Persistent Ex, A Mess of Emotions

[chillamom]

Hello, Family,

I haven't posted on here in quite a few months, but visit the site everyday to try and build my strength…so many new people, still many familiar names, and still many stories that resonate.  I'm embarrassed to say that I'm still struggling to completely detach emotionally from my diagnosed exBPD/NPD boyfriend after having ended the relationship in December 2016.  We had a brief recycle in the summer of 2017 when I caved in to his incessant pleading and I ended up in the hospital with a stress-related heart condition.  I saw him a few times sporadically earlier this year, as he had been going through some health problems and I was feeling a great deal of pity for him.  We were together for nearly a decade, I divorced my husband of nearly 30 years for him.  He was very much younger than I am, we have no children together, and my 3 adult daughters despise him.  He was abusive, controlling, maniacally jealous, and I have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder, C-PTSD, and several health problems that I believe are quite related to my time with him.  He finally secured a job last month and moved out of his parent's home at age 32, having been unemployed during the entire time I was with him.  Needless to say, in addition to being his lover, I was literally his only friend, his wallet, and essentially the "mother" he never had during our relationship.  I have been through years of therapy, reading, and reflection and do understand my role in the relationship and what drove me to it.  I have no intention of trying again, it makes utterly no rational sense.
    I am still confused by the extent to which I miss him, the degree of my anger towards him, and the toxic mix of rage, embarrassment, and shame I feel as I contemplate the last wasted decade of my life.  I am waiting for the "gift" of the relationship to reveal itself, and I'm angry that I am still unable to forgive myself for ignoring the multiple red flags that presented themselves almost immediately and for believing my "love" could "save him" (please insert bitter laugh).
     At this point, he is still begging and pleading with my every day to be a "loving friend" (aka allow myself to be used for sex and money), or at the very least come and see him in new first apartment (he always wanted me to see him "on his own").  He hasn't dated anyone, neither have I.  I have never gone NC with him because I have felt too guilty, so I would say for now this is a LC situation where he does reach out via text daily (and I respond) although he is living 2 hours away instead of 10 minutes, which is good.
   Thanks for bearing with me.  Given that I have no intention to get back with him, why do I still miss aspects of him after all this time?  Do you think the LC is keeping me hooked (even though the interactions are minimal) and I would be better off letting it fade completely (I never reach out to him, he always contacts me)? 
     More importantly, how does one begin to forgive themselves?  I cry so many times a day thinking of all the time I devoted to him, the fact that my children spent half their lives in a "broken" him that I broke because of him, the fact that I am now almost 61 years old and will likely be alone for the rest of my life because I abandoned an admittedly loveless but at least companionable marriage for what I thought at the time was the love I had never had.  I can't forgive myself for my stupidity, and for the trauma I put my children through.  I battle suicidal ideation daily, can't focus on my work, and am isolating myself to an unhealthy extent (not to mention gaining weight because food is the only temporary comfort I have).  I MISS being touched and held,  and I barely feel human.  Obviously I know this is part of depression, but I have to find a way to turn it around.  My ex was a terribly troubled, verbally and emotionally abusive man, the last psychiatrist he had referred him elsewhere because his personality disorders were too extreme for this professional to even begin to deal with. 
     I just don't understand why I am still trauma bonded to him after all this time and separation (it's been months since I've seen him at all) and I want to stop.  If anyone else has still been or still is in the process of detaching after a long time, I would love to learn how you're doing and how it can be done.  Thank you.

[Lucky Jim]

Hey chillamom, I'm sorry to hear that you are still struggling to detach.  One suggestion I have, as a starting point, is for you to treat yourself with kindness and compassion.  It sounds like you are judging yourself harshly for getting involved with a pwBPD.  Who knew about BPD?  Took me nine years of marriage to get a clue about this terrible disorder.  We are all learning on the fly and there's no playbook.  I would also suggest learning to love and accept yourself, just the way you are.  It sounds easy, but is actually pretty hard to do.  Does any of this make sense to you?  Keep us posted.

LuckyJim

[Learning2Thrive]

Hi chillamom,

I’m sorry for how much pain you are going through. I remember when I was trying to detach from the trauma bonds of my BPD lover. It was the most painful time in my adult life up till that time.

