The Final Dagger

[1315]

I guess reversing a breakup is now the wrong group. I received a letter from my uBPDw. In it she tells me it has become clear to her why she cannot be in a romantic, intimate relationship with me. She said she realize that we were good friends at the very best. That was all I was capable of. She didn’t doubt that I loved her. She also didn’t doubt that I have little capacity to translate that love from my mind to her. She is not sure why she could not feel my love. She said she is let with the most empty feeling, dissapointment and gut-wrenching lonlieness. She adds that there is no doubt n her mind I am capable of one ting with someone on that level but it is not her. She said the hardest, most painful part is knowing I wasn’t wiling to be uncomfortable and vulnerable. She said maybe I’ll get another chance with someone else. She cannot bear to subject herself the the emotionally vacant existence her soul feels when trying to connect with me on a deeper level. She said she is not mad, but broken in her soul where she wishes I could have made sure she felt, not knew, that I loved her.

So these are always the things she told me were wrong with our relationship. I was not able to connect with her on a deeper level. I was emotionally vacant. I could not make her feel I loved her. After 12 years together she had me believing I was responsible  for the failure of our relationship. I tried in vain to be “extra” vulnerable but I always fell short in her eyes.

She then proceeds that soon I will be over the broken marriage and that is precisely when I will stop connecting with her kids, my step kids. I have been in their lives through most of their childhood. She has never thought I tried hard enough to be a father figure to them. I am particularly close with her daughter who is 19. My wife’s wrath has transferred from me to her now that we are apart. In the letter my soon to be ex says she will never forgive me for. She believes I reach out to her kids and connect with them in the hopes my wife will come back or that our marriage isn’t over. It makes her angry I am still in contact with them. She says she swears to God she hates me for how I pull them in when I need it. She finishes by telling me I’m selfish as I have lost her, her respect for me, her loyalty and devotion. She believes soon I will stop talking to them and she hopes they will stop talking to me first.

After reading this letter, I felt like I got beat up. This is the cruelest I have heard her be in quite a long time. I truly love this woman even after she writes things like this to me. I only wanted to be a good husband and make her happy. I am devastated that my relationship with her is over. My story is like so many I have read on these boards. We have had little contact until I received this letter. I cant imagine why she sent it. I know that I’m imperfect but I would have never done this to her, never thrown her away like a piece of trash.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[CryWolf]

Wow you are going through a lot right now.

Reading this made me feel the pain and heartbreak you are witnessing. My ex also broke up with me and told me she could not Be in a serious relationship with me and how I deserve someone who can love me better in ways she can’t.

What stood out to me in this were a couple things

Many other people have experienced similar breakups hereby their pwbpd says things like “you will find someone who can love you” or “better chance are  healthier relationship”

I sensed a lot of self projection here.

I think her saying how you couldn’t connect on a deeper level, she actually means herself and she hates how much love you give and perhaps she feels she’s takes too much.



I don’t think she is mad at you for talking to the kids but she’s more angry at herself for making her kids and you stop seeing each other. She is internalizing the blame and feeling shame for causing the end of your relationship with the kids perhaps. She feels like a “monster”

This is just my opinion of the situation right now and I hope someone with more experience will chime in.

How are you holding up lately? This is a lot to process

[1315]

It has been the hardest thing I have ever gone through. I hav definitely learned a lot about codependency. I was just reading some articles on this site about that topic. I definitely see that I became that through our relationship. I sacrificed my own needs to make sure she was happy. The thought of being without her has terrified me. I have felt like I am going crazy because I do not know what to believe is true throughout our 12 year relationship. It has helped as I begin to understand I did bring issues to our relationship but its not all my fault.

[Birddog]

1315,

Definitely not your fault and you need to hear that.

My hope for you coming out of this is you find yourself again, have some new skills and self reflection that will benefit all your relationships.

Is appt today with T?

[1315]

So my appointment was today but it was with someone who just takes a history and she said I would not see her again. I now have to wait up to 3 weeks to actually get a therapist. This is through my insurance. I may try to find anther option which will of course be more expensive.

So I have heard from my wife twice since receiving the letter where she told me she hates me. First she called to ask me about when I had gall bladder issues because her daughter, my stepdaughter was suffering. I told her from what it sounded like it was not a gall bladder. I asked her to let me know what happened. She texted me back later and said all was good. It was just gas.  Then today she called to tell me she had been in a minor traffic accident. Our cars are still registered to both of us and I still pay the insurance. I could tell she was upset about it. I asked her if she was ok. She said she was. I told her I was sorry that had happened to her. My normal M/O is to try to rescue her from the problem. She literally just sent me the most painful letter I have ever received telling me I couldn’t make her feel loved and she hated me for maintaining a relationship with her kids to these rather mundane conversations. BPD continues to astound me. I see it more clearly now that I have been mostly out of it for 7 weeks. I still love her but I see her limitations more clearly now than ever. I still wish I could wave a magic wand and make things better. My family and friends still do not understand how I’m not super angry with her. I’m not sure I understand it either. Simply put, I love her and I have since we were first together. I am codependent on her as well and I am working on that. But I do still love her.

