How I learned how to swim - Pt 2 - Breakup

[Educated_Guess]

The TL:DR version of my first post is that for the majority of Pt 1 of this story is that my relationship of 3 years seemed to be fine on the surface but there was a lack when it came to reciprocity with emotional or physical intimacy.  At most she could parrot back what I did or said in those areas; she could not add anything new to sense of connection in the relationship.  I when tried to explain or describe this void that I felt, she said it was my fault or that what I was saying didn't make any sense.  Overtime, I came to believe that it was my fault and my desire for a greater sense of intimacy was unreasonable.  I cut myself off from my own emotions because it was obviously what was causing the problem.  As you would expect, by cutting myself off from my emotions I fell into apathy and depression.

So a few things happened in the months immediately before the breakup that I think set the stage and triggered her fears of abandonment.  

First, I got into an argument with someone who abused me when I was a child.  Without much warning or reason, he was verbally abusive and threatening to me.  I responded to this in a healthy way.  I defended myself and set my boundaries with him. It made it very clear that I would not accept that behavior from someone in my life.  He eventually backed down but I stood my ground.  This was the first time in my life when I had the strength and awareness to respond to something like this in a healthy way.  My pwBPD ex was supportive of me on the surface but I think she noticed the shift in me and was concerned that I might starting recognizing issues with her own behavior.  This encounter with my past abuser took its toll on me and triggered a lot of memories and emotions that I have not felt since I was a child.  My depression got worse and I became more withdrawn as I was working through these things.

Second, I had become pretty frustrated that I was the only one in the relationship who would initiate any kind of intimacy, emotional or physical. I mean, consistently for three years, I was the only one.  She couldn't even do the simplest of things. For example, for my birthday all I asked for as a gift was for her to write a letter about how she feels about me.  After 3 years I still did not know really how she felt about me other than when she parroted my own words back to me.  I wanted something that came from her.  She said that she would do it but never did.  My birthday passed pretty much unacknowledged.  The writing part of it should not have caused any anxiety because she is a writer.  So I just stopped initiating any sort of emotional contact.  This probably had a lot to do with my apathy and depression, but I was just tired of being the only one who tried.

Third, I asked her to get a job.  Up till this point, I was the one working and she was cleaning the house.  This was the arrangement she said that she wanted from the beginning.  She would do things to take care of me like fixing food and bringing it to me and she said that she wanted to do those things.  But she stopped doing that and stopped cleaning the house for the most part.  I was having trouble paying the bills.  I asked her to get a part time job and that we would start splitting the house chores.  Months went by and she really made no effort to find a job. She put in a few applications. Almost everyday she had some sort of physical complaint (sick stomach, migraine, etc) for why she couldn't work on cleaning the house or look for a job.

So these three things triggered what was to happen next.  I started setting boundaries with people and she saw that.  I stopped begging for her affection.  I asked her to have more responsibility and autonomy.  These things combined probably created a massive fear of abandonment for her.  Things were changing with me and she knew it although we never talked about it directly.
  
She started spending more and more time talking with her online friends, either on her computer or on her phone. She was in constant contact with them all day long. I would try to make conversation with her and she wouldn't even respond because she was so wrapped up in the conversation with them.  I think this was done to make me jealous and to make me start begging for her attention again.  She was also probably grooming them to be her rescuers.

If I would make any comment about it, she would act like I was being unreasonable.  She shared a story that the spouse of another member of the online group left her because he thought she was having an emotional affair with people in the group.  This story was told with the intent of pointing out how ridiculous the spouse was for doing that and how he was really the problem.  I took the story another way in that it was confirmation to me that I was not the only one who recognized that the constant contact with the online group was crossing some boundaries.  This actually ended up being the first outside validation that I had that something was wrong and it wasn't just me who saw it.

One weekend my pwBPD ex was working on cleaning the house in preparation for some visitors.  She had let the house go for several months (I kept the space that I stayed in clean but the rest of the house was pretty bad).  It took a couple of days of hard work.  I asked her several times if I could help her and she always said no. She started feeling weak because she had not eaten anything.  I suggested that she eat something and rest a bit to get her strength back.  I checked on her again in a couple of hours and she was shaking.  I told her that she should stop cleaning and we could postpone the visitors.  

