Ayachuco
Fewer than 3 Posts
 Offline
What is your sexual orientation: Straight
Who in your life has "personality" issues: Romantic partner
Relationship status: Broken up
Posts: 1
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« on: September 09, 2020, 03:28:24 PM » |
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I am 30, my ex is 29, and she has BPD. Slightly complicated, however, as she only has a soft BP2 diagnosis, with her psych noting that there was a chance it could be borderline, he just didn’t have enough time with her to be able to distinguish for sure. She has done every online test available, though, as well as taken meds for BP2 (which didn’t help in the slightest); let me assure you, she has BPD. We dated for four and a half years, living together for over 3 of them. Her borderline, as is common, didn’t really show signs until at least a year in, when she started having to deal with some difficult personal issues, ie. friends disappearing (through no fault of the relationship, let me assure you, I always advocated her spending time with friends/family), she started having troubles at work (specifically with her boss), etc.. I had no idea what BPD was at this point. My family has a slight medical background, so things like mental health aren’t foreign to me, but BPD was something I’d probably never even heard of. She started going to a psych, and that’s when she got her diagnosis. I was being supportive, I didn’t have enough knowledge at the time to notice any potential inconsistencies with what the doctor had diagnosed. We then had a family friend of mine move in, due to her being in a bit of a bind. This friend is a psych nurse, and over the next few months of her being around my ex, she brought up to me one night that she was convinced it was BPD. Not only does she deal with it frequently at work, her best friend for decades suffered from it, so she was well versed as to what the red flags were. I brought it up to my ex, and began looking into it myself, and as soon as I did, everything made sense. She emphatically agreed, and we started looking into counselling/treatments. She was just about to start DBT, until the pandemic rendered it, essentially, illegal, hah.
Now, things started really becoming a problem around two years ago. She had started out as the most supportive, agreeable, easy to get along with partner I’d ever had, but that slowly devolved into someone who was completely all over the place emotionally, would take everything as an insult (even if I brought up that she had done something hurtful/negative, that would get spun into some semblance of personal dig), she never took accountability, would hold situations over my head and bring them up every argument, she blamed me for everything. But the worst was that she started refusing to communicate. Like, at all. I could tell she was upset, I knew there was something wrong, but she would literally refuse to speak to me about it. She wouldn’t discuss anything at all confronting/uncomfortable. I take pride in my ability to communicate, and regard it as, arguably, the most important aspect of a healthy relationship, so this becoming a regular thing was super difficult. We live in Canada, and her parents live in LA. Once the pandemic started clamping down, she started going to see her parents more. She would get on a plane without notice, and not give a timeline for when she was going to return. I started putting together that this was probably because all of the things in our relationship she avoided discussing, or addressing at all, were starting to become unavoidable, and LA was the only place she could avoid our issues, as well as personal problems she still hadn’t dealt with. Her parents are well off, so while she was there, she didn’t have to worry about a thing. No money, no bills, no rent, food was taken care of, she didn’t have to think about any of the struggles her and I were having, or any of the ones she was having personally. She got laid off from her job at the beginning of covid, so she had zero obligations. She would go for a month, month and a half at a time. It was pretty difficult for me, specifically the lack of any sort of timeline as to when she planned on returning. The last time she went, she did give me a return date before she left, but she wound up changing it, no joke, six different times, always the day before she said she was coming home, equalling almost two extra weeks. This was pretty much the final straw for me. The disregard she showed by changing her plans at the last minute so many times, combined with how difficult it was to communicate with her while she was away, as well as the fact that I’d told her how tough it was having to navigate all the pandemic parameters alone, and that it was becoming more hurtful, as every time she left, there was an increasing feeling of her not prioritizing the relationship over going to spend time with her parents, as well as the avoidance that seemed to be correlated with her leaving. Our issues weren’t going anywhere, she was refusing to communicate and discuss anything, and when it got impossible for her to excuse her way out of addressing, she would skip town and lay low at her parents until things had cooled down enough, and I was just happy to have her home. The last time she left I put my foot down. After five plan changes, I told her