It's like he uses a script

[FlSunshineGirl]

I was wondering if anyone else ever found out that their ex BPD had said almost verbatim things to others that they said to you?

I heard from one of my BPD ex's, ex's and she showed me some of their old emails and we talked about some of the eerie similarities of things he said to me that he said to her. And I'm sure I wasn't the first person to hear these things.

It's like he's perfected what to say to get someone to get into a relationship with him quickly.

We both heard:
"I would give 5 years of my life to be able to see and hug you."
"You have the most amazing hair!"
"I'm falling for you new girl."
"I'm falling for you Sunshine"
Always used our names when talking.
Lots of "I miss you Sunshine"
"I miss you new girl."
Would text both of us pics of himself in his underwear or suggestive exposed pictures.
Used the same poetry from his "favorite poet" on both of us.  
Same "Good Morning Beautiful" emails word for word
Used same pet names for both of us.
Started moving the relationship forward quickly from friends and calling us "babe" and saying the same line of "oh sorry. That just fell out of my mouth. Hope it's ok if I call you that." Like it's an accident.
"I think of you often"
"I hope you are happy and healthy"

So strange to hear and read these same exact phrases... .it's like he has the script down. If I say "ABC" girl should respond "XYZ".

Anyone else experience this?

Oh! And he sent her pics that I had taken of him when we were together.
And pics he sent to me of himself, he sent the same ones to her.

[woundedPhoenix]

Well, i read someplace that BPDs are not very original, and can use certain lines and petnames for ALL the lovers they ever ran in to.

I used to think my BPDex was so authentic and original with words. it seems now that it almost seems like a longstretched rehursed pickupline.

One of her favorites that i know always comes back:

"There has never been anyone in my life that i felt so passionate about"

or

"Never before did i feel such deep connection"

and she used the same petname for ALL her exes, never calling them by name until devaluation started.

This seems to indicate that the BPD objectifies their partners

[Indifferent28]

Scary post. The answer is yes. Just from things i see on social media she posts and things she has told others.

This thing you said caught my eye: "Used the same poetry from his "favorite poet" on both of us.  "

Her and i used to like quotes by a poet we both loved, and send them to each other.
Well, she now tags the replacement in the quotes and likes the quotes, meaning she is thinking of the replacement when she likes the quotes.

It makes you feel very dumb to know you thought you had something so rare and unique, but they're telling this bull to someone else, and forgetting they said it to you. Or just not caring that they did. One of the two.

[VitaminC]

Yes. Actually, no. Not the exact same words, I don't think so. But a very similar tone - a way of 'speaking' that caused me to, when reading the words written as a text message, hear his voice in my head speaking to *me*.  It was the single most destabalising and destructive thing to discover that the words and way of speaking that I thought were particular to me, were in fact, not particular at all.

The sense I had was one of being interchangeable; not an individual at all.

This is so many months in the past, but still has me staring at the keyboard for the last ten minutes trying to compose a reply that takes into account what I now know about BPD and what I've learned about myself in the meantime.  And I actually can't get it together to do that at the moment.

I know that it's actually completely logical in the sequence of behaviours. A lack of a stable sense of self, core shame, abandonment fears,  and the overwhelming need to attach to feel complete & with direction - it makes sense. I just can't work out the formula for why it does to put into this post.

I hope someone with a clearer mind than I will do that.

What do you make of FlSunshineGirl? What was the effect on you upon learning this? 

[fromheeltoheal]

I once said to my ex "you are the woman to which all other women are compared."

She then mistakenly forwarded an email to me that she'd sent to one of her orbiters: "you are the man to which all other men are compared."

Pfft.  Do I at least get royalties?

The goal of a borderline is to attach, and if it works, don't fix it yes?  And if a borderline was to be open and honest with someone about how they really felt, that someone would think as poorly of them as they do of themselves, at least in the borderline's head, and they'd leave, abandonment.  So there has to be a script, and since attachment is mandatory for borderlines, it has to be a good one, one that works and is well rehearsed, and if they hear something new that might work, incorporate it into the script.