For me, it required looking into my past to find the pain that brought me to this place. I had to dig deep into buried memories of childhood and remember when I last hurt so deeply, how it felt and who was responsible. For me, I discovered that my ex actually was very much like my mother. The pain, shame and abuse masquerading as love was so familiar. So familiar. I allowed the abuse in exchange for morsels of physical affection. I allowed myself to be an emotional punching bag so I could make herf eel better about herself... .just like I did with mom when I was a kid/teen. I just could not see any of that while I was in the relationship or even for quite a while afterwards.

Once I was able to get to the root cause of the pain and call it by name, then I was able to claim my power to face the truth. After that I was able to completely detach.

These days I spend most of my time here on the PSI board (parents, siblings, inlaws). There are a lot of us that started out on the relationship boards, discovering our trauma as it was unearthed in a romantic relationship with a person with BPD.

Please take good care of yourself.   You are worthy of love. You, in and of yourself, are an amazing person with power and potential and inherently worthy of love.

  L2T

[Gemsforeyes]

Dear Chillamom-
I’m so sorry that you’re going through this difficult time, and from reading your past posts, I understand this is not the first time you’ve been beating yourself up like this.  Please take a breath.

Like you, I have a million thoughts that bang around inside my head.  I’m trying to manage those thoughts so they don’t control me. 

And like you, I am pretty tormented by deep depression, suicide ideation, self-imposed isolation, inability to function properly, C-PTSD, and an inability to forgive myself (for things I’ve allowed to happen).  And I will be 61 in a few weeks.  I too, have a potentially “cruel” willing lover... .or no one at all.  What to do... .

You received wonderful, thoughtful feedback when you posted in April 2018. I’d love for you to re-read your post and those responses.

Now for today.  My friend... .as much as we wish, we cannot turn back the hands of time.  It simply cannot matter anymore that you left a marriage 10 years ago.  And I believe the chances are pretty high that you didn’t leave solely for the BPDex.  There was likely something already broken in your marriage or you would NOT have left.  You’re just in a space right now where you feel you want or need to blame yourself for everything.  You don’t need to do that.  Forgive yourself.  And if you haven’t already done so, after you’ve worked through this, perhaps sit with each of your girls, and express an apology for the pain the marriage break-up caused them.  Work through the forgiveness process with your girls. 

The last 10 years are over.  Most of us here saw the BPD “red flags” pretty early, but were waiting for our beautiful “prince” to return to us... .for years.  And yes, we naively believed we could love them to kindness, or wellness, once we realized what was happening.  Until we knew we couldn’t. 

Many of us employed all of the communication tools we could, set boundaries, opened our homes, our hearts and our wallets and emptied our souls.  And the “gift” of the relationship is a deep dive into therapy and rediscovering who we are supposed to be.  I will take that.

I’m not certain who said this, but it’s great -   “Life is Lived Forward, Understood Backward”.  I just love that statement.

I am beginning to understand and accept things.  And you can, too.  I believe it is the ACCEPTANCE.  Your BPDex needs to go on apart from you.  Or more importantly, you need to accept that it’s okay for you to go on separately from him.  Give yourself permission.  Set boundaries on even the Limited Contact.  You don’t need to reply to each text.  You are ALLOWED to step away.  Slowly if that’s what it takes, but the only permission you need is your own.

Warmly,
Gemsforeyes

[Lucky Jim]

Once I was able to get to the root cause of the pain and call it by name, then I was able to claim my power to face the truth. After that I was able to completely detach.

So well said, L2T!  Thanks for the healthy reminder.

LJ

[Panda39]

Hi Chillamom,

First I wanted to say that there is no set time period to grieve, it all happens in it's own time.    You also have the added pressure of your ex trying to pull you back in which makes letting go more difficult... .keeps you emotionally attached... .engaged with him.

Second, I too have experienced the effects of depression and suicidal thoughts, and depression can make everything so exhausting... .it's kind of like walking through sand.  Are you seeing a therapist at all?  I would encourage it... .help with the depression and help with the grieving.    The two seem to be going hand in hand.