that if she wasn’t home by the date she was giving, that I would take it as a sign that she didn’t want to be together, and she needed to move out. Well, she chose not to come back, changed her plans, and I changed the locks. She came back with her dad (who flew in frequently himself, and there were plenty of days she would spend with him when he was in town, either at a hotel or their family friends who lived close to us), I let her grab her stuff, and her dad was keen to stick around to help her find/pay for an apartment. Now, in the two weeks after we split, I was starting to wonder if I’d made the right decision. We were still talking, and both of us truly having the sense, for the first time, that the relationship could be over, took both of us by surprise. We were talking about getting back together, and this was initiated by a conversation we had, where I mentioned that my biggest point of contention was that she never had the chance to go to therapy, or really deal with her BPD, because as soon as it was discovered that is what she was suffering from, again, the pandemic really restricted her ability to actually explore treatment. I said that it might turn into something we regret, throwing away a four and a half year relationship without ever even seeing how much treatment could improve things, and she agreed. But first she wanted to go to LA for a little while, clear her head, come back in a better space, and actually be able to give the relationship/the disorder the attention/effort they deserved. There was, again, no timeline specified, but the conversation about us giving things another try was more than enthusiastic, and I assumed it would be for, roughly, the same amount of time she was usually there for. Once it got to a month, I started asking about her plans to return. She couldn’t ever narrow down a date, but was still adamant about coming back to give things another try. We had even planned to move somewhere quieter, and were looking up alternative living options, like hauling a camper around or something. We were speaking every day. Then, just after a month, she started getting a little distant. We’d make arrangements to talk at a certain time, and she would bail, or there would be days she wouldn’t respond at all. Now, I know she isn’t with anyone else, a lot of her family lives there, and she didn’t get to see them as much as she normally did the previous year, so it’s been constant catch-up. I also brought up that it was difficult when I knew she was ignoring my calls/texts (I wasn’t blowing up her phone, or anything, we’re talking two calls/three texts in a day, if she wasn’t responding), and especially when she would ghost on specific times we had planned to talk. Initially she apologized and said she understood, but it kept happening, and more frequently. I would bring up again that it wasn’t cool when she purposely didn’t pick up for days at a time, and she began claiming things like that I was ‘suffocating her’, or I expected too much. One time, I sent her a message in the morning, and she said she wanted to talk on the phone, but needed an hour, and that she would call in an hour. I said no worries, and if she needed more time, just to let me know. Well, an hour goes by. I give it some time. Another 45 minutes goes by. I sent a text asking her if everything is alright, no response. So I call, nothing. After two and a half hours have passed, she finally gets ahold of me, and says her dad wanted to grab lunch, so they went and ate. When I asked why she couldn’t text me to let me know that’s what was happening, she started getting upset, and claiming, again, that I was suffocating/expecting too much. Expecting her to call around the time she arranged to talk is ‘expecting too much’? Anyway, our communication began to devolve rapidly. Since we could only talk on the phone, she started just hanging up in the middle of conversations. If we started talking about something that was even the slightest bit confronting, she would hang up, and then ignore me for the rest of the day. This became a pattern.
We would still talk about moving somewhere new together, and that she was definitely still planning on us being back together, but our conversations became less frequent, the amount she was choosing to just ignore my attempts to get ahold of her was increasing, and whenever we would talk about something that was uncomfortable for her, like me trying to address how it felt when she would decide to stop responding for days at a time, she would get worked up, and then hang up.
That’s kind of where we’re at, and I’m not sure what the best thing to do is. No contact seems to be the consensus in normal circumstances, when trying to steer an ex back, but I haven’t been able to find much information about how much something like that benefits someone with borderline.
What would the best course of action be to break the negative cycles, in relation to communication?
And, what would be the best course of action for getting her to finally come back so we can start moving forward?
I understand that there is no way to force someone to do anything, I’m just wondering what gives me the best chance, you know?
I apologize this was such a novel. Thank you so much, in advance, to anyone who is able to get through it all, and offer some advice!
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