Removing the fantasy from my mind.. Accepting the reality..

[Trip09]

Hi all,

It’s been a year since my exBPD discarded and replaced me. These days, I find that when I check in with myself, I am still somewhat grieving the relationship. I’ll have weeks/months where I’m doing well, only to get in a “funk”. Eventually though, with the tools I have gained from the experience, I pull myself back up and the cycle continues.

My first question is: Will this cycle ever end? Or, is this just the way it will be from now on?

When I am in these funks, I tend to look back on my exBPD in the same way I did when we were together. I find in these moments it’s really hard to let go of the idolised version she became, the dream we created of a beautiful life together and the fantasy that it was the relationship of all relationships. I felt she was 100% THE ONE and I never doubted it for an instant... Of course, the BPD traits eventually came out swinging and her true self unleashed. Once she revealed what was behind the mask, it’s clear she is someone that no one with even a sparse amount of self-respect would ever entertain spending time with, let alone enter a relationship.

Yet, I still catch myself yearning for the past with her. Perhaps because I never had a devaluation phase shown to me (although I’m sure it happened behind my back going from the delusional lies she told me through our break up and the fact that I was replaced straight away). For me though, the relationship was perfect, until it wasn’t... I never got the chance to feel or see her in a bad way when we were together. I didn’t witness the relationship breaking, it just broke in an instant! My mind and heart didn’t get the chance to see her go from a goddess to the devil... It’s like I can’t catch up or comprehend what happened as it happened so fast at the time...

So, how have you guys been able to remove the fantasy of the person and the relationship inside your head? How have you completely let go of the dreams you held to allow for real love to bloom within yourself and when the time is right, have a true partner to enter your life?

I just can’t seem to fully shake the fantasy off and accept the reality for what it was...

[FallBack!Monster]

To be honest, I wish I knew the answer. I sometimes feel as if I'm going to spend the rest of my life asking the exact same questions. The only thing I can come up with is that I was unintentionally duped. She was just doing what she thought she was suppose to do with a partner. It never meant more than that to her. Like imitating life, what's seen and done in movies. That's why they can detach so easily and repeat it. Have no idea what to do   

I'm dealing with feeling foolish about expressing so many feelings to someone that had no idea what the heck it all meant. No clue w/o cues. I feel dumb and hope I can stop feeling that way soon.

Nope! You're not alone. I want to get off this foolish trip too. It's not cheating. She just had no clue what love meant. Sorry! Was here feeling the same as you.

[thisagain]

Hi Trip  

I can see how it would be harder than usual for you to accept and detach. You two seem to have made it a heck of a long time without any problems. Most of us have a lot of miserable memories to bring us back to reality.

It helps me just to reflect on the unhealthy dynamics in the relationship -- both how she acted and how I got sucked into mirroring her unhealthy tendencies. Can you look back and see where the relationship was unhealthy, even though you might not have recognized it at the time?

Your post history seems to suggest that you might be "stuck" - there are times that you feel very good and optimistic about detaching, and then other times you think about your ex more than you want to. Where do you think you are in the "stages of Detachment" described on the right?

[Trip09]

Hi thisagain,

Thanks for the reply! Yes, I can look back and see there were times in the relationship that weren't healthy at all... I've spent time processing and learning from these and know to be more vidgilant in the future (see red flags, create stronger boundaries). However, it wasn't until the final month that all hell broke loose in our relationship... It was honestly truamtic seeing a person I loved, turn into something I didn't even recognise.

When I have my good times, I only honestly feel that freedom. I feel compete gratitude and blessed that I was able to get out of a place which would have lead to some incredibly dark places. Places I sadly read on here too often and even had her own family tell me how much better off I am without her...

But, it's like once I have been in that phase for a while, self doubt creeps in... I question everything so much. Why did she do all this? What did I do wrong? Could have I done anything more? Am I a bad partner? Etc... And I seem to cycle between phases 1, 2, 3 and 4, only to eventually "come to my senses" and regain a feeling of freedom... It's like I know 1+1 = 2. I don't question it, it is as it is... Deep down I know how toxic she is for me, but feel "stuck" (better word) and keep questioning it rather than just accepting she is what she is...

