7 months update: what was hard, what helped me

[BKDamon]

Hi everyone,

It’s been 7 months since I left my ex (who has definite BPD traits) after I discovered she was having an affair for the second time, despite her lies and manipulations to keep it secret.

I feel the need to write about where I’m at now, both as a way to clear my mind and in hope that documenting the healing process will benefit some of you.

So, 7 months. Only. Honestly, I have processed so many thoughts, I have suffered and moved on so much that it feels much, much longer. The pain I was in, the betrayal, the deception made me eager to heal. I just wanted it to be over. But as I learned by reading this board’s posts, it takes time. Which seems unfortunate at first when every second hurts.

Paradoxically, some aspects my daily life rapidly improved right after the break-up. Most of you know what it is to live with a PWBPD, all the stress and anxiety over when the next rage or tear outburst will occur, and which of your words or actions will be blamed for it. You all know how soul taxing it is to constantly walk on eggshells and to be depersonalized by someone else’s projections. The feeling of never being or giving enough. Well, all of that was gone.

But I couldn’t really enjoy it, initially. I had other things to process.
First, I had a pretty bad case of BPD fleas for a couple of weeks. I had bouts of rage, I felt intense jealousy, I overacted my sorrow to get her attention, I was needy, all of which were things that looked like her, but were really unlike my calm and introverted self. When I realized that these reactions didn’t belong to me, I instantly felt better. And if this is what it is to be inside her head, then I feel sorry for her.

So the rage was gone, but anger still appeared from time to time. I’ve had a hard time accepting what I saw as an injustice: she and my supposed friend betrayed me for the second time and they got to be happy after that? "A nice love story", they both said. Well that’s only true if you ignore the guy who was cheated on, lied to and manipulated, the guy whose world had collapsed and whose heart and soul are broken. That’s only true with a sufficient amount of selfishness.
Realizing again and again how selfish they both were (are) helped me quite a bit. I for one couldn’t be happy in those circumstances. I don’t envy their so-called happiness, I don’t want it. And I don’t want them in my life either. They don’t deserve my anger, nor my forgiveness (they never asked for it, so I guess it doesn’t matter to them anyway).
Plus, there were telltale signs that she wasn’t feeling as great as she pretended... Petty, maybe, but it does help a little too.

The main thing to process, though, was and still sometimes (rarely) is confusion. BPD can be so confusing for those around who care! She said, declared, promised things with such intensity that it was hard not to believe her. Yet her actions, her behavior were sometimes in total contrast with all of that. I guess she really believed that she was the person I wanted her to be (the person she wished she were too, probably). But at the same time, her overall behavior was mostly self-centered.
Take empathy for example. She proudly believes that she is extremely empathetic, and I believed it too. And she IS really sensitive to some signals like intonation, body language etc. But how she interprets them can be really skewed by her own anxieties and projections. And her behavior when we broke up showed me how insensitive she can really be: she made jokes about her affair, she shouted at me when I was crying, she fell asleep (several times) when I opened my heart and tried to express my pain...
Add to that the sudden mood shifts, the immaturity, the impulsive and irrational behaviors, and it’s hard to keep your sanity!

I have seen a couple of therapists, which was also pretty helpful. One of them helped me to deal with the trauma using technics such as EMDR and hypnosis. And with the other one, I’m trying to understand how I got into this mess. What made me stay with a woman who was violent, demanding and unstable. Because even though I didn’t think that she could be so destructive, I do have my share of responsibility in what I’ve been through.

My first therapist advised me to get in touch with persons who share my values. So I contacted a bunch of old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen in 10 years or so. I have to say, I was surprised to discover how many of them couldn’t bear her. I also got in touch with an old friend from drama school which I had bearly seen in 20 years, and we started dating. It’s been almost three months now, and it’s no always easy: it’s a long distance relationship (we see each other for a couple of days every other week but we speak over the phone almost every day), I am still healing and I am super watchful of any sign of BPD...
But she is great: cute, smart, really kind and patient with me and it is really enjoyable to be in a relationship with someone who actually listens to you, and not only because she wants you to take care of her.
I don’t know how long it’s going to last because we’re not really at the same stage in terms of attachment and commitment. But I try to be honest about it, express my needs, and I encourage her to do the same (we’re both "nice girls/guys" who tend to take care of other people’s needs and forget about our own).

