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VIDEO: "What is parental alienation?" Parental alienation is when a parent allows a child to participate or hear them degrade the other parent. This is not uncommon in divorces and the children often adjust. In severe cases, however, it can be devastating to the child. This video provides a helpful overview.
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Author Topic: Ambiguous Loss, Confusing Ending.  (Read 372 times)
mongazish

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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Separated
Posts: 21


« on: February 06, 2020, 07:23:08 PM »

Hey everyone, this is my first post. I've been reading a lot here and have found a lot of help from this platform.
Just read something on here about Ambiguous Loss and trauma and it really resonated with me but I don't see much else about this specifically so I was wondering if anyone could relate.

We have been broken up for about 3-4 months. Me (a 26 yr old male) and my ex (a 23 yr old female).
I ended up moving back home to my parents' house because I couldn't see any other really healthy option. I have been living on my own since I was 19 so I felt okay coming back to square one for a time. I had been grinding away working and just being super codependent and trying to find a balance between us, but I really couldn't find one without first thinking that I just needed to get away. We had been staying at her dad's house which was not a good idea in the first place. I am seeing a lot of my mistakes and just lack of strength in hind's sight. I feel like if I had more of myself together in the first place, she wouldn't have been so triggered throughout but maybe that is too hard on myself.

She also wanted space and towards the end of the relationship she would just not want anything to do with me. She would sigh and roll her eyes a lot and just tell me she didn't want me there and didn't want to feel bad about it. She didn't want me around. But she also didn't just want me to go back home because she saw it as "uninspiring". She said she still wanted me around to an extent because she cared about me. She just wanted me to get my PLEASE READ together and I did too. Aside from that, I don't really know if she knew what she wanted. And I just wanted some clarity and peace because I was just triggering her all the time and getting triggered all the time and didn't know what else to do. So the split was weirdly mutual. But I also could tell we didn't want to really be done with each other? She is self aware and knows that she is a lot to deal with but she also tries to distract herself a lot. I fall into caretaker role a lot.

I guess I am looking for anybody who can relate because the way it ended wasn't just that she ghosted or we blew up and are done with each other. She got more distant and sassy and criticizing and I just got more withdrawn and meek. But we would talk about it sometimes and she said she wanted to be more open and like meet new people. And I am not that kind of person. So we kind of just fizzled out and I left but felt like I had been pushed out and dumped. We talk every once in a while. She opened up at one point a month after I left, telling me she loves me more than anyone and that I am the only one who will ever understand that and that our souls are tied together, and she wants to go back to being best friends like at the beginning of the relationship but not that we should just get back together. She is an amazing person and I don't hold her behavior against her and I know I am in no position to fall back into anything. I need to really stabilize myself and figure out what I am doing with my life.

It just feels weird. There was no clear separation. I just left but felt like I had been left and we still talk but I feel like I am more invested in maintaining a friendship than she is. When we talk I try to keep it light but I wonder if I should cut through it and ask her what she really is trying to do in regards to our relationship or friendship moving forward. Very foggy, still friendly, sometimes unresponsive.
Thanks for reading.   
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Lucky Jim
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Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 6211


« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2020, 04:40:41 PM »

Hey mong, What makes you think your Ex has BPD?  I'm unclear from your post.

Excerpt
I feel like if I had more of myself together in the first place, she wouldn't have been so triggered throughout but maybe that is too hard on myself.

Don't beat yourself up!  If she has BPD, she would have been triggered in any event.

It sounds like there's a potential for you to have a friendship w/her, going forward.

LuckyJim
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    A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
mongazish

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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Separated
Posts: 21


« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2020, 05:42:52 PM »

Hey LuckyJim, thanks for the response.

I didn't include a lot of specific details about her in the post, but she behaves in a lot of ways that seem like BPD. She has been diagnosed as bipolar by several therapists, and while I think there is validity to that as well, she seems to be reacting to external events a lot, not just going through her own internal changes as one would do more with something like bipolar disorder. We could be off to a great start in the morning and if I showed any lapse in enthusiasm or seemed indecisive about anything or wanted to do something that she didn't really want to do, it could ruin the day. She would shut down very easily and if I tried to get close and understand her I would more often than not trigger her further into a rage where she would break things, cuss me out, hit herself. My tone could set her off. Forgetting something could set her off. Not doing something exactly the way she wanted to could set her off. On a regular basis she has a hard time keeping friends and can turn on people very quickly. She blocks people on social media quite a bit. Black and white thinking. She falls in love very easily and has very porous boundaries. She merges with others very easily and although she spends a lot of time alone, she would rather be around people most of the time. She can read other people's emotions and be extremely empathetic and warm and friendly and connect with people within an instant. She can be an amazing friend. But she has a hard time maintaining any of that in a long and stable way. I have done a lot of reflecting on her behavior and research into what types of things can explain this behavior. Almost to an obsessive rate which then just made me concerned about my own self. So I don't do it too much anymore because regardless of what you call it, it comes down to these unstable patterns that I can't do anything about. What I have been neglecting is what role I play in all of the mess which I was reluctant to see for a very long time.
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Lucky Jim
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Gender: Male
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Posts: 6211


« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2020, 12:11:05 PM »

Hey mong, OK, we can't diagnose on this site, of course, yet it seems like you have done your homework on bPD.

Excerpt
What I have been neglecting is what role I play in all of the mess which I was reluctant to see for a very long time.

What is your role?  Presumably you got involved for a reason.  What is that reason?

LJ
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    A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
mongazish

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What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Ex-romantic partner
Relationship status: Separated
Posts: 21


« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2020, 04:50:14 PM »

My role in the dysfunction could definitely be seen as a passive enabler. I wasn't completely locked into that role. But over the course of our relationship of about 3 years, I slowly lost my sense of self and my reality became more and more intertwined with hers so at a point it felt like my life's mission was to support her. In hind's sight it is interesting now how much she hints at her own dysfunction but never in a direct way. Like she recently posted something about astrology. She is a Leo, and this meme said something like "Leo, you say you want a partner but really all you want is a personal hype-man." That is a lot of what it felt like my role became. I felt like her personal hype man. But she also wanted more of "me". It was confusing. I wanted myself back and she expressed that she wanted me to be more myself too, but it felt almost impossible to get there. It felt like there wasn't enough room in the relationship for the two of us to be whole. It sounds so unhealthy when I say it like that.

As for why I got involved. We were really good friends before we were romantically involved. She was actually dating one of my best friends and we just immediately clicked. I was focusing heavily on my own self growth and physical health at the time and was brimming with enthusiasm most of the time. We matched each other in the amount of fun we had and projected to the world and became kindred spirits very quickly. It was a very strong bond. But it is interesting that I had no inklings of sexual or romantic feelings at all. Maybe I was naive. Maybe she felt that way, but I certainly did not. I respected the relationship between her and my friend and didn't dare tamper with it. I just enjoyed being her friend. We worked together as well. After a while she eventually got bored with my friend and ghosted him which left him pretty devastated.

I lost a lot of respect for her after that. She continued to try to be friendly and enthusiastic with me but I really didn't pay much attention to her. She wasn't really who I thought she was. But we still saw each other a lot at work. And after several months of being around her I realized that we actually think about things in a very similar way. She kind of opened up to me about her ending things with my friend and said that she doesn't really like to make a big deal about things and if she feels like she can't continue something with someone she just stops talking to them. At the time I was in an unhealthy place myself and was a huge spiritual bypasser. I was very monk-like and detached from the social and emotional world so I agreed with her that if something isn't working for you, it is best to just leave it alone. I didn't think so much about how this affects people. So we became close again, and talked more at work and would joke around a lot, and I started to realize that my negative feelings about her had more to do with other people than myself. I decided to just base my decisions off of how I felt when I was with her which was really good and we began to spend more time together and eventually got romantically involved.

I won't give you the whole life story. But looking at it now, I was in a weird place at the time. Into very spiritual stuff and not really grounded, and it felt like we were almost like Adam and Eve. (I'm not delusional, I know how weird this may sound trust me.) Like we had this intense and pure love that had nothing to do with anything or anyone and we could just love each other and ascend out of reality together. Neither of us were really grounded. I think the fact that we started our relationship on that basis, in this crazy cosmic euphoria headspace says a lot about how unsustainable it ended up being. We didn't build up a concrete sense of trust. We were more like clinging onto each other for dear life in the whirlwind of this consciousness-expanding period of time.

It's hard to reign it in when I'm looking back and trying to explain. I don't know if any of this makes sense to you. Hopefully some of it does.

Long story short, however. I was ungrounded and saw her as someone strong who cared more about small physical details and didn't care about societal norms. As I got more grounded through the relationship it felt like smoke cleared and I wasn't floating as I thought I was. I probably gave her the impression initially that I could take on anything and was so detached that nothing could hurt me and thus I could always be there for her and take anything from her.

Didn't mean for this to turn into such a rant. It's hard to relive the beginning. It is steeped in weird feelings of soul-bonding and being sucked out of myself.
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