Hello bpdfamily members/readers,
This is my first post and I'd like to share my story for some much welcomed comments from those of you who can help...
I am finally now 'out of' a very tumultuous 2 year rollercoaster ride of a relationship. It has possibly been the hardest relationship breakup I have had to endure in regards to my own feelings of self worth, yearning, anger, shame & guilt I have ever endured. And I am at a loss to explain my emotions when I knew all along this was just a disaster waiting to happen and should have left long ago...
I have been reading on the net for 2 weeks solidly on personality disorders and in particular BPD and have come to the conclusion with absolute 100% confidence that my ex is a non-diagnosed BPD individual. She has literally all of the traits to varying degrees.
I have just turned 41 years old. My ex gf is now 26 years old. It is a big age gap - I look a lot younger than my years suggest I should add.
My ex gf is a strikingly attractive woman... she is a gorgeous small package of a woman and was an ex model and professional dancer in her earlier years. Of course her ex boyfriend thwarted all her dreams and she blames him for getting her pregnant when she was 19-20 years old and for the 4-5 years of their on/off relationship which was fraught with hideous fights, breakups and getting back together. They have a 6 year old boy who is a very screwed up little lad - he lives with the mother (my ex BPD girlfriend) which explains a lot as to his problems.
When we met she actually contacted me on FB to start chatting... she'd seen me at the school with my 2 young girls and that was that. We started dating the next day... I told my ex wife (been separated/divorced for 2 years) about my new relationship within the 1st week and the result was a few days later my ex wife said she wanted me back (she has NPD). She told me to get rid of this new girl and come back to her & my children.
I still felt there was unfinished business with my ex wife and spoke to my new girlfriend about what she said and that I need time to consider this as I adore my 2 children beyond words. Then new girlfriend refused to accept my departure so I broke it off within the first week or 2 anyway. Bare in mind that I was living in a very large and 'status' type of house and driving a very expensive car and I would also describe myself as attractive and well built in the muscular definition and I felt that this 24 year old girl showing me this huge attention was not entirely genuine but more about status, money and the like so I saw no longevity in it. I decided to spend some time with my ex wife and see how it felt for the sake of my children and perhaps some stability, after all I was married to this woman once. It wasnt great - exactly as it always had been... life ONLY revolves around her needs and no one elses. She has a huge ego, very arrogant and very entitled & grandiose and has never had a fault in her life or relationships. She has 4 children by 3 fathers, very attractive and very dominant.
My exBPD was literally waiting at my door and begging every time I came home and even offered to share me as she would tell me my ex wife was no good for me. The upshot is it all came to a head one day a month or 2 later and I chose my new BPD girlfriend as a new opportunity and for new and better things as she claimed to be head over heels in love with me and so I chose this path rather than treading an old path that would ultimately end with me being unhappy and emasculated again.
Fast forward the next 2 years that I have been 100% devoted only to my young girlfriend and the result has been one manic rollercoaster ride. I have never experienced anything like it in all my life.
Right from the first month she was exhibiting extreme abandonment issues. When we had a fallout which was always based on her fear of rejection she would threaten me with blackmail, for example... her dad was a mason and he would ruin my business dealings in the town, or 'wait until monday in the school playground and I will ruin your reputation' or telling me she's going to tell everyone I'm a big time drug dealer etc... which I can assure you all I have never done in my entire life. I couldn't spend one single day inside a prison by breaking the law as the shame would kill me and I would not see my children...
Having seen this side of her I broke it off yet again and she then came to my house telling me she was pregnant and in tears over it. She upheld this lie for 2 weeks and then said she had a miscarriage. This was to be a common occurrence!
She would literally beg, stalk and plead, sometime bringing her little boy round wrapped in a towel having been dragged out the bath or bed... and me being a rescuer type personality I saw this beautiful little woman who absolutely adored and worshipped me and was in unbearable pain at the thought of me leaving her. So I conceded. I blamed myself for bringing out these emotions in her. The sex was constant and amazing i must admit... literally every single day / night we spent together we had sex and it was wild and literally on tap. I could not keep her off me. She was sexually obsessed with me. She also poured so much love and energy into the relationship, i was basically everything to her... .her only friend, her lover, her future, her boys new father, her codependent etc etc. And I guess she was mine too.
