An awakenning left me vulnerable to BPD? doesn't make sense

[Family Court Strategies: When Your Partner Has BPD OR NPD Traits.]

Six months before I met by BPDex I went to a meditation retreat. While there I gained enormous insight into myself and my emotions, and realized the role I had been playing in my own unhappiness... .I felt that I had woken up to who I really was, as opposed to what I claimed to be. I continued with a great deal of meditation for months after that but I eventually stopped because I began to feel very vulnerable, the meditation released quite a bit of sadness and I did not know how to cope with this emotional rawness. The feeling of vulnerability dissipated when I stopped.

A couple months later I met the BPDex... .and fell so hard for him - never in my life had i experienced the kind of magnetism, longing, passion and lust for anyone. It was so new and intense for me despite having had relationships before, but this time I felt like the "awakenning" had removed a lot of the defenses I had built for myself, and that the removal of these defenses allowed a deeper connection with BPDex but also prevented me from walking away in the way that I might have been able to do prior to the meditation retreat.  What I have not been able to understand and come to terms with his why it is that I would fall so hard for someone with BPD after having experienced a great deal of personal growth and self awareness? The man was very sick. There is no doubt about it. Abusive, hurtful and annihalating. The two experiences seem like they should not be as interconnected as they are... .one is awakenning and the other is deception, smoke and mirrors and games. And yet if I had not had the meditation experience i am not sure I would have suffered to the degree that I did with the BPDex and probably would have more easily discarded the BPDex which is something that I was relatively good at doing with previous relationships. But here I felt as though I was left wide open and vulnerable, and took the hit like a full head on collision. For a long time I thought that being newly self aware HAD to mean that the relationship with BPDex was significant and meaningful in some way and so I hung on to it probably much longer than my previous unaware self would have done. But all I did was hang on longer to pain, hurt and mutliple discards, and prevent myself from moving on. I would really be interested if someone has some insights on what I should make of these two experiences and their interconnectedness.

[caughtnreleased]

Six months before I met by BPDex I went to a meditation retreat. While there I gained enormous insight into myself and my emotions, and realized the role I had been playing in my own unhappiness... .I felt that I had woken up to who I really was, as opposed to what I claimed to be. I continued with a great deal of meditation for months after that but I eventually stopped because I began to feel very vulnerable, the meditation released quite a bit of sadness and I did not know how to cope with this emotional rawness. The feeling of vulnerability dissipated when I stopped.

A couple months later I met the BPDex... .and fell so hard for him - never in my life had i experienced the kind of magnetism, longing, passion and lust for anyone. It was so new and intense for me despite having had relationships before, but this time I felt like the "awakenning" had removed a lot of the defenses I had built for myself, and that the removal of these defenses allowed a deeper connection with BPDex but also prevented me from walking away in the way that I might have been able to do prior to the meditation retreat.  What I have not been able to understand and come to terms with his why it is that I would fall so hard for someone with BPD after having experienced a great deal of personal growth and self awareness? The man was very sick. There is no doubt about it. Abusive, hurtful and annihalating. The two experiences seem like they should not be as interconnected as they are... .one is awakenning and the other is deception, smoke and mirrors and games. And yet if I had not had the meditation experience i am not sure I would have suffered to the degree that I did with the BPDex and probably would have more easily discarded the BPDex which is something that I was relatively good at doing with previous relationships. But here I felt as though I was left wide open and vulnerable, and took the hit like a full head on collision. For a long time I thought that being newly self aware HAD to mean that the relationship with BPDex was significant and meaningful in some way and so I hung on to it probably much longer than my previous unaware self would have done. But all I did was hang on longer to pain, hurt and mutliple discards, and prevent myself from moving on. I would really be interested if someone has some insights on what I should make of these two experiences and their interconnectedness.

[Lucky Jim]

What I have not been able to understand and come to terms with his why it is that I would fall so hard for someone with BPD after having experienced a great deal of personal growth and self awareness?

Hey Cn'R, I doubt anyone is prepared for a BPD r/s, unless they have had prior experience with someone suffering from BPD, so I suggest you give yourself a break.  Certainly I had no idea what I was getting into and didn't learn that there was such a thing as BPD until nine years into a turbulent marriage.  Perhaps the two experiences -- your meditation retreat and your BPD r/s -- have less in common than you might think?  I wonder whether it was something else in your background, perhaps from childhood, that made you susceptible to a BPD r/s?  That's often where the connection can be found.

LuckyJim

[caughtnreleased]

Perhaps the two experiences -- your meditation retreat and your BPD r/s -- have less in common than you might think?  I wonder whether it was something else in your background, perhaps from childhood, that made you susceptible to a BPD r/s?  That's often where the connection can be found.

