I am still in bad shape.

[steelwork]

 So you could consciously start to shift your focus from him to you and from the past to the future, and create a compelling vision for that future, make it big and bright so it pulls you towards it, and then take one step in that direction.  And then another.  And you'll be going on faith initially, but after a while you'll notice progress, which will build momentum, and after a while you'll be living that life, realizing the vision is just a target, and the goal is to live in the moment, enjoying the journey.  Sometimes the best way to fight something is don't fight it, create something new.

This sounds like something I can really grab onto.

Thank you!

Writing a book is a funny thing. You spend (in my case) 3.5 years writing it, and you don't know if anyone will care about it. And then you hand it in and wait a year for it to come out. It's been my lodestar through all this, but I need to shift to something else.

[fromheeltoheal]

WooHoo! 

[steelwork]

When I think of what you've written here-- there were two very important things to you that conflicted with the relationship with your BPD ex: writing your book, and preserving some kind of friendship with your previous ex, or having an exit from that previous relationship that felt okay to you (aligned with your values and needs at the time). Could there have been a scenario in which you could have had it all? Was it BPD that made that have-it-all scenario so difficult or was it really impossible to have all three things that were important to you?

Yeah, those and some others, but yes, I think you really get it. I was in a terrible bind. I put myself there, but still, it was horrible. I described it to my T in a couple ways at different times:

1. It was like someone handed me a cleaver and said, "Cut off your right hand or your left hand."

2. It was like I was in the ocean, clinging to two lifeboats at once.

As to whether there was a have-it-all scenario:

The outside shot was that he would not have hardened against me, and when I let him know I was ready to work hard for our r/s and rebuilding trust, he would have given me a hearing. But that didn't happen. He kept me at arms' length.

Because he'd programmed himself against me. He kept telling me that. About the CBT.

[patientandclear]

So I think here lies some potential respite, and it's similar to something I'm processing about the BPD guy in my life. He too has "hardened himself against me," and I'm not sure exactly why, nor can or will he really explain it to me (like your guy, mine refuses to actually talk, will only write about this, and when we do talk, it goes very differently, which is why he won't ... .), but shards of explanation that pop out are about his fears of deep hurt. How much of that is because of past breaks with us that really hurt him a lot (which were mostly not my fault but maybe I could have prevented by being more skilled with validation, less defensive, less hurt)? How much is fear of pain of loss that is inherent in him with regard to anyone who gets too close? How much is fear of being in a position where someone else could deeply mess with him the way key people did when he was a kid? How much is that I know things about him that he considers ugly? How much of it is that he wants a clean fresh start and to be a clean fresh person?

Whatever the reasons, in his view, he can't let me back in that way. It makes me super sad. I wish he could find a way or wanted to find a way to make another choice.

But it may just be one of those tragedies. No one is doing a wrong thing. Everyone is doing their best to survive life and make wise self-protective choices, and sometimes we make objective mistakes in that effort, and sometimes we later regret our good faith choices. It is OK to feel profoundly sad about it for a long time. And that can co-exist with acceptance.

Like I wrote above, I sort of oppose a relentless commitment to leaving behind the sadness. I could not if I tried. But I can make a sort of peace with the sadness. I've said to myself for long stretches, "it's OK. I'm really really sad about this and I will be for a while, and that is completely as it should be." I agree with FHTH about not fighting the thing; I think perhaps for you as well as for me, not fighting it means really making a home for the sadness, rather than trying to make it go away as fast as possible.

Sounds to me like your guy was just super hurt and ultimately did his best to deal with it, much like my early love eventually chose another woman when I was too slow to come around. It hurts so much to have lost him. But I can sure understand why he did that, and it wasn't because he didn't love me. This guy did love you. Timing is a neutral cause of loss of many potential r/ships.

[myself]

I've found you can only let go of so much.
Some of this is just who we are now.
Missing being in 'good shape' more than in 'bad shape'.

[steelwork]

I've started seeing a new therapist (because I moved), and I told her today about the struggling. We're still getting to know each other, me and the T. She wanted to know how I'd started thinking about personality disorders, and I explained. I said, "but I guess everyone does that, right? Starts giving their exes armchair diagnoses? And what good does it do?" But she said she thought it was helpful to go over things and try to understand them with whatever framework made sense. She just said clinical terms tend to "externalize" things, which can impede understanding. Well, we talked about him for over an hour. I said I sometimes questioned my view of things, and I couldn't resist asking if she thought I was on the right track thinking about what happened in terms of BPD. This is something I didn't talk to my other T about much. It only came up, I think, because I'm experiencing all this emotion about D these days.