It's being able to manifest on those realizations that I struggle with... I've always been a guy who always looks for and remembers the good in people, situations and life... Learning to focus on her negative side is something I haven't seemed to grasp yet, as I still see there is good in her... But it's seeing her negative side that gives me freedom knowing what I have escaped from... But seeing her for good makes me question all I mentioned before and spins me back in the detachment phase

[Mars22]

Hey Trip - I can relate to where you are in your healing. I'm going on 6 months and I still have a general malaise with my emotions. Part of me feels the moments happening around me but, my participation feels half hearted. For me it about not obsessing on what it is that triggers me; how quickly I can snap myself out of thinking about her and the sorted story and all its details. Eventually, it gets so exhausting.

My logical mind knows full well how bad we were together, but my emotional mind still wants to bargain. Like you, and most of us on here... We are good people and healthy people don't treat others the way our exes did us - plain and simple. It's wrong. Put some weight into full realizing that.  So, it's the sudden shock of the no closure we're dealt. Our minds are finding hard to accept that somebody who claimed to 'love' us can be so shrude.

Just know, there is no timeline. Sounds like your still in the FOG perhaps. Just try not to go too far down Rumination Road. It does take effort to have the willpower to stop yourself from going to far. Easier said then done, sure. But, don't rush it. You'll release the toxins from your body when your ready.

[Trip09]

My logical mind knows full well how bad we were together, but my emotional mind still wants to bargain. Like you, and most of us on here... We are good people and healthy people don't treat others the way our exes did us - plain and simple. It's wrong. Our minds are finding it hard to accept that somebody who claimed to 'love' us can be so shrude.

Mate, that's so well put! It really sums up what I have been trying to get out here... It's the shock of having someone say they want to spend forever with you, someone you had picked out kids names with (so pissed she ruined them), buy a house together and then literally in an instant - BAM, that person is gone and the BPD here to stay... Destroying everything that you thought existed between each other and then within yourself... I just can't even begin to fathom how any soul can do that to another, let alone "the love of their life's"...

Logically I can see the path to freedom clearly and sometimes I manage to fully embrace that. However, my emotional mind is still connected to her. So yes, I am in the FOG, I accept that... I guess I was seeing how others have detached from their emotional side and manifested on their logical side. The side which sees it as it is (i.e. 1+1=2, exBPD = soul destroyer - run away as fast as you can)!

On a side note, I've truly learnt to listen to that intuition inside of me... The last few days have felt different. Deciding to post on here was something I have not done for 6+ months and last night after much thought, I actually wrote out a fake reply letter should she ever contact me, just to get it out... It's like I knew something without knowing it yet... So wouldn't you know who I happen to run past on my afternoon jog today, yep... Her :/ I even felt something wasn't right when I left my place... The universe is full of mystery, but seeing her and honestly not feeling much helps me feel I am on the right path... My instincts have been saying that clearly for a while, I just need a bit of motivation and to embrace that logical mind as being the guide to freedom!

Thanks all!

[married21years]

  Trip09       

the the end is like the grief process

denial
anger
bargaining with yourself

we are trying to stop the pain of grief but like the BPD we are trying to remove this pain rather than self soothing

its normal and part of the process, but recycling brings us back to square one

 

[GoingBack2OC]

Getting over the fantasy... .

I highly suggest watching this 2 minute short film.

It is heartbreaking, but I think truly touches on what we as people who love and have idealized our partners in many ways - have to deal with on the outset of the relationship.

The post is here. It's truly worth watching. Watch it twice in fact.

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=297320.0

[pjstock42]

Trip09,

Your post gave me goosebumps, I could have written you entire post word for word to describe my situation - honestly it's creepy how this happened to me verbatim.

I had (what I believed to be) the perfect relationship. I didn't just believe that I had found "the one", I KNEW with 100% certainty that I would be with this person forever and that is a feeling that I had never experienced before. The thought of anything ever happening to us seemed like such a ridiculous notion and I felt so happy with my life because I had found the person that I would be with until the day I die.

like you, I also did not have any devaluation stage. Everything coming from her was that she was so happy and loved me so much, up until literally an hour before texting me at work that she had moved out of our apartment with no warning. I never got to see us drift apart or experience the relationship degrading - this wouldn't have made the discard any less painful but would have at least provided some context and foresight as to what was going to happen to me.