[pjstock42]

I have no evidence of this occurring but without even comparing how she has treated other boyfriends, I can say that much of what she said did seem to be predetermined. She used CONSTANT repetition of love-bombing phrases, like sometimes it got to be a bit much because 50% of the words coming out of her mouth would be things that I had already heard her say 20 times that day but of course, it was the ceasing of those sayings that really hurt because I was subconsciously receiving validation from them and didn't realize it until they stopped.

My BPD ex gf has lived at least 10 different places around the globe and it seems like (from what she shared with me) that the major impetus of jumping one place to the next was most usually a bad breakup (which I now know to mean her discard). Perhaps she does this by design so that no 2 of her exes would ever have any way of knowing who any of the others are and couldn't have a discussion like the one mentioned in the OP. Amongst other things, the fact that I don't use facebook probably made me a very easy target for her because that is the one conceivable way that I would be able to identify/get in touch with any of her exes since they are in places like Italy/Australia etc. and I'm in the US. At the end of the day, I can almost be positive that some poor sucker right now is hearing all of the same repetitive love-bombing compliments that I used to receive, regardless of if they have any basis in reality (as they may not have with me either).

FlSunshineGirl, I'm so happy for you that you were able to have the conversation that you shared with us. These relationships almost always seem to end without any real closure and although having that talk may not have resolved that problem, it probably did give you a lot of understanding while also helping your path to acceptance of what you went through.

[patientandclear]

I've seen remarkable stories shared on here of identical albeit unique sounding endearments sent very close in time to multiple partners.  In one case, even an original painting nearly identical to the one the BPD SO had made for and given the member here, showed up on the new partner's FB as a very special, personal gift he had given the new partner. Not sure how ANYONE can carry on with a love interest once one has seen that ... .but some people do.

Though I have not directly seen it myself, people who know both me and other romantic interests of my ex wBPD said, when I repeated his words of love in the crushing aftermath of our first breakup, "I think those words have been said before."  I know, from watching him with very casual acquaintances, that he is a master of insinuating that the other person is super special and interesting to him.

Interestingly, the longer I've known the BPD person in my life, the more this business has disappeared.  He no longer uses any flowery catch phrases, rarely flatters, has dropped all the endearments.  I do think the things he says to me in this latter period are original.  The r/ship is also concomitantly harder for him to deal with.  Way outside of the mechanisms he knows to use to get and keep someone close.  (And lest anyone get envious, it's gone very off track in recent months and the fact that it's perhaps more genuine hasn't made it any less dysfunctional.)

[enlighten me]

We must be careful to seperate personality and human nature from BPD.

It is human nature to want to attach to someone.

People have their own idiosyncracies that make up their character.

Where the BPD kicks in for me is when things are taken and used to manipulate. PwBPD will use what works. The number of abuse stories people on here have been told is one example. My ex wife told me she had been raped. Her description was horrendous. When I spoke to her friend about it she was physically shaken. She said that it was exactly what had happened to her the previous year. My ex wife had taken an incident that i was aware had happened but not aware of the details and had used it for her own gain. The same goes for phrases that work. This is the BPD part. The using something that works because they know it works.

[VitaminC]

My ex wife had taken an incident that i was aware had happened but not aware of the details and had used it for her own gain. The same goes for phrases that work. This is the BPD part. The using something that works because they know it works.

That's an extraordinary example, enlighten me.

I would say that it's more than manipulation that's at work here. Manipulation is pure control of another, but BPD first and foremost need to protect themselves - and control is one part of that. That's my understanding.    

It's possible that, in your example at least, the story that your ex "stole" from her friend and claimed as her own was a way of giving form and structure to her own pain - for which she had no words, no way to explain, nothing to pin it on as the source.  

It's a little like people liking the lyrics of songs or poetry because they express what they feel but aren't able to adequately express in their own words. A similar phenomenon. And one that I would put into the category of "human nature", where you wisely made a distinction between that and BPD maladaptive practises.

Of course it's "manipulative", but in a way to say things to elicit certain responses is manipulative and forms a great part of human conversation - it's rhetoric and has a long history and culminates in modern day advertising. This is not to excuse it or to say that it's not hurtful, far from that.