The further i went down the road with her the more inconsistent her stories and lies became. Nothing ever added up. Everything she ever told me about herself, her past, her job roles or her evil ex was always a lie. She would try to make me jealous all the time by telling me about coworkers or bosses who were propositioning her and she went through many jobs in the time i was with her. Sometimes she would just go sick and never turn up then write an email saying she was leaving.
I am self employed and could not ever get on with work because if she wasn't having drama with me it was with her ex, her son, her boss, her sister, someone in the playground, her mum... you name it!
She has had taken an overdose of pills (although never enough to be lethal or even damaging) on more than 10 times saying she was killing herself each & every time I broke things off. I had to go and kick the door down to her house with her mum, dad etc to rescue the situation countless times... Other times she would take an overdose then go into a blind rage and run out into the street in the middle of the night and once into a forest during storm while me and her mum went to find her. Every time I found her she would be in such a place that she knew id see her but as soon as i approached shed run further away. If i backed up and walked away she would come towards me again until i then went to her then she'd run off again. It was a constant cry for help and rescue. "If you leave me I will kill myself!"
When she was having a meltdown she would catastrophize like you wouldn't believe. She'd say she was an absolute failure to herself, her son, to all her ex partners, to me, work etc... .then she would start blaming everyone and if her mum was their shed tell her she hates her and that she ruined her life. Eventually we got her on antidepressants which I believed did help. but also I put more effort into making her feel wanted so both things helped a bit...
I called an ambulance on 5 occasions for other problems which always came after a near breakup or bad row. This usually involved an abdominal pain that she played on that was so severe she was given morphine injections by paramedics and orally too along with Gas & Air. She did have a small cyst on an ovary but she'd had that for over 6 years when they found out during a pregnancy scan. Never has caused her a problem. Because she played on the pain so much I went round and went with her in the ambulance where they ended up operating 2 days later even though they said it was very small and couldn't understand the reason for so much pain. She actually went under the knife to uphold the lie which of course brought us back together. She went back again for subsequent problems several more times and the last time whilst going through exactly the same pain, another ambulance and after another row we ended up back in the hospital all night! I left at 7am, her mum took over and at 9am I got a call from her saying that she'd been through a bad miscarriage and that was the cause of the bleeding and pain (she was actually on her period which I knew anyway). So when she retuned home again I looked after her, she received gifts and cards from people and her few friends. I went with her to a follow up at the doctors 2 weeks later and I asked to see the discharge notes... simply red 'mid cycle menstrual pains' ! Pregnancy test was NEGATIVE. The doctor also said to her that she would have us both fertility tested as she had been going to the doctors telling her she's been trying to get pregnant the last 2 years with me despite telling me she was on various types of contraceptive. I said nothing in the doctors room, I simply felt sorry for her and outside in the car I could not even speak about it. She knew exactly what she had done and she cried and played the victim again.
She had the ability to be the best partner I have ever had in my life. So so so loving, generous, kind, adoring, sweet, innocent victim that just wanted taking care of and rescuing. I was the king and I felt like a king. I'm fully aware now that my personality and childhood experiences have probably meant that what she gave me literally filled a lifetime void for me that I wasn't even aware of until meeting her. She gave me something Id never had before and because of this I patiently clung on to her continually getting back with her after each breakup because of this. Her abandonment fears with me were enormous. She never played out 'attachment fears' because essentially we were always in the honeymoon stage and I had not yet let her 'catch' me yet so to speak. I am older and wiser and protect myself more now than I did when I met my ex NPD wife. She kept asking me to marry her and kept asking to live together but every time it came close I pulled back because of another meltdown or suicide attempt which normally came after me finding out another one of her lies. I simply could not live with her or marry her until she stopped the lying and extreme behaviour. I needed to protect my kids too and her son was showing the same issues she has in lying, crying wolf, huge anger issues and absolutely no boundaries... He doesn't care how hurtful his comments are to his mum and quite often to me 5 & 7 year old girls...