[sabas]

Your wife’s “issues” with you sound so much like my wife’s with me. I just wanted to let you know. I also have internalized so much of what she has blamed me for over our time together. It’s awful. I’m wondering if there are other aspects of our situations that are similar., specifically around the making them feel lonely, and being distant complaints/perception by the pwBPD.

My wife has been lamenting how we don’t spend enough “quality time” together, in reality we spend more time together one-on-one than any couple I know. When I’m able to point this out she then moves the goalposts to that during our time together I’m flat and quiet and boring and act like I don’t like her while she’s carrying all the conversations, bringing all the energy. I am always baffled. She also accuses me of being a horrible communicator. I have never heard this from anyone but her. When she describes what she wants in terms of communication it’s a super human level with levels of anticipation, consideration and thoughtfulness of which  a normal person should never be expected. And yet, I believe it’s my fault, I’ll tell her I’m sorry, I am a horrible communicator, I’ll say I’ll work on it, I’ll do these super human things. And then I’m on my toes at all times, it’s truly exhausting and then her complaints of me being flat, boring and quiet become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anytime she wants to start a fight she can through complaints along these lines, my tone, my facial expressions, my quietness, etc, all indications I don’t, or can’t,  make her feel loved. And I’m not normal and need to find some boring, quiet, subservient girl who’s okay being made to feel so incredibly lonely by my vacancy and inability to communicate and connect.

Sorry, that became a bit long, and I talked about my experience more than I planned. But I saw so many parallels I’m interested to know if you can relate to any of it? Maybe it can make both of us feel a bit more normal, and perhaps start to internalize that these complaints are the BPD speaking and indicative of a lack of connection they feel which is not something anyone but they can solve. And that we are not the robotic, distant, unemotional people they make us out to be.

[Birddog]

Sabas,

The poor communicator one stings, it’s a total projection. My SO idealizes her junior high/high school experience, the friends and family were easy to talk to in her mind, outside that bubble she  struggles. I started making my spouse clarify and say in terms of what, what are you expecting.

I don’t recommend you do that,, but this conversation line doesn’t fan the flames for my SO at this point. I told her point blank let’s try and work on building back up your friends in a healthy way, will take some time.

Bottom line 1315 and Sabas, don’t beat yourself up over the distortions and projections, I did that for decades. Tried to make sense of it and never could. when learned it was coping mechanism for SOs survival, my world changed.

[sabas]

Thanks for the kind words, Birddog, I think they ring true. The most difficult part for me is that I think there is what RC has called a kernel of truth in my wife's complaints. I do think I've developed some avoidant tendencies when communicating with her. If I fear, through experience, that a topic or concern of mine might cause a huge fight, or hurtful words from her, I will avoid talking about it and try to forget about it. Then, once she's gotten mad at me for something or is communicating her complaints I can't avoid any longer and I end up dumping all prior concerns on her at once while she's trying to talk to me about my behavior. She refers to it as me taking her opening or platform that she created and stealing it for my concerns that I was too scared to bring up when things were going well.

Things going well being another aspect of it. When I am feeling loved and have good feelings from her when she is in a good mood I am so relieved and happy that I never want to ruin it with some complaint of mine that now, while I'm on cloud 9, seems trivial. Especially given the likelihood that it will knock it straight out of the good mood and back into her BPD behavior. So when things are going well I don't say anything about issues that really do bother me, preferring to keep the peace. Then I only end up talking about them when I can see there's not much to lose since she's already upset at me about something.

It's not a good way for me to act and it's really difficult to change. In this way I have been having a hard time recently not agreeing with her that I am not a good communicator. I have also noticed myself being avoidant around my narcissistic father, so I think it's a coping mechanism I've developed that usually causes more angst and anxiety in the long run. Didn't mean to hijack this thread, but perhaps you or 1315 have experienced similar feelings/accusations?

[1315]

I have totally become an enabler and avoid conflict at all costs. I was not that way by nature but I just wanted peace and for my wife, whom I love, not to be mad at me. I 100% believed that this was my fault. In her recent letter she told me that I never succeeded in making sure she felt as opposed to knew that i loved her. How do i make sure another person feels a certain way?