I have to stay in contact with my ex because of the kids, but it is reduced to the minimum, and it is what helped me the most! But it’s not always easy either. She’s using any pretext that she can find to text me, email me or even call me and it can be tiresome because I just want to forget about her and move on with my life. But, hey, couldn’t dodge that bullet.

Overall, though, I feel incomparably better. Happy, even, in a way that I haven’t been in many many years. I want to add that his site and its community has been an essential ressource of information and support for me in the last several months.
So thank you all, I wish you the best.
Hang in there.

BKD

[Mutt]

Hi BKDamon,

Thanks for checking and sharing your experiences with us. I like how you it takes time but in the beginning how things feel like they’re moving slowly because of hie raw everything is. I have to stay in touch with my ex because of the kids there’s so many ways to communicate with each other these days. I can relate with your post with his your ex finds every possible reason to satay in touch.

I’ll leave this here with you maybe it will will help you. I only communicated via email because not everything urgent and needs immediate attention and you’re not constant alerts that interrupts your day. I’d find a particular day in the week where I’d set 15 minutes aside and make a coffee or a tea to try to get into a relaxed state and skim through the messages looking for what’s valid that was for the kids and needed a response and only responded back to that.

If it was am emergency we’ll that’s different then I’d call my ex or vice versa. I need that buffer, to slow down my responses and to help with detachment and feel better by not feeling like I’m walking on eggshells by responding immediately to my exuBPDexw’s impulses.

It sounds like you’re on the right track and glad to hear that you reconnected with old friends and you’re enjoying someone’s company.

[Ad Meliora]

Hi BKDamon,

Sounds like you've worked through a lot of stuff in 7 months and things are looking up.   Thanks for sharing.

When I realized that these reactions didn’t belong to me, I instantly felt better. And if this is what it is to be inside her head, then I feel sorry for her. --BKDamon

I think this is a good insight, and if others read your story and update (yes, the fleas) they may feel instantly better too.  Those reactions, and specifically the emotions associated belonged to our BPDex's and not us.  They did what they could to make things stick to us, where they were like Teflon when it came to us. Nothing good, supportive, or loving ever stuck to them.  Time to put some coats of wax on our sense of self and/or get out the tarnish remover.  Underneath remains the Sterling Silver that is us.  Shake off the fleas and say, "I'd like to meet someone new, please."  It' sounds like that's pretty much where you're at.

[BKDamon]

Thanks you both for your replies!

@Mutt
Initially, I asked that if there were  things to discuss about the kids, she would leave a note with their stuff when they came to my house, and I’d do the same. She said that it wouldn’t work for her and that she’d rather write emails.
Fine, I said, but only one recap email per week (she used to flood my inbox with 2-sentence long e-mails about whatever came to her mind at that time). And of course, I was OK to use texts or phone calls in case of emergency. She agreed to that.
But it didn’t take long before she broke this arrangement and I got tired of trying to gently remind it to her. Now I just mostly ignore everything that’s not an emergency  and I just do as you do: take time once a week to sieve through the texts and emails and respond to the relevant things.
I still find her texting/emailing me so often pretty invasive but she has never respected my boundaries, so I don’t really expect her to do it now. I thought she would get tired of it, but I might have to get a little more assertive if it doesn’t change. Not my best skill, but c’est la vie.

@Ad Meliora, I love your Teflon analogy! Really original.
I guess her low sense of self lead to her need for fusion, her chameleon behavior, and as a result, it became hard for me to identify what belonged to her and what belonged to me. It felt good to shake off those fleas!