She made me hate her ex boyfriend (father of of child) by fabricating stories. One day he kidnapped her in his van and asked her to marry him and broke her fingers in the process. She also told me he stole her passport so she couldn't go on holiday with her friends while i was away on a motorcycle trip in france. These friends dont even like her let alone really know her so I knew that was a lie. But she had me and other men at the school and also her male family members go hunting him down for this passport.
I found out later that in fact she made this up to go away for the weekend with her ex and son while i was in france and even text me in france to say she had dropped her friends off at the airport and hated her ex for doing this to her. Then made up a fictitious argument she had with her ex over the passport when in reality she was with him for the weekend. She swears they never slept together and they did it for their son. That may of may not be true... During the period that she booked this trip with him I was blanking her agin due to her behaviour problems so she was keeping her ex on the hook leading him along just incase... However just before I went away we were back together again and loved up and I slept with her before leaving and we spoke/messaged every day I was away and I slept with her on the day I returned.
Then the next drama... .she had a pretend phonemail with her mum in earshot of me listening to it where she announced that her ex had just admitted sleeping with my ex wife! She didn't tell me this info first, she preferred me to hear it via a phone conversation. She couldn't understand why I was so angry at her for that. Who wouldn't be especially when I have been lied to about what a bad person he is... They never slept together, merely got chatting at the school during a parents evening! But initially it put me on the warpath with my ex wife and her ex until i realised this was just a load of manipulation to make me hate my ex wife and her ex bf. She was insanely jealous of my ex wife. She gave me children and I married her and also lived with her inside of 3 months of meeting. My BPD gf could not understand why I would not want the same with her so soon. In truth I wanted even more with my BPDgf but I simply could not trust her. She would make up stories of threesomes and other sexual experiences that I found out later to be untrue. She would lock herself in my bathroom with my phone and go through every single message I had ever written to another female prior to meeting her... She planted this incredible jealousy seed in her own head. Her level of inadequacy was severe. But she was drop dead gorgeous to look at. Sexually she was amazing too. She was so needing to impress me she would google sex techniques and tricks to up her game as she felt I might get bored of her seeing as I am 15 years older and saw me as so much more experienced than her.
She would get anxious when we went out because she felt other women wold think what the hell am I doing with her. The truth is she blew every woman away with her looks, but she felt so inadequate. She has alienated so many god friends and now has a handful of what I would call not nice friends. They are not attractive, not pleasant, very ___y, gossipy and all unkind about there partners when there backs are turned. I have heard she from her ex that she lost so many friends when she was with him which she blamed on him but I don't believe it.
She is desperate for drama and attention. Her ex is not allowed to speak with their son on the phone inbetween the alternating weekends he has him. She has been hideous with her ex's new partner who has just had his baby. She would not accept her in her sons life and tells her son she is a cleaner in a police station when in fact she has a top job of interviewing and charging criminals in the police headquarters near us. She even used permanent marker to blot out her ex's gf name in her sons school reading record on the rare occasion she reads to him every other weekend they have him. I have fallen out with her over this behaviour many times and in the end I took up the job of doing all mediating between my exBPDgf and her ex reading their son as it was so hostile - all created by her - that it was stressing everyone out and the poor boy was being caught in the middle of all the games.
I havent even scratched the surface reading the lying and her behaviour. She even lied about her age and I had to have a row with a doctor in the hospital about it when she was having her op as I was told 1988 and in fact it was 1990! She added 2 years!
I never ever looked at her phone or other media. Hell I have learned many years ago not to go looking for things... .I would rather just be ignorant than learn something that would hurt my feelings. However after one evening when she started accusing me again I said ok then show me your phone... which she did. I didn't look on her text messages though because she obviously had that covered. Instead I opened her WhatsApp and FB messages. Straight away I found guys she was flirting with... the dates matched into the dates when we had rows and I was telling her I could not be with her and this behaviour. So while she was begging, threatening and overdosing she was hooking other guys to take my place just in case. She swears blind she never slept with anyone in our time together, but she has never spoken a word of truth in 2 years and sworn on her child's life on everything. Her reaction to me reading these out loud, was give me my phone! We'd broken up then!
