How much time do I need? Will I ever move on?

[KtotheK]

Hi, I am a bit worried. I worry that I will never fully move on and that having another relationship is always going to be difficult after this one with my udBPD ex.
We were not married and have no children (I can see how much more difficult that would be reading on here!) but many posts I have read say 2-3 years out and still finding things tough / still trying to get over my BPD ex etc.
This relationship and how it is has left me feeling... .I have never experienced anything like it before. And I know that I am not alone. People tell me time is a healer but they know nothing about the suspected BPD and how it can have such an impact coming out of relationship with someone who may have it / the traits of it. I had 9 months away from my ex, bumped into her and I was sent into an absolute spin, heart racing etc. I was recycled and discarded again. Can I move on and is it only time. At the moment I think about her all the time ... .and it still hurts a great deal. 4 months NC which I know isn't long but I worry that she will always occupy a part of me and I worry that this will prevent me from truly moving forward and on. That probably sounds stupid? And I'm not sure I could still feel like this in 2-3 years time. When will I get to the point that she doesn't really matter anymore and I don't think about her? I can't wait for it as it is so hard.

[happendtome]

People dont heal if they let recycle themselves. That is the key element here. In my opinion, quite a lot of people here are asking too much questions like "what if". They put all their energy to this fairy tale question and then they get stuck on it. They become like a zombies.

You need to set very firm boundaries for yourself. For examle, i have wanted to text my ex, but i have said - no, dont do it, no point. It has been hard, but it comes easier. I already see that there was no magic between me and my ex. She was quite ordinary, nothing special to be honest. Something, i wasnt able to see last year, because then she was still my soulmate and love of my life.

Dont let them be part of your life or you may even mourn decades. If you dont have kids with your ex then vanish, disappear. Shut this door completely.

[Mutt]

Hi KtotheK,



I'm sorry that you're going through a difficult time. I can relate with your post, something similar happened to me about a year and a half after the break-up. She sent me an email, it was just a routine email about the kids and at the bottom of the email she said she was expecting. We were broken up, we were still married, she crossed a line when she cheated in the marriage but I couldn't believe how wounded I felt from that news. I was feeling great for about three months before up that point, it was disappointing that I wasn't completely healed and still had a ways to go.

About three months back or so, she gave me news that they were moving out of town, again I felt like wounds had reopened but it didn't linger as long as it did the last time and it was nowhere near the pain that I felt right after we broke up and when I was going through detaching.

My point is that you feel pain from to time but it's not going to send you right back to the most painful part of breaking up.

Nothing good lasts. Nothing bad lasts.

[butterflylove]

I think you'll be ok... .maybe it's not important to think about the number of months or years it will take. Right now, I'm just focusing on the progress I've made (even if it's a little, it's something!). I read something today that said even 20 years after emotional abuse ends, seeing a picture of the abuser may most likely give you some anxiety. I think there will always be some pieces of this disaster left inside of us, but I'm sure we will be better and be able to move on.

[lovenature]

It takes what it takes: we must always be realistic about the overall of our life before, during, and after the relationship. There is a wide spectrum to PWBPD and their partners, the worse the PWBPD's traits are and the more co-dependent their partner is, the more pain and the longer the recovery.

I found total NC and learning as much as I could about personality disorders helped me the most, when I was ready it helped me to learn why I stayed in an unhealthy relationship for as long as I did.


Books that really helped were: Stop Walking on Eggshells, Searching for the Real Self, Co-dependent No More, Overcoming Perfectionism. Reading others posts who were further along in healing and knowledge helped too.

Don't put a timeline on recovery, it just sets you up for failure. Be open to what ever thoughts and feelings you have along the way, this has been a life altering experience for us, we can't expect to not ever think about it again-the goal is to reach the point where the thoughts are indifferent to us.

[stimpy]

I think Lovenature is 100% on the right track. I'm a couple of years out from the discard, and a year out from when my expwBPD finally stopped stalking me and disappeared. I have been NC with her for a year and a half, and yet I still think of my ex more than I'd like to. Or rather, I think of the terrible experiences I had in the relationship with her and of her stalking activities which upset me just as much as the events in the relationship itself.

So I ask myself the question sometimes... .why? Why am I still ruminating on this event such a long time later.

And I think in truth, that I have come to realise that I am not allowing this event to clear from me yet for two reasons.

One is that it opened old, old wounds that I had buried very very deep and have never confronted... .until now... .about my childhood and how I was treated as a youngster and whether I was really loved by my parents, and what I meant to them. My conclusions are that my father had strong narcissistic traits and may even have had NPD, my mother was more concerned with her well being than with mine and that I was, let's say, an inconvenience. So as a kid I learned to be a people pleaser, with some co-dependent tendancies and that to cope with this environment I learnt to put my parents feelings and needs before my own. Not good, really really not good. Because as an adult, in adult relationships, these traits can lead to disaster.

What I have learnt may sound a little odd, but it is that my most important job in my life, is to look after my own emotional well being and that before this catastrophe in my life, that actually I wasn't very good at doing this. That doesn't mean being selfish, or nasty or anything like that, but it does mean that if people are disrespectful to me, or not considerate, then I avoid them, and I will only allow good, kind, thoughtful empathetic people into my life. And not allow others who don't have these qualities any where near me... .and so my emotional well being is protected.

So I am having to learn, bit by bit, day by day, to be a different version of myself, one that worries less about what other people want, and more about what I want, and not to worry too much if people disagree with me. This is a hard thing to do, and I suspect will take a long time. So coming back to your question, why is it taking so long, I have come to the conclusion that part of my psyche won't let go yet, because it knows that this must never happen again. Never. So at some level, I am fixing and changing myself, so that this kind of thing doesn't happen again, and to do that I am having to keep some of the memories of this awful experience alive as a constant reminder of the need for me to change.

The other thing that I'm sure happened to me and may have happened to others is that the discard was so sudden, so nasty and so unfeeling that it had me emotionally reeling, and may have caused a trauma bond. Trauma bonding is a horrible thing to have happen, and I think in truth that the first thing I've had to do is process the trauma (that took months), then I've had to process the end of the relationship (that took months) and now I'm having to work on myself to make myself a stronger person, so that this kind of thing never happens again, and that is ongoing work in progress.

So overall, I, and maybe some others on this site, are having to deal with and sort out one hec of a lot of stuff. And that takes time.

My good friend who has been my confidant and mentor through all this (she went through the same thing but a few years ago and knew exactly what had happened to me and has metaphorically held my hand through all this) told me two years ago when we first discussed what had happened, that it would take two years for me to feel mainly normal again. I said, no way... .maybe six months. But yeah, she was spot on, and now two years later, I'm just about starting to feel normal again and I'm enjoying life once more.

But still, I have more work to do on myself, and I think only when that work is done, and I reach a new stability, will my psyche let go of what happened to me.

[Rayban]

It depends on you. The more actions you take to better your life the faster you detach. You get stronger knowing you're taking detaching seriously. This is a time to take good care of yourself.  It's a learning experience and if the end result is you becoming a better person then so be it.

[FannyB]

Hi KtotheK

There's no magical formula to healing, but radically accepting what a LTR with your ex would really be like and actively deciding that's most definitely what you don't want is a start.

I'm about 2.5 years out now after a 14 month relationship and feeling fine. For me, as soon as I got to the stage where I'd been longer out than in, things started to fade into insignificance.

Think of it as being like a significant bereavement, there's lots of stuff to process before time can work it's magic.

There is a positive side to BPD relationships and that can draw us back in. By staying away from her that lure will start to wane and soon you'll only focus on all the crap that came with it and start to naturally detach.

Good luck!


Fanny