Retribution and hitting rock bottom

[Depression = 72% of members]

Retribution! That’s what I want.

I spent all of Valentine’s Day crying. After being NC over 100 days, I asked our mutual friend S about my exbf and I became enmeshed all over again. I found out that he was seeing 3 girls and never asks about me. I spent all morning wondering if he was spending V-Day with my replacement and turns out he wasn’t even in the country that day. I had been slowly getting better over the last 100 days and I suddenly felt like I was back to square one and spent the whole day at work crying and that day I felt like I finally hit rock bottom. Suddenly it just became worse and too much to handle. Ironically my therapist is also on vacation this week.

In the evening I met some single friends for dinner which was great, after which S and I sat and talked about what I was feeling. She asked me what I wanted. Did I want him back? And what exactly was I missing. Did I want him to ask about me? Why couldn’t I just come to events when he was there? What’s the worst that could happen?

I told her I’m just unhappy. Not once since NC have I wished to have him back or to be a couple ever again. In fact, just the thought of laying eyes on him makes me feel all knotted up and I know I never ever want to see him again, let alone plan a future with him. I just want him to hurt like I’m hurting. But he’s so busy with 3 women, he obviously will not have any time to think and reflect and feel like I do, and that’s his illness. And it irks me that people know more about him. I didn’t know he was out of the country, I didn’t even know he had changed his apartment. I knew every single detail of his life and now I’m the last to know anything.

He had looked up a guy I was sort of seeing on Facebook and then realized that the guy had married someone else and asked S about it. This was in January. S said that knowing that must have made me feel flattered. It did I think. To know that he’s still curious about knowing what’s going on in my life. Yet it also scared me so much that I hoped against hope that he wouldn’t contact me after he found this out. Weird right? I want him to miss me and my worth, but I never want to see him again. And now he doesn’t even ask about me. And each day for me is an uphill battle.

I want retribution, plain and simple.

[mevz]

Retribution! That’s what I want.

I spent all of Valentine’s Day crying. After being NC over 100 days, I asked our mutual friend S about my exbf and I became enmeshed all over again. I found out that he was seeing 3 girls and never asks about me. I spent all morning wondering if he was spending V-Day with my replacement and turns out he wasn’t even in the country that day. I had been slowly getting better over the last 100 days and I suddenly felt like I was back to square one and spent the whole day at work crying and that day I felt like I finally hit rock bottom. Suddenly it just became worse and too much to handle. Ironically my therapist is also on vacation this week.

In the evening I met some single friends for dinner which was great, after which S and I sat and talked about what I was feeling. She asked me what I wanted. Did I want him back? And what exactly was I missing. Did I want him to ask about me? Why couldn’t I just come to events when he was there? What’s the worst that could happen?

I told her I’m just unhappy. Not once since NC have I wished to have him back or to be a couple ever again. In fact, just the thought of laying eyes on him makes me feel all knotted up and I know I never ever want to see him again, let alone plan a future with him. I just want him to hurt like I’m hurting. But he’s so busy with 3 women, he obviously will not have any time to think and reflect and feel like I do, and that’s his illness. And it irks me that people know more about him. I didn’t know he was out of the country, I didn’t even know he had changed his apartment. I knew every single detail of his life and now I’m the last to know anything.

He had looked up a guy I was sort of seeing on Facebook and then realized that the guy had married someone else and asked S about it. This was in January. S said that knowing that must have made me feel flattered. It did I think. To know that he’s still curious about knowing what’s going on in my life. Yet it also scared me so much that I hoped against hope that he wouldn’t contact me after he found this out. Weird right? I want him to miss me and my worth, but I never want to see him again. And now he doesn’t even ask about me. And each day for me is an uphill battle.

I want retribution, plain and simple.

[marti644]

Hi mevz,

I so relate to you. Up to about a week ago I was so angry. My poor dad listened to me yell on the phone for about an hour about my BPDex as I began to finally move to the stage of anger from sadness. As I have been reading I realize that it's good to hold onto this anger for a time. This person did very unfair things to you and you deserve to be hurt and angry. You would never do something like that to your ex.

You want to get retribution?

No contact. Plain and simple. Ignore emails, texts, calls, social media, and anything related to them. Remove the momentoes, the gifts, and photos. I hid mine in a place for much later in my life so I can eventually remember with fondness the good things, after the bad memories fade. They always want to pull you back in. It is their goal, their way of hiding from their own shattered existence, and their way of hurting you over and over again. Your best retribution is making sure he can never do that to you again.

You will torture him by leading the good life that you have ahead of you, because he can't ever attain that. Move on, find a person who deserves you, and avoid people that have the red flags that show they have a PD.

And when the anger fades, you will realize you deserved to be happy after all

Hang in there!

[mevz]

You want to get retribution?
No contact. Plain and simple. Ignore emails, texts, calls, social media, and anything related to them. Remove the momentoes, the gifts, and photos. I hid mine in a place for much later in my life so I can eventually remember with fondness the good things, after the bad memories fade. They always want to pull you back in.

Thanks Marti, but that's my point. He hasn't contacted me at all. We are completely NC from Nov 1. And I know that when we first went NC, if I had agreed to his compulsions and terms, I would still be with him even now, but for once I didn't. And so the NC went on and he replaced me with others after everything we had. In the beginning he asked a few things about me but my friend said that he doesn't ask about me anymore.