In terms of those suicidal thoughts... .they are just thoughts... .keep it that way!  I can only tell you that for me when I felt those kinds of thoughts, I kept my son in mind.  I loved him, he needed me and I could never leave him no matter what.  Keep your children in mind, they love and need their mom.

I also want to say how glad I am that you came here to talk, to get things out, and to process that is a really good thing. 

I had a very important relationship many years ago end with my partner cheating and I stuffed my feelings and stayed stuck were I was... .then 25 years later everything re-surfaced... .25 years later I finished grieving.  So the fact that you are working on processing and have come here to get support is excellent.

5 Stages of Grieving (in no particular order)
1. Denial and isolation; 2. Anger; 3. Bargaining; 4. Depression; 5. Acceptance.

Where to you think you are? 

I can tell you with my past relationship I was probably stuck at number 1 for a long time.  I wasn't in denial that the relationship was over but I did shut down and isolated myself... .I also took on sole responsibility for the break up... .If I had done something different or been different he wouldn't have cheated.  For 25 years I loved him and blamed myself.  I had some depression in there too.  But because I stuffed everything it took 25 years to get to Anger and once I found the Anger at him, the Disappointment in him, the Sadness he caused me... .not just the love... .I was finally able to see each of our parts in the relationship and it's end... .I was finally able to forgive him and myself and move on to Acceptance.

But everyone is different, every relationship is different, and we can move back and forth among all those stages of grief.

I hear you taking on a lot of blame here too.  Everyone in your story played their parts, this isn't just the "Chillamom" show. This relationship didn't just happen in a vacuum.  Yes, you made choices and there have been some consequences. The question becomes how do you respond to those consequences?  You can wallow in self-pity, you can spend all your time beating yourself up, you can avoid the consequences, or you can face them and work to repair things.  I hope you will choose the later, that is where the healing is... .push through the shame and self-blame. 

Keep posting, keep processing, keep talking and get yourself the support you need in the real world if you haven't already.  We're here for you. 

Panda39

[Mutt]

Hi chillamom,

I'm sorry that you're going through this   I can see how difficult it would be if you spent the last 10 years of your life with him and you're feeling like a hot mess today. Don't beat yourself up try letting go of those guilty and shameful feelings there are a lot of us here that get it.

Do you think the LC is keeping me hooked (even though the interactions are minimal) and I would be better off letting it fade completely (I never reach out to him, he always contacts me)?

I would probably tweak this I don't know if I would suggest going completely NC I would add more boundaries how do you respond to the messages are you sharing personal stuff how quickly do you respond back? For example if he messages you give yourself a couple of days before responding, don't share anything personal or show emotion in your texts NC/LC gives you a buffer to give you the time and space that you need to heal, staying in touch can reopen emotional wounds over and over you want to give your wounds time to heal.

[chillamom]

Thanks, LuckyJim,

I have frequently been advised to show the same compassion to myself that I have shown to my ex and (hopefully) all others that cross my path, I think self-acceptance has always been hard for me because I've been beaten down for quite some time.  I'm working on it - it would probably be easier if I were younger, one of the tougher feelings to deal with is the fact that I wasted so much time when time is something I really don't have a great deal of anymore. 

[chillamom]

Thank you, Learning to Thrive,
I certainly see how everything that so many of us have gone through with our partners and others is reflective of conflicts that have long been at play in our lives; growing up with a narcissistic dad and a mother basically incapacitated with depression gave me a wonderful role model for a health relationship (hardly).
I've been in therapy for years and am a psychologist myself so I've dug in pretty deep and have a fairly good clue at the dynamics that led me here - I'm discovering that there's a big difference between knowing something intellectually and feeling something at a gut level.  I'm glad that your circuitous pathway to understanding has brought you peace, for some reason I'm too stubborn or stupid to let things fully connect and realize that I've just been replicating the same drama as my FOO over and over.  Hopefully someday the proverbial "click" will take place at more than an intellectual level! 