She went into an absolute rage blackout and screamed at me for about 10 minutes about everything I had done wrong in the entirety of the relationship.  I can't even remember what all she said.  One of the main points was that her online friends cared for her more than I did because they recognized that something was wrong with her by the way she was typing but I ignored her and what was going on with her.  

I stopped the argument so that I could go out to the store to get some Boost for her to drink so she could get some nutrients. I had to go at that time before the store closed.  When I returned, I brought the Boost to her and she continued to tell me how awful I was and how her online friends cared so much more for her.  It was during this conversation that I realized that the online group was now more important to her than I was.

I went to the bedroom and cried alone.  I just felt like a complete failure as a human being and that I was so messed up that no one could ever love me.  I was also just overwhelmed because she threw so much at me at once with no warning that it was going to happen.  Up until this point, she had never expressed anger openly to me like this.  Anything that I said in my defense, anything good that I had done, would be ignored or discredited.  She kept talking about how I didn't show any concern for her feeling sick even though I encouraged her to stop cleaning and I got her Boost.  She was very skilled at taking anything that I said and turning it against me or making it seem like evidence that I was such a horrible person.

This argument continued off and on for days.  We got very little sleep.  During all this time, I did not yell or scream.  I did not accuse her of doing anything wrong; I only attempted to defend myself.  Everything I said was turned against me.  At one point I did get so angry that I was physically shaking but I did not speak out in anger.  I was angry with myself for screwing things up so bad.  She claimed that she could tell by the way that I was shaking that I could hurt her or abuse her.

During this days long argument, she brought up several things that she was upset about that she had never mentioned to me before.  She was upset about how long it had been since I had taken her on a date or brushed her hair.  She was angry that I hadn't made dinner for her in years (she didn't like me to cook because she said I made too much of a mess). They were all things that she had never mentioned before as being important to her but now, in a rage, she went through a laundry list of things that I did and did not do over the course of the whole relationship.

One of the things that she accused me of was that I did not try to learn about her mental diagnosis.  I have a degree in Psychology so it is not like I know nothing of it.  But I also did not intentionally try to learn more about it because in the past I have had a pattern of trying to fix people with the knowledge I had about psychological disorders and patterns.  That kind of behavior has no place in a love relationship, so I intentionally did not research it because I did not want to repeat that pattern.  It didn't matter. It was evidence that I didn't care and I expected her to do all the work in the relationship.

All the while she was in constant contact with her online group and I think they were coaching her on what to say to me so the argument was more like 5 against a very confused and blindsided 1.  I tried to keep up and made a good showing for being so outnumbered but anything that I said either did not matter or was turned against me.

The main gist of her argument was that she did all the work in the house and took care of me.  She pointed out the symptoms of my depression (like not being able to get out of bed) as evidence that I didn't do anything.  I would point out that I worked a full time job and paid all the bills for years but to her that did not mean anything because I would have had to pay bills even if she was not living there.  

In her mind, our relationship always was unbalanced because of this.  This was another thing that blindsided me.  It didn't matter that this was the arrangement she wanted in the beginning.  The good times we had no longer seemed to exist in her memory.  It was all bad from the beginning.  It really made me question my own perception of things.

She kept pointing out how much better her friends were than me.  At one point, I told her that I thought she was so attracted to the online group because she could meet her communication needs with them without having to deal with the challenges of being in a body that are inherent in a physical relationship with someone who lives in the same space with you.  Her eyes narrowed and I saw hatred boiling beneath her eyes.  It is the first time I had ever seen her look like that towards anyone, let alone me.  It hit me like a thunderbolt and I realized that there was an emotional darkness in her that I had never understood before.

With a voice like ice, she said, "I think you have a limited perspective."

I replied, "I'm sure I have a limited perspective but that doesn't mean I'm wrong."

In less than 5 minutes, she told me that we should put our relationship to the side and we should just be friends.  Just like that, the relationship was over.

More to come in Pt 3!