I don't mean to take away from what you and others, including me, here have said so far, nor do I mean to get off the point. I am just struck by the introjection that is, to some degree, normal and the difference between what's human nature, as you say, and when it becomes pathological.

We talk a lot about projection here, there is also introjection that goes on in the minds of personality disordered individuals. Here's a definition:
"the unconscious adoption of the ideas or attitudes of others"

From the wikipedia entry: " psychoanalytical term with a variety of meanings. Generally, it is regarded as the process where the subject replicates in itself behaviors, attributes or other fragments of the surrounding world, especially of other subjects. Cognate concepts are identification, incorporation,[1] and internalization.

To use a simple example, a person who picks up traits from their friends (e.g., a person who begins frequently exclaiming "Ridiculous!" as a result of hearing a friend of theirs repeatedly doing the same) is introjecting."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introjection

We encounter this in thousands of ways, from silly and banal all the way to very serious and damaging- all along the spectrum. In itself a fascinating topic, and one that helps us to understand not only BPD but just regular humans stumbling through life with those idiosyncrasies you mention.

I guess the way to get back to the question we need to, at some point, start and keep asking ourselves here is to think about how a) we can minimize our own introjections  and projections and b) how we can only begin to discern these patterns in another if we're pretty clear in who we are ourselves.  And then we also need to have the presence of self to act, once we spotted it.

As  PatientAndClear said; "Not sure how ANYONE can carry on with a love interest once one has seen that ... .but some people do."  I did, for a while. I can only think *around* that in a general way, still, a year later. That's how crushing it was.

And   FHTH, your story made me burst out laughing. Obviously not in unkindness.  Really, there needs to be a play or a film script of the absurd things we've lived through and been part of.

[enlighten me]

With my example im certain it was a manipulative hook. We had broken up and she has been seeing someone else. She used it to recycle me. I was even told later by her friend that she only got back with me to use me for my money. That was what she had told her friend.

An example of how we pick up traits is that I was working with a group of people with a strong regional accent. I went home and my family laughed at how I had picked up the accent. That is human nature. We subconsciously fit in. When its done on purpose then its something different.

[VitaminC]

With my example im certain it was a manipulative hook. We had broken up and she has been seeing someone else. She used it to recycle me. I was even told later by her friend that she only got back with me to use me for my money. That was what she had told her friend.

Fair enough, enlighten me.

I guess I fight against the notion of someone's just being manipulative because at the core of me I believe manipulation is bad, bad people are hurt people, and the way forward is to understand the hurt. Hence all the digging around in theories of psychology and philosophy and what not.

The selfishness of someone using someone else in the way you describe, just doesn't compute for me - not in a deep way. I sometimes wish it did, so I could just strike it off my list of things to figure out and move on to the other hundred thousand things on that list.

If the explanation works for you, however, more power to you. Maybe it's really simple, after all.

Take care, you 

[enlighten me]

One thing ive learnt from all of this is sometimes things are simple and straight forward. 

 A fb post showing an ex all happy is sometimes just that. Theres no malicious intent or alterior motive.

Sometimes an ex meeting someone else is just that. Its not to get at you its just they want to be with someone.

Sometimes it not because they are psycologicaly driven to do things its because they are just being nasty.

Just because we dont sink to their level it doesnt mean that level doesnt exist. We cannot expect everyone to live up to our own moral standards.

All we can do is treat people how we would hope to be treated and if someone doesnt reciplicate that then we should decide whether that person should be part of our lives.

[gotbushels]

and she used the same petname for ALL her exes,

Early on my ex wanted a pet name. She said I called her it once before. I had no idea what she was talking about. So I started guessing the pet name she "wanted".

Rollercoaster time!  
↓  

"Is it sweetie?" → "NO. WHO HAVE YOU BEEN CALLING SWEETIE?" → Lose. Tantrum.
   

"Is it darling?" (what she wanted) → "YOU GUESSED SO MANY NAMES, I'M NOT SPECIAL." → Lose. Tantrum.
   