Also like you, I have found myself ruminating almost every minute of every day about how much I miss this person and how perfect they were. Even though I now know that they lied to my face for months on end about various things, very likely cheated on me and heinously painted me black via an email full of slander and lies - I'm still so hung up on this fictional character that she created & presented to me during the relationship. Even though my logical mind knows that this person never existed, it was crafted in such a way that fulfilled all of my deepest needs and desires so to lose it out of nowhere definitely sent my emotional health spiraling out of control. My logical brain cannot convince my emotional brain that this was all just a fantasy and the emotional brain simply spends all of its time thinking about how perfect everything seemed to be.

It's so hard to reconcile that I could have gone into a situation like this with nothing but the best of intentions only to be hurt so badly in the end. She did such an amazing job reflecting back to me all of the things that I wanted in a woman/relationship, so finding out with no warning that none of it is real will probably take me a long time to truly accept and move past.

[pjstock42]

Sorry to add more rambling here but this topic was so powerful to me as it is so eerily similar to what I went through / am going through.

I don't know if this is productive thought pattern for me to have but it is something that has been crossing my mind a lot and it makes a lot of sense. I really believe that part of the discard process and maybe even the devalue process (I didn't have this so I can't really comment on it) is this act of "transference" from the BPD to the non. For me, the transference was in regards to emotional stability, something that I have always had and something the she lacks big time. This is a person who would be on top of the world one minute and then crying profusely the next because "it was too hot outside" or they couldn't find something in the kitchen, basically the human embodiment of emotional instability. Me on the other hand, I have always been even-keeled and level headed through anything, this was even one of the things that she constantly complimented me about during her love bombing phase.

I think that through the gaslighting, lying and constant manipulation of me to make me believe that everything was perfect right up until the sudden discard, she was attempting to transfer some of that emotional instability to me and have me also on that roller coaster of highs and lows. Well, it worked and I have been an emotional mess basically since the day that all of this happened. Some days are better than others, many times its no longer constant ups and downs all day but kind of a sedate period that lasts through most of the days and is interrupted by a few lows but they're definitely not as debilitating right now as the initially were.

It seems to me like the higher she could put me on that love bombing pedestal that to her it only meant that she could knock me down further and make that fall hurt more. Through exposing all of my deepest vulnerabilities, insecurities, hopes/dreams etc. to her, she knew exactly how to control me to an extent that no one ever had before. This made the manipulation incredibly powerful and I will never understand how she could pretend that things were so perfect and constantly talk about our future during that last month in which I now know that she was already covertly planning her discard.

I'm left feeling as though I was incredibly mentally violated. One of the first serious discussions we had about relationships way back in the beginning of things involved me telling her how I had always gone through relationships with part of myself walled off to prevent being hurt - always having the belief that if I lost this person that I would be OK. She told me how important it was to not think like this, that I needed to not have those barriers to experience 'true love' and of course I listened to her. Not having those walls led to the highs of the good times being incredible but also led to the despair, confusion and trauma that I am feeling now after finding out that she took that deeply personal information as a weapon to hurt me with.

I don't know, all I can say is that I'm thankful every day for finding this community. The resources and personal accounts here have showed me that I'm not alone and also allowed me to institute strict no-contact a while back which I know will help me in the long run even though it's difficult right now.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey Trip09,

Yes, I can confirm that the cycle will end.  Now I feel indifferent towards my BPDxW.  I understand why I got into such an unhealthy dynamic and have vowed never to repeat it.  Suggest that's the place to start: figuring out why you got into a r/s with a pwBPD in the first place.  Other people would have run, but you didn't (neither did I).  Your task, I submit, is to figure out why.

I don't miss the drama.  I enjoy returning home after work without expecting a confrontation.

I discovered that there are kind, considerate people out there.  I have a GF who is thoughtful and supportive.  I'm a lot happier now in my current r/s than I ever was while married to a pwBPD.

