Grimbog
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 18
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« on: December 22, 2017, 03:10:41 PM » |
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Wish I could say that Christmas is merry as I write this. I have the support of my family which is helping a great deal, but I feel I have to write about recent things that have been happening with my ex-bpgf, and could really use some advice on how best to approach it - right now I'm close to NC due to the emotional abuse, splitting and indifference, but its hard as I do still love and care about her (part of a dependency trait I'm sure).
The worst is how secretive everything is... .its like one more door gets shut at a time. I get a sense she doesn't want to open up because she's frightened of being hurt, so she gets self-destructive and I get pushed away. I've tried SET and other tools to help, but as soon as we get too close we take two steps back. The latest was down to a yearly cycle where she'll travel abroad to avoid Christmas at home. During this time we agreed to text every week - when I do, she usually takes a day or two to reply.
Sadly my own insecurities got the better of me recently - I would usually ask light hearted questions in my text to encourage conversation, but most of the time these would get ignored. I had no idea where she was whilst she was travelling through Ecuador, and I read a lot about BPD and impulsivity... .so I started ruminating myself that maybe someone could take advantage of her. After no response, I sent another text and asked if everything was alright, that if she needed space it was okay, and that she mattered a lot to me - I didn't want us to drift further apart.
Her reply (2 days later) was very indifferent/patronising and she asked that we take a break from messaging saying that she was worried I was overthinking things. I sent one last reply to respect her wishes and apologised and opened up that I was worried about her which is why I texted.
I thought long and hard about what to do - I feel I need to set a boundary but its really hard when she's already created her own distance. I'm slowly trying to move myself away from her bit by bit but each time I keep wanting to find hope that maybe she will try and sort herself out. So reluctantly I decided to close off my Facebook account but rather than cause her panic by doing an outright ban I decided to put her in a "restricted list" which basically hides all of my timeline/info/pictures (unless she's tagged) and then I finally posted the following:
"Thinking of you all over Christmas, I'm going to step back from Facebook for a while. We all want to do our best, or have goals and dreams, and when we love people and we don't want to hurt them or lose them, we should feel pain when it doesn't work out. The point isn't to live without any regrets. The point is to not hate ourselves when things go wrong. Stay committed to those you love, and ensure you are always true to yourself."
I should note that the post above was set to appear in that restricted list only, not my other friends. But it was, I felt, the best way to slowly step back and create my own boundary.
Its early days, and I have no idea if I've done the right thing, but I did notice that finally she's become more active on her account (after 6 months of absence). Today she posted some historical life events on her past secondary-school and education, so I wondered if that was maybe some form of dissociation? Urgh, I'm trying not to think about it.
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