Do people with BPD ever regret their decision or miss someone?

[Duped 1]

Just curious about this. I feel like mine never missed me at all. It's been 4 mos NC. Do others feel the same? Do they really not miss the people that once were their plans for the future?

[GuySmiley]

Yes.

But, only after the relationship they left you for starts going down the tubes.

Hmmm, I wonder if xxxx is still single? Maybe I'll hit them up, just to fill the gaps that this new relationship isn't filling... .

They miss you as being a supply to their needs.

I met up with my xBPD a while back - she has no memory whatsoever of half the things we did never mind the plans for the future that we made.

Honestly, it sounds cruel but it really is an out of sight, out of mind mentality, until they need you to fill a gap. But don't be fooled into thinking the miss you, they miss whatever you supplied them with emotionally.

My xBPD is married and clearly unhappy, and sometimes she sounds convincing when she says she misses me and us, and it would be easy to fall for it. Until I ask her exactly what it is she misses - then she's vague and noncommittal and changes the subject.

[once removed]

its hard to know whats in someones head. usually the person that does the leaving in a relationship has already grieved the relationship, at least largely - the person that is left has not. that doesnt preclude the person who left the relationship from missing the person they left, only illustrates how both experience the breakup differently.

[vortex of confusion]

usually the person that does the leaving in a relationship has already grieved the relationship, at least largely - the person that is left has not. that doesnt preclude the person who left the relationship from missing the person they left, only illustrates how both experience the breakup differently.

I am the one that called it quits and ended the relationship. I did a lot of grieving before the relationship officially ended. I tried all sorts of ways to tell ex that I couldn't live with the way things were. I told him that I couldn't deal with the lies and the deception. I couldn't live with worrying about saying or doing the wrong thing and having him go post an ad and look for somebody else. I couldn't live with him sitting on his computer playing games and checking out.

He seemed shocked that I ended things even though I had tried to tell him that I was not okay with what was happening. I don't know if he misses me. There was one time when I asked him if he missed me. His response was real, "What would it matter if I said I missed you? You wouldn't believe me any way."

He was right. I wouldn't believe him. I wouldn't believe him because I feel like if I meant that much to him that he would have treated me better. I feel like if he missed me that much he wouldn't continue to be doing whatever it is he is doing and would have instead tried to find a way to treat me better and actually hear me and see me. So, what good does it do to wonder if he misses me? It does no good.

Was I special to him? I have no friggin' clue. Yeah, I probably was. It is a hard pill to swallow but I am slowly coming to accept that I wasn't special enough for him to check into our family and try to meet me half way. That was too much work for him. That is hard to accept. It is what it is.

For the record, I have gotten to a place where I really don't miss him. I don't miss the fighting. I don't miss the walking on eggshells. I don't miss worrying about whether or not he is posting ads. I don't miss worrying about having him interrupt me when I am on the phone. I don't miss worrying about whether or not he is going to come home in a bad mood. And, I don't miss having to jump through hoops and indulge in his fantasy world just to get a little bit of physical intimacy.

Does that mean that he isn't special to me? Nope, he was very, very special to me and still is. I am more special to me than he is. As such, I have to walk away and take care of myself. He has to discover his own specialness. He has told me several times towards the end, "How can I love you when I don't love myself?"

[Kelli Cornett]

Yes & No... .Like all things BPD their experiences are different than those without... .

Sometimes they will sometimes they won't depends on the person, the time, the guilt etc... .

But this question (and trust me I've had it on endless loop in my head too)... .Do they miss us... ?

What we are really asking and trying to get is...
1.  Did I matter - can anyone really answer that for us?  BPD or not...

Try answering the question yourself both ways and then ask the next question...

Answer Yes they miss you... .
Next question - So what does that mean - do you feel better, worse?

If that answer is Yes, then why do you feel better?
Ask and answer that question...
Because if they miss me they'll come back or they'll change or etc... .

Do you believe that?

I think if you go through this exercise with yourself what you will find is the questions may not end and ultimately the answers you seek aren't with your BPD person... .