LuckyJim

Hi LuckyJim,
Thanks for the message. There certainly was a lot of stuff in my FOO and the meditation retreat really brought a lot of that to the surface. It was the first hint for me that all was not what I thought that it was.  The fact that they are so closely related in time really makes me think that there is a relationship. What i think the meditation retreat did though was make me unable to sustain the relationship with the pwBPDex. While I was incredibly and terribly drawn to him I also was experiencing panic attacks from being involved with him and I had to put an end relatively quickly to it due to major anxiety, even though I was very deeply emotionally invested. So while I did end it, the emotional connection did not end for me and so I ended up spending years struggling with the fact that I was pretty much split in two. I couldn't be with someone who had a terrible hold over me and who used it to make me suffer. Prior to the retreat though, I think i also would have totally discarded/dismissed him because I was so not a sucker for sob stories which is what he fed me. Having been open and vulnerable the sob story hit me squarely in the heart, but so did all the red flags... .phew. I'm glad it's all over. The very last remnants of emotional attachment have lifted and I feel so free and happy. Now that I've come out of the FOG completely, and understand how vulnerable I was, I see him as a monster... .like Gollum from the Lord of the Rings... .but for a long time the fact that these two events happened so close together really led to my thinking that meeting him was somehow related to my increased self awareness, and it was but perhaps not in the way that I thought... .This is perhaps the last part that I still need to understand. Who I was when I met him... .I was someone experiencing a serious identity crisis as a result of having increased awareness about myself and my family and the abuse I experienced as a child... .Now that I think of it, I may have been re-visiting my own trauma which is perhaps why I connected so deeply with him who has a great deal of trauma. Who knows... .but it's something I am trying to get a better understanding of because perhaps I misunderstood what was going on with me at that time. But the transformative power of that increased self awareness I think I may have (wrongly) attributed or confused with meeting the BPDex... .

[Harley Quinn]

Hi caughtnreleased,

Your comment here stood out to me:

I continued with a great deal of meditation for months after that but I eventually stopped because I began to feel very vulnerable, the meditation released quite a bit of sadness and I did not know how to cope with this emotional rawness.

I'm imagining that the sadness, vulnerability and rawness were dredged back up (and then some) by the experience you had with your ex?  Perhaps the connection is that the r/s arrived in your life as a marker for you to return to these feelings and address where they come from, whilst learning ways to cope with intense emotions when you had no other choice but to.  I am of the belief that everything in life happens for a reason and we must draw the lessons from these situations and take the necessary learning from them.  Sometimes life takes us full loop as though to remind us that we can't skip a stage.  I may be off base, but am interested to know what the similarities were for you emotionally between the two experiences and whether you feel more able to face the uncomfortable emotions that you describe above, after what you have now been through?

Love and light x  

[SlyQQ]

Many people here regard having a BPD relationship as an opportunity to explore the weaknesses in your soul that led you to such a place,

Generally it is being open to new experiences, trusting others,  and a willingness to help others move forward,

Not completely at odds with your "awakening " i imagine.


Basically if you play with fire you are going to get burned, the trick you need to know, is to see where the flames start.

[caughtnreleased]

Hi Harley Quinn,
Absolutely. The sadness and vulnerability were both things that came up, but only in my body language and expressions. They were not things I was yet able to verbalize but I could feel it inside me. It was there just beneath the surface. The BPDex saw it and responded by mirroring me with vulnerability and sadness. This drew me in so deeply. I felt as though for the first time in my life I was seen and validated, as though I had connected with a long lost soul mate and that we could work through our pain together. I was obsessed with HIS sadness and vulnerability. I had kept my own sadness and vulnerability hidden far away in a dark hole and now that it came out he and I fused in such a basic and fundamental way.

I then had to deal with the horrible experience of being discarded, rejected, and replaced. the pain was so unbearable it forced me into therapy (after I told him to go get some), and to further explore trauma and abuse in my past and eventually work through it. The pain that the discard inflicted was unbearable, I felt as though I was writhing in emotional pain. He hit me square where it hurt the most.

It took me years to process the sadness I had inside me. It was so deep and repressed and bundled up.

Back then I suppose the fact that I was refusing to deal with my own vulnerability meant I wasn't really bonding with people because I wasn't letting them in. I was lonely, even though I had friends, but the friendships were not deep or fulfilling. I had been lonely in previous romantic relationships. That's what was so hard because I finally felt that I had a connection with someone, I felt "seen", but it was BPD smoke and mirrors. The one true friend I connected with threw me away and I clung to the idea of that friendship for years until I learned to really become more vulnerable with others and let them in. I was convinced that the meditation retreat allowed for my connection with the BPDex - it cracked me open - but what I didn't realize was that by not accepting to be vulnerable I was preventing myself from bonding with healthy people. For a long time I was ashamed of my connection with the BPDex, and how obsessed I had been over him, compared to how he treated me. I knew the meditation retreat factored into it all somewhow But I had never really sat down and taken a good hard look at these two things. I couldn't figure out how the two were fitting together and so I put all the attention onto the ex and attributed my awakening mostly to meeting him. I gave him more credit than he deserved really.

Working through it all and accepting certain sides of myself has really allowed me to foster much healthier friendships and relationships. And while I still have some work to do my life is nothing like what it was back then even though from the "outside" I seem like the same person, but from the "inside" it's radically different, I am a happier and more fulfilled person and anyone who is close to me can see it. This is getting a bit clearer in my head now, and how strange that for so long I wasn,t really taking a look at the impact of the meditation retreat... .I was soo focused on the BPDex and his sadness, his vulnerability - anything to avoid looking at mine.

[Lucky Jim]

There certainly was a lot of stuff in my FOO and the meditation retreat really brought a lot of that to the surface.

Hello again, C'nR, Sounds like you're onto something here.  Had a feeling that there might be FOO issues that came to the surface in that retreat, which made you particularly susceptible to a BPD r/s.

This is perhaps the last part that I still need to understand. Who I was when I met him... .I was someone experiencing a serious identity crisis as a result of having increased awareness about myself and my family and the abuse I experienced as a child... .Now that I think of it, I may have been re-visiting my own trauma which is perhaps why I connected so deeply with him

I admire your honesty, C'nR, and think you have put your finger on the issue.  Now it's your task to process and resolve those feelings that you have identified so well.  I'm confident that you're on the right path here, which will lead to growth and freedom from recent struggles.

So maybe it does make sense, after all?

LuckyJim