Well we hadn't actually because we normally slept together within 2 days at most of a breakup and everything was back on again each time...
Each suicide attempt I threatened to take her to hospital if she didn't tell me how much she took. I said you will jeopardise your son if social services are alerted to this. Most times she would tell me she only too 4 or 5 antidepressants and calm down a bit. Other times she would completely lose control and I would have to pin her down whilst calling her mum to come over or I'm calling the police and/or ambulance...
She was unable to let the dust settle during an argument. Hundreds of times I would try and get away from her and she would corner me or steal my car keys. One time she took my dog so I couldn't leave. On times I have managed to get away she would hang on the side of my car down the road so I had to stop. She caused a huge scene whenever a meltdown occurred... I would be having anxiety attacks on some occasions because I was cornered in my own home. Sometimes she would show my some empathy and stop but mostly she wouldn't. She used t have terrible panic attacks over our breakups and couldn't breathe and again I would change the subject and get her breathing and cuddle her and tell her it'll all be ok and then of course we were back together again...
We had some wonderful times together as well. We were so comfortable together and loved up yet I knew this master lurked in the background somewhere. Even if I could get past it, I could not get past the extreme lies and manipulation of not only me but also her ex and his gf and so many other people she would put down. Those are not values I share with her. But god do I miss her so much and I feel utterly shameful and responsible for everything. I have now been replaced with her hatred instead of her previous ex who clearly went through hell with her.
I split up with her on boxing day this year. We had a beautiful xmas day with her and on boxing day after a minor row where she was unkind about my children for no reason at all she then has a meltdown and went into this self loathing stage again. I drive her home and said we're done. She destroyed a £1,000 necklace Id given her on xmas day and I left.
She then went into hate mode, then begging mode, then told me we'll all better better off without her when she's 'gone'. I decided to break the pattern this time. She had her family down who live overseas some of them so this time she had support. I continued to stay away even on new years eve where she became desperately sad, then nasty then begging again. A few days into the new year we spoke again and I went to see her and we got close and had a cuddle. She called me that right asking to come over and I said no because we'd just be papering over the cracks again. We needed a solution and not to sweep it under the carpet again. I new I needed rid of her but I also wanted her so much. It was painful. The next day I sent her message and asked if she was ok. She wrote me a dear john letter, So i called her bluff and also wished her well and apologised for my part in ending the relationship. She then got upset and angered and this then got a whole lot worse...
We had a big row and she called me telling me she cant be without me but them accused me of sleeping with all my ex's throughout our time together which absolutely never happened... She just reeled off name after name. Then hung up... then called back again and apologised but the did exactly the same thing again...
I habe to have closure... i need it. But I felt I also loved her and missed her. But how could I have loved her when I had no respect for her and her hideous lies and actions. It cant have been love, surely not. Probably an infatuation for something she gave me. Maybe I'm needy and she gave me something I so craved.Because I wanted an amicable closure I went round and saw her again... she became absuive saying that all thats wrong in her life is down to me and that I've treated like sh1t fr 2 years. She had forgotten all that shed put me through. She did calm down the cried and I cuddled her. We even had a kiss and told each other we loved and missed each other. But we both knew it was over. However she text me again that right and used our closeness as me wanting her back and then turned the tables on me and dumped me but did so politely.
I wrote back the her the next day and i said I agree and that we really now need NC and to try to recover. I was also told that she has befriended a male on Facebook and has been taking comfort from him. She denied this of course but reacted very badly when told her I new some of the content of the messages... More lies...
We had no contact for a couple days and then I mumbled into her ex's partner at the school and i spoke with her, just general chitchat. 2 hours later we were reported for speaking and she then phoned her ex and then me and then send me hideous emails that i was slagging her off to her and all sorts...