Just my opinion...

[infjEpic]

Just curious about this. I feel like mine never missed me at all. It's been 4 mos NC. Do others feel the same? Do they really not miss the people that once were their plans for the future?

Walk into your kitchen.
Look at your toaster.

Do you feel love for your toaster?
Do you feel empathy for your toaster?
Are you capable of feeling some emotion for you toaster?

I'm assuming the answer to these questions is No.

Now... .cook a great slice of toast in that toaster. How did that make you feel?
Probably made you feel pretty good, right?
Do you love the toaster? No - because it's an object
What you love is the feeling you get from the object.
You can fall in love with that feeling - not with the object... .

Now - do that everyday for 2 months.
How does that make you feel?
Probably bored of toast right? You want pizza instead - so you start overlapping toast with pizza. When you get bored of pizza, you might go back to toast.


Sorry if this hurts - but that a (very simplistic) explanation which may help to explain your xBPD's view of you.
They likely never loved you, because they are not capable of love, as non-disordered people would understand it.
What they loved is how you made them feel. (Temporarily.)

It depends on their specific traits of course - but your xBPD may nnever viewed you as a person, but more as an object - similar to how you would consider a toaster.

If your honest with youself - you'll probably realise that you also loved the way your exBPD made you feel, and that's what we tend to miss - the feeling, not the abusive monster who helped to generate it.

[Duped 1]

If your honest with youself - you'll probably realise that you also loved the way your exBPD made you feel, and that's what we tend to miss - the feeling, not the abusive monster who helped to generate it.

Good stuff and LOL on the toaster. I really did feel like an object at times, especially when she was putting heavy pressure on to marry. I remember saying: "is it me you want or is it just important that you're married for the status of it?"

[msh28]

She definitely has BPD as she keeps doing everything I've read about. Now she's stringing me along... .Not sure how long I can deal with it to be honest.

I know she has someone else but she won't admit it - what is there for her to gain out of this? Telling me she still has feelings while she's with another idiot? Why doesn't she just be straight up about it, I don't get it.

Is there a chance that she will realise that her "replacement" is worse than I am and regret her decision or does that just not enter their mind?

She says she isn't looking for a relationship and if she was with anyone she would be with me but I'm not that naive to think that suddenly she's got so busy overnight, I call and she doesn't answer, takes hours to respond to messages etc.

Do people with BPD ever regret their decision or miss someone?

[Skip]

I know she has someone else... .

If that is the case, she most likely is going through some level of relationship honeymoon and idealization and anyone would in a new relationship.

Do they really not miss the people that once were their plans for the future?

Does someone who moves on to another partner have regret or miss the other person - often they do - often there is guilt for the way things end.

Will that materialize as an admission to you and a desire to restart the relationship - or just be a quiet reflection and some emotional grieving - depends on the circumstances.

I know I have varying degrees of regret and miss past partners... .we all do. We once loved them and shared our life with them so they are special and we hold a place in our heart and maybe our box of old photos.

When do we act and share these feelings? Only if we want to rejuvenate a relationship or possibly have a friendly reunion years later.

[msh28]

If that is the case, she most likely is going through some level of relationship honeymoon and idealization and anyone would in a new relationship.

Its messed up because she still talks to me about sex and things like that I just can't imagine her sleeping with someone else and then saying all of this stuff to me - it really is disturbing.

Especially because deep down, I know that but she will never admit it to me she just says she's busy and gets REALLY ANGRY with me whenever I ask her.

I did want to get her back but I am convinced she already has someone else and is stinging me along... .

Is there any way she will miss me over this guy?

