To those reading this topic: if you are in a relationship with someone with BPD and everything is working out for you guys considering the disorder, I'd really appreciate your guidance and advices, but if you're not and you're holding grudges against your ex and all you do is tell people to run for the hills when it comes to BPD, please I've had enough of that and yet I can decide for myself if someone is worth it or not, no matter what, so please don't. But if this is not your case and you have an ex with pbd and want to share some of your wisdom and experiences without judgments I'd love to read it too
So let's get started.
Back in november I wrote my first and only topic here, saying how much my ex girlfriend hated me and would treat me with nothing but coldness after almost 3 years apart. I thought we would never ever be friends again. But guess what? Two months after that we casually started to talk again and to my surprise she was being nice and seemed to be more mature. No, it wasn't a mistake, she actually is doing better now compared to how she was 3 years before, believe it or not. She also told me she would treat me badly because yes, after all those years she still wasn't okay with me, she would still hurt. She apologized for her bad behavior and assured me everything was fine now.
So, a few months after we started to talk again we decided to get back together but only to a month and a half after she end things... again. I won't get into much details of how it started and ended, but there were no fights, no arguments, no disagreements, no toxic behavior, because after learning a little how to respond to her it was clear that the way she responded to me was different too. It was calmer. I haven't mastered the principles of DBT yet but it IS real, guys, and it's really important to those who want to stick with a pwBPD wether you're a family member or a romantic partner to this person. So it was all about being open and understanding this time, whenever she was upset or I was upset we would sit and talk about it until we were good and solved the problem "for good". There weren't judging or invalidation, just listening and speaking up our minds. It sounds so healthy, right?
But I think I was wrong, we wouldn't fight or have disagreements but appearently she was feeling pain, feeling suffocated by being with me and away from me, and kept it to herself instead of attacking me and in the end she decided that it was best for both of us if we broke up. She wanted to be alone. To me the most logical thing to do was just accept it and that's what happened, life had to keep moving.
The problem is that we wanted to keep friendship and I say problem because with that we would still treat each other as romantic partners, meaning being vulnerable to romantic feelings. Until she started to distance herself by simply stop replying my texts and a couple days after text me again and give me as much love as she could. Oh the push-pull behavior... This cycle has repeated itself a couple times now and right now she's distant again, like if she had moved on already.
From what I saw on her social media she actually is talking to someone new but it's not something serious, it's really not. But the fact is that she is flirting with someone else and it doesn't matter if it's serious or not, she just is. I didn't want to confront her about it but I couldn't just sit there pretending I didn't see it and let that feeling kill me, so I talked to her, no criticizing or pointing fingers, and she said she wasn't getting involved with this girl, she was good being alone and wasn't open to relationships right now with the pandemics as I already knew. But she also didn't want to decide now what she want to do about us and I didn't force her to, she said she likes me very very much and we're good the way we are now, but she can't give me an answer at the moment, but seriously, to me it feels like she's just being nice, that she moved on already and just wants me to decide if I want to keep friendship, try to get her back or leave. What I see and of course I might be wrong is that she doesn't want to take this responsabilty to herself, even if to ME it's clear she just wants to remain friends... yet she won't tell me that, which is hard for me to decide what to do, considering her illness and also the person she is aside from that.
But the truth is that I'm not okay with all that, I practice compassion and understanding because that's what I alone decided I wanted to do for her, because while she is not disrespcting me or trying to break my limits, I do want to stick with her and try to make things work if that's possible for us.
I'm pretty dysregulated myself now, and although this kind of behavior of hers is predictable and expected we're never truly ready to deal with it. I honestly don't know what to do or if I can even see if the answer is right in front of me already, I'm torn between end this "romantic friendship" with her, give myself a long time away from her so I can move on and truly heal or if I stay and wait to see what happens next. If I'm missing some important detail here that would help me have some peace and accept things how they are now, how she is now, and yet be able to wait if we have a chance... considering that we went too far just to end things now IF thats the case. I need insight.
So what are your thoughts?