None of this happened! I wrote her a strong email and told her to leave me alone. Unfortunately yesterday evening I knocked on her door to ask for the very expensive necklace back I gave her which she promised to return seeing as she broke it anyway. I'm not too bothered about it but she hasn't even given me my xmas present back yet that she gave me! She flatly refused and said it was a gift and i can no longer have it. I asked why even though I was not really bothered and she told me because she hates me. That I have treated her like sh1t for 2 years and despises me. All this from someone who absolutely adored me and worshipped me and told me i was the best thing that ever happened to her on every single level. The utter hatred she had for mesas painful and completely unjust and she based it on the fact that I have said unkind things about her which I havent except to my closest. It is her who as been blackening my name since we broke up. It's filtering back to me constantly. She has taken no fault whatsoever. Really if I'm honest I just wanted closure yesterday and at times during the last few days I have even contemplated giving her what she wanted and saying lets move in together and be that family you always wanted from me and I'd marry her this year and even pan a baby with her... thats how ill this break up has made me. But I thought better of it and did not weaken my position again as she would have rejected me and then gained even more power over me making my recovery even longer and damaging my self esteem further.
I have been in talking therapy locally for the last week to try and process all of this as for the first time my life I have felt a depression over a relationship. Far worse than my ex wife who I felt i was very much in love with. I cannot explain it. It is just so horrible. Sometimes I go to bed and I'm ok and the 5 mins after waking up it all slaps me in the face again.
She's now having to look for a house as the landlord wants to sell her house. She is in debt and not earning enough from teaching dance lessons which I helped set her up in and was her dream to to do... so she's now looking for a job and a house. I offered to still help support her till she was on her feet but I know that was stupid. She's already sucked me dry and I have lost over £100k in earnings over the last year of missed working days dealing with her never ending dramas. The constant push pull attitude where I would just ask for a day to be left alone to work and she would then grant me that only for the demons to get in and 12 hours later she is telling me i dont care about her and I'd be better of without her. I wouldn't pander to this then shed call in a panic and then the suicide threats come again then the apologies and begging...
I would feel terrible if she now goes on to have a beautiful life with someone as it would make me feel all these problems were mine, but I know her past well enough now and having become good friends with her ex and ex's gf I have seen first hand what she is capable of. She wouldn't give him a stitch of furniture from the house they shared when they split. Wont even give him the coffee machine which he has begged for over 2 years and she hates coffee> so of course i was never getting my necklace back!
She asked me to make her ex disappear when he came to the door to get his stuff saying it was never his, but hers. What I didn't know at the time we got together is that she was overlapping him with me and also another rebound fling she was involved with before she met me and during her break up with her ex. We have all been mugs and it was me she chose for her future and always came back to me as that was the most important thing to her. She had other interested of course but I overrode all of them it seems... .but then I consider myself a good guy, I'm a good dad, earn well, know a lot of people and have a good standing in my town and plugged her in to new people...
What I wonder about is would the attachment fear has have begun when i finally conceded and lived with her, married her etc... Thats the only part I have not yet witnessed but she never really had me pinned down... .it was always fear of abandonment. She started hating her ex and pushing him away as soon as they had their baby in the first year they met. They spent most of their time split up as much as together in fact more so! He was messed up afterwards too but I think i got the worst of it with the miscarriages, pregnancies, suicides etc... she clearly upped her problems further with me...
I'm hoping that i have had a lucky escape, that I now need to repair from rather than throwing something away that I really loved. I'm very confused and cant even think about other women at the moment. Not even a rebound fling.
I feel very damaged from the but know i will get my mojo back eventually... or maybe she was the best i will ever have had... Perhaps I need to look further into me.
Im certain she is now done with me and that she will never want back with me. She knows I'm on to her lies and behaviour and she'll not muck about with someone who will finally expose her. Yet I do feel very jealous of who she's now with... I would never react to it though or say anything.
Oh well... .time will heal. Writing some of this down here is probably helping process it