The fact is that i do love her, even now. I do see her suffering which is totally real to her. I can say that i have tried everything I knew how to do that she would know I love her. I would probably say “I love you” to her 5-10 times a day. She accused me of not being physically affectionate with her which is complete projection. She was not with me.

So basically because I am human and could not make her feel a certain way, she throws me away. She also believes that I just wasn’t willing to be vulnerable. She believes both that I’m capable and incapable of intimate connection at the same time.

Even with all that, I fantasize that she will realize we are worth salvaging and reach out. That would cost me with every other person in my life who has watched what this relationship has done to me. I know that will not happen though. She throws people away. I have seen her do it to other people. I just never thought it would be me.

[sabas]

It is so difficult when you feel like, or really, know, that you are giving your all to make them feel loved and they see you as the devil. It's part of that black and white thinking pwBPD do (before I even knew what BPD was I would constantly be telling my wife things are not binary). And it also seems like pwBPD feel bad inside, and have an innate need to project that onto to someone or something, and it seems from what i've read here, that someone is always the person closest to them. For the person closest to them this is legitimate torture. For anyone, the very last thing you could ever want is for your spouse or partner to hate you. Especially when your partner is someone with BPD, meaning you've probably acted like a saint to even get this far, and all that effort means nothing now.

It's such a self-fulfilling prophecy, at least with my wife. They're sure no one can love them but they have such a desperate need for love that they put all their eggs into the basket of you, everything starts out amazing. You think you've found a soulmate, they see you bathed in white light. "I've found my person!", they think. And for awhile you are, as the beginning of the relationship is so intense and all-encompassing that the pwBPD seems to forget about this lacking inside. That must be intoxicating for them, they associate you with finally some relief from however it must feel to have BPD. But inevitably, that feeling comes creeping back, and they blame "getting comfortable" or "missing the earlier stages of a relationship". My wife always talked about some stat she heard that said 18 months is around when love or what I'd think of as "puppy love" dissipates. She was so fearful of this. And I would say, well I'm looking forward to the deeper, long-lasting kind of love that comes from truly partnering and trusting someone and sheer time together. She had no use for that. The lacking comes back and that's all that matters. Then it starts to feel like they were right, no one CAN love them. And this feeling inside must have something to do with you because you're the one who made it go away in the first place. But what are you doing differently? Probably nothing. But they need something to be different, or some "revelation" about who you are. It seems like the go to is "not making them feel loved" whatever that means to them. For my wife, and it seems your wife too, it's that we "make them feel lonely" and apparently for me, that's because i'm not excited, optimistic, enthusiastic enough. But the thing is, the lonely feeling is coming from within them. It's not something you're doing. You've been the same person the whole time! But because this lacking feeling is so intense and they've conveniently blamed it all on you, you're now responsible for it completely. And it's such a bad feeling they hate it, and therefore they hate you. And because this whole process is so exhausting and stressful and scary and sad, you do start to lose some enthusiasm, spontaneity, excitement. And that can just be read as making them feel more unloved. And now everything makes sense to them. They were right all along, no one can love them.

I don't know how to stop that relationship lifecycle from happening. It seems I'm entering the pure hate stage as well. It sure appears that they want to fulfill their own initial prediction (that no one can love them) and so they do anything they can to push you away: call you names, criticize, nag, insult, ignore, withhold, hit. And since they're so on-edge, and can be so perceptive and manipulative they're incredible at finding ways that actually do push you away even if you know it's happening and it's the last thing in the world you want. And it's all to fulfill the idea that they're not lovable. It must be a truly awful feeling. But I think they have to want to change it, and they need to become aware of it, however that may be. I take some solace in thinking that there's probably no way I can actually make that lacking feeling go away for my wife. In that way I can attempt to stop blaming myself, and stop regretting all these little transgressions that my wife creates and loom so large in her head. Hopefully you can see that too, that it's not your fault, and pretty much anything you did, if she's not going to get help or acknowledge something is wrong inside her, would have had no affect. As you say, there's no way you can make a pwBPD feel a certain way for an significant period of time.

I think in terms of getting her back, I'd try to be as nice as possible, but as independent and confident in your sense of morality and how to be a good person/spouse as you can be. You need to remember how you were before you were convinced that you're the worst. That's actually the person that attracted her in the first place. And she will either respond to it or not, and if not, it's not your fault, and you were at least true to yourself and, maybe, could stop stressing as much about what's the right move to get the pwBPD back. Obviously that's all far easier said than done. I've been attempting it myself with mixed results, it's very hard, especially when you want them back so badly. But I think trying to be the person you were before them, before codependency is the healthiest thing for you, and coincidentally, the best way to ge them back, if they're going to come back.