[Harley Quinn]

Thanks Duped for this post and everyone for your replies.  It's been a really useful read and one I'll look at again if this question crosses my mind.  Love the toaster analogy!  I completely agree.  It is the feeling we both give them and receive from them that is the mutual addiction.  I miss the feeling as I know he did during the relationship when he realised that his behaviours wouldn't just be accepted, tolerated and met with adoration... .  I do not miss the trauma I lived and I'm sure he doesn't miss hearing the truth about himself.  Before the end all the pent up emotions I had finally exploded in a torrent of a wake up call.  I know that haunted him as I heard the words repeated time and time again before NC.  I do think that with any relationship it's natural for us all to miss the good times.  What we can't forget is our reason for no longer being with this person though.

Love and light x

[patientandclear]

My exwBPD does miss people and experience regret, but a ways down the road.  He is very aware of loss--because of the accumulated habits and decisions of a lifetime he is quite alone, and that was never his plan. He is in search of a permanent connection and he keeps killing the bonds he starts, so it isn't turning out like he had hoped.  It does cause him to question what he does and to think about changes.  So far, it hasn't equipped him to actually make those changes.  He has limited insight into what goes on with his feelings and he attributes the problems to being with the wrong person.

There are some people in his past he seems to use and "miss" like the toaster.  There are others who bother him more specifically, but he seems to have extremely confused feelings about them, a strong mix of resentment and betrayal and longing.  The woman he misses most specifically, he has strongly negative feelings about, but he can't stop thinking about her--over years, she is the person I saw him obsessively focus on.

So I think it's complicated.  The people are not as "gone" as it might appear from his actions.  Yet, the feelings are not useful, in the sense that he can act on them in the spirit of repair and reunion.

[msh28]

Well whatever my ex is doing it doesn't seem like she misses me at all... .I was good to her but she only sees the fact that "I lied".

Made me feel like Adolf Hitler - and there are some things in my head that are still coming together that I'm asking myself like was she cheating on me etc... .

Would I have seen the signs? I don't know. I was so stressed out I couldn't see anything else other than her. Trying to keep her happy, trying to understand what I was doing wrong... .

How do they move on so quickly? Do they not actually grieve after a break up?

It's really messed up how she just detached after a week and never really looked back since then.

We're still in contact and she says she has feelings for me but she can't be with me but "she will never say never". And when I ask her if she's seeing someone else she starts raging at me.

[Rayban]

 

 It is the feeling we both give them and receive from them that is the mutual addiction.  

I think they're addicted to that new love feeling. That's why I believe they recycle just to recapture that new love feeling. I know she loved the way I touched her, looked at her, it's intoxicating for both of us. 

The problem is they are addicts. What they didn't receive as children, they perpetually chasing. They will do anything to keep that option available to them.

Looking back I realize how I was hooked and bonded. A large part was sex. With the amount of sex we had.  It was also small things like constantly holding hands to the point where my hand would go numb.  This was constant.  In the car, out in public, and especially when we slept.  I  would wake up in the middle of the night, go to the bathroom, and when I got back to bed, she grabbed my hand and held on for dear life. It was endearing.  It's actions like this that make me realize that she must have loved me, maybe just for the way I made her feel.

[joeramabeme]

I met up with my xBPD a while back - she has no memory whatsoever of half the things we did never mind the plans for the future that we made.

Honestly, it sounds cruel but it really is an out of sight, out of mind mentality,

. . . when she says she misses me and us, and it would be easy to fall for it. Until I ask her exactly what it is she misses - then she's vague and noncommittal and changes the subject.

I believe her memory of what we did is either missing, or at times, have concluded that her construct of the memories is very different than mine.  Perhaps she did not have the same happiness that I was feeling when we did things together or her assembly of what those things meant were very different for her.

I am reminded of when she came back to the house after having left 3 months earlier.  She walked in and looked around at the room that she designed as if it was the first time she was seeing it.  Suddenly, I saw the look on her face change and it seemed to say; what a good job I did decorating - as if she didnt remember doing it and was giving herself adulation for a job well done.

Perhaps out of sight is out out of mind and she does not remember big chunks of what we did together that I have had such a difficult time of letting go.

I just want to be free of all this and yet it is hard to let go of something that was so powerful and deeply meaningful for me.  As I try to move forward with a new path it just seems the old one keeps being called into the present which gets me back on the treadmill of wondering if she ever does miss what was once us.

