Hello and thank you for this forum. I broke up with my pwbpd last night he was my romantic partner for the past 5 years. This was the 3rd time I broke up with him and hoping can remain strong this time. I couldn't take the mood shifts, the daily eggshell walking, and on and on any longer.
Right now I'm just feeling wrecked emotionally. I don't know what I need right now, I'm hurting badly.
Thank you you for listening/reading.
sounds like you made the right decision to move on with your life.
If I can share any advice, it's to focus on material things you can do to recover. Don't spend time worrying about "why did this happen to me?" ... if there were specific actions you could've taken, don't waste time thinking about what might have happened, think about what inside you kept you from doing that, and work on those things.
For me, that was why I didn't set boundaries around how I expected to be treated and what I would tolerate. I've talked about some of this with family members, because a lot of us have trouble asserting ourselves sometimes, and feel guilty about setting boundaries. It gets us into bad situations when we're around people who don't.
Also, the point you make about the "constant gridlock" is a good one, and one I don't see discussed enough here. We focus on the conflict and bad memories of BPD incidents, but not as much on how paralyzing the conflict can be to our everyday wants and needs, just to cater to a pwBPD, or self-censor to avoid fights.
Take this time to consider things you wanted or needed to do, but couldn't because the pwBPD had imposed their own standards of what was acceptable on the relationship.