[chillamom]

Gems,
I frequently read your responses to others here and can see that you are a woman of considerable wisdom and compassion, I appreciate you sharing your ideas with me because I think there is a good deal of common ground (not to mention a similar birthday!)  I have indeed contemplated sitting down with each of my girls and expressing my sorrow and guilt to them - actually I have done this at times in the past but it does not seem to have been sufficient to unburden me.  At this point, I do feel forgiven by them, but a random remark by one of them has the power to reduce me to tears quite rapidly.  One of my twins the other day remarked upon the trauma the situation with my ex had had put her through and it brought things back so vividly.  This particular child was the one who resembled me the most, and my ex used to openly state to me that "maybe someday (daughters name) would fall in love with him and have a baby and all of us could live together as a happy family."  Can you imagine that I would even consider SPEAKING to someone that sick and delusional after such a statement?  Well, I did.  (Although he never laid eyes upon my daughter again).   

I am working on radically accepting MYSELF here and radically accepting the wounds that enabled me to be open to this person, and enabled him to be open to me.  I am not caring so much about his perspective at this point, admittedly.  I need to get through the anger to reach the acceptance, and I will continue to try.  Time grows short.

[chillamom]

Panda39, thank for the reminder about the fact that grief has no timeline, that's important to keep in mind when I get impatient that I should have left these emotions behind some time ago.  I would say I vacillate between the stage of anger (at both myself and the ex) and the stage of depression; and I have been cycling through that for a long time now.  And you're right, the relationship didn't happen in a vacuum  - as with many of us, there was certainly a perfect storm of needs and circumstance that played into the situation.  Shame is a very deep-rooted feeling for me, and this is something I need to continue to address. Thank you for reaching out.

[chillamom]

Hi, Mutt,
I'm still around!  I like your idea of more boundaries around things, because right now when he texts I am quick to respond and probably don't keep my emotions out of things as well as I should.  I still feel a great deal of sympathy for him, as even though he is 32 this is the first time he's been out on his own and he's very lost with all the little details of that process.  Creating that buffer of time (we already thankfully have the buffer of space) is good advice and that can be a goal for the coming week.  Thank you for that observation

[Learning2Thrive]

... .
I certainly see how everything that so many of us have gone through with our partners and others is reflective of conflicts that have long been at play in our lives; growing up with a narcissistic dad and a mother basically incapacitated with depression gave me a wonderful role model for a health relationship (hardly).
I've been in therapy for years and am a psychologist myself so I've dug in pretty deep and have a fairly good clue at the dynamics that led me here - I'm discovering that there's a big difference between knowing something intellectually and feeling something at a gut level.  I'm glad that your circuitous pathway to understanding has brought you peace, for some reason I'm too stubborn or stupid to let things fully connect and realize that I've just been replicating the same drama as my FOO over and over.  Hopefully someday the proverbial "click" will take place at more than an intellectual level! 

What are you afraid of, chillamom? What do you think is preventing the proverbial click for happening on a personal level for you?

L2T

[Lucky Jim]

I think self-acceptance has always been hard for me because I've been beaten down for quite some time.

Hey Chilla, Right, I hear you, because it's hard for me, too.  I spent 13 years married to someone who was berating me and putting me down.  Self-acceptance sounds easy but is actually pretty difficult to do for some of us Nons.  I would say that learning to accept myself is a gradual process that doesn't happen overnight.  I understand your regret for lost time, yet in my view the time you have left can be happier through self-love and acceptance.

LuckyJim

[Harley Quinn]

Hi chill,

I'm happy that you've come back to post.  

How are you doing today?  Can we talk about the suicidal thoughts?  Are you still having these since he moved away?  What help or crisis management plan do you have in place in case you have further thoughts of this nature in future?  

Love and light x

[pseudotsuga]

I have no super helpful response, but I hear you and sending compassion and hopes for healing and better times for you <3

That sounds so hard.

I am also dealing with that I may have "wasted" 10 years with someone who did little but hurt me deeply in such profound ways. I am also not NC. I don't know. We don't have time machines. Life feels so short but also long at the same time. I imagine you must feel lost. But, I think we all have options and possible better futures. I don't think anyone is ever doomed to be alone, no matter their age. There are more single adults than ever recorded before, according to statistics. I think a lot of folks are looking for connection. I wish you love and all the best.

[Learning2Thrive]

Hi chillamom,

It’s been a few days and I just want you to know that you are being thought of today. I hope you’ll come back and post an update when you’re ready. You are worthy of love, kindness and compassion. Especially your own.

Sending you gentle hugs and encouragement,

  L2T