Thanks for a great posting... .

[StayStrongNow]

infjEpic, I liked your toaster example. I want to add that I know my uxBPDw doesn't miss me at all but misses the money I used to make. Money kept (and keeps) her emotionally stable. During the good years of our marriage when I was making a good living the barometer of her happiness was evidenced by the numerous "I will love you forever" cards and letters. As soon as the times got tough the idealization ended and devaluation set in for good.

In all of our years of marriage I would often say to the x "all you care about is my wallet". A good example of this not loving the "object" but what the object provides to the pwBPD is the x's mother r/s. She is also a BPD and is married to a rich NPD. It is all over the Internet a BPD and NPD can last especially if the NPD has money. Of course this r/s is a disaster as can be witnessed by any non, nevertheless they have been in a miserable marriage for quite a while.

Quite frankly after 8 years of idealization and 5 years of devaluation and discard, I want as little to do with the x as possible. But I have full custody of our three children so I need to understand and deal with the uxBPDw for a long time. Thank you for this post, it has been very helpful to further my understanding of BPD.

[RealizationBPD]

Lots of good tidbits in this post. Like everyone else, I love the toaster analogy, it is so true. I will have to use that one.

I do not miss the trauma I lived and I'm sure he doesn't miss hearing the truth about himself.

I can fully relate. I'm sure my wife will not miss hearing from her dad, because I realized I was that parent figure in her life.

pwBPD love the ideal of being in love, more than the person that is showing it to them.  When the facade starts to crack, time to devalue and IDEALize. Next. 

[40days_in_desert]

Back in February of this year, a year and a half after my xw left me for her replacement, she told me that she should have never started a relationship with my replacement, and never should have filed for divorce. She said that she sees now that we should try and reconcile. Her boyfriend is 40, lives with his step-dad, doesn't have a car, has a couple of felony convictions and is not a good influence on her or our children so I agree with the statement that she should have never started a relationship with him. Especially while we were still together. I can go into more detail about the conversations that we had six months ago but I'll try to stay on point. I was willing to consider reconciliation but two things were missing that would have made that necessary. First, all of the "regret" were really "poor me" statements. There wasn't one word about how her choices affected me, our kids and others. It was still all about her. Second, she never left her boyfriend which is a very necessary requirement before considering reconciliation. I wouldn't even start to try until these two things happened. In the end, I don't know and don't need to know if she was sincere about what I described above but just like my signature says, they have a way of showing their true face behind the mask if you wait long enough. Focus on the actions and not the words. She never showed what she said. At this point, I don't feel a need to know whether she regrets. If she does, it probably has more to do with the fact that her life is harder now because of those choices and that I don't want her anymore than truly knowing what she did was wrong. My advice: don't waste any brain cells trying to figure it out.
By the way, I was quickly split black after I didn't give the response she anticipated after these conversations in February and still am to this day.

[Skip]

Guys, be careful of "the world is flat" theories.  

We are all wounded (all standing on the same boat deck and looking at the same horizon) and see (actually, feel) the same plausible, but not necessarily true phenomenon.

Of all our boards here at bpdfamily, ":)etaching" is often the one with the most skewed understanding of personality as many of us are trying to explain how someone who hurt us thinks and sees the world.

If you read the literature, you will see that the number one event that puts pwBPD into hospitals or contributes to suicides is failed romantic or best friend relationships.

If someone is willing to kill themselves over a toaster - it is much more than a casual object in their life.

Why is it important to get a realistic understanding on what happened?  Because 25% of the population is mentally ill or addicted - we will encounter these things in our future and we will only be able to navigate if we understand what is truly going on.

Some thoughts... .

[joeramabeme]

Great reply Skip!

It really is hard to assess what happened without going into a black and white mindset.

BTW, was it Galileo that proposed the world is round and was going to be killed for heresy?
 

[roberto516]

If you read the literature, you will see that the number one event that puts pwBPD into hospitals or contributes to suicides is failed romantic or best friend relationships.