Well, I'm babbling. But she said, with the usual caveats, that BPD fit well with what I'd described. She paused. "Very well." I don't have much doubt anymore. I don't really have any doubt.

While we talked, she pressed me to explain how I thought things might have worked out if I'd known this at the time. None of my answers made much sense, even to me.

I know she can't diagnose him, but it nonetheless sunk in a bit deeper that I didn't miss out on an opportunity for great happiness. I've read it countless times, here and elsewhere, but she talked about all the years of hard work he would probably have to do to have a stable relationship with anyone, and it was a dose of reality I needed.

I mean none of this is news, but I guess it helped to hear it from her.

I still don't think I could train my brain not to love him, even if I wanted to, but this is something I can use to douse the flare-ups of longing.

[fromheeltoheal]

Hey steelwork-

Good on the new therapist!  Professional validation can carry some weight yes?

I still don't think I could train my brain not to love him, even if I wanted to, but this is something I can use to douse the flare-ups of longing.

I agree, love is not a choice, but you can train your brain to focus on things that empower you, like the creation of the life of your dreams.  And then, as you build that life, your love for him may end up as a warm place in your heart, safe and a good thing, but not one that debilitates you and your future.  How does that sit?

[kc sunshine]

Your therapists' words are very helpful for me too! And so are yours FHTH!

This road is a tough one.

[steelwork]

FHTH:

I intentionally made her undesireable to get time and distance and my feet back on the ground, because I knew I didn't want to be with her, it wouldn't have worked, and I was doing the right thing for me, and I'd like to think both of us.  

This is what I mean by brain training. I don't want to distort things in some way that makes life easier to take, even temporarily.You've said how that helped you. I've said it's not my way, for better or worse. And honestly, I remain skeptical of the deep efficacy. At least for me. It would mean that whatever peace I attained was based on a lie.

What helped me today was a reality check. I need to meditate in an informed, realistic way on what was, what is, what's possible, what I was getting, what are other ways to get that, whether I even need it. I guess you could call that brain training. I call it emotional processing. The conversation we had took away the sting of loss, at least for a while, by putting the focus on things as they really were, without disavowing any of the positive feelings I had.

[kc sunshine]

I like that your therapist was at first skeptical and then totally came around.

[steelwork]

No one is doing a wrong thing. Everyone is doing their best to survive life and make wise self-protective choices, and sometimes we make objective mistakes in that effort, and sometimes we later regret our good faith choices. It is OK to feel profoundly sad about it for a long time. And that can co-exist with acceptance.

By the way, patientandclear, this is such an honest, humane view. It's the one I try to hang onto. Thanks for expressing it so well.

[steelwork]

kc: I'm not sure she was skeptical. I mean, she might have been, but if she was, she didn't say so. She asked how I'd started thinking about personality disorders out of curiosity, I think... .and I told her that it happened by way of an epiphany I had, that my reaction to D's silent treatments was making me think of my reaction, historically, to my mother's withdrawing, withholding behavior: that I found myself constructing a theory of him that would make his behavior consistent with an idea that he cared about me. It was a chain of associations that led to me going over what had happened, googling some of the things, and coming across descriptions of cluster B personality disorders. At first I was looking at NPD, but PBD really explained a lot more.

[steelwork]

Wow, weird. I saw the therapist again today. She described his behavior, I mean over the course of our relationship, as being very narcissistic. Focused intensely on what he needed, what he was being denied, his problems--really not so curious about mine. I guess I didn't really see it. I was so consumed with guilt about not giving him what he wanted that I didn't put a lot of thought into his lack of concern about what I was going through. He was so vulnerable, so obviously more IN NEED than me, I didn't really notice.

Until the end, when he was "happy in a new relationship" and I was trying to be a good sport about it, and yet he was still sending me emails complaining about being tired, worried about his job, worried about some spot on his nose, dealing with all his "bummers"--all the while, my life was falling apart. And he never once asked how I was doing. And when I pointed that out, he cut me off cold.

I just don't know. It made me feel like maybe I'd been describing the situation unfairly. Sometimes I wonder if I'm hopeless.