Many people here fear the unknown, with reason, when their BPD r/s ends or when thinking about leaving.  Yet I've learned that the unknown is also where one can find joy, which is what it's all about, in my view.

LuckyJim

[Narkiss]

Pjstock: yes, I also turned myself inside out for him and he encouraged it. I felt he was holding my heart in his hand and told him way to much. I thought he would treasure it --he told me he would -- but I think it mainly made him feel good and affirmed that I trusted him so much to be vulnerable. They do and say things in the moment with no regard to consequences. I'm not even sure they can understand until perhaps later the effect of what they did and said and the expectations it set up.

I still don't understand why he didn't value this relationship and the incredible connection. Do they get that with everyone and so it's not that special?

Narkiss

[SoMadSoSad]

Pjstock: yes, I also turned myself inside out for him and he encouraged it. I felt he was holding my heart in his hand and told him way to much. I thought he would treasure it --he told me he would -- but I think it mainly made him feel good and affirmed that I trusted him so much to be vulnerable. They do and say things in the moment with no regard to consequences. I'm not even sure they can understand until perhaps later the effect of what they did and said and the expectations it set up.

I still don't understand why he didn't value this relationship and the incredible connection. Do they get that with everyone and so it's not that special?

Narkiss

I think we are all just attachments to them. We just fill their void.

[Narkiss]

I think he cared about me and felt incredible love for me in the moment. But basically I think I made him feel really good -- important, valued, appreciated and accepted. When I didn't make him feel good anymore it ended.

[Narkiss]

A friend of mine who is Japanese said it is like haiku -- lots of beautiful words and feelings but not much to do with reality.

[SoMadSoSad]

Love is a mature emotion. Infatuation is an immature emotion. Do you think you ex was emotionally mature enough to feel love? Or was it just infatuation?

[FallBack!Monster]

Trip09, pjstock42, married21years,

You have taken the thoughts right out of my head. Some of it sounds like somethings that my ex would say and most of it sound like my own thoughts.

She told me how important it was to not think like this, that I needed to not have those barriers to experience 'true love' and of course I listened to her.

I encouraged her to explore her feelings. I told her it was now or never. That she wasn't getting any younger. 

I did once think to myself  what if this is the person that I'm going to spend the rest of my life with. My devaluation was probably obvious for me because I knew it would one day come once I started to read about pwBPD.  I didn't fully recognize it when it did.  She started to make lots of excuses to not see me and that's when I knew it was time but I still wasn't sure. Until I was sure.

I'm left feeling as though I was incredibly mentally violated.

like she won.

Mate, that's so well put! It really sums up what I have been trying to get out here... It's the shock of having someone say they want to spend forever with you, someone you had picked out kids names with (so pissed she ruined them), buy a house together and then literally in an instant - BAM, that person is gone and the BPD here to stay... Destroying everything that you thought existed between each other and then within yourself... I just can't even begin to fathom how any soul can do that to another, let alone "the love of their life's"...

Logically I can see the path to freedom clearly and sometimes I manage to fully embrace that. However, my emotional mind is still connected to her. So yes, I am in the FOG, I accept that

Even if it's not my cup of tea, I have to accept it.

[molitor]

Hey Trip-
    It is so refreshing to read a story similar to that of mine. I too was living the dream, deeply in love, and her feeling the same... until she didnt. Years of soulmates, etc., to a replacement within 2 weeks. She was the waif variety, and never lashed out. As you said, it was the most traumatic event of my life. I am 16 months out, and socializing well. I have NO interest in dating however. I dont feel its fair to another woman as no one can match the fantasy a pwBPD can display. I sadly have accepted a life of solitude, in hopes with time someone comes in the picture. I totally feel you though, I often wonder if Im permanently damaged from this... .best of luck to you , brotha

[FallBack!Monster]

Hey Trip-
   dont feel its fair to another woman as no one can match the fantasy a pwBPD can display. I sadly have accepted a life of solitude, in hopes with time someone comes in the picture. I totally feel you though, I often wonder if Im permanently damaged from this.

I don't think I would trade authenticity for a temporary idea. Not me. I'm single until I find a smart person that can actually understand what I'm talking about.  I don't think I'm permanently damaged from this. I hope you too soon can feel that you're not.