This went on for a few days. This came up for months thereafter. I didn't ever find out what the word was. She just started calling me something and didn't tantrum--so I copied her. Enmeshment fail.
 

No BPs or nons were harmed in the above illustration of a "lose-lose" dialogue.

[Lilyroze]

Very sad thread. Everyone in my life to me is special for a different reason. I have always  told my children I love each of you so much for your own individual ways. I had pet names for those in my life ( each unique to who they were to me).

It is sad to me to see some have been hurt, some used same words and names, as they mirrored or didn't know better. I am sorry for your pain, I can understand how you feel.

 I do think things unique and sweet between a couple make the relationship stronger, and each person feel special to the other. So I have enjoyed when someone honored me with a name special to them and our relationship.

I did have someone that seemed to mirror many years ago and found out later. I chose to not let it hurt me, as well life is too precious to continue the hurt or hate in my heart.

None of us are perfect and learn as we go, just sad that we have the chance to see and grow and some refuse to, won't look within or due to the illness situation can't.

If for some reason the person in your life didn't make you feel that way, or you are hurting now due to seeing a script etc. Just realize maybe they gave the best they had at the time.

You don't need outside validation to be valuable. Self love and self compassion can help you through the pain. Had to learn that one myself.

Hugs and find the peace and joy in the day all.

[VitaminC]

I had pet names for those in my life ( each unique to who they were to me).

Me too, I'm a great pet-name giver. There's such joy and love and celebration in the uniqueness and specialness of the individual to me in each pet name. Everyone close to me has one, and often several! My mom was the one who first ever noticed this habitual re-naming I was prone to - she asked how my cat "with the thousand names" was doing.   

If for some reason the person in your life didn't make you feel that way, or you are hurting now due to seeing a script etc. Just realize maybe they gave the best they had at the time.

You don't need outside validation to be valuable. Self love and self compassion can help you through the pain. Had to learn that one myself.

Well put, Lilyroze. I think you're right, but it does take time to get there, doesn't it?
Your words are full of kindness.

Just makes me think about the power of words all the more.

[FlSunshineGirl]

Thank you all for contributing your stories and your sentiments to this thread. I really appreciate each and every one of the comments.

I've been trying these past few days to put the puzzle together and make some sense of the new revelations I've learned. Your words have definitely helped me.

I do think in my ex's case (and maybe some of you have experienced as well) when a relationship deteriorates and the pwBPD is left with the possibility of being alone they try quickly as possible to find someone to attach to. Yes we all, to some degree or another, want to find a special person to share our lives with and being alone isn't always fun or easy... .but it's even a more desperate attempt to fill that void with another person for a pwBPD.

Maybe some of the words they say they mean, some they definitely exaggerate and sometimes they just use what works because they have had it proven time and time again it leads to them being able to secure a new relationship.

If you pair their fear of being alone with the fact that they have no identity, it does make sense that they need someone right away to feel that they even exist at all.

The speed of replacing me with another and the others with their replacements has made my head spin.

There is some comfort that it didn't happen to just me.
The "next girl" that came along didn't necessarily have something better than me to offer. He just needed someone, anyone to stop the pain.

It's just all so very baffling.

In the email she shared after they were done, he had been lining up someone behind her back (and he's still with her today) and he spoke to this girl about even though he was with the next new person, he was still having a hard time getting over me. I left him with scars.

Now he's been with the latest girlfriend for a little over a year and he was telling this ex that she (the new one) treats him like a king but again he still has lots of scars from me and he will never open himself and his innermost feelings again to anyone like he did with me. That he felt he can't feel as deeply and be as romantic as he used to be. That he's guarded now with his feelings and is emotionally disconnected from her.
It was nice in a way to know that he's hurting in the same way that I have been hurting because I thought for sure the ending of us had no effect on him.

I do know that he's taking to another girl behind the new girlfriends back.
I actually feel sorry for all these girls who get involved with him like I did and thought they were so special and had this special connection with him. It just wasn't so. A mirage.

I see him in a new light now.