If someone is willing to kill themselves over a toaster - it is much more than a casual object in their life.

To offer an alternative view. There is that article on this site about memories as files. I think when a BPD is dumped, or left they are completely out of control. The thing they fear. the most. It hits right at their core wound of abandonment. So it's not really the toaster they are trying to kill themselves over. The toaster is just the present manifestation of what they were trying to avoid for their whole life... .rejection. And now here it is again. The toaster (current partner or best friend) is really being viewed as mom or dad who abandoned them physically, or emotionally.

To further the analogy. If someone expects the toaster to do as they say, and they fear very very much that it won't, and one day it will stop working for them and leave then when it does that it can be an emotional destroyer (especially for someone with such intense emotions and nowhere to go with them). What someone with traits might fail to realize though is that to keep the toaster working they have to do routine maintenance and put some work in to make sure it operates at a high level. I never knew I'd be speaking so much about a toaster .

But this is just my take. I agree it's not good to generalize everyone. But it does make sense. They expect the toaster to work for them. When it doesn't, and they aren't the ones who toss is in the trash before it gets up and leaves, they are completely out of control again. That's devastating for someone. I would know because it's what I struggle with. Being out of control right now, and having to accept. I can't imagine if my emotions were 1000 times stronger how I would have reacted to this absolute hell I have gone through emotionally for almost 6 months.

[Skip]

o it's not really the toaster they are trying to kill themselves over. The toaster is just the present manifestation of... .

And the same is true for many of us.

[roberto516]

And the same is true for many of us.

Me definitely.

[Insom]

Skip,

Can you say more about what you mean by this?

Of all our boards here at bpdfamily, ":)etaching" is often the one with the most skewed understanding of personality as many of us are trying to explain how someone who hurt us thinks and sees the world.

I am interested, but don't think I get what you mean by skewed.

[Mint julep]

Vortex, your post really resonated with me this morning! I hope one day to reach the place where I can not miss him. I'm so lonely but I think peace is better than the hell he was putting me thru!

[Hopefulgirl]

InfjEpic, that is one of the best descriptions I've heard about how a person with BPD sees people.
I think that was one of the worst things, knowing that my ex never really missed me. Of course I missed him so terribly I couldn't function. Basically everyone I knew who was close to him would say the same thing to me, he doesn't miss me. It's like I don't exist. So I had some sort of comfort in a strange way of knowing that I wasn't the only one. Of course, I know people who don't have BPD who don't miss people, as in when they're done with the relationship they're just DONE,  they don't even seem to think of them, they just carry on. Even people that I thought were very deeply attached to someone or very deeply in love.

[Skip]

Skip, I am interested, but don't think I get what you mean by skewed.

First of all, I say this for constructive reasons, not to demean anyone.

By skewed I mean distorted and/or uniformed.

There is a significant bias to label and blame ex partners. Most partners have BPD traits... .but it is not uncommon to terms on detaching like "full blown" or BPD/NPD or BPD/NPD/ASPD or vampires, evil or even sociopath and psychopath.

This is possibly a good case study here. With respect for the member posting, who I think is sincerely trying to make sense of things... .
https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=310785.0

We don't see this mishmash of terminology and a discrediting of psychology and the DSM from parents, adult children, married partners, people trying to save relationships, or professionals. We mostly see it on Detaching and Family Law.

The interesting thing is that the severity or the "pwBPD" partner is, on average, lowest on the Detaching Board and highest on the Parenting Board (where many of the pwBPD are diagnosed and have been institutionalized to some extent).

The result is that many Detaching members don't learn the psychology and human behavior skills that will help them go forward and self reflct on theory own attachment issues, rather they get caught up in the "their bat crazy, nothing I could've done" thinking.

I raise this to encourage members to remember not to drink the kool aid - these are complex relationships and they form and drag out because both partners have attachment issues.

Ignoring them and passing the blame may help in the short term, but if we don't get down to business, we only cheat ourselves.