It's just frustrating that's all, feeling bad about a guy I don't want to end up with yet missing the guy whom I had fallen in love with and even till the day we went NC, discussing marriage with.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want him to contact me. That's not what I'm saying. Like I said, retribution. I just want him to miss me or have trouble dealing with it like I am. It's weird right, I miss him but I never ever want him back. I just want validation that I counted and am difficult to get over and not so easily replaceable.

[marti644]

Hey mevz,

I totally get it. I sorta fumbled my comment to you but I feel now that the only retribution that I will get is the NC. Nothing else unfortunately will ever come of my breakup or closure with my BPD-ex. My BPD-ex (and im pretty sure all BPD's) have no capacity for that kind of empathy or sympathy.

The question I keep asking myself is where does this miss him/ reject BPD-ex pain come from?

The more I read the more I think the pain is part of my childhood pain and stuff that actually has nothing to do with the BPD-ex. They just reopened my old wounds (with my permission because I ignored the red flags and put up with the abuse).

For me I am trying to find validation in who I am as a person, because my BPD-ex is not equipped to give me that validation. Which hurts everyday.

Hope that makes sense!

[Mr.R.Indignation]

As my name should indicate I can relate.

Here's a spiel for you.

The feelings of anger and retribution aren't directed at my ex, but directed at the nature of happiness.

Someone who freely commits bad deeds to satiate every desire, someone who avoids acknowledging problems, someone who seems to have everything... .They might be deeply hurting, but how often do they have fleeting happiness? They can be the saddest SOB inside, but they can keep bouncing from high to high enough to distract themselves and to feel some element of pleasure. Most of the time they get what they want in immediacy, even if it's only something that allows them to keep running. And that is irritating.

Meanwhile morality isn't distraction - it's dedicated focus.

I hate the notion that someone striving for something real, someone trying to attain an element of good, can consistently have that thrown in their face. What's morality if not feeling like crap because you're not good enough? Usually it seems to be more about avoiding feeling bad than getting some kind of high. You do what you feel is right because if you want to keep going you have to feel justified and productive.

That is a good reason to stay dignified. Morality should be  a tool for improvement.

Yet attaining something valuable through 'pure' means seems so improbable. Why is it so difficult to attain something both real and worthwhile through earnest actions? The question is nagging. Tragically, conscience begins to feel like a burden, and not the avenue of uplift that it is.

The battle between humanity's animal side and humanity's capacity to be something better than itself is entirely frustrating. Fighting for a just cause is always going to be an uphill battle because we are combating the inherently unjust force of nature and the greed it brings. It's hard to accept that the right thing is so often a lunge of powerlessness, conviction and hope and not an instant method of achieving worldly satisfaction. Thus in the moments where decency fails and indecency succeeds, I feel only indignation. It means that one more constructive building block has been cast aside.

You did something that was good for you and received unjust punishment for it, while your ex is off gallavanting with no clear justice being dolled out for his misdeed. So maybe you can relate to the spiel, maybe not. :P

What I realised more recently is that the jumping around, the replacing, it's not really a better alternative at all. Typically these people live on the edge of drama and tension almost every day and whatever they have they're usually still unhappy.

But maintaining decency and dignity, you're striving for something better. You're overcoming an obstacle, not avoiding it. So basically what I'm saying is that whatever unhappiness you're feeling, whatever the uphill battle, it's presumably because you're doing the right thing and another part of you dislikes the hardship of what the right thing is.

We set boundaries for a reason - if they get crossed it makes us unhappy. They signpost a trail so that we can be clear about whether or not the direction we're taking is good for us.

The problem with a relationship like this it's easy to stay hooked because typically the relationship is yanked away at an equally hopeful and confusing moment, which leaves some sense of incompletion. We had it so easily before, so why can't we easily have it back? Since the pwBPD is always running from something, completion only gets further and further away the more you try to get it. In a way what we feel post-relationship must be similar to how they feel while they're in it.

The only way to actually get anything is to keep following our safe trail through the wilderness. As Marti says, your ex can't attain the good life, but by continuing to take steps in the right direction you can. You can build a lot of good by making a foundation out of fossilised bad.

It goes without saying, but try to cut knowledge of him out as best you can. Retribution won't come for an experienced escape artist, but neither will fulfilment. Fulfilment can still come to you. That's all you need to know.

G'luck to ya,

R . Indignation

[MiserableMostly]

Yes that's the thing. You won't get revenge. But you can put yourself in a position where revenge is no longer needed. That's fulfillment. And that's better than revenge because it's not just a passing satisfaction.

[lovenature]

Hey mevz

I understand your pain, wanting your PWBPD to still contact you and try to get back with you, while knowing you should stay NC and want to do so as well. It takes time to detach from the craziness; we spent so much of ourselves trying so hard to make sense of the senseless and make it work.
Friends who haven't lived through a BPD relationship can't possibly fathom it, and they can cause us more pain even though they are trying to help.

I hear your desire for retribution, accept your feelings no matter what they are. Keep reading and learning, the further out you get the clearer things become; recovery isn't linear, try to take it one day at a time.