want's to have all the control... .  

[yellowflower]

... .but I am so sad, so sad that he lives his life that way. So sad that he has been hurt so badly that he doesn't know how to even feel loving or love anymore, so sad that he sees everyone as mentally ill and manipulative and soaked in agenda and so sad that he feels to push and push and destroy and test and provoke and hurt and, after having destroyed everything that was there sit back and feel validated. About the imaginary thing that was never there that he was so afraid of and then caused just so he could experience what he was so afraid of and get it over with... I am so sad that I was not able to cut myself open and show him what was in my brain and my heart and that I was never wanting to hurt him or betray him or destroy him or control him, that I was happy to just be with him and support him... .and god damn, it's another level of disbelief, it's like... .it's just madness.

[C.Stein]

It's OK to feel sadness for him but you also need to feel sadness for yourself.  I know it is incredibly hard to see anything clearly right now.  It is time to take care of yourself, to put yourself first.   

[Grey Kitty]

Wow. That was quite a blowup. I'd say you handled it remarkably well.

I hope you are in your home country, rebuilding a life for yourself soon, if not already.

 GK