Can you explain more about the botched therapeutic separation?
Do you think you'll be maintaining a friendship with her? Still wishing you could get back together?
She didn’t really do anything different during our separation. She’d still lash out at me regularly, not using any skills to control herself, even when I’d respond with patience and compassion. In my absence, she would add to her list of problems with me, why I was not an adequate match for her. She even regressed back into physically assaulting me, which she hadn’t done for a long time, if not years. She never read the book that the therapist had required us to read before accepting us as clients. After one full year of things getting worse rather than better, I had no choice but to leave, but she characterizes it as me abandoning her.
She says she now regrets not utilizing that time, but just blames other stress factors in her life, like school or family problems.
I can’t just be her friend while she dates other people. I can’t. It’s just too painful.
I would love to get back together with her if she could change, but without changing, I can’t go back to living like that. She’s been doing DBT for a year, but still denies her BPD (when not disregulated -emotional permanence).
Despite it all, I still love her. But until she owns her disease, there’s just nothing I can do. If I could see some progress, I’d try again in a heartbeat.
