Hi MiaP,
I'd like to welcome you to bpdfamily. I so sorry that you're going through this. A r/s break-up from a pwBPD is incredibly difficult and they seem to keep hitting our emotional wounds.
Ihave been living a true hell, trying to keep a stable environment for the children and at the same time dealing with the constant rage outbursts, texts all the time, controlling of where I am and what I'm doing... .
I can see how that would be tough when you're working hard to keep things stable and you' ex is blowing up your phone with texts and trying to keep tabs on you. You don't have to explain anything to anyone. I went through something similar after my break-up, my exes behaviors got worse before they got better. It sounds like your ex may be going through extinction bursts.
You have children so you'll probably recall this, i remember when my D11 was about a year and a half maybe two and we took her soother away. We called it a "suz" and she was crying that she lost her "suz" anyways, every night when we put her to bed and didn't give her her soother she cried for what felt like an hour, an hour and a half, she kept escalating and it sounded worse until one night she had an excting burst and the behavior stopped. It sounds like you're probably not validating negative behaviors and he keeps texting you.
I'd suggest to self protect with minimal contact, its hard to go no contact when you have the kids but you can control how you respond back. I would respond only if it was about the kids and i'd didn't respond back to anything personal or that was about us, our marriage, our r/s. I'd also suggest to not JADE when he's trying to bait or wants attention, don't Justify, Attack, Defend or Explain, and I only explain things once maybe twice with my ex because sometimes she'll ask the same thing several times to keep me engaged because she just wants attention.
I feel a lot of guilt because now that I look back, I did see some strange behaviours which should have allerted me to something more serious going on but for some reason I ignored them or was convinced that it wasn't tha bad... .
Don't be hard on yourself, i'd also like to add that it's hard when when your ex projects, twists things around or emotionally blackmail's you. It's really confusing if you don't know that it's BPD , but I'm not a trained professional that's trained to detect hard to detect personality disorders.
I'd like to ask you about the guilt that you feel, are you saying if you had detected the mental illness that you could have helped him or saved the r/s?
BPD BEHAVIORS: Extinction Bursts
